The Sister Swap

by Fiona Collins

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I’m a vet.’

  Meg threw her head back and laughed.

  ‘What’s so funny,’ he asked crossly.

  ‘Nothing, honestly.’

  ‘You think everyone in the country is a farmer or a vet?’

  ‘Well, you could include doctors – with their own country practice, a view of the fields and a stream of genial patients with minor and satisfying-to-treat ailments.’

  ‘Very good.’ He still sounded sour.

  ‘I read a lot of books,’ she offered, still teasing.

  ‘I see.’

  Oh, she gave up! Perhaps he was busy, distracted, on his way to somewhere, she decided. He probably had a hamster to put down, or something, or somewhere unmentionable he needed to stick a Marigold-gloved hand. Shame, really. She switched tack and opted for polite small talk.

  ‘I’m staying here, at my sister’s cottage. Well, it used to be mine, too – once upon a time. Sarah Oxbury. Do you know her?’

  ‘You’re Sarah’s sister?’ He turned to her, surprised. ‘I never would have guessed that!’

  What did he mean? Looks wise, probably, like Clarissa had said. Or did he mean Sarah was all grown-up and sensible, whilst she was all ridiculous and prone to falling in cowpats? She gingerly tugged at the wet backside of the jeans to temporarily release their vacuum suction from her knickers. Ugh.

  ‘Well, I am,’ she said defiantly. She wasn’t sure if she was defending her sister, or herself. ‘I used to live here. I left when I was eighteen. I work in London. I run my own mo—’ She stopped herself; he looked like he wasn’t interested. His mouth was set like one of those presidents on Mount Rushmore. Only Garfield looked animated. He was all bouncy, like he might leap up at her at any moment and have another go. ‘So, you know Sarah?’ she said instead.

  ‘I know Monty, mainly,’ said Jamie. ‘Her cat? But Sarah’s very nice.’ A car passed them, its windows down.

  ‘All right, Jamie?’ came a voice.

  ‘All right, Trevor!’ Jamie waved, a huge grin on his face suddenly, and he gave another cheery wave as the car’s horn made a jaunty beep. Oh. He was friendly to other people, noted Meg. Maybe it was just her. ‘That cat certainly makes its presence known. Last time it came into the surgery it knocked over a week’s supply of prescriptions.’ He chuckled to himself. They were at the village now. One final corner to turn and before them was a tiny circular village green, raised and bordered by a low wall and surrounded by a circumference of lopsided pastel-painted houses, wedged tight and leaning on each other and all characterized by flinty, weather-beaten roofs, sunken skew-whiff doors and weeny small-paned windows. To the left of the houses was a timbered peach and black pub with a swinging sign – The Duke of Wellington. A ginger cat stretched itself full-length on a solitary picnic table outside, basking in the early-morning sun.

  It was all the same as it ever was. How very disappointing.

  ‘One of your charges?’ asked Meg, referring to the cat.

  ‘Lord Hamish the Third, yes. So, see you around,’ said Jamie and he turned and headed off down the lane to the left of the green which promised the village hall, according to an old-fashioned sign. The ginger cat looked up from its slumber.

  ‘Bye, then,’ said Meg, somewhat petulantly. Her charms were clearly deserting her. Or he was simply a moody git, even if he was annoyingly handsome. She hoped she wouldn’t see Jamie or Garfield again. Especially Jamie, and she’d prefer Garfield, actually. A close eye would have to be kept on this Monty, she realized, when he showed up – no skirmishes with other cats, no eating things he shouldn’t … absolutely no trips to the vet.

  Once Moody Jamie had disappeared off down the lane, Meg looked around her. Yep, there was Binty’s – a Wall’s Ice Cream metal sign gently swinging next to a wooden stool with a cardboard tray of eggs on the top; a brown stone front, brown tinted glass in the window and a brown painted door. And there was Les Metcalfe Hair, the near-fossilized hairdresser’s with a faded poster of Farah Fawcett in the window. Shiny Metropolitan London could not feel further away.

  The door to Binty’s opened with the familiar clang of an ancient bell. Brown uneven oak floorboards? Check. Scowly ancient person behind counter in brown jumper, despite the heat outside? Check, although Meg noticed it was a new ancient person. Not Scowly Steven, who always used to tell her off for being too loud. There were shelves of old-fashioned sweet jars behind the new old scowly person, a basket full of freshly baked bread and doughnuts on the counter and shelves all around filled with approximately one of everything – a tin of beans, a packet of jelly, a tin box of teabags, reminding Meg of when she and Sarah used to play ‘shops’. She wondered if Binty’s still had one of those old-fashioned cash registers, with the ping.

