The Switch

by Beth O'Leary

  “Can’t you look frailer?” I ask Nicola, straightening her cardigan and brushing some lint from her shoulder.

  She shoots me a glare that I make a mental note to imitate when I next want to eviscerate a rude co-worker.

  “This is as frail as I go,” Nicola says. “I thought you said you were taking me to Leeds to go shopping. Why do I need to look frail?”

  “Yes, absolutely, shopping,” I say. “We’re just dropping in on a few corporate law firms first.”

  “What?”

  “It won’t take a minute! All our meetings are scheduled for twenty minutes at most.”

  Nicola glowers. “What do you need me for?”

  “I’m getting a sponsor for the May Day festival. But I’m all, you know, Londony and corporate,” I say, waving a hand at myself. “You are sweet and elderly and get the sympathy vote.”

  “I’m not even from Hamleigh! And sweet my arse,” says Nicola. “If you think I’m going to sit there and simper for some fat-cat lawyer…”

  “Maybe just don’t say anything at all,” I say, ushering Nicola toward the car. “Probably safest.”

  Nicola grumbles the whole way to Leeds, but as soon as we get into that first meeting room she’s such a convincing doddery old dear I find it quite hard not to laugh. Such an important event for our poor little village, Nicola says. I look forward to May Day all year. They lap it up. Port & Morgan Solicitors sign up there and then; the others say they’ll think about it.

  It feels good to be back in a boardroom, actually. And it’s especially good to be walking out of one victorious, instead of hyperventilating. I send a quick text to Bee as we head to the car.

  You’ve still got it, she replies. THAT’S my Leena Cotton.

  As we drive back to Knargill, Nicola cackles into the enormous mocha I bought her to say thank you.

  “I had no idea it was so easy getting men like that to cough up some cash!” she says. “What else can we ask them for, eh? Sponsor the mobile library? Sponsor a minibus?”

  She might actually be on to something, there. My mind goes to the document still open on Grandma’s computer: B&L Boutique Consulting—strategy. Corporate responsibility is more important than ever for millennials—businesses need to be building charitable work and volunteer opportunities into the heart of their business models, they need to …

  “Leena? This is my house,” Nicola says.

  I screech to a halt.

  “Oops! Sorry! Miles away.”

  She eyes me suspiciously. “Don’t know why I let you drive me anywhere,” she mumbles as she unfastens her seat belt.

  * * *

  The next morning I pop around to Arnold’s and knock on the conservatory door. He has morning coffee in here at ten-ish, and every so often I come around to join him. I’ll be honest, the cafetière coffee is a big draw, but it’s more than that. Arnold is lovely. He’s like the granddad I never had. Not that I didn’t have a granddad, but you know, Grandpa Wade hardly counts.

  Arnold’s already there, a full cafetière ready and waiting. It’s sitting on his latest book, and I shudder as I step inside and spot the large brown ring spreading across the cover. I move it and spin the novel around: it’s Dorothy L Sayer’s Whose Body?, one of my grandma’s favorites. Arnold seems to be on a detective novel thing of late. Discovering his love of reading has been one of my favorite surprises of my time in Hamleigh.

  “How’s your mother doing?” Arnold asks as I pour myself a coffee.

  I give him an approving nod, and he sighs between his teeth.

  “Would you stop acting like you taught me how to have a conversation? I wasn’t that bad before you got here. I know how to be polite.”

  Whatever. Arnold insists that his decision to “clean up” (buy some new shirts, go to the barber’s) and “get out more” (start Pilates, go to the pub on a Friday) was his and his alone, but I know the truth. I’m his Donkey, he’s my Shrek.

  “Mum’s good, actually,” I say, passing him his mug. “Or, you know—a lot nearer to good than she has been for a while.”

  Since that phone call after the argument, Mum and I have met up three times: once for dinner, twice for lunch. It feels strange and tentative, as though we’re rebuilding something wobbly and precarious. We talk about Carla in fits and starts, both afraid to go too close. It makes me anxious to the point where I’m sweating with it. I feel like I’m in danger of opening something I’ve fought very hard to keep closed. I want to do it, though, for Mum. I may not have really known what I meant when I promised Grandma I’d be here for my mother, but I get it now. Mum doesn’t need errands doing, she just needs family.

