Life Swap

by Jane Green

  Chapter Twenty-six

  ‘Darling husband?’ Kate asks as they’re going into the house for lemonade after lying around on the sun loungers all afternoon, watching the kids play in the garden, chatting, and reading the papers. ‘Did you manage to fix the chicken coop, and have you spoken to Bill-the-chicken-man about replacements?’

  ‘Surprising as it may be,’ Andy laughs, ‘I have fixed the coop, and Bill is bringing over a few more birds later this afternoon, plus he’s going to check the coop to make sure it’s fox-proof.’

  ‘Bill-the-chicken-man?’ Amber raises an eyebrow.

  Andy shrugs. ‘It’s a habit of ours. Few people are ever referred to by their given names alone. There’s Robert-the-gardener, Jake-the-spark –’

  ‘Spark?’

  ‘Our electrician,’ Kate explains with a laugh. ‘And rather a delicious one at that.’

  ‘Yes,’ Andy sighs. ‘The other prerequisite of working in our house seems to be that my darling wife has to have a crush on you.’

  ‘But not serious crushes,’ Kate pouts, ‘only little pretend ones, and I can’t help it if I feel protected by all these big strong men taking care of me.’

  ‘Jake doesn’t take care of you, Katie, he takes care of the wires.’

  ‘But they all make me feel safe, which is much the same thing.’

  ‘What about me?’ Andy laughs as he steps up behind Kate, puts his arms around her and starts nuzzling her neck. ‘Do I make you feel safe?’

  ‘Oh get off, you big lump,’ she says affectionately. ‘Go back to your chickens and leave me alone.’

  ‘I can’t believe you talk about crushes in front of your husband,’ Amber says, once Andy has indeed taken Kate’s advice and gone back to his chickens.

  ‘Why? I’m only being silly. He knows I wouldn’t ever do anything about it, although I have to say I did see Jake once without his shirt and his abs are rather yummy.’ She gives a little shiver then grins.

  ‘But does he trust you?’

  ‘Of course!’ Kate laughs. ‘I wouldn’t ever do anything. It’s just fun to look. Don’t you do the same with your husband?’

  ‘Goodness, no! My husband would be devastated if I talked about having a crush on someone. He wouldn’t find it funny at all.’

  ‘Oh. He sounds very serious.’

  ‘No, he’s not serious,’ and then Amber stops, because she realizes that whilst Richard per se is not serious, both of them certainly take themselves far more seriously than Kate and Andy seem to. In fact Amber can’t remember the last time they teased each other in the way Kate and Andy did over lunch, laughing affectionately together over a shared joke.

  ‘Maybe we are too serious,’ Amber ventures, thinking out loud. ‘Maybe that’s part of this dissatisfaction. Maybe we’ve forgotten how to have fun.’

  Kate puts down her tea towel and turns to look at Amber. ‘Marriage should be about fun,’ she says gently. ‘It’s about friendship, and laughter, and trust, and fun. If it’s not fun, if you take it all too seriously, what’s the point? You know I’ve been with Andy for fifteen years, and the reason it still works is because he’s my best friend and he still makes me laugh. Admittedly, not all the time, and often we get completely bogged down in work, and the kids, and life, but he’s still the person I most want to phone when anything happens in life, and he’s still the person who makes me laugh the most.’

  Amber listens intently, her eyes fixed on Kate, her mind over the Atlantic Ocean with her family in Connecticut. They used to laugh as well, she thinks. In the early days before life got so crazy with children, and charities, and, well, just life.

  And suddenly it seems that middle-age has set in. Richard is permanently exhausted from his commute, barely sees the children, and Amber is so busy keeping up with the Joneses she doesn’t have time to stop and relax, enjoy her kids, enjoy her husband, have fun in the way that Kate and Andy seem to have fun here.

  Today is the perfect example. They haven’t actually done anything today. Nothing other than shell peas, play in the garden, lie on sun loungers, pop down to the local supermarket for some brie and cheese crackers for tonight. And yet today has been the most idyllic Saturday Amber can imagine. Granted, it helps that they are in the heart of the English countryside, that the sun is beaming and the bees and butterflies are buzzing around the lavender that’s spilling over the old brick terrace where they’ve been lying, that the only sounds, other than the children laughing and occasionally fighting, have been the birds and the odd plane flying high overhead.

