The Sister Swap

by Fiona Collins

  ‘Yes. Maybe,’ said Meg. ‘Are you Les Metcalfe?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘What’s happening to the shop now it’s closing down?’

  ‘What’s happening to it?’ Les shook his Just for Men tail and shrugged dejectedly. ‘Not a lot. It’s closing down and going on the market. I expect it’ll probably stand empty for a while. Shops do these days.’ He threw his hands in the air – Les Misérables, thought Meg – and gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘I can’t see anyone rushing to buy it. Look at the state of it!’

  Meg looked around her. It had to be said, it wasn’t the most attractive of shops. It had peeling paint, grubby walls and grimier windows. It had tumbleweeds of matted hair in the corners, old-fashioned sinks and battered old Coronation Street-style hairdryers. And the whole disaster was painted Barbapapa pink and had an amateur paint job on the ceiling where someone had attempted to depict a blue sky, clouds and cherubs, but had failed miserably: the cherubs looked downright satanic.

  ‘If it was spruced up it might sell quicker and you could get more for it,’ she said.

  ‘How do you mean?’ Les wiped a pale hand across his forehead and tapped his left foot disconsolately at a ratty tray of combs and brushes that was half hanging out of a white plastic storage unit.

  ‘Well, I could spruce it up for you.’

  ‘Why would you want to do that?’ He looked like a sad French spaniel, decided Meg. One that had barely survived the revolution.

  ‘I could clear out the shop, give it a facelift, refit it as a pop-up shop – my pop-up shop – then it could go on the market and you’d be able to sell it.’

  ‘Hang on, what’s a pop-up shop when it’s at home? Never heard of it!’

  ‘It’s a temporary shop, like a boutique. They have loads in London.’

  ‘Do they now?’ His large-lidded eyes looked suspicious.

  ‘Yes. I’d run it for three or four days, maybe a week, depending how things go. What do you think?’

  Les looked around him, too. ‘What sort of shop would you turn it into?’

  ‘Clothing, vintage fashion. I could make it look really nice, I promise.’ She could – she had a vision for it already. Meg felt … excited.

  ‘Vintage fashion, eh? Well, I suppose that might work. People might come from further afield to it. That’s been my problem,’ he said morosely. ‘Very small captive audience and the young ’uns don’t want my cap highlights any more, they want “Beige” or something. I can’t keep up. There’s just not the call for perms and shampoo and sets these days and all the old dears I’ve been doing for years are dying … it’s depressing, really.’

  ‘It’s balayage,’ said Meg.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The way they highlight hair these days.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ Les said sadly. Then, ‘OK, you’re on! Do up the place, have your little pop-up shop and then I’ll try and sell it. You’ll need to give me a pound though, to seal the deal. Like they did with BHS.’

  A pound, a pound … Meg didn’t have a pound, only a tenner in her back pocket.

  ‘Do you have change?’

  ‘I’ve got nothing,’ said Les.

  ‘Just give me a minute, then,’ she said, ‘but in the meantime, you’ve got a deal,’ she added, holding out her hand to shake his cool, clammy paw. She could almost detect the flicker of a smile on his thin lips.

  Meg hurried out of the shop. Annoyingly, Violet wasn’t at the pub any more; her empty pint glass, beery foam at its edges, remained on the table. Meg headed down The Shambles to Lavender Cottage, where Violet was out the front in the blazing sunshine wielding a pair of secateurs and trimming a lavender bush, her visor replaced by a Panama hat.

  ‘Violet!’ Meg cried, as she walked towards her. ‘Looks like I’m going to sell your dresses for you! A pop-up shop, for up to a week. All proceeds go to your conservatory fund.’

  ‘Wonderful!’ declared Violet, pausing in her trimming and looking really pleased.

  ‘I’m thinking of opening it on the night of the July Jamboree,’ continued Meg. ‘With a launch party.’ Meg’s mind was whirring with ideas for it, and plans for how she would fit the shop, showcase the dresses … If she could pull it off in time, it really could be very exciting.

  ‘A launch party sounds fabulous!’ Violet smiled.

  ‘That’s settled then,’ said Meg, with a massive grin, before giving the old lady an impromptu hug. ‘By the way, have you got a pound coin I can borrow?’

