The Sister Swap

by Fiona Collins

  ‘Please may everybody be seated!’ declared Laura-Faye, flapping those kimono sleeves together, and the pastel-clad party took their seats at the trestle table as waiting staff poured tea and began passing round plates of food.

  ‘I haven’t had this much fun in ages,’ stage-whispered Dylan, sometime later, passing behind Sarah as he snapped Clementine unwrapping the last parcel of the final baby shower games to reveal a tiny Tiffany ‘dummy’. Sarah was collecting the discarded soft yellow tissue paper.

  ‘Good!’ she whispered back, and then she felt something plop on her arm. Oh god, a bird hadn’t pooped on her, had it? She looked up to the sky. Oh no, it was worse that than. Half the sky was blue, with the sun in it; the other half was completely black – a more typically British type of shower was threatening.

  ‘It’s raining!’ cried Laura-Faye, looking straight at Sarah. Oh god. There was no point Sarah shaking angry fists at thunderous skies or cursing the weather men – if it started raining right here, right now, it would be her fault as she had promised Laura-Faye it wouldn’t.

  ‘It might just be a few drops,’ attempted Sarah. ‘It’ll pass.’ Everyone looked up at the sky. The sun had gone now, swallowed by that advancing band of black. The raindrops started to fall with more frequency. Big splatters were coming down now, plopping onto the half-empty plates creating random dark polka dots on the leftover macarons so they looked like pastel ladybirds.

  ‘My blow-dry!’ shrieked Clementine, standing up. And suddenly everyone was on their feet and pushing their chairs back from the table.

  ‘Run!’ shouted Felicity helpfully, and there was a flurry of flapping skirts and kitten heels and hair as guests grabbed clutch bags, pass-the-parcel trinkets and half-eaten cupcakes and dashed for the double doors to the kitchen. The gorgeous trestle table was abandoned – like Alice’s tea party after the Queen of Hearts got cross and threw everyone out.

  Dylan shrugged at Sarah, a drop of rain landing cutely on his nose. ‘I guess rain has stopped play,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Sarah shrugged back at him, then they both made a dash for it, too, followed by a gleefully shrieking Felicity who Sarah could tell was enjoying this a bit too much. She herself was mortified – she hadn’t contingency-planned for bad weather. Why could the forecasters never get it right? There was half an hour of the party left to go and it was supposed to be milling around time – a few drinks, a few photos, delighted chatter. In sunshine.

  A pile of grass-flecked slingbacks was scattered just inside the kitchen doors. Guests were either giggling and patting down their hair, or scowling and checking faces in compacts for ruined make-up. Laura-Faye ushered them further in and shut the double doors behind them. It was chucking it down now: cats, dogs and other mammals – all throwing themselves from an angry sky – and Laura-Faye looked equally furious. She turned to Sarah as if to say, What now, clever clogs?

  ‘Would it work if we all went into the sitting room?’ suggested Sarah.

  ‘I suppose we’ll have to,’ said Laura-Faye disgruntledly. Oh, this was a disaster. Dylan, his camera back in his bag, looked at Sarah sympathetically, for which she was grateful, as everyone else was looking at her as though she were the captain of the Titanic. It’s not my fault it’s bloody raining! she wanted to cry, like a petulant child. I didn’t make it rain!

  Instead, she adopted her best child-wrangler voice and said, ‘Could everyone please make their way into the sitting room. There’ll be more seating in there and perhaps we can organize another game.’ She didn’t have another game.

  The women all dripped through to the sitting room to mutterings of ‘Dreadful!’ and ‘No backup plan for “wet play”? … At Monique’s shower the whole thing was at Claridge’s so it didn’t matter what the weather was doing!’ and Felicity didn’t help by patting people on the shoulder and saying ‘Well, the best laid plans …’

  By the time Sarah and Dylan had brought up the rear, it was hastily assembled chaos in there. Women and babies and young children were stuffed into sofas and armchairs and perched on the rug, or standing cramped in corners, and it was noisy and all a bit damp. Laura-Faye didn’t look happy at all, and Clementine had her feet up on a footstool while the soggy pack fussed round her tutting and petting.

  ‘Is the cake OK?’ asked someone in a shrill command.

  ‘Yes, it’s in the kitchen.’

