Swapping Lives

by Jane Green

  And although she hadn’t understood the rules of that first Highfield League of Young Ladies meeting, she did understand how money could protect you, how clothes and jewellery could be used as armour, making you feel just as good as those around you, even while inside you knew you weren’t.

  Amber knew exactly what her mother-in-law would have said if she were to have stepped into that house and seen those women. Her mother-in-law in her centuries-old cashmere sweaters and Ferragamo shoes, still quality despite being bought back when the family had money. Her mother-in-law with her ubiquitous string of pearls, her aristocratic grey/blonde hair scraped back in a soignée chignon, her mother-in-law who didn’t have to carry a bag that shouted Chanel, or a diamond ring that was so heavy she could barely lift her hand in order to prove that she had money, that she was good enough.

  ‘New money,’ Amber could hear her mother-in-law sniff dismissively. ‘How very déclassé,’ she would say, yet Amber knew that deep down Icy Winslow would be ever-so-slightly jealous. Not because she wanted to be déclassé, but because although she had the name and the prestige that went with the name, she didn’t have the money to go with it.

  Amber had thought, when she first married Richard, that with the name and the money to go with it, she would have everything in life. She would feel good enough for the first time in her life, would be able to hold her head up high no matter who she was with, would never have to feel inadequate again. But she had found that whatever she had, wherever she went, she brought herself with her, and there seemed to be no escaping the baggage that she had collected throughout her life.

  Of course there were times when she felt good enough, but every time a League meeting approached Amber would start to feel less than, and so she started going to Rakers – the one designer store in town – once a month to ensure she had an outfit good enough for the meeting, one that would make her the envy of the rest of the girls.

  She hasn’t admitted this to anyone. Not even Deborah who has become one of her closest friends, largely because Deborah is as real as she first appeared at that meeting, and she is the kindest, greatest friend that Amber has ever known.

  But she can’t admit it, has trouble at times even admitting it to herself because it just feels so damn childish. There are times in these meetings when she knows they’ve all regressed back to high school.

  Times when Suzy’s fallen out with Heidi, or Elizabeth and Patty have decided they think Jennifer is weird, or Nadine didn’t pull her weight when she chaired the Arts Festival.

  Amber has tried to stay out of the bitchiness, but it’s hard to avoid with groups of women, and anyway, she’s on a mission – the same mission she had when she was in high school: to be queen bee. Suzy Bartlow may be the current queen of the League, but Amber is quietly pulling her troops around her and preparing for a takeover. She has the name, she has the house, and thanks to Rakers she has the clothes. Now it’s just a matter of time.

  ‘Hi, Judy!’ Amber finds her sales assistant in Rakers and they kiss hello – one of the benefits of being a regular and high-spending customer at the most expensive store in town.

  ‘How are you, Amber! Don’t tell me it’s that time of the month already?’ Judy is in on her secret, knows that Amber comes in to buy an outfit just for the meeting, usually has already picked out a few choices that generally Amber will love, Judy now having worked with her long enough to be able to anticipate her likes and dislikes.

  ‘I know! Can you believe it? Do you have any ideas?’

  ‘I do. I’ve already been through the new collections and I pulled some things out for you. There are some wonderful Michael Kors pants, a jacket from Escada and some Cavalli tops that may be a bit dressy but they’re absolutely stunning.’

  ‘And you’re sure no one else has bought them?’

  Judy nods. ‘I’ve checked the computer. Nobody else has them.’ Yet another benefit of an upmarket store in a small town is that everyone knows everyone, and because most of the women in the League buy their clothes at Rakers (although Suzy has recently started going to the city, which Amber is going to have to start doing herself very soon), the women can ask the staff to ensure that no one else has bought the same thing, thereby avoiding the humiliation of turning up to a meeting or, far worse, an event, in the same outfit as another committee member.

  Amber tries on the trousers – perfect, and gasps as she puts on one of the Cavalli blouses. Judy was absolutely right. It is on the dressy side, a light gauzy chiffon with a loose tie at the neck, but somehow teamed with the tweedy trousers it looks perfect, and Judy nods in approval when Amber comes out of the fitting room.