  I think part of what had made me so angry with my mum was the fact that I felt she should have been looking after me, not the other way around. But Mum couldn’t be my shoulder to cry on, not when she was bent double with grief herself. That’s the messy thing about family tragedy, I guess. Your best support network goes under in an instant.

  I’m explaining all this to Arnold when I see his mouth twitch.

  “What?” I say.

  “Oh, nothing,” he says innocently, reaching for a biscuit.

  “Go on.” My eyes narrow.

  “Just seems to me that helping your mum has really got you talking about Carla at last. Which is what your mum wanted. Wasn’t it?”

  “What?” I lean back and then I laugh, surprising myself. “Oh, God. You think she’s doing all this talking about Carla for me? Nothing to do with helping her?”

  “I’m sure you are helping her too,” Arnold says, through a mouthful of biscuit. “But you’d be a fool to think she’s not getting her own way, that Marian.”

  Here I am, making Mum my latest project, and there she is, making me the exact same thing.

  “Maybe fixing one another is the Cotton family’s love language,” Arnold says.

  I stare at him, my mouth hanging open. He grins toothily at me.

  “Borrowed a book about relationships off of Kathleen,” he says.

  “Arnold! Are you thinking about trying to meet somebody?” I ask, leaning across the table.

  “Maybe I already have,” he says, waggling his eyebrows. But, infuriatingly, no amount of bullying, cajoling, or wheedling will get any more information out of him, so I have to give up for the time being. I take the last shortbread as punishment for his discretion, and he shouts such a florid string of old Yorkshire insults after me that I laugh so hard I nearly choke on it on my way out.

  * * *

  Mum texts me later to invite me around the next day. It’s the first time she’s suggested I come to her house, and I feel tenser than ever as I make my way over there, my fists clenching and unclenching beneath the sleeves of my hoodie.

  As soon as she opens the door, I know she’s pushed things too far this time.

  “No, no no no,” Mum says, grabbing me as I try to bolt. “Just come in, Leena.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  The door to the living room is open. The room is exactly like it was when Carla died—all that’s missing is that bed. There’s even that chair where I used to sit, holding her hand in mine, and I can almost see the bed, the ghost of it, invisible blankets and invisible sheets—

  “I’m trying something new,” Mum says. “This podcast I’ve been listening to, by that professor—she says looking at photographs is a wonderful way to help you process memories, and I thought—I wanted to go through some photos with you. In here.”

  Mum takes my hand and squeezes. I notice she has one of those old photo envelopes from Boots in her other hand, and I flinch as she pulls me in to stand on the doormat.

  “Just try coming in, love.”

  “I can hardly bear to look at that photo,” I say, pointing to the one on the hall table. “I really don’t think I can do a whole stack.”

  “We’ll just ease into it slowly,” Mum says. “One step at a time.” She turns and cocks her head, staring at the photo of Carla on prom day as if she’s seeing it
for the first time. “That photo,” she says.

  She walks over to the hall table, picking up the frame, then looks up at me.

  “Shall we bin it?”

  “What? No!” I say, eyes widening, and I walk toward her to grab the picture.

  Mum doesn’t let go of the frame. “Carla would loathe it. It’s been there so long I’ve stopped seeing it—I’m not sure I even like it very much. Do you like it?”

  I hesitate, then I let go of the picture. “Well, no. I kind of hate it, actually.”

  Mum links arms with me and marches me down the hall. As we move across the living-room threshold my eyes skit over the space where the bed would be, and my stomach drops with the same sensation you get when you go flying over a bridge in a fast car.

  “It should go. It’s a terrible photo. It’s not Carla,” Mum says.

  She drops it into the bin in the corner of the living room.

  “There. There. Oh, that felt a bit strange,” she says, suddenly pressing a hand to her stomach. I wonder if her emotions tend to boil there too, like mine do. “Was that awful of me?”

  “No,” I say, staring down into the bin. “The photo was awful. You were just … impulsive. It was good. Mum-ish.”