  ‘Oh good, I promised Hugo a piece. Is it gluten free?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘What do we do now, girls?’ trilled Laura-Faye and Sarah could see she was putting a sudden brave face on proceedings, or maybe it was because she had noticed Dylan was now in the room and a smile was more attractive than a frown. She hitched her dress higher and crossed her legs, allowing the kimono front of her dress to open putting a lightly Cote d’Azur-ed breast in danger of display. ‘Entertain us.’

  Sarah really didn’t want to bring out charades or anything, but the chatter was getting louder and the children were getting more and more restless. She started to panic. Her first event and it was all going wrong. She was just about to start clapping her hands and mentioning the dreaded ‘C’ word when …

  ‘Laura-Faye?’ It was Felicity. She’d obviously managed a surreptitious brush of her hair when they’d been in the kitchen as she looked immaculate again.

  ‘Yes, darling.’

  ‘You’re on Instagram, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ said Laura-Faye proudly, leaning forward to give Dylan a further flash of that breast. ‘Two thousand and thirty-four followers. My baby line gets a lot of engagement.’

  ‘I know. I’ve looked you up,’ said Felicity. Oh, Sarah hadn’t. ‘You sometimes go “live”, don’t you?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Would you like to go live now? We could film everyone giving a message of love and advice for Clementine on the arrival of her baby. And if any of your guests’ children are wearing your designs … well, make sure they’re shown at their best advantage to the camera and they’ll get lots of exposure.’

  ‘Most of them are wearing Baby GaaGaa!’ exclaimed Laura-Faye. ‘They wouldn’t dare not to, at one of my dos,’ she added with a grin. ‘What a wonderful idea!’ Laura-Faye fetched her phone from her Chanel handbag, clicked onto her Instagram account, and after everyone had quickly double-checked everyone else for smudged lip gloss or wayward eyelash extensions, Felicity started filming from left to right as women, holding babies and children aloft, gave Clementine advice: from bribing the nanny, to nodding and smiling at unwanted advice, to making husbands do their share … and mentioned which of Laura-Faye’s designs their darlings were wearing.

  ‘… And don’t forget,’ said the last guest in line. ‘Sleep when the baby sleeps!’ The room erupted in delighted laughter, and Laura-Faye looked thrilled when the woman added that Tarquin was wearing the ‘gorgeous Baby GaaGaa dungarees in Midnight’.

  ‘What a great idea for when a shower is all showered-out,’ said Felicity, self-congratulating, as she pressed the button on Laura-Faye’s phone to end the live video.

  ‘Fabulous.’ Sarah smiled, between slightly clenched teeth. What a know-it-all, Felicity was. And so smug. Sarah felt like all her sterling efforts had been thrown back in her face.

  ‘Tip,’ said Felicity to Sarah, as the guests finally blew their air kisses and left, leaving behind them a trail of perfume and baby powder. ‘Look up your clients’ online presence – all of it. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, everything. Don’t just research the event, but the client. Research, research, research.’

  Sarah, seething, couldn’t even bear to nod. They had never done things like that in her day. The client was taken at face value. You didn’t need all this superfluous background stuff about what they had for dinner last night, how well their kids had just done at parents evening and how they were feeling about everything, at every minute of every day. Sarah felt like a very old dinosaur indeed. And Felicity was making her fee
l how Meg used to: furious.

  ‘Are we all done here? Can we go?’ It was Dylan, camera bag swinging, scruffy suede jacket looking all scruffy.

  ‘Yes, we can go.’

  They said goodbye to a winking Laura-Faye and made their way out. A cab pulled up outside. It was for Felicity. She skipped up to it, her enormous bag over her shoulder. ‘Bye, guys!’ she trilled. ‘I’ve got a date! Sightseeing. I’m being taken to the Tower of London.’

  ‘And I wish they’d leave her there,’ muttered Sarah. ‘At Traitors’ Gate.’

  ‘I guess she trumped you there at the end,’ said Dylan ruefully. ‘With her cunning plan.’

  ‘I guess she did,’ agreed Sarah. ‘Not so much the fast lane now, eh? More like the slow boat to failure.’ London Sarah had taken a great fall.

  ‘Hey, it wasn’t that bad! You did brilliantly, up until the rains came. And the party did end on a happy note, due to your little fiend.’

