The House Swap

by Rebecca Fleet

  The sound of the doorbell shatters the silence, shrilling through the air. It makes me jump and I start to my feet, but I’m grateful. Right now, I don’t want to be alone here.

  I push open the front door to see Amber standing on the doorstep. She’s wearing a red cotton shift dress, another deceptively simple outfit which is harder to carry off than she makes it look. Her hair is swept back behind her ears, revealing small diamond studs.

  ‘I thought it would be easier just to come round,’ she says, and belatedly I realize that I never replied to her text the day before, the one suggesting coffee.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, although I don’t know why I’m apologizing; surely, arriving to chase up a tardy reply in person is extreme. ‘I’ve been a bit busy,’ I add feebly.

  ‘No worries,’ Amber says graciously. ‘Do you fancy that coffee now, though?’

  Thinking of the cup in the lounge behind me, I half nod. ‘Maybe a tea …’ As ever, there’s something about her manner that brooks no denial but, as I pull on my shoes, I acknowledge to myself that I’d follow pretty much anyone out of this house right now. Besides, it’s been a long time since someone sought out my company so intensely, and part of me can’t help but respond to it.

  I catch a breath of her perfume as I stand up, and with a little start I realize that it’s one I used to wear myself a few years ago, or something very similar. I used to love its powerful scent of rose and spice, and the smell of it now makes me think of darkly lit bars and the kind of recklessness I have long since left behind. I threw it out after I came back from the Silver Birches, along with much else, but breathing in that scent now, I feel that pull again, those elusive reminders of myself in this woman that are hard to ignore.

  I follow her across the street, noticing again how her front garden breaks the regimented repetition of the street. She has planted a sprawling wild rose at the edge of the lawn, and the ragged splashes of colour of its dark orange blooms are a stark contrast to the prettily planted rows of pansies and peonies that neatly line each of the neighbouring beds. The whitewashed walls of the house are scuffed in places with unidentifiable, patchy stains, like drifts of soot. On its own, it would look unremarkable but, in this company, it seems almost defiant.

  We go into the house and she wanders through to the kitchen, where she’s already set the mugs out waiting. ‘Have a biscuit, if you want,’ she says lightly as she makes the tea. ‘I’ve eaten most of them, but I think there are still a few left.’

  I glance at the packet of digestives lying on the arm of the kitchen chair and think of her curled up lazily on it, eating her way through the packet. There’s something unthinkably decadent about the image, and yet it’s exactly the sort of way I would have spent an idle morning, before Eddie. ‘I’m all right,’ I say, and then take one, anyway, on impulse.

  ‘So,’ she says, as she sets down my mug with a clatter and slides into the chair opposite mine, ‘are you OK? The other day, you seemed – well. Not OK. Not the way I’d expect someone on holiday with her husband to be.’

  She’s watching me closely, unblinking. In her own way, I think, she’s just as much of a curtain-twitcher as the people in this road she speaks about with such derision, only the curtains she’s twitching are the edges of my own feelings, and she’s flicking and peeling at their corners in the hope that something will spill out.

  ‘It’s been a difficult few days,’ I say at last. ‘A difficult few years.’

  ‘For me, too,’ she says quickly, and I wonder if I’m wrong and whether her real purpose is to unload rather than to absorb, but she doesn’t elaborate and raises her eyebrows slightly, waiting for me to continue.

  I’m struck again by the strangeness of this situation, and by how little I know this woman who is asking me to turn myself out for inspection. I’m not sure I trust her, but at the same time there’s something tempting about being with someone who behaves so unconventionally. It frees me up to do the same, and I’m tired of keeping these thoughts trapped in my head.

  ‘I love Francis,’ I tell her, ‘but our marriage is – complex.’ I hesitate.

  ‘All marriages are,’ she says mildly, ‘aren’t they?’

  ‘Some more than others.’ I find I want to explain. ‘He’s a recovering addict and he doesn’t really know himself how things will be from day to day. Sometimes, like this week, he’s incredibly upbeat and positive, proactive, making an effort. Other times, he’s very distant. Not quite there. At times like that, it’s easy to feel there’s nothing much holding us together.’ Now that I’ve started, there is a kind of wild pleasure in saying these things aloud. I don’t voice them with such frankness to anyone, not even my closest friends.

