Life Swap

by Jane Green

  From the farmers’ market they go to Gymini Stars for the children to run around on the play quad for a bit out of the sun, and from Gymini Stars they go to the diner for lunch.

  And everything is just as perfect as Vicky had always imagined.

  From the diner they go home, pick up Ginger, and take him to Lake Mohegan to exercise. Ginger is so excited he can hardly contain himself. The most exercise he usually gets is down to the bottom of the driveway and back when Lavinia picks up the mail. Amber had great ambitions to walk him at the dog park every morning when they first got him, but that was before Gracie came along, before her charity work, before life got in the way.

  So Ginger doesn’t just run around, he jumps in the lake and swims excitedly to bring back sticks that Richard throws out for him, while the children jump up and down on the shore and squeal with glee as Ginger comes out and shakes himself dry all over the four of them.

  Vicky takes Ginger to the car and attempts to dry him with a jacket, as a woman loads her own golden retriever into the Ford Explorer parked next to them. The woman has been standing near them by the lake, and now she looks over at Vicky and smiles.

  ‘You have a beautiful family,’ she says, and Vicky feels a surge of sadness, and joy.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says, knowing that whilst this may not be hers, the possibility is now there. She’s bonding with the kids, she’s comfortable with Richard, and she can finally see that marriage isn’t this impossible dream that has been, and will be, forever out of her reach. She could have this too. She is the sort of person that other women – women like the one with the Ford Explorer – look at and envy.

  And Vicky feels a surge of joy in her heart, because she never ever thought she was going to be this woman. She had always thought it was a dream, that anyone looking at her would know instantly that she was a single journalist with a terrible track record with men; but maybe she got it all wrong. Maybe this is the beginning of a whole new life, a way of attracting a whole new life. Maybe she should have done this years ago. Maybe this experiment isn’t so strange after all.

  And Richard? How does Richard feel about all this? Like Vicky, he is stunned by how normal it seems. Admittedly this isn’t his typical Saturday, but where he thought he would have to stand on ceremony for this foreign journalist, he finds he feels far more comfortable with her than he ever imagined he would, and this doesn’t feel nearly as strange as he expected.

  He had liked her when he met her, but he hadn’t expected to like her this much. And Richard realizes just how much he misses female friendship, the only females in his life being Amber and his mother.

  The trading floor of Godfrey Hamilton Saltz was almost entirely male-dominated, the train journeys to and from work were spent either reading the paper or catching up with the other – male – commuters, and aside from the evenings spent with other couples at dinner, Richard realizes that he has no idea when he last spent this much time with a woman who was not family.

  And more than that, he had no idea, before today, how much he missed it. When he was at university his two best friends were female: Michelle and Cristina. They did everything together, and when Amber and he first met, he couldn’t wait for her to meet the two of them, convinced they would get on like a house on fire.

  But the fire never quite ignited, in part because of Michelle’s husband, Michael, and in part because Cristina had always been secretly in love with Richard and couldn’t deal with him having first a serious girlfriend, and then a wife.

  Cristina moved to San Diego, and for a few years she and Richard kept in touch with the odd email, the even more rare phone call, and a very occasional lunch when she came to New York, but it’s been two or three years since they exchanged anything other than a Christmas card, and it’s only now, towards the end of this day that Richard is spending with Vicky, that he thinks about his old friends, and thinks how much he has missed female friendship.

  He’s never thought, before today, of how unlikely it is for a married man to be friends with a woman. If she’s single, he thinks, everyone assumes they’re having an affair, and if she’s married then they are still presumed to be having an affair. Why is it, he wonders, that it’s so frowned upon, so impossible to have friends of the opposite sex once you are married?

  Perhaps it would be different had Cristina and Michelle moved out to Highfield. Perhaps then they would all be friends, and it would be okay for him to go out occasionally with one of them, perhaps it wouldn’t necessarily set tongues a-wagging, or be a red flag for Amber.

  Although it’s not as if Amber has male friends either, and were he to spot Amber in the window of the diner having lunch with another man, he knows he would immediately assume the worst.