  But couldn’t she do this back at home? It’s not as if they live in the city any more. In fact, if Amber remembers correctly, the only sounds in their back yard are birds and the odd plane flying overhead.

  Amber never seems to have time to enjoy it the way she has today. Saturdays are filled with breakfasts at the diner, trips to the bookstore, playdates, lunch at the deli, and only if they have time can they squeeze in swimming in their own pool, and even then Amber rarely goes in, not wanting to get her hair wet, so Richard splashes about with the kids for a bit while Amber reads the papers.

  When they first moved in, when Amber couldn’t sleep with excitement over the swimming pool, she dreamt of long lazy days, just like the one she has had today, playing with the kids in the pool, floating around on a raft with a drink in hand, even sensual midnight swims with Richard, maybe even making love under the wisteria-draped pergola on a hot summer night.

  The truth is they barely use the pool. The truth is she isn’t living the life she always wanted to live. The truth is, Amber realizes as she listens to Kate, that she and Richard are so busy running, constantly striving to reach some goal in the future, they never take time to stop and just enjoy where they are.

  And where they are is really not so bad, Amber realizes. Not that Highfield is necessarily her town of choice, not any more, but if she were to pull out of the charities, spend more time with her children, focus on her family and friends – in that order – wouldn’t she start to enjoy what she has more?

  ‘Richard is a wonderful man,’ Amber says eventually to Kate. ‘And he is my best friend. I think that the two of us have got so caught up in life, in the busyness and the stress, that we’ve stopped enjoying each other. It’s not that we don’t love each other – heaven knows we do, but I don’t honestly remember the last time we had fun.’

  Amber takes a deep breath. ‘I know I’ve only been here a week, but I feel as though I’m having one epiphany after another. I was so nervous about coming, so convinced I had done the wrong thing, I almost thought about backing out, but now I see why I’m here.’

  Kate raises an eyebrow questioningly.

  ‘I needed to get away from my life for a while to really see it properly. I knew I wasn’t happy, but I love my husband and love my kids, and couldn’t figure out what it was that was wrong.

  ‘During the past week I’ve seen that I miss doing something for me, something that engages my brain, makes me feel useful; and the other thing that I now see so clearly is that I haven’t been engaged in my life. I see you here, with your adorable children, and no help, and you manage fine. I’ve been so terrified about being overwhelmed by looking after my children myself, that instead I run away and spend my life being overwhelmed by this stupid charity work.

  ‘Oh my gosh, Kate. I’m so glad I came down to see you this weekend. I can so see where I’ve been going wrong, and what needs to be done to make it right.’

  ‘You see?’ Kate says cheerfully. ‘Everything happens for a reason. I just wonder how Vicky’s getting on, what epiphanies she may have had, and whether she’s had any huge realizations while she’s living your life.’

  Amber shrugs her shoulders sadly. ‘I’ve been desperate to call home to find out, but it’s against the rules.’

  ‘Aren’t rules made to be broken?’ Kate grins.

  ‘Do you think I should phone?’

  ‘I absolutely do,’ Kate says, handing her the cordless pho
ne. ‘And after you speak, let me have a word with Vicky. Although I have to say you’re a wonderful substitute and I’m having a lovely time with you, I do miss her.’

  Amber picks up the phone and dials, quietly putting down the phone when the answering machine picks up, and she looks at her watch.

  ‘Should have known,’ she says. ‘Saturday means the kids will probably be on their way to the Little League game, and Richard’s the stand-in coach this week so his cell will be turned off. I guess it serves me right for trying to break the rules.’

  ‘I know you must miss your children horribly, but isn’t it wonderful to be free?’

  Amber frowns. ‘Yes and no. I think that a week’s life-swapping would have been perfect. Now I don’t know what I was thinking, agreeing to leave everyone for a month. The only thing that keeps me going is that this week has flown by, so hopefully the next three will go just as fast. The novelty of being able to do whatever I want whenever I want was amazing for the first three days, and now I just miss my family, I miss my life, but I’m still glad I did it.’

