I glance over my shoulder. Thankfully Fiona is surrounded by people and clinking her champagne glass with a man wearing an enormous hat.
‘Diane,’ I hiss, trying to grab her arm as unobtrusively as possible. ‘Diane, you can’t smoke in here. You need to put that out!’
I notice another swirl of smoke float from her mouth and wrench her round to face me. She pulls the cigarette from her lips and launches her arm into the air.
‘No!’ she snaps. ‘You can’t tell me what to do. I’m allowed to smoke!’
I feel a surge of anger.
‘Not inside!’ I cry. ‘Look, just put it out and I’ll get you another one to smoke outside.’
She sticks it back in her mouth and takes another furious drag. I take my chance and clamp my hands onto hers, trying to prise the limp cigarette from her mouth.
‘Diane!’ I grunt, as she swivels around in an attempt to knock me off balance. ‘Diane, please, you can’t smoke inside! You need to put it out, you need—’
But suddenly the screeching sound of the fire alarm reverberates around the room and an almighty spritz of water fans down from the ceiling, showering the guests. Their high-pitched squeals join the fire alarm and I yank the cigarette furiously from Diane and stamp it on the floor. She blinks back at me, her eyes finally looking sorrowful, but I quickly work out that it isn’t because of what’s just happened.
It’s because she’s about to throw up all over my designer dress.
CHAPTER SIX
RACHEL
I flop onto my bed, feeling a small tingle of warmth as the fresh waffle duvet attempts to swallow me, and for a minute it’s as if I’m about to fall into Wonderland. I take a deep breath, pushing the air into my lungs as I try and ignore the gentle ticking from the wall clock hanging over my head.
I don’t need to look at the clock; I know what time it is. I’ve felt unnaturally in tune with the time all day. I’ve tried my best to ignore it. I’ve changed all the bedding, I pottered about in the garden, and I even took Bruno on an extra-long walk along the cliffs at the end of the village, which almost gave me a heart attack when he charged after a bird and tried to throw himself off the edge. All day, the slow ticking of the clock has clouded my brain like a faint mist, because I know that at six o’clock, Katy will arrive. An hour before that, I need to send the email telling her the conference has been cancelled and I’ll be here after all. Two hours after that, we’ll be spending more time together than we have done in three years, and I will have forced her into it. I’m not even giving her the choice.
Nausea rolls through my body and I clamp my eyes shut.
I don’t know if I can do this.
I rest my hand on my bump as the baby wriggles around as though it can sense my nerves.
I was almost grateful that Katy didn’t email me back last night. In a mad state of loneliness I suddenly felt the need to call her and tell her everything in one go. This urge vanished as soon as the email had sent, God knows what I would have said to her if she had called me. Some lie about Bruno or something.
She’ll be so angry that I lied to her about needing her to house-sit and tricked her into coming home. There’s a high chance that she won’t even stay the night. She’ll be here long enough to hear my explanation and slowly unpick each of my lies: Danny, the baby, my life. And that’s when I lose the ability to predict what she’ll do or say next. I don’t know her well enough any more.
I try and conjure up the happy fantasy where Katy is hugging me, delighted. But although she is there, her eyes are blank and withdrawn, and somehow I can’t hear her voice in my mind.
I feel panic shoot through me and snap my eyes open.
The clock hands click into a new position and I look back at the ceiling.
It’s ten to five.
I can’t keep living this fantasy. I need to know what the real Katy will do. I need to find out. I’m running out of time.
I push myself to sitting, scrunching up my face as a head rush swims in front of my eyes. I grab my laptop and open the lid, bringing the prepared email back onto the screen.
My heart quickens as I read it again. My fingers curl around the duvet and I try to keep myself calm.
As terrifying as it is to picture being alone, the reality of it is much worse. If I’m right, and I’ve already done too much damage for Katy to forgive me, then I won’t have anyone else. My husband has gone, Mum has a new family, I drove Dad away and Grandma died. Katy is all I have left, and even though the door is barely open, if she slams it shut, I don’t know how I’ll survive.
