The Sister Swap

by Fiona Collins

  ‘How could I forget?’ said Sarah. She hadn’t found that funny, either. Dad had laughed and called her ‘uptight’.

  ‘Do you remember when Mum nearly fell over, too?’

  ‘Of course I do.’ Why was Meg trying to make her laugh now? Sarah rubbed her hands together to get rid of the mud and said, ‘Right, how the hell are we going to find Olivia among this little lot?’

  ‘Is she with Jude?’

  ‘No, I think she’s on her own.’ Sarah showed Meg the text: No longer moving with Jude. At Mashbury Hall now. ‘Do you know what she’s wearing today?’

  Meg screwed up her face. ‘Short denim shorts and a white Morrissey T-shirt?’

  ‘Morrissey?’

  ‘Jude’s influence.’ Meg shrugged.

  ‘OK, into the fray then!’ commanded Sarah briskly. ‘Although this could be like looking for a needle in a haystack!’

  The crowd was huge, young, and drunk. The music was deafening. There were a lot of leotards on stage, too, from what Sarah could make out as they pushed past a million bouncing bodies, muttered a thousand ‘excuse me’s and stepped on quite a few toes. Around the edges of the wide field were food outlets, selling everything from kebabs to chips to candy floss to doughnuts. At least it had stopped raining now.

  They scoured that crowd for half an hour.

  ‘There she is!’

  Meg was pointing at a huddle of young people, over to the far right of the field. They were chomping on burgers and holding plastic pint glasses. Through a tangle of bare legs and wellies and see-through rain capes, Sarah could spy a pair of short denim shorts and a T-shirt with a man’s miserable face on it. The face above it was hard to see and equally hard to read.

  ‘Olivia!’ she bellowed, and she ran towards the huddle.

  ‘Mum?’ Olivia poked her head out of her little crowd, and then came galloping out like a wounded gazelle. Sarah had never been so relieved to see her, despite the fact her daughter had black smudged eyeliner all round her eyes and had clearly been crying. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Looking for you, worrying about you! Are you OK?’ Sarah grabbed her daughter in a hug and held her tight as Olivia gave a small sob into Sarah’s still wet shoulder.

  ‘I am now,’ said Olivia. She pulled back from Sarah and gave an almighty sniff. Sarah scoured her face, ran a thumb under her eyes to wipe away the smudged make-up. ‘I wasn’t though, but I’ve come to my senses.’ She produced a watery smile. ‘Hi, Auntie Meg.’

  ‘Hi, Olivia.’ Meg looked relieved, too, Sarah noticed.

  ‘Why are you here? What happened with Jude?’ asked Sarah.

  ‘Oh, that loser,’ sighed Olivia dramatically, her voice a little quaky. She sniffed again and rubbed the end of her nose with her finger. ‘I’m done. I’m so done. I’m just upset I wasted so much time on him. All men are disasters, aren’t they?’

  Meg and Sarah looked at each other.

  ‘What happened?’ repeated Sarah.

  Olivia grinned, but her eyes still looked hollow. ‘We were on our way to Hull, but I had an epiphany on the A12.’

  ‘Hull?’ exclaimed Sarah.

  ‘It’s been the City of Culture. Jude kept banging on about Philip Larkin and the Housemartins. That’s a band, Mum.’

  ‘“Caravan of Love”, I remember,’ said Sarah. ‘My era. So, what was the epiphany?’

  Olivia pulled a face, wiped at her eyes. ‘First, he used some of my money to buy Monster Munch, KitKats and Discos, when I thought it was going to go on falafels and weak tea and the water meter, in romantic, starving artist in garret fashion, you know? Then he was going on about buying a tweed coat – not from a charity shop, but from bloody Hugo Boss.’ Sarah couldn’t help but smile – Olivia was only this effusive occasionally. ‘A red flag went up right there. Funny how people change once they have your money!’ she scoffed, still a little teary.

  ‘I thought he was rich, though,’ interjected Meg.