  “Mum-ish?”

  “Yeah. Mum-ish. Like when you suddenly got cross with the green wallpaper one day and we got back from school to find you’d peeled it all off.”

  Mum laughs. “Well. In case you didn’t notice … you’re in the living room.” She tightens her grip on my arm. “No, don’t go running off. Here. Come and sit down on the sofa.”

  It’s not as bad as I thought, actually, being in the room. It’s not like I forgot what this place looked like. It’s seared on my memory, right down to the old stain in the corner by the bookcase and that dark splodge where Grandma fell asleep and let a candle burn down on the coffee table.

  “Do you like this as it is?” I ask Mum as we sit down. “This house, I mean? You’ve not changed it at all since…”

  Mum bites her lip. “Maybe I should,” she says, looking around the living room. “It would be nice if it was a bit … fresher.” She flicks open the wallet of photographs. “Now—looking at the photographs is supposed to move the memory into a different compartment of my brain,” she says vaguely. “Or something.”

  With enormous effort I suppress my urge to eye roll. God knows which pseudo-science book she’s got that one from, but I very much doubt there’s a clinical trial proving the efficacy of such a technique.

  But … Mum thinks it’ll help. And maybe that’s enough.

  “Paris,” I say, pointing at the top photo. It hurts to look at Carla’s smiling face, but I’m getting a little better at this—if you sit with the hurt it’s a tiny bit easier, like relaxing your muscles instead of shivering when it’s cold. “Remember the boy Carla convinced to kiss her on the top of the Eiffel Tower?”

  “I don’t seem to remember him needing much convincing,” Mum says.

  “And she never would acknowledge how awful her French was.”

  “You were on her about pronunciation all week,” Mum says. “Drove her up the wall.”

  We move along, photo after photo. I cry, messy snotty crying, and Mum cries a lot too, but it’s not that choked sobbing I remember her doing after Carla died, when I had to hold it together on my own. This time they’re the sort of tears you can brush away. Mum’s doing so well, I realize. She’s come so far.

  We break for dinner then finish the photos. I’m not sure any memories have moved brain compartments, but when I get up to switch on the light, I notice that I’ve walked right across the space where the bed used to be, as if it’s just ordinary carpet.

  I feel guilty, at first. Like not sidestepping that invisible bed is a betrayal of what happened in this room. But then I think of Carla in all those photographs—smiling, loud, piercings catching the camera flash—and I know she’d tell me I’m being fecking ridiculous, so I move back and stand there in that spot, right where she used to lie.

  I stand still, and I let myself miss her. I let it come.

  And I don’t break. It hurts like nothing else, a keening raw hurt, but I’m here—no Ethan with his arms around me, no laptop in front of me—and I’m not running, not working, not shouting. And whatever I was afraid of—falling apart, losing control … It doesn’t happen. The pain of missing her is scorching, but I’ll live through it.

  24

  Eileen

  Yesterday Bee sent me a text message to say she saw Ethan and Ceci slipping off for lunch together. It’s been nagging at me all morning. I try distracting myself looking over the ads Fitz has made to stick up around Shoreditch—Over seventy and looking to meet Londoners like you? Call this number to find out about the Silver Shoreditchers’ Social Club! But even that doesn’t do the trick.

  I think of Carla. She’d do something about this, if she were here. She wouldn’t let Ethan run around on Leena. She’d be bold and brave and resourceful and she’d do something.

  I push myself up and march over to knock on Fitz’s bedroom door. Carla should be here for her sister. It’s an unspeakable tragedy that she isn’t. But I am here for Leena. And I can be bold and brave and resourceful too.

  * * *

  “I think this is the coolest thing I’ve ever done, Mrs. C,” Fitz says, then promptly stalls the van he just borrowed from Sally of Flat 6. “Whoops. Hang on. Yep, yep, got it, there we go! Don’t tell anyone that happened when you regale them with stories of our stakeout, will you?”

  “There will be no regaling, Fitz,” I say, in my sternest voice. “This is a secret mission.”

  He looks delighted. “Secret! Mission! Whoops, sorry, didn’t realize it was still in second gear. Oh, wow.”