  ‘Morning,’ said a scowly voice.

  ‘Good morning!’ said Meg brightly. ‘How much are the doughnuts?’

  ‘Five for two pound.’ Oh, they were cheap! She’d get a magazine and a bar of chocolate as well. ‘I’ve never seen you before,’ said the woman peering over the top of horn-rimmed glasses and stroking her beard. ‘Are you a tourist?’

  ‘No. I used to live here.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Er … Meg Oxbury.’

  ‘The hooligan? Oh, I’ve heard about you! Your poor sister!’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ Meg was taken aback. ‘Well … er, five doughnuts please?’

  Meg hurriedly paid for her purchases and dashed out of the shop as quickly as she could. Hooligan! What an exaggeration! She hadn’t been that bad. Clutching her brown paper bag of doughnuts, Meg strode round the path which circled the green.

  ‘Morning.’ An old man in a flat cap greeted her as he walked past. This was better; someone who actually looked pleased to see her.

  ‘Morning!’ she replied chirpily. She’d forgotten everyone greeted everyone else in the country. No one said ‘Morning!’ in London – people avoided each other at all cost. Woe betide you if you caught someone’s eye on the Tube, and if you dared say ‘hello’ to anyone, they called the police.

  She walked the perimeter of the green, perched on the village’s Witching Stone outside the pub, and munched on one of the doughnuts. She supposed she should find ‘hooligan’ funny. Silly old bat. How did she even know about Meg? And Meg had just enjoyed some drunken skirmishes, that was all. Teenage shenanigans. Some people liked to make a big old fuss about nothing. Including Sarah. Especially Sarah.

  It was only eleven o’clock; the whole rest of the day to fill. Perhaps Meg would have a mosey down to the village hall, see if anything exciting was happening there; there certainly never used to be. That’s where Sarah had said she held the art class, wasn’t it? And the library used to be there. She’d go and have a look. Perhaps she’d soon be bored enough of Tipperton Mallet to actually take both of them on. Lord knows she needed something to do. God, she missed London.

  Back Lane, which ran down to the village hall, was flanked by slightly larger cottages than those on the green and set back on the right-hand side, on a raised grassy knoll, was an old red phone box. It had been there for donkey’s years. She peered in as she passed. It was always nice to see one; the ones remaining in London absolutely thrilled the foreign tourists. Meg expected to see a broken receiver dangling from a battered cradle; some dog-eared cards offering dubious services; at least one shattered pane of glass; and possibly an old phonebook, yellowed apart from the blackened corner where it had been set alight by bored teenagers. Just like it had been when she’d last stepped a scuffed Adidas trainer inside.

  ‘Oh, wow!’ she exclaimed out loud. Why this was delightful, and so, so cute. The phone box was a library. The whole back panel had been fitted with wooden shelves and was floor-to-ceiling crammed with books. A small sign hung from the top shelf with string saying, ‘Please help yourself and donate your old books. Thank you.’ Sarah’s familiar handwriting.

  This was the library her sister ran; the big one
in the village hall must have closed.

  Meg pulled open the door and stepped inside. She adored the smell of books – sometimes she went into London City Library, if she was near, just to breathe in that gorgeous library smell – and it was not what these phone boxes used to smell of, that was for sure. It was lovely in there; there was also a tiny white table and chair, suitable for a toddler – Meg may have sat down on it were it not for her cowpat-splattered rear.

  She had a browse. There were self-help books and non-fiction on the top two shelves, children’s books at the bottom and general fiction in the middle. Meg’s eyes scanned along. Modern chick lit, thrillers, historical romances; quite the little goldmine. She might take something out – Lord knows she had plenty of time on her hands. Her eyes alighted on a very familiar title. Little Women. One of those old navy bound classics, with the gold-embossed writing. Funny, it looked like Sarah’s old copy. Meg pulled it out. Oh my goodness, it was Sarah’s old copy. She opened the dust cover. Yes, inside in neat, childish handwriting, ‘This book belongs to Sarah Oxbury’. It had probably been doing the rounds of village readers for years. Meg smiled. Sarah had read Little Women to Meg when she was, what, six and Sarah had been sixteen? They’d loved that one of the sisters was called Meg; they’d laughed at the funny bits and been sad at the sad bits. Sarah had sat on the end of Meg’s bed and had read a chapter a night in a soothing, steady voice. What a different sixteen-year-old Sarah had been to Meg’s. Sensible, careful, quiet and organized. Then again, the sixteen-year-old Sarah didn’t have dead parents.