  ‘Only his parents!’ exclaimed Olivia. ‘He’s not allowed to get his hands on any money until he’s twenty-five. They don’t trust him with it and I can see why!’ She gave another giant sniff. ‘So, anyway, then he said he was so thankful I was his muse. That he’d got me to rely on. He said I needn’t worry about anything more in life than supporting him, for the next few years anyway, both financially and emotionally. He said once we got to Hull I had to get a “little job” so he could stay in the bedsit and write his plays. And I looked at him and he looked so smug, so sure of it all, that it just kind of hit me. I just had a massive wake-up call, you know? … What about me? What about my life? Was I going to chuck it all away? And I burst into tears – embarrassingly – and he was trying to shush me because he was driving and he said I was distracting him and all I could think of was you, Mum, and how you’re such a great role model now – working in London! Going back to your old career! – and what was I doing?’

  Sarah was surprised. Olivia had been so unimpressed about her going to London; she had no idea she was any kind of a role model for her daughter – that was startling. ‘Oh, Olivia,’ she said.

  ‘And you, Auntie Meg,’ continued Olivia, ‘saying don’t ever throw it all away on some boy. And I nearly did just that! But I can’t do that. I won’t do that. I can’t live for somebody else – I need to live for me. I remembered my friends were at the concert here today and I made him drop me. Luckily there was enough of my money left to get a ticket. The rest will go towards my uni spends’ – she grinned a wobbly grin –‘as planned.’

  ‘You’re going to go to Durham still?’ Sarah asked. A lump came to her throat and relief flooded through her.

  ‘Of course I am!’ declared Olivia. ‘I’m not stupid. I just temporarily lost my mind.’

  ‘Well, thank god!’ uttered Sarah, and as Olivia began to weep softly again, she enveloped her daughter in the most enormous, relieved hug she had ever given.

  ‘Thank god!’ she heard Meg echo, from behind them.

  Olivia finally peeled away from Sarah’s shoulder and, wiping her tears away for what Sarah hoped would be the final time – over this awful Jude – looked at her mother. ‘I’m sorry I made you come looking for me. You didn’t have to.’

  ‘How could I not?’ replied Sarah. ‘You’re my daughter.’

  ‘And you, Auntie Meg.’

  ‘I was worried.’ Meg shrugged.

  Then Olivia’s face broke into a sudden smirk and she pealed with unexpected laughter. ‘You both look ridiculous, you know. You’re soaked through! Why don’t you go and dry off in the doll’s house museum? I think the conservatory’s open. Are you going back to London tonight, Mum?’

  ‘Yes, I guess so.’ She supposed she was; where else was she going to go?

  ‘I’ll come and find you at the end of the set then.’

  ‘You’ll be OK now?’

  ‘I’ll definitely be OK.’ She gave them both a brief hug; Meg looked surprised by hers, thought Sarah. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Not all men are bastards by the way,’ said Meg as Olivia made to go. ‘Just so you know.’

  ‘No, they’re not,’ added Sarah. She didn’t want to, but she thought of Dylan, how she had shut the door in his face earlier. He hadn’t deserved that, however terrified she was.

  Olivia leapt back to her friends and Sarah and Meg smiled tentatively at each other and headed towards the house, which loomed tall and grand behind a bank of food outlets. They found a way through to it down the side of a vegetarian burrito stand.

  ‘How does Olivia know about the doll’s house museum?’ asked Meg, navigating an overflowing bin.

  ‘I brought her and Connor here quite a lot, as kids,’ said Sarah. ‘I suppose I’ve been carrying on the family tradition.’ The lump arrived back in her throat, uninvited, and she hoped Meg couldn’t see it. She was so relieved about Olivia, yet already sad about having to leave her again at the end of the afternoon … and nostalgic and emotional … and melancholy about being in London at the moment, so
far from her children. It was also so weird being here with her sister again, even if the place was barely recognizable, having had a huge music festival dumped on it. And weird being here with Meg but not their parents.

  ‘That’s really nice,’ said Meg. Sarah looked at her, but couldn’t decipher her expression. After a moment, Meg said, ‘Do you know, that’s the most I’ve ever heard Olivia say! She doesn’t talk to me that much.’

  ‘Me neither,’ said Sarah, with a teary grin. ‘But she has her moments.’

  The two of them walked around the left-hand side of the house, where an ornate, white gothic conservatory provided a pretty annex to the main house. Meg was silent as Sarah opened the pretty arched door and they stepped into the circular space with the black and white chequered floor, the trailing plants, the mismatched, empty vintage birdcages and, of course, the dolls’ houses.

  ‘Oh my god!’ declared Meg. ‘It’s exactly the same!’