Before I realise what I’m doing, my hand closes the laptop. I jump up and open the wardrobe, dragging out a suitcase and hurriedly throwing clothes into it. Once it’s full, I wrench the zip shut and ease myself back to standing. With the bulging suitcase in my hand, I catch sight of myself in the mirror. My ankles are swollen, my hair is scrunched above my head and my face is red and blotchy. My stomach, which looks bigger than ever, sticks out like a beach ball, screaming to be noticed. I take a moment to look at myself, my head throbbing as a new idea spins through my mind like silk. Before I can pull the plan apart, I step out of sight of the mirror and race down the stairs.
I don’t know how Katy will react, but I’m not ready to find out. I need more time.
CHAPTER SEVEN
KATY
Okay, so it was bad.
I can’t really escape that. There is little point trying to convince myself that it wasn’t actually that bad and perhaps I’m dramatising things because I’m so hung-over I feel as though a rat has died in my mouth and the juices of its rotting carcass have stained my insides for all eternity. It was just very, very bad.
The train jolts over a bump and my clammy hands clench onto my Evian water bottle.
You know when you’re worried about something and your brain does that fun trick of listing every possible thing that could go wrong? And then you go, ‘Oh, you’re just being silly! That will never happen! You’re worrying about nothing!’
Well, what happens if the thing that actually happened was so bad that it didn’t even make it onto the list? I didn’t fall off the stage after announcing the bar would be closing. I didn’t accidentally sneeze into the open mouth of a very important investor. I didn’t even get the dates mixed up and arrive at the venue to find that I had missed the entire thing.
The man next to me pushes his shoulders back and I fight the urge to hiss at him as his elbow knocks mine.
Instead, I wrestled a cigarette from my colleague who has a ‘weak ribcage’ and had to go to A&E because she suspected I’d cracked one of her ribs (which I’m sure I’m not capable of, but even if she’s fine, it’s enough to start a rumour that I’m an absolute brute).
The fire alarm sent a shower of water over all the guests, which might as well have been acid by the way everybody reacted, and all the designer outfits were ruined, including mine, which I now have to pay for. God only knows how much that bloody dress will cost me. Obviously I have nothing of value to sell to pay for it, and since I single-handedly flushed my promotion down the toilet, I’ll have no choice but to sell one of my stupid kidneys.
The staff had to treat the fire alarm as a real emergency and insisted on evacuating the entire hotel. I begged them to just turn it off and put it down as a blip. I even offered them champagne for their silence (not a bribe, as the manager cruelly suggested, but a kind gesture. Who doesn’t love champagne?) But twenty minutes later, our glamorous party were out on the King’s Road being splattered by sheets of rain and wincing at the crowds of drunken teenagers staggering about. Hardly the high-class ambience I was hoping for.
Oh! And then Diane’s ambulance arrived.
Needless to say, Fiona didn’t offer me the job in the office with a large bottle of Dom Perignon. She barely looked at me until an hour later, when we were the last two left on the street. Then she turned to me and said:
‘And now you’re off for a week, aren’t you?’
<
br /> Before we climbed into an Uber and travelled home in silence.
I take a dubious sip of my water.
I barely slept last night. When I got back to the cabin, I ordered a Chinese, ate it in bed and slept in my stupid soggy Gucci dress. I was so defeated I didn’t even care when I spilt soy sauce down the front. I woke up this morning feeling as if my organs were sitting on a bed of pins, and every breath I took pierced my insides a little. The torrential fear of a hangover is multiplied when the things you were worried about actually happened, and I have nobody to reassure me that it wasn’t that bad. Who was I going to tell? I could hardly call Rachel when she thinks I’ve already been promoted.
I threw whatever I could find into my suitcase and dragged it along the grey street until I got to the Tube station. After chugging along on perhaps the most rickety Tube I have ever experienced, I am now safely cushioned in the warm corner seat of a train on the way to Wales. I’ve tried sleeping, but every time I shut my eyes, I feel as if I’m falling down a rabbit hole. So I’m staring out of the window instead, watching the world turn slowly into colour as we roll into the countryside.