  ‘Well I must say I’m glad you did it too. I’ve loved having you around today. Are you going to stay all weekend?’

  ‘I’m staying tonight and then I think I’m going to get back tomorrow. This friend of Vicky’s wants to take me out to dinner.’

  ‘Which friend?’

  ‘Daniel.’

  ‘Ah. Friend in the broader sense of the word.’ Kate grins.

  ‘Yes, precisely. Not that I have to do what Vicky would do on this occasion,’ Amber smiles, ‘but he turned up the other night very late and very drunk, and seemed a bit taken with me. I hope he doesn’t think I’m a date.’

  ‘He knows you’re married?’ Kate asks.

  ‘Yes. Very much so. If anything I think that piqued his interest even more. He mentioned something like a joyful night of passion.’

  Kate whoops with laughter. ‘And there were you saying your life was boring.’

  ‘I didn’t say that!’ Amber laughs back. ‘But I do want to get to know Vicky’s friends, so I think I should say yes.’

  ‘Absolutely you should say yes,’ Kate nods. ‘And there’s nothing nicer than having an attractive man flirt with you, especially when you feel like an old married woman that no one would ever even look at.’

  ‘True,’ Amber says. ‘And he is attractive.’

  ‘See?’ Kate says delightedly. ‘Maybe we can get you to develop an innocent crush after all.’

  Amber gives Kate a huge hug when she leaves. She kisses the children, gives Andy a smaller hug, and thanks them profusely for one of the nicest weekends of her life.

  ‘Please come down again,’ Kate whispers into her ear. ‘It’s been so lovely having you here, and the kids loved you too.’

  ‘I’m sure I will,’ Amber says. ‘Vicky’s so lucky, having a family like you.’

  ‘And your family’s so lucky,’ Kate smiles, ‘having a mummy and wife like you.’

  Daniel turns up to collect Amber at six o’clock, a bunch of full-blown peonies in hand.

  ‘These are by way of apology,’ he says sheepishly when she opens the door. ‘I’m appalled at my behaviour the other night. Turning up on your doorstep drunk was hardly the best way to introduce myself, but hopefully I’ll prove to you this evening that I’m not so bad after all.’

  ‘The flowers are lovely,’ Amber says. ‘Come in while I put them in water, then shall we go?’

  ‘Great,’ says Daniel, thinking that Amber is even more lovely than he remembered from the other night. She has a coolness and reserve that he has always found stunningly attractive, not to mention that exotic sophistication that a certain kind of American woman seems to hold.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Amber’s voice comes from the kitchen.

  ‘It’s a surprise,’ Daniel calls back.

  Amber appears in the doorway, the peonies now in a glass bowl which she sets carefully on the coffee table. ‘I don’t like surprises,’ she says.

  ‘You’ll like this one,’ he says. ‘Look, please try and relax. I’m not going to flirt with you or make a pass at you. I’m just here having a friendly dinner, just as I would with Vicky.’

  ‘Except you’d go to bed with Vicky afterwards, no?’

  ‘True,’ Daniel shrugs. ‘But still, it’s not a love thing with Vicky and me. It’s friends with benefits, and I certainly don’t expect you to go to bed with me afterwards.’ Although, he thinks, if you’d like to that would be perfectly fine with me.

  ‘Okay,’ Amber smiles. ‘This just feels very strange. You have to remember I’m married with children, I don’t have dinner with men I don’t know, haven’t done anything like this for years, and even though I know it’s not a date, it just feels… well… like a date, I guess.’

  ‘It’s not a date,’ Daniel says, opening the front door and ushering her downstairs to the car. ‘It’s just an evening.’

  Daniel hadn’t booked a restaurant. Instead he had bought out the local deli: fresh slices of prosciutto and Parma ham, exotic cheeses, crusty baguettes, pâtés, olives, roasted peppers with nutty olive oil and sprinklings of chilli, two bottles of Pinot chilling in the cooler.

  ‘Oh my gosh!’ Amber says in delight when they park on the outskirts of Regent’s Park, and Daniel produces the hamper and ice boxes from the boot of the car. ‘A picnic! How perfect!’