  ‘I can understand that,’ Amber says carefully. ‘It’s a hard thing to live with.’

  ‘Well, it’s not only his fault.’ I pause again, but I already know I’m going to continue. ‘A couple of years ago, I had an affair.’ I glance at her quickly, but her face betrays no emotion. ‘It lasted about six months,’ I say, ‘and even though I never left my husband for him, I really loved him. I haven’t spoken to him for a long, long time. We agreed that we wouldn’t be in touch ever again. It – it ended horribly. Not between us, not exactly, but …’

  I take a breath. Up until this point, the words have poured out as easily and swiftly as blood-letting from a vein. Now, there’s a tightness in my throat and my hands are shaking with what feels like delayed shock. Saying these things out loud has made them real, but it hasn’t dispelled their power. If anything, they feel more dangerous, and the weight of all I haven’t said is looming darkly behind them, pressing at the door and waiting for release.

  Amber nods, swirling tea in her cup as if she’s reading the leaves for the answer to my problems. ‘But he has been in touch,’ she comments. ‘You said that, the other day.’

  ‘Yes. I think so.’ I stare around the kitchen, suddenly lost. Pressing these thoughts back into their box is exhausting, leaving me drained and passive. I find myself looking at the piles of crockery on the dresser: dark blue china, rimmed with white.

  ‘I can see why it’s unsettling,’ I hear her say. With an effort, I drag myself back. ‘I imagine it’s very tempting to fall back into contact with someone who helped you through a difficult time. But if you don’t mind me saying so, Caroline, it doesn’t seem to be making you very happy. It sounds like you have enough to cope with, without him.’

  Silently, I nod. I’m thinking of those first few weeks afterwards, when not having you on the end of the phone felt like agony. I needed you to talk to, to process what had happened, to make sense out of the senseless. It isn’t like that now. But they say that, often, amputees feel the presence of the missing limb, something at once ghostly and strangely real. There are still times when I feel you stirring invisibly next to me and, right now, that presence is stronger than it’s ever been.

  ‘I do understand what you’re saying about your marriage,’ Amber says. ‘Especially that feeling you mention of him not being quite there … I feel that with my boyfriend, all the time.’

  I look up sharply. ‘Really?’

  She hesitates, as if examining her own words for accuracy. ‘Yes. Of course, in my case, a lot of the time he isn’t there. He works in a satellite office a lot, and he’s usually away for a week or so at a time.’

  ‘That can’t be easy.’ Something clicks into place. Her words make sense of her aimlessness, the vague aura of expectancy and isolation I sensed buzzing around her from the first time we met. ‘You end up feeling like you’re just filling in time when you’re not together,’ I add, and unavoidably, I’m thinking of you again. The way I used to cling to you when we said goodbye, trying to imprint you on my body, and the way that the sensation always faded in minutes, impossible to hold on to.

  ‘Exactly,’ Amber says. ‘So when he is around, it puts …’

  ‘Puts pressure on?’ I prompt.

  She half nods, sips her tea again. ‘Puts a spotlight o
n things, I was going to say. Everything’s – exaggerated. I find myself wanting to know exactly what he’s thinking and feeling all the time, and it just makes him …’ She brings her hands away from her mug in a sudden, violent movement, snapping them together. ‘Close up.’

  I look at her painted fingernails, digging into her own skin. There’s a rawness to it that shocks me. ‘I see,’ I say.

  She releases herself and leans back in her chair, tipping her head back to the ceiling. ‘Oh, well,’ she says flatly. ‘That’s men for you. I blame his ex. That relationship hurt him a lot. He told me all about it, a while ago. I’m not sure he’ll ever fully get over it. He sacrificed a lot for her, kept her secrets. I don’t think she has any idea the effect it had on him.’

  All at once, I feel claustrophobic. The conversation is too intense, making me short of breath, and there’s something prickling over my skin, some small, wordless instinct I don’t quite understand. I push my chair back and take my mug to the sink, turning on the tap. ‘I’ll wash this up,’ I say, but she doesn’t seem to hear me. She’s twisted round now, with her arms locked across the back of the chair, her face angled towards mine.