  ‘Did you say “fiend”?’

  ‘Yes, I did. But hey, look, she’s young, she knows not what she does.’

  ‘I think she does … ’

  ‘OK then, she’s probably threatened by you, too, someone older – coming in as an authority figure. She was covering Verity’s maternity leave, before you – she must hate someone telling her what to do now.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Yeah, maybe. She was kind of top dog for a little while, a bit like the spoilt only child of the office. It must be like a bossy governess turning up.’

  ‘I’m not bossy!’ said Sarah. Well, she’d had her moments, she knew. She used to be, with her kids, before she’d given up with it all, and she’d had to be with Meg, all those years ago. Was what Dylan said a valid defence of Felicity? Was there a defence for anyone trying to undermine Sarah when she was trying her best?

  Sarah and Dylan walked to Richmond station in silence.

  ‘Hey,’ said Dylan, as they were about to go inside. ‘There’s a little bar near here I know. Do you fancy going for a drink? Sobbing into a gin might relieve some of the post-shower anguish.’

  Sarah looked at him. She didn’t know if she wanted to go for a drink with him. She liked him; she had been happy to join him in Dylan-style teasing, in an easy-going daylight kind of way. Going for a drink with him, as the evening loomed, was more dangerous territory. He was handsome, funny, and nice. They had history, in her mind, anyway. And she didn’t do dates. She had to keep herself safe. Wound-free.

  ‘Sorry, no, not really,’ she said. ‘I have magazines and chocolate waiting for me at home. Do you mind?’

  ‘Suit yourself, no problem.’ He shrugged. He looked quite unbothered.

  ‘Maybe another time,’ she said, but she didn’t really mean it. She didn’t want to go for a drink with anyone and especially not Dylan.

  ‘OK,’ he said, and he hoicked his camera bag further up his shoulder and they headed into the bowels of the Tube.

  Chapter Eleven

  Meg

  At 10.45 the next morning Meg, in a floaty floral-y dress of Sarah’s with flat gladiator sandals and her hair in a swingy ponytail, walked across the fields to the village. It was dry underfoot today; the fallows had that satisfying crunch and crumble to them when you stood on the edges. Birds were singing, clouds were scudding merrily across the sky; even the bull in the next field looked positively genial this morning – and she gave him a bit of a wave.

  ‘Morning!’

  He merely gave a grunt in reply. She stuck her tongue out at him cheerfully and took a huge breath of clean, fresh air. All embarrassment from yesterday’s disaster had been shrugged off and Meg was treating today as the new day it was. No more debacles involving swinging pendulums and pillaging dogs. Just a nice cup of tea with an old lady in the village. It would be pretty boring, no doubt – it hardly compared with front row at London Fashion Week or meeting with either Dolce or Gabbana, or both, at the Savoy – but it would kill some time.

  She’d considered emailing Sarah, this morning, to get the skinny on Violet Chase, but had decided against it – she’d probably have received more terse bullet points. Instead, she’d texted Clarissa and her friend had been surprisingly envious about Meg’s day ahead, said she would be spending hers in her underwear being prodded with bony fingers and having bits of fabric thrown at her. Meg had smiled and texted at least Clarissa had Starbucks and the Evening Standard. Today she would have to make do with country air and weak Earl Grey, probably.

  Arriving at the village green, Meg noticed the pub had put up fresh bunting, and there were a couple of colourful posters in the windows. She wandered over to have a look. The Tipperton Mallet ‘July Jamboree’, the posters said, happening in the middle of the month. Food stalls, Morris dancers, face painting and a cider tent were promised, and it didn’t start until nine at night, which was kind of cool, Meg thought. She might mooch along to that; she’d have nothing else to do.

  There were no barking or rampaging Garfields this quiet morning, she noted. No locals milling around, no sign of Jamie either – good. She hoped he was really busy today with goat worrying, or whatever, and in no danger of turning up at his mum’s. He did appear to be a man who just kept turning up everywhere … Meg found Violet far more agreeable; Violet didn’t look at her with mild disgust and like she was cowpat on the bottom of a welly.

  The door to Binty’s was open. Meg would get some biscuits to take.

  ‘You still here?’ admonished Grotbags, looking displeased behind the counter.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ said Meg indignantly. ‘I’m back for two months.’

