The Sister Swap

by Fiona Collins

  ‘I suppose. Although it’s usually country mouse and townie do a straight swap and go all wide-eyed and unable to cope. Our story is a bit more complicated than that.’

  ‘I remember,’ said Dylan. ‘I remember all that happened, why you had to go back to the country. Your sister’s quite a bit younger than you, isn’t she?’

  ‘Ten years. She was sixteen when I went back.’

  ‘And how was it, being her guardian?’

  ‘Bloody awful.’ Sarah smiled.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Do you really want to hear my sob story?’

  ‘I’m a good listener, apparently. So the lady in the launderette tells me.’

  Sarah sipped at her coffee. ‘It was a nightmare.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘A bit of a drunk, law-breaking nightmare. Meg, not me,’ she added. ‘I was trying to keep everything together, keeping a lid on my grief – for her, mostly – while she was tearing it up round the village and neighbouring areas and being a bloody nuisance. Drunk, disorderly, boys … it was hell. She didn’t care. About anything.’

  ‘How long was it for?’ Dylan drained his coffee and placed the cup back on the cracked saucer.

  ‘Two years. She left at eighteen, as soon as she finished the sixth form she hardly attended. After what she did – her parting shot, as it were – I was relieved to see her go.’

  ‘Her parting shot?’

  ‘It sounds pathetic now, really … well, maybe it doesn’t – it was pretty bad – but she drunkenly wrecked a locket of mine,’ said Sarah quickly. ‘When I was sixteen, I bought it with my birthday money. It was nine carat gold. I spent ages cutting up two photos of my mum and dad to put in it. It was really precious to me. She was in my bedroom one time, before she left, she took the locket out of my jewellery box and was taunting me with it, saying she was going to stamp on it, destroy it. Because I’d told her off for being drunk again. She said she hated me and she wanted to destroy my “silly little pictures of Mum and Dad”.’

  ‘Ouch!’

  ‘Yeah, ouch.’ It still hurt Sarah now.

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Well, I think she was so out of it she didn’t even remember doing it, afterwards, but I told her to stop being so childish and to put the locket back and she threw it on my dressing table and smashed it up with the bottom of a vodka bottle.’

  ‘Blimey.’

  ‘Yeah. It put a massive crack in the dressing table, too. Nightmare, eh?’ Sarah was playing it down. She had adored that locket. They had been lovely pictures of her parents. Their faces cut out carefully with nail scissors from a photo now gone for ever. Of them all at Mashbury Hall, in Dalton St Clare. They’d all had ice creams, 99s. Dad was ready to wipe everyone’s faces with his big blue hanky. Her parents were dreamlike to Sarah, now. Her mother, a vision of ethereal long hair and boho-style dresses, like she should be running through a corn field all the time; her father, sensible in suit and tie during the week, and casual in shorts and polo shirts at the weekends, and on trips and holidays.

  Sarah still missed the locket and what it had meant to her.

  ‘You said she didn’t remember doing it. Did you tell her?’ asked Dylan.

  ‘No, what was the point?’ She could still see it now – Meg smashing up the locket. How out of control she had been. How angry. Sarah had never talked about it to anyone until now.

  ‘And how do you feel about her currently living in your house?’

  ‘Needs must.’ Sarah shrugged. She crumbled a sugar cube between her fingers.

  ‘What do your kids say about her?’

  ‘Not a lot. That she can’t cook, that’s about it. I don’t think they’re particularly enamoured. Oh, I don’t know. I keep meeting people here who say how lovely she is, but I can’t see it. I don’t think I’ll ever think she’s “lovely”.’

  ‘Stubborn?’

  ‘Yes. She’s that, too.’

  ‘No, I mean you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Dylan was smiling, gentle mockery in his eyes she found all too attractive. ‘Look,’ said Dylan. ‘She was sixteen when you had to look after her. A teenager. Teenagers are notoriously selfish. It’s always all about them. She wouldn’t have considered your feelings or even noticed them, I bet. She was young and grieving and probably couldn’t help any of it.’

  ‘But she’s not young now, is she?’ retorted Sarah. ‘She did an interview, in Glamour magazine, a few years, back, “Day in the Life of a Model Booker” or something. She was asked what she was like as a teenager, was she into fashion, and she’d said yes, but her real loves were booze and boys, in that order, like it was all one big joke. Well, it wasn’t a joke to me.’