  But what a shame! How much he has missed! He has forgotten how much he had always enjoyed the company of women, and particularly this woman, who is quite unlike the women he has known.

  He wonders if it is cultural, for Vicky is far sharper and funnier than most of the people he knows out here, and she has an openness and an honesty that he is not used to. She has already told him all about the man she is seeing – this Jamie Donnelly – and asked his opinion, although he didn’t tell her what he thought.

  And what he thought is this: when a man only rings you late at night, when he only wants to see you late at night, when he doesn’t take you out for dinner, or introduce you to his friends, or spend any time or attention on you, then this is not a relationship. This is sex.

  And then he can’t help himself. He wonders what Vicky is like in bed, and almost as he thinks it he mentally kicks himself. Stop it! he says. You’re a happily married man. And he tries very hard not to think about it for the rest of the day.

  Which is much harder than he’d like to admit.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  By Friday afternoon Amber is exhausted. Once I am back home I will never complain again, she muses, thinking of all the times she tells Deborah she is exhausted, when all she has done is run around town doing errands.

  This week, though, she has actually done some work. After the success of her boxon ten things that give us breathing space, Leona has given her more and more to do, without having to resort to sending her on a press trip just to get her out of the way.

  From How to Tell if Your Husband is Having an Affair (Amber found that one frighteningly easy, and thanks her lucky stars she’s never had to deal with Richard suddenly joining a gym, or splashing himself with aftershave in the mornings…), to Best New Self-Tanners for Summer, Amber is having the time of her life.

  Mostly, she realizes, she feels young again. Sitting in a busy, buzzing office, surrounded by younger girls all dressed in the latest fashions, all of whom see her as one of them, rather than just ‘a mum’, has given Amber a shot of adrenaline and excitement that she hasn’t felt since her days in the workplace, a feeling she had forgotten about entirely.

  This is what I’ve been missing, she thinks, sometime around Thursday when the girls ask her to join them for lunch at Truc Vert, where they sit around a scrubbed wooden table and banter and laugh over delicious salads and glasses of white wine.

  ‘So come on, Amber,’ Ruth says over lunch, ‘tell us what your life is like in America. Is it very different? What will Vicky be doing now?’

  ‘Now?’ Amber looks at her watch. ‘Now it’s half past eight in the morning so she’ll be showering while our nanny gets the kids dressed to take them to camp, although sometimes I take them, so Vicky may be getting them ready or packing their lunches.’

  Little does she know that Vicky, in her determination to be the greatest mother of all time, has now given Lavinia a later start in the mornings, wanting to do it all herself, to see what it’s really like to be a full-time mother, and one without the advantages of middle-class wealth, i.e. a full-time nanny.

  At eight thirty this morning Vicky is trying to persuade Gracie to drink from her sippy cup even though she is insisting on drinking from ‘a big girl cup’, and j
ust as Vicky suspects, Gracie goes on to pour milk all over her dress. She erupts in a storm of wails as Vicky carries her upstairs to change her, while Jared refuses to sit at the table and eat his muffin.

  Once Gracie is changed she runs into the playroom and covers herself, and most of the playroom, with green paint, and when Vicky has packed their lunches and calls them for camp, already fifteen minutes late, Grace and Jared are fighting over the green paint, and both of them are now covered.

  ‘Oh God,’ she groans, fighting back the tears of frustration, for Jared had three bad dreams last night and insisted on coming in to get her, and all she wants to do right now is crawl back under the covers and go to sleep. ‘God, please give me the strength to deal with this.’

  She drives Jared and Gracie to camp, and once she is all alone in the car she breathes a sigh of relief.

  This motherhood thing is definitely not all it’s cracked up to be.

  ‘Will your kids be behaving for her, do you think?’ Leona grins.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Amber says, unaware that her playroom has been redecorated in green, allegedly washable, paint. ‘My kids are very well behaved.’

  She goes on to tell them about her life. About the charities. The work she’s done. The socializing.