  ‘You don’t look like you belong in these ’ere parts,’ said Grotbags and Meg was half delighted – people actually still said that! – and half disappointed; she thought she was blending in quite well. She was sporting ‘no make-up’ make-up and was wearing Sarah’s sack-like country dress – she thought she had more than a charming dash of the Little House on the Prairies, actually.

  Meg headed out of the shop, clutching her packet of chocolate chip shortbreads, walked past the pub, down Back Lane, and turned left into The Shambles, a tiny walled passage, where halfway down was Lavender Cottage. It certainly lived up to its name. A hundred bees were merrily buzzing in dense, lilac explosions that lined either side of the path to the tiny, Alice in Wonderland front door you might well have to drink a potion in order to squeeze your bottom through. It was lovely.

  She knocked on the door and waited, delighting in the heady nosegay of the lavender, and Violet, a vision in a denim pinafore and silver grey pigtails, opened it with a huge smile on her face. ‘Come in, come in.’

  The hall was so pretty: it had white distressed floorboards, a console table with a vase of yellow roses on it and lots of tiny botanical prints on its pale-pink walls. The embodiment of shabby chic, Meg decided, as she handed Violet the biscuits. The sitting room was equally delightful: a red-brick fireplace, matching floral sofa and two armchairs, cosy-looking throws draped over everything and a cute window seat.

  ‘Oh, a window seat! I love these – how gorgeous!’ Sarah could have one of these, Meg thought; a couple of her windows would be perfect for it, with a bit of alteration and a deep clean. She went over and sat on it. It had an inset quilted cushion of faded yellow velvet and a gorgeous view of a cute cottage garden overrun with shrubs and wild flowers and featuring a low-slung hammock. Violet’s place was stunning, like something out of Homes and Gardens.

  ‘It’s a lovely garden, isn’t it?’ said Violet. ‘I’m very lucky. Jamie helps me with it.’

  ‘It’s very beautiful,’ agreed Meg, hoping Violet wouldn’t be mentioning Jamie too much; she was planning on a fairly nice time.

  ‘Come, sit with me on the sofa. We’ll talk.’

  Meg left the window seat and came over to the sofa, which was crammed full of matching cushions she had to part in order to sit down. She noticed a silver tea tray on the low wooden coffee table in front of it offering a bone china plate of custard creams, two
embroidered cotton napkins, a tiny bud vase of sweet peas, two engraved shot glasses and a full bottle of Cinzano Bianco.

  ‘Alcohol!’ blurted out Meg.

  ‘Yes, a drop of Cinzano. You’re not driving, are you? Operating any heavy machinery this afternoon …’

  ‘Well, no …’

  ‘Didn’t think so,’ said Violet, unscrewing the bottle and merrily pouring a generous slug into each shot glass.

  ‘It’s a bit early, isn’t it?’ protested Meg.

  ‘It’s never too early for a little tipple,’ chuckled Violet. ‘And it’s Friday.’ As though nothing else needed to be said. She raised her glass and downed it in one.

  ‘Go on then,’ said Meg, taking one of the shot glasses and knocking back the sticky Cinzano in one. Blimey, it was sweet, and strong. She had to suppress a mammoth choking cough.

  ‘Gets you right at the back of the throat, doesn’t it?’ laughed Violet, her pigtails shaking with merriment. ‘Fires up the old brain cells good and proper. Just the job.’ Meg decided she wanted to be like Violet when she grew up. ‘Right,’ said Violet, filling the glasses again and encouraging Meg to drink her second shot. ‘So, how’s country life treating you? What have you been doing with yourself since the art class?’

  Meg placed her empty shot glass back on the tray. ‘Well, it was only yesterday, so not a lot.’

  ‘Are you doing another?’

  The booze was already warming Meg’s tummy nicely. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said, reaching for a custard cream. She had a feeling her stomach might need some belated lining; it was a shame Violet didn’t have an industrial-sized bowl of pasta on offer.

  ‘You didn’t really go to St Martin’s college, did you?’ said Violet, her head tilted to one side.

  ‘No,’ admitted Meg. ‘I actually run a model agency.’

  ‘Oh, interesting,’ said Violet. ‘You enjoy it?’

  ‘I love it,’ said Meg. ‘Never a dull moment, dealing with top designers, top models, going to shows …’