  ‘And,’ Judy lowers her voice, ‘it’s the only one we got in so you’ll definitely stand out in the crowd.’

  ‘I love it.’ Amber breathes in, admiring herself as she turns and examines herself from every angle in the mirror. ‘It’s perfect.’

  Judy disappears for a couple of minutes then re-emerges holding a pair of high satin pumps with a crocodile toe. ‘These just came in from Prada. Aren’t they darling? And wouldn’t they be perfect?’

  ‘Oh God,’ Amber groans. ‘Richard’s going to kill me.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ Judy snaps, used to comments like this from her wealthiest customers, and frankly she never knows why they complain, given the amount they spend so regularly and so unthinkingly. ‘We’ll put it on the house account as usual, and by the time the bill comes at the end of the year he won’t even think about it.’

  ‘Okay,’ Amber grins. ‘Judy, you’re amazing. Thank you!’

  ‘It’s my pleasure,’ Judy smiles, and given how much and how regularly Amber spends, of course it is.

  Amber throws her Rakers bags into the back of her Toyota Sequoia and shudders with pleasure as she anticipates the meeting next week. Next week, for the first time, it’s at her house, and Amber has already phoned the caterers and ordered tiny, delicious French pastries, exquisite fruit tarts, mini éclairs stuffed with fresh cream.

  She has bought a selection of the finest teas in the world, has stocked the fridge in the butler’s pantry with every soda imaginable, determined that hers will be the meeting that everyone will remember.

  Of course some of the girls have been to her house, and her only regret is that the influence of Amberley Jacks will not be seen for a few more weeks – why does it take so long to order a sofa, for heaven’s sake, and why is their painter fully booked for another month? – but in the meantime Amber knows the girls will be studying the noticeboard in her kitchen, and so she has pinned the letter from Amberley Jacks slap bang in the middle of it, just to be sure they all know.

  Amber only knows this because Deborah told her that everyone was talking about the meeting two months ago when Heidi had an invitation on her noticeboard to Elyse’s daughter’s birthday party, and Patty had seen it and been upset because Patty’s son and Elyse’s daughter occasionally had playdates, but Patty’s son hadn’t been invited. Patty in fact didn’t even know Elyse was having a birthday party because Elyse had decided she had gone off Patty and didn’t want to invite her, and had told all her friends not to tell Patty about it.

  And who would have thought that Heidi would be so stupid as to keep the invitation on the noticeboard when she was holding the meeting at her house, and everyone knows that everyone else studies the notice-board in the kitchen, just to make sure they’re not missing out on anything.

  So now nobody’s talking to Heidi either, who has no idea what she’s done wrong, and the phones are buzzing around Highfield about this latest brouhaha, although, as Deborah said, it will all be forgotten about in a week and then something new will blow up. ‘We are, after all, back in high school again,’ she said with a roll of her eyes, and Amber laughed.

  Amber drives off along Route 1, turning the radio on and singing along to a Billy Joel classic, feeling great as she pictures herself in her new outfit, three inches taller and ten pounds thinner, because after all, isn’t that what fantasies a
re for?

  She passes CVS, and jams on the brakes, suddenly remembering the prescription she was supposed to pick up. ‘Oh bugger,’ she curses, unable to do a U-turn, and too lazy to turn around, so she picks up her cell phone and presses quick dial to Lavinia.

  ‘Lavinia?’

  ‘Hang on,’ Lavinia yells, as Amber hears screaming in Lavinia’s background.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Amber says.

  ‘Sorry,’ Lavinia comes back on again. ‘Jared just took Gracie’s cookie so she’s having a fit. No, Jared, give it back. Grace, don’t hit him. Grace! Grace! Stop that! Sorry, Amber. Is everything okay?’

  ‘Yes, fine. I just remembered, though, I have a prescription at CVS, would you mind picking it up for me?’

  ‘Sure,’ says Lavinia, who is on the other side of town, with two over-tired and fractious children, dinner to cook when she gets back to the house, and a pile of laundry to get through tonight as she watches television in her room, with just the ironing board and Ginger, the golden retriever, for company.