  ‘Are you waiting for an apology?’

  Sarah laughed. ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘You know, you could try and see it from her point of view. There she was, at sixteen, living with Mum and Dad – big sister up in London, who hadn’t lived at home since university. Then, bam! Her parents are killed in tragic circumstances and big sister comes back …’

  ‘To be the bossy governess …’ For the first time Sarah realized Meg had, in effect, been an only child for eight years, before their parents died; she’d had them all to herself for a long time.

  ‘Think about it,’ said Dylan gently.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Sarah. She looked at her watch. ‘Oh god, I’ve got to get going,’ she said. ‘Face the music. And I’ve got loads I still have to do today.’ She got up.

  ‘I’m sure there will be no music to face,’ said Dylan, getting up too and grabbing his camera bag from the back of his chair. ‘Thanks for coming for coffee with me.’ His eyes searched hers; she returned his gaze.

  ‘I’ve enjoyed it,’ she said. ‘Despite the therapy.’

  Dylan laughed. ‘We’ll have to do it again sometime. Maybe go for that drink.’

  ‘Maybe,’ repeated Sarah.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Meg

  Meg had never been so bored. She stretched as she lazily pulled on a T-shirt. ‘Summer Breeze’ by the Isley Brothers drifted across the bedroom from Sarah’s HD radio and she half-heartedly hummed along. Out of the window she could see a combine harvester motoring up a distant field, leisurely chucking up early-morning dust. She yawned and looked around for her jeans.

  ‘Another day in paradise,’ Meg murmured to herself, finding them on the floor under the bed and slipping them on. She was getting a bit lax – her standards of tidiness were slipping a bit. She’d stopped being fastidious about folding her clothes and fussing about how things hung in her wardrobe – what was the point when she was wearing jeans and T-shirts every day? The smart suits of her London role were now long forgotten; she’d definitely regressed to a simpler version of herself when she used to just throw on jeans or scour those vintage shops for mad, beautiful dresses.

  Meg stared out of the window at the combine harvester and casually wondered what was happening back in London. She’d text Clarissa, in a bit, if she could be bothered. London seemed really far away. She’d stopped checking her work emails now, too. Again, what was the point? Let Lilith deal with models’ hissy fits, cash flow dramas and clients’ unreasonable demands. She must be dealing with it OK, thought Meg – she hadn’t heard from her at all. No queries, no questions, nothing. It was actually surprisingly nice to hand over the reins to someone else – just for a bit.

  Meg’s boredom was more like inertia, really, and had settled in her like concrete these past three or so weeks. It had seen her lying in until half nine in the morning, having a lengthy afternoon nap in the orchard and going to bed by ten. She had no desire to do anything, no great motivation for much at all, except to eat the fab food Connor had started cooking for them, and to sleep, and she’d spent many glorious days like this now, since that episode at Violet’s. She’d only been into the village twice, to sort books left at the phone box library; the rest of the time she had generally resembled a giant sloth. She now idly wondered if she’d wake one morning t
o find she’d undergone some kind of Kafka-esque Metamorphosis and actually turned into one.

  This morning, however – a Tuesday, Meg believed – she was hauling herself away from the cottage again and going to the phone box to pick up another library book. She wasn’t really getting on with Little Women. It wasn’t much how she remembered it. Although she had fond memories of her sister reading it to her, once upon a better time – sitting beside Meg on her bed – she was finding it a little saccharine this time around. There was a lot of rather sickening sisterly love she couldn’t relate to. Plus too much girly nonsense, and weeping.

  ‘Going into the village, Olivia!’ she called into the kitchen before she left. She could hear Olivia in there, clattering around with bowls and spoons. There was no answer, so she wandered in. Olivia was at the table, frowning over a notebook. ‘Do you want anything in the village?’

  ‘No, I’m all right!’ Olivia frowned some more.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Making some notes, for Jude.’

  ‘What sort of notes?’ Meg sat down; she was in no hurry.