  *

  On her way back to the hairdresser’s, Meg almost didn’t notice Jamie sitting outside the pub, on the same table his mum had been on. He was in his vet’s uniform, there was a fresh pint glass in front of him and sitting opposite him was a girl with a blonde bob who was laughing at something Jamie was showing her on his phone. She was also dressed as a vet.

  Meg had to walk straight past them; there was no other route to Les Metcalfe, with her pound, but she wouldn’t look at Jamie. She marched past, head up, arms pumping, like she was out for a morning power walk. She could have done with Violet’s visor.

  ‘Meg?’

  Oh damn, Jamie was calling her! Why, when he was clearly on a date? She’d hate to be on a date with a man who was calling out to other women. Poor girl. Still, a good match for him – another vet. A country girl, someone not from London. She kept marching – head up, arms pumping. He called again.

  ‘Hey, Meg?’

  What did he want? He’d said in front of his mum he didn’t think she was worthy of going out with; he’d then made a hash of trying to pretend he didn’t mean it by turning up at Orchard Cottage and half-heartedly inviting her to the pub. And now he was on a date. What the hell did he want? Meg wished like crazy she had her headphones in, playing some sort of thrash metal. She wished this village wasn’t so bloody small.

  Oh no, he was running up to her.

  She also wished he wasn’t so bloody handsome.

  ‘Hi, Meg.’

  ‘Hi, Jamie.’ She carried on marching.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Buying a shop.’

  ‘Hey, what?’

  ‘I’m buying the old hairdresser’s. I’m turning it into a vintage clothing shop.’

  ‘Mum’s dresses …’ said Jamie.

  ‘Yup,’ said Meg.

  ‘Well, that’s fantastic, so …’

  ‘Sorry, but you’re clearly in the middle of something and I’ve got to go,’ cried Meg.

  ‘Meg! Can I just talk to you? I …’

  She left Jamie without looking back and dashed over to the hairdresser’s. Once she had given Les the borrowed pound coin and shaken his limp greasy hand once again, she bounded out of there and virtually ran past the green and hurried up the lane, over the stile and across the fields to the cottage. She was quite proud of herself by the time she got back. For rebuffing Jamie – did that man have to pop up wherever she went? For her immediate plans to become a local entrepreneur. Fashion, fashion she knew. And for this venture she didn’t have to wrangle stroppy models, demanding clients, travel logistics, models’ pushy mums, demanding clients’ hangers-on …

  She had a sudden desire to tell someone about it. Clarissa? Sarah? Meg had thought of her sister and her supposed ‘big heart’ a few times since Harry had mentioned it. She’d thought about it while lying in Sarah’s orchard and ambling over the fields to Sarah’s village and hanging Sarah’s sheets on the line. Sarah was ‘lovely’, according to the village. And if Harry – a pretty awful man, it had to be said – had been an ‘oasis’ for Sarah, after two years of looking after Meg, what did that say about those two years? About Meg?

  It was a question Meg abandoned for being too difficult. She decided she wouldn’t tell Sarah about the pop-up shop; she would tell Clarissa. Her friend would think it was a hoot. Meg took out her phone and started composing a text.

  *

  Clarissa did indeed think it was a hoot, when she replied later that day. She even said she’d come
and model some of the dresses for Meg, on the launch night, if she was free, although she had a lot coming up; clients and Lilith were keeping her really busy. Meg smiled. She was pleased Lilith was holding the fort at her agency so well. She definitely felt more relaxed without the whole mania of it and all its pressures. The heart palpitations had stopped; she was sure her blood pressure reading would be favourable when she had it checked. In the meantime, Meg could concentrate on her exciting, non-stressful new project. She was sitting in her pyjamas as the sun went down in the orchard, lying on a blanket – still texting Clarissa about all her exciting plans, and happily flicking through the internet, getting ideas for shop styling and fitting.

  After the sun had long disappeared, and the air had turned less balmy, Meg remained on her blanket in the orchard. She wrapped a portion of it round her legs and was about to text Clarissa again to ask whether she should source some trendy paper carrier bags, like the shops in Bond Street, when her phone rang in her hand. Connor’s name flashed up. Meg had made both the twins swap numbers with her, just in case – although neither of them had particularly wanted to.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Smarty Mag?’