‘Any snacks or drinks?’
I look up and see a kind woman at the end of the carriage chatting to passengers and handing out Kit Kats. For some reason, this makes my eyes swell and for a horrible moment I feel as though I could burst into tears.
Look at her. Look at how clean and put-together she is. I bet she didn’t get disgustingly drunk last night and wake up this morning with a half-eaten spring roll lodged in her cleavage. Why can’t I be more like Train Lady? What’s wrong with me?
I think I’d like to be Train Lady.
‘Anything from the trolley?’
I feel myself jump slightly as she reaches me, as if she can read my thoughts and is suddenly aware of what an enormous creep I am. My stomach twitches as I look at the snacks. I am starving. The time shines at me from my phone; it’s just gone five. No wonder I’m hungry. I’ve barely eaten today.
‘Yes please,’ I say, digging my hands into my pockets to try and find my bank card. ‘Can I please have a bacon sandwich and a Crunchie?’
‘Sure, would you like any sauce?’
‘Ketchup, please.’
As I pull my card out of the depths of my pocket, trying not to fling an old tissue across the carriage, my phone vibrates loudly. I glance down at the flashing screen and see Rachel’s name.
Why is she emailing me now? Maybe she’s checking I’m actually on the train and that I haven’t forgotten. Honestly, I’ve never known anyone so obsessed with sticking to a plan.
I mean, yes, I was going to cancel two weeks ago with some elaborate fake business conference, but like the absolute moron I am, I forgot, and there is no way I’d cancel on her this late. She’d march up to London and drag me to Wales herself.
I pick my phone up and open the email. As I read it, I feel as if I’m about to throw up.
Hi Katy,
Sorry, last min change of plans. Conference has been moved to London, so I’m going to stay in your flat. Your spare key is still under that fake rock I sent you, right?
Let me know you get to the house okay.
Love you, Rachel
I glare at the phone, my mouth hanging open.
What? She’s going to what?
She can’t just turn up at my place! What is she thinking?
I scrabble at my phone to try and call her, just as a large tunnel swallows my last bar of signal.
Rachel thinks I live in a flat! Which I do, sort of, but at the bottom of my boss’s garden, something I’ve never mentioned to her. Why would I? How was I to know that she would one day decide to trick me into leaving my home so that she could move in for a week?
I type a manic text to Fiona trying to explain that my sister is planning to show up and move into the cabin for the foreseeable future and to please not call the police. As soon as it sends, I jab a frenzied response to Rachel and take a giant bite of my bacon sandwich.
I can’t let Rachel stay in my cabin, but how the hell can I stop her?
*
My eyes glue themselves shut as another wave of sickness rolls across my body. I’ve given up trying to determine whether it’s hangover sickness, hangover fear, anxiety over possibly losing my job, or anxiety over my highly strung, perfect twin sister arriving at my hellhole of a home and realising that not only am I not actually a real adult like I’ve been pretending, I may not even be a real human being. Although I think she’ll only realise that if she finds the egg-fried rice under my pillow.
The taxi lurches over another bump and I clamp my jaw as the urge to vomit tickles the back of my throat.
‘What number did you say you were?’
My stomach turns over as I feel the car slow down. My eyes pull themselves open and I look around. I haven’t been back in two years. Me and Rachel spend every Boxing Day nibbling through turkey sandwiches at our aunt’s house, when Mum can be bothered to come back from France, and that’s the only time we see each other. Not that I saw her this year, she said that she was spending Christmas with Danny and Mum said she’d like to spend the holidays in France, so I spent it with Dad. We watched old rugby highlights and ate roast lamb, which was great.
The place is still filled with fat cottages sitting in wild, lively gardens that pop with colour and almost wave for your attention. The village pub, the Sailor’s Ship, stands proudly at the end of the main street, by the cliff that overlooks the frothy seafront. As my eyes scan the village, they eventually fall on my childhood home, which looks exactly the same as it always did. I feel a pang in my chest as I take in the pebble-grey door, the duck-egg-blue garden fence, and finally my bedroom window. My old bedroom window.