  ‘I’m working with him extensively on his latest work.’ Olivia sniffed, looking cheesed off Meg had sat down. ‘The whole premise of it was my idea.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Meg. ‘You told me a few days ago you’d given him the idea for his last play – the one about the woman from Birmingham who goes off with the Hermes delivery guy, the one who throws the parcels over the fence—’

  ‘—and ends up in that bedsit with only her tenor recorder and a bottle of Peach Concorde for company. Yeah, Jude loved that idea,’ muttered Olivia grumpily, her black biro skittering over the page.

  ‘Has he been to Birmingham?’ asked Meg. ‘Or any of the places in all these plays?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Olivia shrugged. ‘I don’t think so. What does it matter?’ she asked defensively.

  ‘I bet he’s never been further north than South Mimms service station,’ Meg scoffed. ‘And it seems to me all Jude’s plays are your ideas,’ she added. ‘Doesn’t he have any of his own?’

  ‘Of course he does! He has loads of them. He’s a genius! And what do you know?’

  That Jude was a bit of a loser? That Olivia was the one with the brains and the qualifications, while Jude seemed to be a talentless brat with pretentions of deluded literary grandeur – his only skill the great ability of sponging ideas off his much-cleverer girlfriend?

  ‘Not a lot, probably,’ said Meg. God, Olivia was so stroppy, she thought. She’d really tried with her since she’d been in Tipperton Mallet, but the girl was impenetrable. In the rare moments she wasn’t out, Meg could barely get more than two words from her. Her niece was a closed book that only opened to mutter things like, ‘Jude’ and ‘I’ll be back late.’ ‘OK,’ Meg said, getting up from the table. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  Meg shut the back door and made her way down the path to the gate. Even if she could get Olivia to talk to her, she thought, she was hardly one to dish out relationship advice, was she? Her own love life – as it had stood in London – wouldn’t bear that well under too much scrutiny. Her arm’s length dating and a little gentle bed-hopping was really quite pathetic; even she knew that. There was no point to it. Still, she was glad she had turned down Jamie three weeks ago. He deserved it. If, in London, she brushed men off as easily as cotton lint from a coat, she certainly didn’t need men in the country – however good-looking – offering to take her out under sufferance.

  Meg heard the garage door clatter up and walked round to the front of the cottage to see Connor putting his bike away.

  ‘Hi, Connor, I’m going into the village to get a new book.’ She held aloft Little Women, its cover faded by afternoons in the sun-dappled orchard where she’d struggled to read it. ‘How was your shift?’

  ‘Good. We had a right laugh. Top quality banter.’ Connor said ‘banter’ without bothering to include the ‘T’. London Speak, far from London, thought Meg.

  ‘Well, great,’ said Meg, watching him as he shut the garage door. Banter? He really was wasting his time at that place. ‘Olivia said you got good A levels,’ she added casually. ‘How come you didn’t want to go to university?’

  ‘It’s for geeks and swots,’ grunted Connor, thrusting his hands in his back pockets.

  Meg smiled. ‘Well, it’s not for everyone, but you got fantastic grades, better than what’s needed for a sandwich factory!’

  ‘Yeah, well, the people at Larkins are well nice. I like working with them.’

  ‘The banter, I know,’ Meg said. ‘But banter does not a career make.’ Gosh, she sounded pompous, she thought, but her nephew frustrated her. The boy needed a good shake. And Olivia’s attitude was still riling her, too. ‘Look, Connor, this is your life! You’re only young once, life is short … and other clichés. But they are clichés because they are all true.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Connor lazily. ‘Well, Mum wants me to do an apprenticeship, but I’m not that keen. Who wants to be an electrician?’

  That was a question Meg really couldn’t answer. ‘You need to find what you want to do,’ she said. Hadn’t she?

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ said Connor. He looked really fed up with her now. Then again, he was always so dismissive of her, anyway, Meg noted. Like he couldn’t wait to get away. ‘Can I go now?’ he grunted. ‘I’m going to pub this afternoon. I won’t be able to cook tonight.’

  ‘No worries,’ said Meg. ‘I’ll sort something.’ She regretted their conversation already; she had sounded so judgemental and bossy. Good Lord, she had almost sounded like Sarah.