  ‘What? Hello? Connor?’

  ‘Smaaarty Maaaaag …’

  She couldn’t make out a word of it. ‘Hello? Is that you, Connor?’

  ‘Smaaarty …’ Connor had clearly had his phone stolen by an alien. Meg hung up and returned to the internet.

  The phone rang again. ‘Connor’ again.

  ‘Hello?’ she said impatiently.

  ‘Hi, this is William. I’m a friend of Connor’s. I’m afraid Connor has had too much to drink and can’t ride his bike home. We’re in a pub in Bridging Hampton. Really sorry, but would you be able to pick him up?’

  Meg looked at her watch. It was eleven fifteen. ‘I suppose I’ll have to,’ she sighed. ‘Which pub?’

  ‘The Brewer’s Arms.’

  Meg remembered it well; it was one of her old stomping grounds. ‘OK, I’m coming,’ she said. ‘I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.’

  She was in her pyjamas. She didn’t want to get dressed again. Oh sod it, she’d go in the pyjamas and shove some flip-flops on. It was getting really quite chilly now, though, so she ran upstairs to get Big Bird from the back of her bedroom door.

  The Fiesta took three tries to start. It lurched out of the garage. Meg hadn’t driven for a long time and felt way out of her comfort zone. She turned on the radio. She rolled up the over-long sleeves of the yellow dressing gown. Some dance music she didn’t know came on, but the radio seemed to be stuck on that channel and she couldn’t turn it over. She suffered quite a few ‘songs’. It was just all a horrible noise, she thought, and then she laughed to herself as Mum and Dad used to say the same about her music. On Sunday afternoons they’d have a roast dinner, then Meg would listen to her Goth music while she did her homework at the kitchen table, with Dad washing up and Mum writing her list for the Big Shop the next day. They would suffer her music for so long then beg her to turn it off. It was always the same. A funny little routine. Meg had been an only child, really, for quite a few years and it had been great. She used to have them all to herself before they were ripped away from her.

  She switched the radio off. When the Fiesta limped near to the pub she could see Connor outside in the car park being propped up by a boy even taller and lankier than he was. ‘Over here!’ the taller boy yelled as Meg got out of the car.

  Connor’s head was down, bouncing on his chest. He was doing a kind of quickstep, in the same spot, side to side, back and forward, his fringe dangling over his eyes like a straggly curtain.

  ‘He’s had a skinful,’ said William.

  ‘I can see that,’ said Meg, tying Big Bird tightly round her waist. ‘Can you help me try to get him in the car?’

  She walked over to her nephew and tried to get her fluffy yellow arm under his armpit. He resisted.

  ‘Gerrrrr off! I don’t like you, Hawtie Miiiig.’ He shrugged her off and staggered over to a trestle table, where he proceeded to swan-dive, on the top, laughing now.

  ‘Uh-uh,’ said Meg. ‘I don’t think so.’ She tried to drag him by the leg, William grabbing the other one.

  ‘Just going to have a quick kip,’ Connor slurred.

  ‘For god’s sake,’ Meg spluttered. She and William managed to get Connor off the table and in an upright position again. He was staggering like the drunken sailor. They took an arm each and led him to the car, where Meg got the back door open. With Connor’s head lolling round his neck, she folded him into the back seat of the Fiesta, with the help of an almighty shove by William. One leg was still hanging out. She levered it in and shut the door quickly, before it could escape, like a limb from Davy Jones’s locker.

  ‘Thanks, William,’ she said. ‘How about you? How are you getting home?’

  ‘I’ve got my bike.’

  ‘Ah, yes. I’ll bring Connor to pick up his tomorrow. Will you be all right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, I’ll shadow you home anyway.’