  Meg decided in a fit of nostalgia she would read Little Women again. She took it, shifting the other books up slightly to fill in the gap. Was it OK to just take it? She presumed it wasn’t a library where you had to have a card, or your book stamped? What did Sarah have to do? Just keep it tidy? Then she headed further down the lane to the village hall, a red-brick Thirties building with a pitched roof and white pillars out the front. The double doors were open, so she wandered right in to the front entrance.

  ‘Garfield?’

  The Great Dane was bounding out of a side room towards her and barking like an explosion in a biscuit factory. Meg shrunk back against the wall in mild terror.

  ‘Garfield!’ An elderly lady dressed in a red jumpsuit and flat silver mules bustled up the corridor, a pile of papers in her arms and her hair swept back from her face in an enormous Princess Anne cottage loaf. ‘Step away from the young lady! There’s a good boy.’ Garfield stopped, gave a long drawn-out sound like Chewbacca having a yawn, then trotted over to the lady who patted him on the head. ‘There’s a very good reason it was a Great Dane which led the Twilight Bark to get news of the missing puppies out in 101 Dalmatians.’ The woman smiled at Meg.

  ‘Yes, that’s quite a bark,’ agreed Meg. ‘I met Garfield earlier,’ she added. ‘Is Jamie here?’ She hoped not.

  ‘Jamie? He’s gone to the surgery. Are you looking for him?’

  ‘No, I met him earlier, too. I thought Garfield was his.’

  ‘No, Garfield belongs to me. Jamie just walks him for me. He’s my son,’ she added.

  ‘Oh, right.’ The village was still as close knit as ever, then. She’d never seen this lady before, though; the family must have moved to Tipperton Mallet after she’d left.

  ‘Did you get that from the library?’ enquired the woman, looking at the book in Meg’s left hand.

  ‘Yes,’ said Meg. ‘I hope it was OK to take it?’

  ‘Yes, yes, fine. I’m keeping an eye on the library at the moment. It’s not normally our job, but our lovely library lady is away.’

  ‘I know,’ said Meg. Well, she didn’t know how ‘lovely’ Sarah was; it certainly wasn’t how she remembered her. ‘I’m her sister.’

  ‘You’re Sarah’s sister?’ Another one. Why did everyone have to say that? ‘Why, you’re nothing alike!’

  ‘Right, well, I’m staying at Orchard Cottage for two months,’ said Meg. ‘Sarah’s in my flat in London. She’s got a job there. We swapped houses.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said the woman. ‘Tell me, would you like to run the library while she’s away?’ Oh, very direct, thought Meg, but she could already tell this was that kind of woman.

  ‘She’s already asked me,’ said Meg. ‘Kind of. What would I have to do?’

  ‘Keep it tidy; sort any books that get donated. The decent ones go on the shelves, the others we get rid of. Sorry, I should introduce myself. I’m Violet Chase, I’m head of the parish council.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Violet. I’m Meg. OK, I might be up for doing that,’ Meg said. ‘And the other thing Sarah mentioned was running the art class.’ Well, she might as well. There was nothing else to do. No dalliances to be had. If she was busy, the time would go quicker and she could get back to London faster.

  ‘Yes, it’s life drawing. Thursdays at eleven a.m. There’s not much to it. I’ll be here to let everyone in. You’ll just have to make sure everyone behaves, really.’

  ‘Life drawing? I didn’t know that. So there’s a model?’

  ‘Yes.’ Violet smiled. ‘I think Sarah books someone different each week. She’ll have a list somewhere.’

  ‘OK, I’ll do it. It sounds … fun.’ Meg would rather be booking models for her clients in Paris, but hey, this would do, for a while. Needs must.

  ‘Fantastic. Meet you here on Thursday at ten forty-five, then,’ said Violet. Meg turned to go, but then Violet called after her, ‘Did Jamie ask you out when you met him?’