  ‘You know,’ she says, ‘funnily enough, her name was Caroline, too.’

  And I’m not sure what comes first: the hearing of the words, or the flash of colour and shapes that catches my eye as I turn from the sink and reach for the tea towel hanging from a hook on the side of the fridge. Just below the hook, there’s a collage of photographs in small magnetic frames. Amber in bikini and sunglasses, shading her eyes on a sandy beach. Amber smiling nose to nose with a small tabby cat. Amber dressed up for a party. And in the centre, she’s looping her arms around a man’s neck and pressing her face close up against his and her eyes are half closed in bliss – and the man is you.

  I say something, or think I do, but the words are strangled in my throat.

  I can’t drag my eyes away from the photograph. You’re smiling, your eyes crinkled at the corners. You’re wearing a shirt I’ve never seen and you’re someone I don’t know.

  ‘Caroline,’ I hear her say, and when I force myself to turn around her face is so pale I can see the veins translucent beneath her skin. We look at each other for a long moment. ‘It’s you,’ she says at last.

  We stand there motionless opposite each other, only a few feet apart. It’s as if we’re reading parts and the scripts have dropped out of our hands and neither of us has any idea what to say.

  She finds the words first, raising her chin, glaring at me defiantly. ‘What the fuck is going on?’

  I gasp, trying to sort my thoughts into some kind of coherence. I glance at the photograph again, and this time the look in your eyes seems calculating. I have the strangest feeling that you’re here in the room with us, watching this unfold. ‘I have no idea,’ I say shakily. ‘I’m not the one you should be asking.’

  ‘What?’ she asks, louder now, folding her arms across her chest. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Where is he?’ I say. ‘What has he told you?’

  ‘He’s not – it’s not something he’s told me,’ she bites back. ‘It’s something that’s real. He’s working away, just like he often does. I told you that. He’s at the other office, in Cambridge, he’s—’

  ‘He’s lying to you,’ I say swiftly, before I have even stopped to consider if I want to be saying this. ‘I don’t think he’s there at all. I think he’s in my flat.’

  ‘What?’ she says again, shaking her head. ‘Caroline, that’s insane. Do you expect me to believe that my boyfriend—’

  ‘Carl,’ I interrupt again. ‘You can say his name, you know, I’m not going to fall to pieces if you say his name.’ But my voice is rising and I can hear the tell-tale shakiness in my own words. My eyes are filling with tears and I’m pressing my fists angrily against them, shutting her out until I can’t see her any more.

  Home

  Caroline, June 2013

  HE’S ALREADY WAITING for me at the station by the time I’ve fought my way off the Tube – wearing sunglasses and a short-sleeved shirt in response to the new heatwave, lounging back against the wall. I’ve seen him from way off, but pretend I haven’t, walking slowly and composedly, feeling the Lycra of my dress stretch and rub against my thighs. I know he’s watching, and it’s only when I’m a few feet away that I let my eyes meet his and quicken my pace, almost running into his arms. He sweeps me up and holds me tightly, kissing me as I slip my hand briefly inside his shirt. His skin is warm and smooth against mine, and I feel a pang of desire twist in my gut.

  ‘You look hot,’ he says simply, pulling back to examine the dress clinging to my body; the band of pink and red flowers running across the bodice that pushes my breasts out beneath it, the short black skirt moulded to my curves. I found it in the back of my wardrobe this morning. It’s been years since I wore it – probably not since I was his age. When I first tried it on and looked in the mirror, doubt rippled through me, but the longer I stood there, the more I liked it: the brazenness of it, the way it shouts for men to turn their heads and stare. I had forgotten that I had this power but, now that I’ve rediscovered it, I find I only want him.

  ‘Thanks. You too.’ His hands are running up and down my sides, as if they have minds of their own. It wouldn’t take much to peel this dress over my head and have me where he wants me, and for a crazy moment I wish he’d do it, right here in the station, with the sun beating over our heads through the glass roof. ‘Let’s go and get something to eat,’ I say instead. ‘I’m really hungry.’