  ‘But what else do you do?’ Ruth asks, confused.

  ‘Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Leona says. ‘Aren’t you doing this because you were feeling unfulfilled?’

  Amber nods slowly. ‘It’s true. I feel as though I fill my days running around doing things, but none of it seems to matter. Even though I’m supposed to be helping these charities, even I can see that that isn’t the reason why we all get involved. No one cares about raising the money to build a new recovery centre, or apartment building for the homeless. What they care about is who’s got the most expensive outfit at the gala, and who has the biggest house. And what I hate most of all is that I buy into that. Even though I see it for what it is, and hate it, I do it all the same. I got this decorating firm, Amberley Jacks, to do our living room –’

  ‘I know Amberley Jacks!’ Leona interrupts. ‘I just read a piece about them in W. They’re the firm to use right now.’

  ‘And that’s the point. I used them because the other girls would be jealous, and you know what?’

  ‘What?’ The girls all lean in.

  ‘The room looks like crap.’

  ‘Noooo!’ They lean out again.

  ‘Yes. It’s lilac, for God’s sake. Lilac and plum. Every time I walk into it I want to throw up.’

  ‘But at least you recognize it for what it is,’ Leona says seriously. ‘Doesn’t that make you automatically different? Better?’

  ‘Different, perhaps. Better? No. I would only be better if I stopped doing it. It’s like that old saying: three frogs were sitting on a log and two decided to jump off, so how many were left on the log?’

  ‘One?’ Ruth suggests.

  ‘Nope. Three. That’s the point. They only decided to jump off, they didn’t actually do anything about it. It’s not what you think about that matters in life, it’s what you actually do about it.’

  Leona smiles as she orders more coffee. ‘Well you’re doing something about it, aren’t you? You’re here, living the life of a single girl.’

  ‘I know. I do feel that this is the first step to get me out of this rut.’

  ‘Do you actually like where you live?’

  ‘No. Not really.’

  ‘So why can’t you move?’ asks Stella.

  ‘It’s complicated. My husband needs to commute to his job on Wall Street, and there aren’t that many places that are within commuting distance. And I guess I’ve always been scared of change. I’ve worked so hard for everything I’ve got, and even though part of me hates it, part of me loves that I can live in a house like I do, buy the clothes I do, because I grew up with nothing. Not that I think any of it is real, or even matters particularly, but I came from nothing, and I still look around at all that we have and can’t believe quite how far I’ve come.’

  ‘Even though it’s not yours, it’s your husband’s job that provides it?’

  ‘Ouch,’ Amber laughs.

  ‘God, I’m sorry,’ Leona says. ‘That came out sounding far bitchier than I had anticipated.’

  ‘No, it’s okay. And you’re right. I don’t contribute anything. Maybe that’s what needs to change. Maybe I need to work, find a job, do something for me, something real. And I have to tell you, even though this is only the first week, I am loving every minute of it.’

  ‘Even writing about the shit farms?’ Ruth laughs, referring to the article they had given her about the latest and greatest health farm which provides five colonics a day.

  ‘Even writing about the shit farms was fun,’ Amber said. ‘Although I’m not sure I’d feel the same way if I actually had to go there. Maybe I’d feel differently if I was Californian, but as it is you can keep your shit to yourself, thank you very much.’

  After work on Friday she zips over to the blue bar at the Berkeley for a drink, and then, instead of joining the others at Hospital – Janelle is a member and had got the others in – she decides to go home for an early night.

  Now this is what I’ve missed, she thinks, pulling on pyjamas after a fairly pathetic, but nevertheless hot, shower, and sinking onto the sofa with an oversized bag of nacho chips for dinner.

  She yawns her way through Will & Grace, and just as Big Brother is starting she gets up to go to bed, when the doorbell rings.

  It’s ten fifteen. Who on earth would be at her door, or more to the point, Vicky’s door, at ten fifteen? And what should she do? Were she in Highfield, Richard would answer it, but then again were she in Highfield no one would ring her doorbell at this time of night. The whole of Highfield is sleeping at this time of night. Were she single and living in Manhattan she would just ignore it, but here? Of course she knows that Vicky would answer it, and so, hesitantly, finally, she picks up the intercom and says hello.

