The Mince Pie Mix-Up

by Jennifer Joyce

  ‘I need your support, Calvin, especially with Christmas approaching. I’m rushed off my feet all day at work and then when I come home I have to do everything here.’

  Calvin couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Do you think I have it easy? Do you think I enjoy working my arse off to support this family?’

  Judy threw her arms up in the air. Why did she even bother? ‘I work too, you know.’ Judy stormed from the room as hot tears threatened to spill and make her look like a fool. She wasn’t upset. She was angry. Frustrated. Why couldn’t Calvin understand? Why couldn’t he see that her job was just as important as his? Yes, Calvin worked hard but his duties ended as soon as he shut down his computer. He could come home and relax. He didn’t have to cook or clean or ferry the children here and there. He didn’t have to shop or organise or help with homework. Judy’s responsibilities were never-ending.

  ‘What, that little baking job?’ Calvin had followed Judy and was trailing her up the stairs. ‘You work a few hours a day. Try working my hours and then you’ll know what it’s like to be exhausted. I don’t need this crap after a day’s work.’

  ‘And I don’t need to run around after an overgrown child.’ Judy had reached the bedroom and contemplated slamming the door in Calvin’s face, but that would only diminish her point. Acting like a hormonal teenager wouldn’t give her the upper hand she thought she deserved. ‘I already have two children. I don’t need another.’

  ‘So I’m like a child now? You should try living my life and you’d soon change your mind.’

  Judy reached out to close the door now Calvin was inside the bedroom, not wanting to wake the children. ‘You should try living my life and then you’d realise what a pig you’re being.’

  ‘I wish I could live your life.’ Calvin thought how luxurious it would be to work part-time without the commute. ‘I’d happily swap lives with you.’

  ‘Me too!’

  Judy and Calvin stood just inches apart, glaring at their spouse. In the movies, they’d fall into each other’s arms and make up like there was no tomorrow. But this was no movie and Judy and Calvin were far too incensed to even think about sex.

  ‘You think my life is easy, do you?’ Judy asked. There were those damn tears again! She didn’t want to cry – she wanted to speak and be heard for a change.

  ‘Compared to mine, yes. You don’t have a jumped-up prick of a boss breathing down your neck or deadlines looming around every corner. You don’t have to battle rush hour traffic or miss out on the kids’ stuff. Do you think I wanted to miss Scott’s award ceremony?’

  Judy honestly didn’t know the answer to that. Calvin’s work commitments were unavoidable but she sometimes got the impression Calvin would rather be anywhere else other than with his family.

  ‘I just need you to understand what my life is like,’ Judy said.

  Calvin pulled his hoodie over his head and tossed it towards the laundry basket. It missed by about a foot but he made no attempt to pick it up and try again. Instead, he kicked off his shoes and wriggled out of his jeans before climbing into bed.

  ‘I know what your life is like, Judy. You never stop bleating on about it.’ Calvin turned away from his wife and within minutes he was snoring and making enough noise to rattle the windows. Picking up Calvin’s discarded clothes and dropping them into the laundry basket, Judy got herself ready for bed, but sleep was not as forthcoming for her as it so audibly was for Calvin.

  ‘I wish we could trade lives,’ she told Calvin’s back. ‘Then you’d understand.’

  Chapter Four:

  We Made a Wish

  The alarm clock jumped to attention, emitting an annoying but effective siren to wake the occupants of the nearby bed. The occupants groaned and stretched but, as no attempt was made to reach for the clock, it kept going, enjoying stretching its clock equivalent of vocal cords. This clock was a true professional. There would be no snoozing on his watch.

  From the bed, Calvin groaned, rubbing at his dry, scratchy eyes. How much had he had to drink last night? His brain was fuzzy but he recalled eating turkey with all the trimmings the evening before. So why could he taste mince pie? Slightly burnt mince pie? Had Christmas been and gone already? Did that mean that they had reached the Benvenuti deadline at work? He hoped the rescheduled photo shoot had gone well. He couldn’t remember it at all.

  Shoving his head under his pillow, Calvin mumbled something incoherent about turning off the alarm. Though Calvin couldn’t remember much, he was pretty sure it was the weekend. Didn’t a bloke deserve a lie-in at the weekend?