  ‘Yes, it’s always exactly the same,’ replied Sarah. The dolls’ houses were displayed on low shelves around the perimeter of the conservatory, spotlit from above by pretty lanterns on gilt chains. She trailed her finger over the roof of a three-storey Elizabethan town house, then carefully opened the front panel. The fireplace, the hearth, the little wardrobes, the footstools … the tiny sinks and chairs – they were all still there.

  ‘Unbelievable!’ said Meg, pacing around. ‘We must have come here a million times! Mum must have been so patient, letting us explore the same old things over and over.’

  ‘And Dad always went out for a smoke and an extra strong mint.’

  ‘I miss them,’ said Meg suddenly. ‘They used to be here, in this room, and now they’re gone and we’ll never see them again. I feel like this in Tipperton Mallet, too,’ she said. ‘In the cottage. It’s so strange, sometimes. Being there.’

  ‘I know,’ said Sarah. ‘I feel it too when I’m there.’

  Meg looked at Sarah, her face all pensive. Then she took a deep breath. ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you about Olivia and the whole Durham thing,’ she said quietly, immediately bending to peer in the window of the grand mansion with the white stucco walls and the tiny gold carriage parked outside. ‘It really was only a “might be” – I didn’t want to worry you. And, to be honest, I was scared of upsetting the apple cart.’ She looked up. ‘We’d just started to get on OK again, after all this time. It was selfish of me, but I didn’t want to jeopardize that.’

  ‘It’s OK.’ Sarah turned away from her sister to close the front panel of the town house and smooth her hand down the ‘brickwork’.

  ‘Don’t say that if it’s not,’ said Meg.

  ‘It is OK.’ Sarah turned back. ‘I’m not angry about that now. Now we’ve found her. I’m sorry I had such a go at you and I’m sorry I accused you of sending Olivia up to London to be a model.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ Meg smiled. ‘I know you didn’t really think that.’

  Sarah felt a little bad, as she actually had.

  Meg sat down, on a low ledge at the edge of the conservatory. She stretched her sodden feet and ruined shoes out in front of her and slung her bag on the black and white floor. It was unzipped and a packet of tissues and a book spilled out.

  ‘Little Women!’ cried Sarah. ‘I’m reading that!’ She reached into her own bag and pulled out her copy. ‘Snap!’

  Meg smiled and picked the book up from the floor. ‘It’s actually your old copy,’ she said. ‘I got it from the phone box library.’

  ‘So it’s still doing the rounds!’ said Sarah, amazed. She sat down too, next to her sister and flicked through the book. ‘I found mine on the Tube.’

  ‘Enjoying it?’

  ‘Not really.’ They both laughed. ‘Well, yes and no,’ added Sarah. ‘Too many memories. And the part where Mr March comes home from the war …’ Sarah grinned. ‘Let’s just say I shouldn’t have read it on the Tube.’

  ‘Oh god, I haven’t got to that bit yet,’ Meg said. ‘I’ve found it … saccharine. Well, no, that’s not quite right,’ she added, thoughtfully. ‘To be honest, on reading it, I preferred to scoff at it than admit how I really feel … which is sad.’ She fiddled with a soggy piece of hair; tucked it behind her ear. ‘Sad for the Little Women, and sad for us.’

  Sarah nodded. ‘I used to love reading it to you,’ she said softly. ‘In the good old days …’

  ‘ … before everything went wrong,’ continued Meg. There was silence between them; the faint strains of Girl Squad the only sound. ‘You resent the two years you had to look after me, don’t you?’ Meg said suddenly.

  Sarah looked down at the chequered floor. ‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘I did. I had to leave my job in London, when I was on a roll … I had to come home … to give up everything. It was devastating, in so many ways.’ There. Finally, after all this time, she’d said it.

  ‘I do too.’ Meg looked straight up at Sarah and fixed her eyes on her sister’s. ‘I resent you for how you were.’

  ‘Me? How about how you were? Bloody hell, Meg!’

  A lost teenager wearing a glow stick necklace wandered in, saw their faces and wandered out again with a drunken ‘sorry!’ Sarah stared at her trainers, below mum jeans. She’d thrown on her old mum uniform for this trip home; it seemed appropriate. She glanced at Meg and Meg looked both contrite and angry.