  ‘Hi, Vix,’ comes a voice. ‘It’s Dan.’

  ‘Um. It’s not Vicky,’ Amber says, realizing this must be the Daniel that Vicky had mentioned. ‘This is Amber. Vicky’s away in America for a few weeks. Can I give her a message?’

  ‘Oh shit,’ comes a mumble, at which point Amber realizes that Dan is ever so slightly drunk. ‘Well can I come in anyway?’

  ‘Oh.’ Amber looks down at herself. She can’t possibly let a strange man in whilst wearing pyjamas so late at night. Never mind what the neighbours would think, what would Richard think? How would she feel if Richard were letting a strange woman in late at night while she was away?

  But this isn’t about Richard. This is about Vicky. Walking in her shoes. Living her life. Doing what she would do, and there is no doubt about it. If Vicky were here right now she would let Daniel in. That’s all she has to do. Let him in, perhaps make him a cup of tea, be friendly and then send him on his way. She’s willing to befriend him, no benefits required.

  Daniel struggles to focus on this sexy, lithe redhead standing in Vicky’s doorway. She’s slightly taller than Vicky, almost the same height as him, and despite the pyjamas and robe, he can see her body is as taut as an athlete’s. Well, well, well. This is an unexpected surprise.

  ‘Hel-lo!’ Daniel grins, leaning against the door jamb in a bid to appear somewhat less drunk – and wobbly – than he is.

  ‘Hello.’ Amber smiles politely but stiffly, extending her hand which Daniel shakes warmly, and for what feels like several minutes, staring into Amber’s eyes, clutching her hand firmly while she tries to extricate it. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ Amber asks eventually, whisking her hand away with all her might, praying that he’ll say no but knowing that, being British, he’ll say yes.

  Amber is discovering that a cup of tea is the British panacea for just about anything. She has caught the odd soap opera with delight, noting that however distressed the characters are, whether they have just discovered
their husbands are dying, their daughters are drug addicts, they only have twenty-four hours to live, someone somewhere will say, ‘Go on, have a nice cuppa tea. That’ll make you feel better.’

  ‘Love a cup of tea,’ Daniel says, following a reluctant Amber into the kitchen, admiring the delicate bones of her ankles as she walks.

  ‘I’ve got to be honest, I’d completely forgotten about you,’ he grins while Amber fills the kettle. ‘Not to mention the fact that Vicky didn’t tell me you were, well, you know…’

  ‘No, I don’t know. What?’ He may be drunk, and she may be unavailable but here is a man, and an attractive one at that, who appears to be somewhat taken with her. Amber doesn’t remember the last time someone actively flirted with her, and so what if he’s a little sozzled. She’s still going to enjoy it and take her compliments where she can.

  ‘Well you’re rather saucy, aren’t you?’ Daniel says, and Amber can’t help herself. She cracks up with laughter.

  ‘Saucy?’ she finally manages to splutter. ‘Saucy? What on earth does saucy mean?’

  ‘You know,’ Daniel says. ‘Sexy. Nice. Attractive.’

  ‘Well thank you for the compliment, but just so you know, I’m also married.’

  Daniel’s ears prick up. For a commitaphobe such as he is, what could be more perfect, what could be more attractive, than a glamorous redhead who’s not only married but whose husband is on the other side of the Atlantic? Who would ever know? Who would ever tell? Did ever a situation present itself that was as perfect as this?

  ‘Even better,’ Daniel says lasciviously. ‘Married women are just my cup of tea.’

  ‘Speaking of which,’ Amber tries to hide her flush, not because she’s attracted to Daniel, but because she’s so unused to being in a situation like this, ‘milk and sugar?’

  ‘Yes, please, So you’re the swapper.’

  ‘Careful. People might talk.’

  Daniel raises an eyebrow. ‘Well let’s give them something to talk about, then…’