  Inches away from Calvin, Judy stretched out a hand, wriggling fingers searching for the off switch on the alarm. How could it be morning already? It seemed like only minutes ago she’d been driving home from her parents’ and having a stupid row with her husband. But she must have been asleep because she’d been having a weird dream about eating one of her burnt mice pies, fairies and pine needles. A life-sized fairy had crashed into the sitting room, waking her and Calvin and upending the Christmas tree.

  Wait, she could even taste mince pie. Had she angrily eaten one before bed last night? She hadn’t really done her mum’s festive spread justice yesterday evening, what with seething about Calvin all through the meal. She’d gone to bed hungry so maybe that hunger had driven her to the kitchen in the night. A belly full of burnt pastry would certainly account for the bizarre fairy dream.

  Judy couldn’t seem to locate the alarm. Squinting through one blurry eye, Judy realised what the problem was. She was sleeping on the wrong side of the bed, which meant the alarm was next to Calvin. She gave him a nudge, which ended up being more of a shove. Maybe there was a little residual anger left from their stupid row last night.

  Calvin failed to stir and Judy knew there was no point giving him another nudge. Her husband could sleep through a hurricane rampaging through the bedroom. Reaching over Calvin’s cocooned body, she switched off the alarm and dragged herself out of bed, her eyes bleary from lack of sleep. She’d tossed and turned for what felt like hours before she’d eventually succumbed to sleep what felt like only a matter of minutes ago. Shoving her arms into her dressing gown, Judy made her way out into the hallway. The dressing gown felt oddly snug, as though it had shrunk in the wash.

  Scott’s bedroom door swung open as she reached out to knock on it, revealing her scowling son.

  ‘Your stupid alarm woke me up.’ Scott pushed past Judy and stomped his way to the bathroom, only to poke his head back out to face her again. ‘Why are you wearing Mum’s dressing gown? Pink really isn’t your colour.’ Scott sniggered and disappeared into the bathroom, slamming the door shut. Judy would normally tell her son off about the door-slamming (he needed reminding at least five times a day) but she was too preoccupied by the dressing gown thing. Why are you wearing Mum’s dressing gown?

  Judy turned around as a door opened behind her. Charlie emerged from her bedroom, one leg of her pyjamas lodged mid-calf so that she resembled a nineties rapper. Judy always thought her daughter looked adorable first thing in the morning, her curls amassed around her head to Sideshow Bob proportions. Of course, it wasn’t quite so adorable when Judy had to brush the curls later on, but for those first few minutes of the day she could appreciate the charm.

  ‘Is it morning, Daddy?’

  Daddy?

  Judy looked down at the increasingly uncomfortable dressing gown, pulling it tightly across her body, and realised she was wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts underneath.

  Boxer shorts?

  Slowly peeling away the dressing gown again, she gasped when she caught sight of the hairy belly and even hairier chest beneath the fabric. And her legs! What the hell had happened to her legs? Yes, it was winter and she wasn’t quite as razor-happy as she was in the warmer months but she looked like a Yeti.

  ‘Can I go and watch cartoons?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘Yes, sweetie.’ Judy clamped a hand over her mouth, shocked by the voice emerging from her
lips. It was gruff but not in a first-thing-in-the-morning, bottom-of-hamster-cage sort of way. It was not her voice at all. It was a man’s voice.

  ‘Yay!’ Charlie bounded down the stairs, not at all concerned that her mother had spouted an alarming amount of body hair overnight and adopted a man-ish tone.

  With shaking fingers, Judy pulled the waistband of the boxer shorts away from her body, wincing as it snapped back into place once she saw what was in there. That did not belong in there at all.

  ‘Da-ad!’ Charlie hollered up the stairs. ‘What’s happened to the Christmas tree?’

  Judy’s eyes widened. The Christmas tree!

  The fairy had catapulted into the tree, knocking it to the floor and scattering its pine needles. But that was a dream.

  Wasn’t it?

  ‘Just leave it, sweetie. I’ll sort it out in a minute.’ Judy covered her face with her hands. That was definitely a man’s voice coming out of her mouth. Specifically, her husband’s.