  ‘Let’s talk about it, Meg,’ Sarah said. Suddenly, she really, really felt that they should – here among the dolls’ houses and the trailing plants and the birdcages, in the place they had visited and loved so often. ‘Those two years. That time. You resented me? I find that a bit rich!’

  ‘I was grieving,’ said Meg, her face pained. ‘I was grieving and staying out a lot and being a bit of a cow. You were cold and bossy and condescending. I know you had to make a big sacrifice, coming back, but—’

  ‘You weren’t just “out” a lot!’ Sarah exclaimed. She was absolutely taken aback. ‘You were an absolute nightmare! Always drunk, getting arrested! You made it so, so hard for me, as it was all about you. I was grieving too, you know.’

  ‘You wouldn’t know it!’ cried Meg, with a force that shocked Sarah. ‘You never said anything!’

  ‘You didn’t think I was grieving?’

  ‘No, because you never said a word!’ repeated Meg. ‘It was clear what was going on with me – I’d just lost my parents! I was sixteen. I was lost. Any fool could see that. But you didn’t comfort me – you just told me off. I was just the eternal bad person, the albatross round your neck, the bad one. And you were a closed book. You were impenetrable!’

  Sarah felt herself close up again now. She felt her heart close. Again. ‘I just had to do what I had to do,’ she said quietly. ‘And you made it so hard. Do you remember the locket?’

  ‘What locket?’

  ‘The locket of mine you smashed up.’

  ‘What? Your one with Mum and Dad in? I didn’t smash that up!’

  ‘Yes, you did. It was a few days before you left. It was why I wasn’t talking to you. It was the final straw for me. You smashed it up on my dressing table with the bottom of a bottle of vodka.’

  ‘I don’t remember doing that!’ Meg looked confused, mortified. ‘If I did … well, I’m sorry! I really don’t remember!’

  ‘I don’t think you remember a lot of things, because you were so hammered all the time! And then you buggered off to London. To start the kind of career I’d had to leave. It felt like everything I’d done for you was being thrown back in my face.’

  ‘You could have gone to London, too, got your old job back …’

  ‘I was so battered, there was no way I could at that point!’ Sarah’s heart was splitting open again, as painful as it was. ‘I just wanted someone to put their arms around me and make everything all right. I met Harry. I stayed in Tipperton Mallet.’

  There was a beat. ‘He told me,’ said Meg, her voice quiet now. ‘He said he was your “oasis”.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘
He came to the house a few weeks ago. Did the kids not tell you?’

  ‘No. They know I don’t like to talk about Harry. I never talked about you, either, to be honest.’ She knew that sounded rather spiteful, but as cards were being laid on the table …

  ‘I gathered that. That’s why the twins have been so resentful towards me,’ Meg said, almost to herself. ‘They had no clue who I was. I understand that – I never talked about you, too; I pretended you didn’t exist. I hated you, Sarah, for those two years. Maybe I just wanted someone to put their arms around me, too. But you never did. You were too busy trying to replicate the exact house Mum had run, pretending to be her, making everything business as usual when it was far from it. I just wanted my big sister to share the grief I was feeling.’

  ‘I couldn’t cope with it. Your grief and mine. I went into robot mode; keep calm and carry on. Just try and get through each bloody day. Oh, god,’ said Sarah, on the verge of tears. ‘It was awful. I didn’t dare break down in front of you. If I had, I knew I would never stop.’

  They both fell silent.

  ‘I was too proud and stubborn and angry to ever get in touch with you afterwards,’ said Meg.

  ‘And I was just too angry, full stop,’ said Sarah. ‘Too closed off, but, by god, there were times when I needed you! At Uncle Compton’s funeral, Harry and I were on the brink of splitting up. I knew he was having another affair, I just hadn’t proved it yet. I was falling apart. A mess. And you were there, but you weren’t there. It was like you couldn’t even see me.’

  ‘No, I don’t think I could see you,’ said Meg sadly. ‘I was too wrapped up in myself. And I’ve had heartache, too. I’ve had terrible relationships. I’ve pushed people away. I’ve been scared of getting hurt. And I couldn’t reach out to you. You were too far away, too much time had passed. Since Mum and Dad died, I’ve never been able to reach you.’

  ‘What a waste,’ sighed Sarah. ‘What a crying bloody shame. We could have really been there for each other, but we weren’t.’ She felt unbearably sad; wretched with regret.

  ‘I saw the magazine clipping,’ said Meg.