  ‘Thanks, Lavinia, you’re an angel,’ says Amber, who suddenly spies a parking space next to the new French furnishing shop in town, one that she’d been meaning to go to since it opened three weeks ago. Perfect, she thinks, as she expertly manoeuvres the car into the spot then checks her watch. Just enough time to see what everyone’s talking about before going home and getting ready for dinner tonight with Richard.

  By the time Amber gets home the kids have eaten and are quietly watching Shrek 2 for the 149th time.

  ‘Lavinia!’ Amber shouts as she walks in the mud room, greeting Ginger then pushing him away so he doesn’t get dog hair all over her black coat.

  ‘I’m just clearing up the dishes. Do you need some help?’

  ‘Oh yes, please!’ Amber unbuttons her coat, throws it over the banisters from where she knows Lavinia will retrieve it later to hang it up in the coat closet where it belongs, and walks into the kitchen where she collapses on a chair. ‘I’ve got a load of shopping in the car. Would you mind bringing it in?’

  ‘Sure,’ says Lavinia, who truly is an angel for she sees that Amber walked in empty-handed and doesn’t resent being asked in the slightest because she loves the children, loves living here, and thinks that Amber and Richard are incredibly nice, if a little spoilt. But she is now part of the family, so much so that Amber regularly sits in the kitchen and chats to Lavinia, has even shared with Lavinia the secrets of her background, so whilst Lavinia sees that Amber is a little spoilt, she understands why, and she forgives her for it.

  Chapter Six

  It may only be a BBC radio show where no one is going to see her, but as Vicky pulls on a skirt and flat pumps, shakes her hair out to give it some more body, checks her make-up in the bathroom mirror, she thinks of her mother and smiles to herself.

  ‘You never know who you might meet,’ her mother always says, and whilst, on the whole, Vicky tends not to listen to her mother, these words have been drummed into her so often it is now second nature to ensure she looks, if not her best, then certainly acceptable, before she leaves the house. Because her mother, she hates to admit it, is right. You just never know.

  There was the time when she was driving her Beetle along Chalk Farm Road and she had spotted a parking meter and zipped over, jumping out to find the car behind had also pulled over. She had looked at the driver strangely, wondering if he had something to say to her, but he hadn’t said anything and she had shrugged and walked off, only to return to find a note on her car asking her for a drink.

  That drink had turned into a five-month relationship.

  There was the time when, again driving her Beetle along Park Lane on the way to a club, she had passed a Triumph Stag, the roof down, crammed with laughing men, one of whom had jumped out and climbed into her car at the traffic lights. She had slept with him a week later.

  There was the time she had taken the train to see some friends in Manchester, and had started talking to the man who had come to sit opposite her, even though the rest of the carriage was practically empty. She hadn’t fancied him in the slightest, but he had become a good friend, and was now married to a girl that Vicky had introduced him to.

  So her mother was right, you just never knew, although those times, those spontaneous, exhilarating meetings, hadn’t happened for a while, and every now and then Vicky worried that they’d never happen again, that you are supposed to have adventures when you are in your twenties but by the time you reach your mid-thirties the adventures stop happening: you are supposed to be settling down and growing up.

  Vicky drives herself to the BBC studios in Portland Place and parks the car. She’s early, so she sits in the car listening to the show for a while before going in to collect her pass and wait outside the studio.

  ‘Next on the show,’ says the voice of Lisa Diamond, one of the presenters of the show, ‘we’re going to be talking about… wait for it, Jamie… speed sex. Yup, speed sex is apparently the answer to all my problems.’

  ‘Any sex is the answer to my problems,’ says a male voice with a soft Irish accent, one that Vicky recognizes and struggles to place as Lisa laughs.

  ‘Typical,’ she says, ‘although according to the papers you haven’t had a lot of problems in that area lately.’

  ‘Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to believe everything you read in the papers? Although in this case I would say believe everything. Particularly the story about me and Angelina Jolie –?’

  Lisa’s slightly sardonic voice interrupts him, ‘So, coming up after this we’ll be talking about speed sex between Jamie Donnelly and Angelina Jolie, oh and we’ll have the features director of Poise! on to tell us why we’re all raving about speedy sex, although I’m sure Jamie will do a perfect job all by himself.’