  ‘What’s up with Mum?’ Scott asked as he emerged from the bathroom. Judy sighed with relief. So Scott could see it too. She wasn’t going mad and imagining things! ‘She usually gets up with us. Are you taking me to football?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Judy said in Calvin’s voice. ‘I don’t know what’s going on.’

  ‘Okay.’ Scott gave Judy a funny look. ‘Whatever. I’m going downstairs.’

  ‘Don’t touch the tree,’ Judy said before dashing into the bedroom and heading straight to the dressing table mirror. An anguished cry escaped her as she saw the image looking back at her. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.

  Judy crept towards the bed, releasing another anguished cry as she saw the body sprawled out in the bed. Instead of her husband, she saw herself. Man, she looked rough first thing in the morning.

  ‘Calvin,’ she hissed, shaking his – her – body. ‘Calvin, wake up. Something’s happened.’

  ‘What?’ Judy watched as her body propped itself up on its elbow and rubbed at its eyes. It threw back its head and flung open its jaws to yawn. Yep, there were her fillings.

  ‘Calvin!’ Judy hissed again, eager to get this mess sorted out.

  ‘What do you want?’ Calvin asked in Judy’s voice. He opened his eyes and shook his head as he took in his own image staring back at him. ‘What the –’

  ‘We’ve switched bodies.’ Judy sank onto the bed and grasped Calvin’s – or rather or her own – arm. Gosh, this was confusing. ‘I had a dream. We were visited by an overgrown fairy.’

  ‘She woke us up,’ Calvin said slowly.

  ‘Yes!’ Judy’s eyes almost popped out of her skull. ‘Yes, that’s right! She appeared in our sitting room. Crashed into the tree.’

  ‘We ate a burnt mince pie and we made a wish,’ Calvin said. It started to come back to Calvin then, slowly at first and then rushing at him and knocking the breath from his body. The row. The peculiar winged being destroying their Christmas tree. The wish to swap lives. The fairy had said they could switch lives – live as one another – until Christmas Day. All they had to do to make it happen was eat one of those dodgy mince pies.

  ‘Up to Christmas Day?’ Judy had asked. ‘Or including Christmas Day? It’s just that Calvin would never be able to handle the turkey and everything. We’d end up having a not-very-festive plate of egg and chips for lunch if it was left to him.’

  ‘Hey!’ Calvin had cried. ‘I can handle a bloody turkey. All you have to do is shove it in the oven.’

  Judy and the fairy had shared a look. ‘Up until Christmas then.’ The fairy gave a decisive nod of her head. ‘You’ll spend Christmas Eve as the other person, then you’ll switch back in time for the big day.’

  So they didn’t trust him with the bloody turkey. ‘Isn’t Christmas two weeks away?’

  The fairy had turned to Calvin with a sweet smile, her eyes twinkling like a set of fairy lights. ‘Don’t you think you could handle two weeks of Judy’s life, Petal?’

  ‘Handle it?’ Calvin had snorted with derision. ‘It’ll be like a holiday. Bring. It. On.’

  ‘Then wish it. Say “I wish we could swap lives”. Both of you. Then take a bite of the mince pie.’

  Judy and Calvin had looked at one another before they both uttered the words. ‘I wish we could both switch lives.’

  But that wasn’t real. It couldn’t have been real.

  ‘Look, Calvin.’ Calvin’s replica pointed to the other end of the room, at the large mirror on Judy’s dressing table. The image of Calvin and Judy stared back at them in the wrong order. ‘I’m you. And you’re me. The wish came true. We’ve switched bodies.’

  Chapter Five:

  The First Stage in Wish-Fulfilment: Denial

  Calvin gave a snort and threw back the covers. Switched bodies indeed. What a load of nonsense! Yes, he did appear to be wearing Judy’s penguin-print fleecy pyjamas (that he’d never found particularly sexy on his wife and which he suspected were even less appealing on him). And yes, his voice was a bit squeaky and feminine, but there was no way he had switched bodies with his wife. It was a ludicrous idea!

  ‘Look at the state of me. I’m so hairy,’ Judy-in-Calvin’s-body wailed as she looked down at her bare chest.