A chill runs up my spine and my grip tightens on my seat belt as a thought shoots through me.
I don’t want to be here.
I push it out of my mind and take a deep breath.
I haven’t been back since Grandma died. I didn’t want to; I didn’t want to see my childhood home without my family sitting inside it, laughing and having fun. I never wanted to be in that house with only Rachel and the simmering reminder that the big, warm family we were once a part of doesn’t exist any more. And the only thread of family I’ve managed to hang onto, Rachel barely acknowledges.
After she turned her back on Dad, it was never the same. I never understood how she could cut him out when we had so little family left. We could have kept a piece of our childhood alive, but she refused.
I don’t want to be here.
A thick wind shakes through the hedge surrounding the cottage, like it’s beckoning me inside.
Rachel has never left this house. As soon as our parents left, she invited Danny to move in, and that was that.
‘It’s just here,’ I say, my voice hoarse.
The taxi driver clicks off the engine and hops out.
The sea air hits the back of my throat as I open my door, and for a second I feel as if it might steal my hangover away. The fresh taste of salt and the light smell of wet grass fills my senses, and I feel as though I’ve stepped into another dimension. I haven’t had this feeling in years.
But as soon as it comes, my memory ticks into life and brings the expected next sounds and smell to my mind. The smell of the kitchen, the smell of fresh bread. The sound of Grandma laughing and the prickling feeling of peeling off damp socks and warming my feet by the fire. The feeling of her soft, pillowy arms pulling me into her chest and her familiar lavender scent.
I force myself back into the present, my throat tight as the memories float above me, teasing me to reach forward and believe it’s all still real.
I don’t want to be here. God, I really don’t want to be here.
The driver drops my suitcase next to me and I glance down at it dubiously.
Eurgh. I’m sure there is absolutely nothing useful in there. I bet I didn’t even pack any clean pants.
‘Thank you,’ I mumble, fishing
around in my pockets for cash and handing him a ten-pound note.
He gives me a thumbs-up out of the window and pulls the car away. I rub my forehead with my sleeve and drag my suitcase towards the house. My head continues to throb, and I feel my ponytail droop with every step, like a disappointed horse’s tail.
At least I can rely on Rachel’s house to be clean and warm. I can crawl into her fresh sheets and maybe, just maybe, her fabric softener and freshly lit candles will soothe my hangover away and I’ll wake up a new woman.
Wouldn’t it be great if I woke up as Rachel? I’d have a flat stomach, perfectly conditioned hair and teeth free of red wine stains. I’d probably cartwheel out of bed and spend the entire day happily tending to my lovely bush (not a euphemism) until dinner time – or, as I’d suddenly call it, supper – where I’d eat one slice of vegetable pie with a glass of still water because that is all I need to satisfy my lovely, perfect life.
I feel another flurry of worry as I picture Rachel arriving at the cabin and realising I live in a back garden like a slightly important gnome. I did compose a mad email confessing all my secrets, saying how I didn’t actually have a high-flying job in events after all and actually spent eighty per cent of my week looking after my boss’s children. Oh yes, and I live in her garden.
But I couldn’t send it. So instead I’m choosing to believe a new fantasy where she doesn’t even notice. She thinks I just live in a nice little field and Fiona and the children disappear for a week and they never even cross paths.
I did think about immediately getting on a train back to London and shoehorning Rachel out of Chiswick before she could even reach the cabin. But by the time she landed her lovely bombshell, the last train to London was chugging through Gloucester and the next train I could catch wasn’t until tomorrow morning. So I’ll just have to wait this one out.
I reach the front door and pull my phone out of my pocket.
Right. Where did Rachel say she was leaving the key?
I finally find the email where I asked her where she kept her spare key, and feel a small stab of panic as I realise she didn’t answer the question.
House Swap Page 6