  ‘Careful, you’ll get me sued,’ Vicky hears Jamie’s voice in the background as Damien Rice’s haunting tones fill her car, and she quickly checks herself in the mirror before getting out. Shit. Jamie Donnelly. She had no idea he’d be on the show and all of a sudden she starts to feel slightly nervous. Jamie Donnelly! The star of Dodgy, a comedy sketch show that started small on BBC2, swept the boards at the British Comedy Awards, and is now the show that everyone’s talking about, phrases being repeated in pubs all over the country, amidst much laughter.

  All it takes is a raised eyebrow and a ‘Not in my back yard, missus,’ for a roomful of people to start cracking up. Or an ‘Is that your dog or are you just pleased to see me?’

  Jamie Donnelly: Irish, twinkly, usually made to look horrendously ugly in most of the sketches, his teeth blacked out, or dressed as a baby, or a homeless man with a luxury home in the doorway of WH Smith’s on the Strand, has become an overnight star, not least because he is also the writer and producer.

  A regular guest on various radio and TV shows, Vicky never understood what all the fuss was about until she switched on the TV one night and happened to catch Jamie Donnelly being interviewed by Jonathan Ross, and all at once she got it. She sat in her living room, all by herself, shrieking with laughter until her face actually hurt.

  Jamie Donnelly hadn’t been in her consciousness at all until that night, but since then she had seen his name everywhere. He’d been linked with every gorgeous single woman in London, and a couple from overseas who had just been visiting, including, allegedly, Angelina Jolie, from whose hotel he had been spotted emerging in the early hours of the morning.

  But what had really done it for Vicky, what had sealed the deal as it were, in turning Jamie Donnelly into her number one crush, was when Deborah had phoned her at work one day and offered her an interview she had done with Jamie Donnelly.

  ‘I can’t believe you interviewed Jamie Donnelly,’ Vicky had said. ‘I love him! I wanted to interview him.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Deborah said. ‘But I managed to get him on his own at a film do last week and he gave me half an hour. I’ve got some great quotes about being single, the womanizing, what he really wants out of life. A lo
t of stuff he’s never talked about before. I was going to give it to the Mail, but I thought Poise! would pay more…’ They both laughed, knowing that no one paid more than the Mail, but also knowing that half the time the Mail never actually printed the story, and Deborah wanted her byline in print more than she wanted the money.

  ‘So what was he like?’ Vicky asked. ‘I have to tell you I’m deeply jealous. I really do think he’s gorgeous.’

  ‘The funny thing is I didn’t think he was gorgeous before I met him, but he does that thing where he completely focuses on you and makes you feel like the only person in the room, and he kind of nods earnestly at everything you say, and I have to be honest, I do understand why all these women fall head over heels. He’s also kind of flirty which is always nice. If I wasn’t happily married…’

  Vicky sighed. ‘Oh God. Stop. Be still, my beating heart.’

  ‘Well he does say in the interview he’s ready to settle down.’

  ‘Okay, now you got me. Send it over now and I’ll have a look. Maybe we can set up a photo shoot to go with the piece and I’ll go along to style it. Christ, I’ve got to be able to meet him somewhere, I’m Features Director of Poise!, for heaven’s sake, I meet celebrities all day every day.’

  ‘And I thought you were jaded by now?’

  ‘Oh I am, I am. Just not when it comes to Jamie Donnelly.’

  *

  But what had really affected Vicky, turned her minor silly crush into a series of full-on fantasies, had been the interview itself. Jamie had said that despite his reputation for being a womanizer, what he really wanted was to settle down. He dreamt, he said, of a house in the country, with children and big dogs everywhere, of finding the one woman who would make him happy for the rest of his life.

  So Vicky decided she would be that woman. He was, after all, the same age as her, and even if he did tend to be photographed with young bimbettes, that didn’t necessarily sound like what he wanted. No, surely what he really wanted, really needed, was a thirty-five-year-old successful, intelligent features director of a magazine; someone who wasn’t all that great at cooking but who would be willing to learn; someone who shared his dreams, who would bring him cups of tea while he sat in his office off the kitchen writing wonderful comedy scripts.