  He takes my hand as we walk out on to the street and head for the covered market. I hardly ever come to this part of town, and it’s taken me the best part of an hour to get here, but that’s its attraction. No one knows us here. We’re just a couple, scanned idly by strangers, accepted and dismissed.

  I lace my fingers through his more tightly, unable to stop the spread of happiness and excitement pulsing through me. This feels like a treat. It’s the first time we’ve ever had a day off together and, although I need to pop back home and collect Eddie from nursery at five, I’ll be back with him again by eight. I’ve earned this, I tell myself. I’ve been a good wife all week. Made Francis’s dinner, cleaned up after him, listened to his ranting. Kept our son away from him when he’s too out of it to see him. I think of these things and a savage surge of entitlement steals my breath for an instant. I look at Carl tipping his face up to the light as it glints off his sunglasses, relaxed and at ease. Right now, this is what I want. Just this. I won’t think about anything else.

  ‘So how is it in the new office?’ I ask as we wander around the stalls, trying to decide what to buy. ‘New lease of life?’

  He shrugs. ‘The work’s the same, to be honest. No Steven spouting random crap all day, but beyond that it’s not much different.’

  ‘And you said the people were friendly?’ I probe. ‘Who are you sitting next to?’

  He glances at me. ‘A girl.’ His expression is serious, but the corners of his mouth are twitching. ‘She’s very friendly, and quite ugly.’

  Laughing, I press myself up against him, the embarrassment at being rumbled outweighed by the pleasure that he can see through my unreasonable jealousy so easily. ‘You know me too well.’

  ‘Yes, I thought you might like that.’ He kisses the top of my head, pulling me closer. ‘Seriously, though, it’s OK, but I can’t say I’m getting a lot of work done. I probably shouldn’t spend so much time messaging you, but it’s hard to resist.’ He shoots me a quick smile as he draws back, but I think I see confusion flare briefly in his eyes. I’m reminded of the strange, queasy feeling I had when we said goodbye a couple of weeks ago, the sense of this having slipped out of my control. It’s the first time it has occurred to me that it’s the same for him. There is no one steering this ship. In our different ways, we’re both wildly out of our depth.

  ‘Well, like Steven always says, you can resist anything but temptation,’ I say lightly, tr
ying to dispel my unease. ‘Though I’m not sure he said it first.’

  We eventually buy a couple of wraps from a Mexican stall and wander up to the nearby park to eat them, settling down in the full glare of the sun. Carl lies down on his back, pillowing his hands behind his head, and I lie next to him, feeling his heartbeat where my head rests on his chest. ‘This is nice,’ I say quietly after a while. ‘Nice not to have to rush off.’

  ‘I know.’ His chest rises and falls in a sigh. ‘Sometimes,’ he says, ‘I wish we could just stay in one evening and, I don’t know, watch TV. Get a takeaway. Normal stuff.’

  ‘Well, we could do that.’ I know exactly what he means but, even as I speak, I know it probably won’t happen. Our time alone is precious, too short. We spend most of it in bed, and it feels like the opposite of normal.

  He doesn’t answer but strokes my hair, his hand running idly up and down its length and gently pulling, teasing his fingers through the strands. ‘There’s a couple at the new office,’ he says at last. ‘They’re in their twenties, think they’ve only been going out for a few months. It’s funny, they hardly ever talk to each other at work. Don’t often go out for lunch together, even. It made me think there’s no way I’d be able to stay away from you, in that situation.’

  ‘You managed it OK,’ I say, ‘when we did work together.’

  ‘Well, not really,’ he points out, snorting briefly with laughter. ‘Not by the end. Anyway … it doesn’t matter. I just couldn’t help looking at them and thinking, you know. It wouldn’t be like that for me.’

  I scratch my fingernails lightly down his abdomen, thinking about what he is saying. These days, more and more, I find myself trying to imagine what it would be like if we were a real couple. I think about the routine trips to the supermarket, the household chores, the aimless, rainy days when there’s nothing to do. ‘It wouldn’t be like this, either,’ I say. ‘You know that.’