  We’ve turned onto the main road and it is chock-a-block. We both stare at the traffic stretching out ahead of us as people on foot weave between the cars.

  “Let me check Google Maps,” Fitz says, reaching into the pocket of his bomber jacket to get his phone. “OK. It’s saying it’ll be forty minutes to the Selmount office in this traffic.”

  I deflate. We inch onward. The traffic has rather taken the drama out of the whole affair.

  Eventually we reach the vicinity of the Selmount offices, and Fitz parks—quite possibly illegally—so we can settle in a café opposite the Selmount building. Thanks to Bee, I happen to know Ethan is currently holding a meeting there. It’s a surprisingly ugly street, a wide road lined with squat buildings that each have a few of their windows boarded up, like tarnished gold teeth. The shiny gray glass of Selmount HQ looks a bit over-the-top in the middle of it all.

  I sip my tea and examine the doughnuts Fitz insisted on buying for us. Apparently one has to eat doughnuts on a “stakeout.” They look very greasy—mine has already formed a bluish ring on its napkin.

  “There he is!” Fitz says excitedly, pointing toward the building.

  He’s right: there goes Ethan, his briefcase in hand, tossing his dark hair as he strides out of the office. He is handsome, I’ll give him that much.

  “What now, Mrs. C?”

  “Now we play the little-old-lady card,” I say. “Grab a few napkins, would you, there’s a love—I don’t want to waste this doughnut. I’m sure Letitia’s cat will eat it. She eats everything.”

  By the time I’ve managed to get myself out of the door Ethan’s nearly disappeared down the road. I break into a fast walk, almost a jog; it takes a moment for Fitz to catch up with me.

  “Jesus, you’re rapid for an old lady!” Fitz says, matching his pace to mine. “Hang on, if we cut down here, we can intercept him.”

  I follow Fitz down an alley, barely wide enough for two people. It smells distinctly of urine and something else that it takes a moment for me to place, but which I eventually remember to be marijuana.

  “There!” Fitz yells, pointing at Ethan across the street. “Oops, sorry, secret-mission indoor voice, I remember.”

  But it’s too late—Ethan’s looking
over. I’ll just have to work this to my advantage.

  “Ethan! Dear!” I trill, barging through the flow of pedestrians and marching across the road. Behind me I hear Fitz inhale sharply and then apologize to somebody on a motorbike who had to swerve a little. “What luck, bumping into you here!”

  “Hello, Eileen,” he says, giving me a kiss on the cheek. “Are you well?”

  “Very well, thank you,” I say. I’m rather out of breath; I look around, wishing there was somewhere I could sit down for a moment, but of course there’s no bench in sight. “Though, actually, I’m fair to bursting for a trip to the ladies,” I say in a confidential tone. “I’m not sure I’ll make it home! Once you’re my age, you know, the bladder isn’t what it was. Leaky, you know. Leaky.”

  Ethan is wearing an expression akin to Fitz’s when someone is maimed on one of Martha’s crime dramas.

  “My flat’s just up here,” Ethan says, gesturing to the building at the end of the street. “Would you like to pop up and, err, use our facilities?”

  “Oh, you are a love,” I say. “Lead the way.”

  * * *

  I find four clues in Ethan’s flat.

    1) A receipt on the hall table for a meal for two, coming to £248. Now, I know London is pricy—the amount they charge for things here is criminal—but that’s an awful lot of money to spend with someone if they’re just a friend or colleague.

    2) Two toothbrushes in the bathroom, both heads damp, suggesting recent use. Why would Ethan use two toothbrushes?

    3) Alongside a couple of bottles of Leena’s hair potions that I recognize—all designed to “manage frizz”—there was a small bottle of serum for “color-protection.” Leena’s never dyed her hair. Though I suppose it could be Ethan’s. He is very proud of those dark locks of his.

    4) No bathroom bin. This doesn’t in and of itself suggest adultery, but I’ve found in my life that I rarely like a person if they’ve not had the consideration to put a bin in a bathroom. It’s always men who do this, and almost always men you cannot trust.