  Calvin ignored the hysterics as he made his way towards the dressing table mirror. There would be some explanation. Some trickery. Some way to put an end to this charade. He reached out and touched the glass but the mirror seemed real enough. He frowned. Judy frowned in the reflection. He stuck his tongue out. Judy stuck her tongue out. He stretched the corners of his lips with his thumbs, baring his teeth while tugging down on the skin underneath his eyes with his index fingers. Judy pulled the same face back at him.

  ‘No, no, no.’ Calvin stepped away from the mirror, shaking his head. Judy stepped away from her side of the mirror, shaking her head. ‘This can’t be real. This is insane! People don’t wish for things that come true. Not crazy shit like this.’ He turned to Judy, who was inspecting the contents of her shorts and curling her lip in distaste. ‘They might wish for a promotion that they then rightfully earn. But they do not wish to change lives with their wife and end up in her body. Judy! Stop playing with my knob and take this seriously.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Judy let go of the waistband of the shorts and turned her attention to her husband. She had never seen herself looking so terrified. It was unsettling.

  ‘This is nuts, Judy.’

  Judy thought about the nuts that were currently attached to her body and nestled in her shorts. This was by far the craziest dream she had ever had (and it had to be a dream, Judy realised. Calvin was right – for once – wishes just didn’t come true). She’d laugh about all of this once she woke up.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Calvin asked.

  ‘What can we do?’ Judy gave a shrug. ‘This has to be a dream, brought on by eating burnt pastry. We’ll just have to get on with things until we wake up and things go back to normal.’

  Judy wriggled out of the snug dressing gown and reached for her deodorant, only realising she’d picked up the wrong one as she lifted her arm and caught sight of a hairy pit in the mirror. She doubted Calvin would be impressed if she made his body smell of jasmine and creamy vanilla. Picking up Calvin’s musky deodorant instead, she got herself ready, kitting herself out in a pair of Calvin’s baggy jeans and a gloriously roomy hoodie. Why did she truss herself up like an Egyptian mummy in tight jeans and tops when loose clothing was quite clearly the better option?

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked once she realised Calvin had snuggled back down under the covers.

  ‘It’s still early.’ Calvin nodded towards the alarm clock. ‘And it’s the weekend so I’m getting a few more zeds in.’

  Without a word, Judy peeled the hoodie off and kicked off the jeans, resisting the urge to pick them up and fold them neatly away and instead leaving them where they happened to land. She climbed into bed, placed her feet against her husband’s back and gave him an almighty shove so th
at he toppled out of bed and onto the floor.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Calvin picked himself up and rubbed at his knee.

  ‘I’m going back to bed and having a lie-in.’ Judy settled herself back down into the pillows. ‘And you’re going to drop Scott off at football and take Charlie to ballet.’

  Calvin was still rubbing at his (probably bruised) knee. ‘Why me?’

  ‘Because you’re Mum now.’ Judy pulled the covers up to her chin and closed her eyes. It was a pity she’d have to wake up and do those jobs herself soon. ‘And that’s what Mum does in this house. Dad is going back to sleep. Oh –’ Judy opened one eye, enjoying the look of horror on her face that now belonged to her husband. ‘Don’t forget to take Miller out for a walk before you go.’

  Miller tugged on his lead, insisting that he and Judy (who was actually Calvin but the dog didn’t know that) walk beyond the first tree that they came to. Calvin had expected to dash outside, let Miller do his business and then dash back inside but Miller had other ideas. Calvin found himself being dragged through the village and along the canal, trailing through a muddy dirt track and along the high street, but he was too lost in his own thoughts to put up any resistance. He couldn’t believe he was going along with this. Not the walking the dog thing. He did that regularly. Well, as regularly as a full-time job and his commitments would allow. He couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d taken Miller out, but that didn’t mean it didn’t happen.

  No, it was the whole body-swap thing he couldn’t quite grasp. How could he be expected to believe that he had switched bodies with his wife? The evidence was pretty damning, he had to admit. Calvin was currently sporting a pair of women’s jeans (which were overly clingy and not very comfortable), a pink jumper (which Judy had found hilarious) and a beige mac, which was the most masculine coat Judy owned. Oh yes, AND HE HAD JUDY’S BODY AND FACE.