  ‘No …’ said Meg, wondering how to respond. Of course he hadn’t; he’d pretty much detested her on the spot.

  ‘Surprising,’ said Violet, looking at Meg quizzically. ‘You’re just his type.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Meg, rather at a loss for what else to say. ‘So, OK, thank you. I’ll see you on Thursday.’

  ‘See you then,’ said Violet, and Garfield gave a bark as if to punctuate things.

  Meg left the village hall for the trudge back across the fields to Orchard Cottage.

  Chapter Eight

  Sarah

  Sarah had been at her new job in London for approximately three hours and already felt mentally drained. It had been a long morning. She wondered what to have for lunch and where she would get it from. She wondered if the coffee machine in the corner of the office was free or whether you had to pay for it. She wondered why she had not returned to her former career sooner as she was absolutely loving it.

  She’d let herself out of the flat at eight o’clock this morning, quite a civilized hour, she’d reasoned, then travelled the four stops on the Tube feeling extremely nervous, and worrying about how she looked. When she’d laid her clothes out on Meg’s bed early this morning, she’d realized her black skirt and white blouse was going to make her look like a waitress, so she’d rooted around in her sister’s wardrobe for something less Service Industry. Everything Meg had hanging up was so glamorous, but she’d found a navy shift dress which, though far too tight, she hoped she could tone down, glamourwise, when she added her boring black courts.

  It was weird wearing Meg’s dress, she’d thought, as she looked in the mirror. This was what her sister wore, when she did her glamorous job and lived her glamorous life. How jealous Sarah had been of it over the years, while she’d changed nappies, and got divorced, and picked up pieces of fish finger from the floor, and wept over Harry’s affairs, and had endless nights on her own, watching telly, and trudged over the fields in the rain with two whingeing children, to nursery in the village hall. Now here she was, in London, doing a job that called for a dress like this.

  Her hair didn’t match, Sarah had decided; it looked so mumsy she felt she was going to a PTA meeting from the neck up, so she’d consulted Meg’s many expensive-looking lotions and potions in the bathroom and ended up slicking back her hair into a kind of wet look quiff with some trendy hair gel. Not bad, she’d thought, as she’d looked back in the mirror. She did look rather accidentally sexy, though, and hop
ed nobody would notice.

  Her heart was thumping as she’d travelled down the escalator at her final Tube stop, realizing she’d forgotten the rule about not standing on the left – she’d had to move over when she got a giant tut from somebody behind trying to power climb. She stood on the right and stared at the posters she was gliding past: West End shows, new book releases, weight loss programmes – all in identical oblongs framed in chrome. They had changed since she’d been here last – lots of these moved, and videos advertising all sorts talked at her as she descended.

  The office for House Events had also moved, from a dark and poky office above a cigarette and magazine kiosk in Soho, to a gleaming glass-fronted office, just off Tinder Street. As she stood outside, Sarah realized House Events was now impossibly trendy and wondered how she would possibly fit in. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door and walked into the marble lobby. Ahead of her was an opaque reception desk with a shiny silver lift glinting beyond it, and the receptionist behind it looked about eighteen.

  ‘Good morning, welcome to House Events, London. How may I help you?’

  ‘Good morning. I’m Sarah Oxbury,’ said Sarah, her voice wavering. ‘I’m starting work here today.’

  ‘Sarah, welcome. We’ve been expecting you. I’m Joanna. Let me just give you a pack’ – she reached into her desk for a coloured file –‘and then we’ll get you whisked upstairs.’

  Joanna handed Sarah the file and then buzzed through to someone on her snazzy-looking phone: ‘About to bring Sarah Oxbury up.’

  Joanna escorted Sarah to the lift. Its surfaces reflected all parts of her like an exposing kaleidoscope. Her bum looked big in this outfit and Meg’s dress suddenly looked not only tight and a tad too short but also indecent – Accidental Office Sex Bomb was really not a role Sarah wanted to inhabit. She realized she was shaking in her courts as the lift rose one floor and the doors whooshed open. Waiting outside it was a very tall, thin girl – early twenties? – with poker-straight white-blonde hair tucked behind her ears. She had a tight little smile, eyes that looked like turquoise precious stones, a tan drape-y dress with yards of material spun all around her, so she resembled a spindly chrysalis, and nude platform heels three sizes too big. She thrust out an arm at Sarah as though it were a baseball bat.