  Daniel grins in delight. ‘I thought a quintessentially English picnic would be the perfect introduction to London for an American visitor. Unfortunately the food is mostly Mediterranean, but rather that than bangers and mash, I thought.’

  ‘No, it’s perfect. And on such a lovely night. Did you organize the weather too?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Daniel nods seriously as they stroll through the park, avoiding the softball games being played, picking their way through other picnickers dotted around. ‘Had a word with the man upstairs this morning.’

  ‘Okay, I’m relaxed now.’ Amber grins. ‘This isn’t a date. This is just a lovely thing to do on a summer’s evening.’

  ‘And they say I don’t know how to make a woman happy…’ Daniel rolls his eyes.

  ‘Well right now I’d say you’re making this woman very happy indeed,’ Amber says innocently, and Daniel resists the temptation to come back with a flirtatious wisecrack. Not now. Not yet. But God, she is gorgeous, and who knows what might happen after a few glasses of wine…

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The jewellery sale was a huge success. Despite the food, about which Sonia was right, no one really ate anything anyway, they sold nearly everything. For a while at the beginning Sonia was worried, but once Heidi snapped up a gold necklace for $1,200, it seemed that everyone rushed in to buy something for themselves.

  Every good party must have a drama, and sure enough Vicky’s jewellery party even had a little drama of its own when Nadine showed up, Suzy’s alleged best friend. The two of them – Nadine and Suzy – kissed one another hello, told each other they looked fabulous, and then spent the rest of the afternoon ignoring one another and whispering amongst the cliques that had formed on either side of the room.

  ‘What’s going on?’ a bemused Vicky had asked Deborah after she’d walked in upon Nadine, almost in tears in the kitchen, being comforted by two of the other girls, all of them whispering furiously, all of them silent as soon as Vicky entered, resuming their conversation when they saw it was only Vicky.

  Deborah had rolled her eyes when Vicky asked her. Nadine had apparently confessed to one of the other girls, when slightly drunk and in a situation where she didn’t think anything would be repeated, that she secretly thought of Suzy’s husband as Muttley, because of his unfortunate underbite.

  It seems that one of the other girls had immediately told Suzy, and a war had begun. But this being a grown-up war amongst supposed women, there was no fighting, no direct confrontation, Suzy had just icily frozen her out, and Nadine didn’t know what she had done.

  Nadine was ringing S
uzy and leaving messages, and Suzy would just fail to call her back, had blocked all private calls so her callers were forced to reveal their caller ID, and if she saw Nadine’s number, she wouldn’t answer. And these were girls who had spoken five times a day, so after a couple of days of radio silence, Nadine figured something was up.

  But she couldn’t think of what she had done. Didn’t remember her confession about Muttley, and so she left a few messages pleading with Suzy to let her know if she had done something to upset her, telling Suzy that she was such a wonderful friend, Nadine would never knowingly do anything to hurt her.

  And Suzy didn’t respond. Instead she drew the battle lines and set about recruiting her army, ensuring that the coolest, prettiest, richest women were on her side. ‘What a B-I-T-C-H,’ she would say about Nadine, and the others, delighted to have an opportunity to be one of the queen bee’s workers, would shake their heads in professed bewilderment at how Nadine could have been so awful.

  Nadine only knew for sure that she had been completely snubbed when she drove past Suzy’s house two days ago to see the driveway full of cars, each of which belonged to one of Suzy’s friends, and where Nadine’s Escalade was supposed to have been – right in the front as she would normally have been the first to arrive, to help Suzy organize what Nadine knew must have been one of Suzy’s infamous coffee mornings – was Heidi’s Lincoln Navigator, mocking her in all its champagne glory.

  Nadine had been tempted to stop the car. To walk in as if nothing were wrong, as if she hadn’t been deliberately excluded from an event at which she would usually be number two bee, but of course she didn’t have the courage, would never do something like that, so instead she drove home through a sea of tears and left messages for three of her friends, including the girl who had passed the Muttley message on to Suzy, and asked them what she might have done, why Suzy was now ignoring her.

  Suzy would never be so obvious as to ignore Nadine in person. Her torture is far more subtle than that. To Nadine’s face she will always be charm itself, it is only when her back is turned that Suzy’s knives will be drawn.