  Meg walked back round the side of the cottage and down the path to the back gate. It was another beautiful day. She’d forget about her niece and nephew for a while, enjoy the weather and the morning. The fields were pretty, the centre of the village even prettier. The grass on the green had been cut; Binty’s had the sun on it and looked all olde worlde and welcoming; the tiny houses leant on each other daintily. The only blot on this picturesque scene was the little hairdresser’s. Farah Fawcett had disappeared and had been replaced by a large sign in the window saying, ‘Closing down, Sorry!’

  Meg walked down the lane to the phone box, enjoying the satisfying thwack of her flip-flops on warm tarmac. Inside, it was so hot, Meg propped open the door with a big stone. She placed Sarah’s old Little Women back on the shelf and looked for another book. What was here? Valley of the Dolls, The Grapes of Wrath, A Prayer for Owen Meany. A couple of Agatha Christies – both sisters had loved those. A Maeve Binchey. Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past – that was a tome and a half, thought Meg. She didn’t think she was brave enough to venture into that one; wasn’t it chapter after chapter describing some kind of French cakes? Nothing took her fancy. She might have to plough on with Little Women after all; give the sisters another go. She retrieved it from the shelf and made her way back to the green.

  ‘Meg! Over here!’

  Violet was sitting outside the pub, at one of the picnic tables. She had a full pint of beer in front of her, despite the early hour, along with a packet of crisps, and was wearing a bright yellow terry towelling sun visor, making her look like a golfer who’d absent-mindedly wandered from the fairway.

  ‘Hi, Violet,’ said Meg, approaching.

  ‘Hello! I haven’t seen you about for ages, Megan. What have you been up to?’

  ‘Not much, I’m afraid. Just pottering around.’

  ‘Shame you haven’t done any more art classes. I’ve had people asking, you know.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Meg shrugged. There was no way she was doing any more.

  Violet took a big slurp of beer. ‘I heard you turned my son down,’ she said. ‘You should have gone,’ said Violet. ‘He likes you.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Meg smiled. ‘And it’s not like I need showing round the village now. I’ve seen everything!’

  ‘And have you decided to make your stay down here permanent yet, give up your job in London?’
r />   Meg was flabbergasted. ‘Why on earth would I do that?’

  ‘It’s lovely here.’

  ‘Well, yes, I’m coming to appreciate that. But, no, I’m not going to give up my job in London!’

  ‘Just a thought,’ said Violet breezily, leaving Meg bemused. Was the woman insane? ‘And I’ve been thinking about something else. Remember what you said about selling my dresses?’ She took another giant slug of beer.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I wonder if you could do one of those temporary pop-up shops. I’ve been reading about them, in The Guardian. London thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, yes.’ Actually, this was interesting. Meg loved pop-up shops; Clarissa had opened one for a famous lifestyle blogger, bringing out her own make-up line, recently – near Jubilee Market.

  ‘Les’s, the hairdresser’s, is closing – have you seen?’ They both looked over to the forlorn shop window. ‘I wonder if you’d be able to do something there … And this might help you. I took the liberty of getting it from the library.’ Violet slid a book to Meg across the table. It was: A Mavis Muckley Guide: How to Make Money from Vintage Clothing. There was a picture on the cover of a woman in a tweed cap who looked like Madonna, the Guy Ritchie Years, standing outside her big country house and hanging off a rail of vintage clothing.

  Meg picked up the book. It had been decades since she’d ventured into a vintage shop, but she had used to love them. ‘You know what, Violet, you might have an idea there,’ she said, flicking curiously through the book. She suddenly thought she might like to shrug off her sloth-like coat, actually. Do something. And do something for herself. Why not a vintage pop-up shop? She had lived and worked for fashion for years, after all. It was her thing. And it might be enormous fun.

  ‘Why don’t you go over and ask now?’ suggested Violet, a twinkle in her eye, below that ridiculous visor.

  ‘OK,’ said Meg. She was never one to step down from a challenge. ‘OK, I will.’

  She left Violet, flip-flopped over to the hairdresser’s window and peered through it. Someone was in there. A man in a blue vest and an over-black curly ponytail was at the back of the shop dispiritedly chucking hair products into a cardboard box. He threw another canister in the box and looked up with sad, heavily lidded eyes as Meg walked in. ‘Can I help you?’