  Meg followed him slowly out of the car park. As she turned left onto the road, one of the sleeves of Big Bird dangled down and caught on the gear stick and she had to momentarily stop the car so she could free it. Then it hit her. Not the sleeve – Big Bird hadn’t come to life like something from Pet Sematary – but a realization. She was not only wearing Big Bird but was also literally in Sarah’s size seven shoes right now. Sarah had done this for her, so many times. Picked her up drunk from the pub, got her home, put the washing-up bowl and the kitchen roll by her bed, which Meg would have to do for Connor when they got home …

  Suddenly, all these years later, she was Sarah. While Meg got into her scrapes, Sarah had got her out of them. While she was a teenager who thought the world revolved around her, Sarah, in her Big Bird dressing gown, had been the one to take charge. The only one who could take charge. And for the first time Meg saw that time through Sarah’s eyes. Not just as the eye-rolling, morally superior big sister, but the mentally exhausted one picking up her little sister’s pieces. Yet, a piece of the picture was still missing. Even though Meg could clearly see her own grief, how she’d tried to disguise it, and how miserable it must have been for Sarah to deal with it, she still knew nothing of Sarah’s. Because Sarah had never said anything.

  As Meg drove, to the accompaniment of Connor’s very loud snores from the back seat, she wondered what she could do about all this now: Sarah’s hidden big heart, her need for an oasis, her stoicism while she picked up Meg’s pieces … and all the unanswered questions. Meg felt she needed to talk to Sarah, but Sarah had made it plain she didn’t want to talk to her; she could barely manage a civil email. If Meg wanted to reach out to her sister in some way, would Sarah be receptive, after all these years of radio silence?

  Meg put Connor to bed, once they were home; the washing-up bowl and the kitchen roll at the side of his bed ready for service. She, too, had a banging headache now she was back at the cottage and went in search of some painkillers. Sarah’s messy bathroom yielded nothing. Where else could she look? Meg went into Sarah’s bedroom and pulled open a drawer in one of the bedside tables, thinking she wouldn’t nose, but if there was some paracetamol or something in sight, it was worth a quick look. Inside the drawer, on the top, was a book, and tucked into it was a sheet of glossy paper. There was something about that sheet of paper that was familiar to Meg – the colours, the typeface … the photo in the top right corner … Oh, it was a clipping, from Glamour magazine, the interview she had done: ‘A Day in the Life of a Model Booker’. Meg pulled the page free. Yes, there she was, and Sarah had clipped this out and kept it. That meant something, didn’t it? Perhaps there wasn’t a cold shoulder, to be felt all the way from London, perhaps there was a flicker of warmth, after all.

  Meg allowed a smile to dawn on her face, then without thinking about it too much, she dashed downstairs to the laptop and thrashed out an email, her fingers
flying across the keys.

  Hi Sarah, I hope you are well. How is the job going? What sort of events have you been organizing? Start casual, start casual, she told herself … She remembered how frosty Sarah had been in that ‘list’ email.

  I’ve been looking after the library for you. And I did one art class – long story! Also, I’m opening a shop, in the village. A pop-up shop, selling vintage clothing. Dresses, mainly. It will be at the old hairdresser’s. I’m going to do it up and have a launch party on the night of the July Jamboree – I can’t wait! Too gushing? Oh, what did it matter? She was reaching out, wasn’t she? Breaking radio silence? Meg paused, for a second, and then she typed again.

  I’m sorry you thought I was such a nightmare and that you were the one who had to deal with me. I’m sorry I made you so angry. She paused, breathless, shaking. We used to be so close, didn’t we, before the accident? I’m sorry it all got messed up and we never sorted it out.

  She was too scared to send that. She deleted it. She wrote something else. A memory that made her smile, although she also realized she was crying, just a little. Do you remember when we used to really get on, as kids? Do you remember how we used to play libraries?

  Then, without reading anything back, she pressed send.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sarah

  Fashion was an early business. Sarah’s alarm went off at five o’clock on Monday morning; she had to be at the venue at the old wine cellars for half past six to make sure everything was absolutely tip-top for designer John James’s 11 a.m. show: overseeing the laying out of chairs, making sure the front row was the correct front row – London’s top fashion people and a hand-selected contingent of click-baity celebrities – organizing the florists’ displays, the pre-show cocktails and canapés, the mini bottles of champagne for the models backstage – the list was endless. John James, the designer, had his own producer for the actual show, but Sarah was where the buck stopped for everything else and she was mildly terrified. The whole thing had to be perfect, on literal pain of death.