The Sister Swap

by Fiona Collins

  ‘Sarah. I’m Felicity. Welcome back to House Events, London.’

  ‘Thank you, Felicity,’ said Sarah, reaching for the end of the bat and shaking it with a clammy hand.

  ‘I look forward to working with you.’ Felicity’s voice was clipped and brittle.

  ‘You, too. I mean, me too.’

  ‘Let’s walk.’ Felicity set off away from the lift and Sarah shakily followed her, on her heels. Forty-something Jessica Rabbit with a quiff. ‘I know they’ve been looking for someone to fill Verity’s role for quite some time,’ said Felicity, her smile barely making an impression on her doll-like face and her oversized shoes skittering across the floor. ‘I’m glad it’s a woman. I don’t want some man bossing me about when I’m quite capable of doing the job myself.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Sarah. She wasn’t sure what else to say. The office was sleek, streamlined. Gone were the family photos and cosy clutter from the Soho office of her day. This one just had three desks, an opaque glass corner office, a chrome water dispenser and an air of corporate cool.

  ‘I’ll show you to your desk.’

  They walked over to the far end of the office where a steel and glass desk with a posh-looking white leather chair awaited.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I’ll just move that. I’ve been keeping your seat warm until you arrived, so to speak,’ said Felicity, swiping a pretty notepad with a matching pen off the corner of the desk. ‘I liked the view.’ There was a window to the right of the desk and Sarah looked out of it to see Londoners blithely going about their business: a cyclist in a headset, three tourists huddled over a map; and two striding women in suits and heels brandishing Starbucks cups. ‘There you are. It’s all yours,’ Felicity said, motioning at the chair for Sarah to sit down. ‘Ah, good, here’s Michael.’

  ‘Sarah!’ said a warm voice and Sarah looked round. Michael Tremaine, her old boss, was standing there, and he didn’t look much different to before. He had been fifty-something when she last knew him, making him seventy-something now, but he still had that warm, dancing merriment in his eye and an air of mischief, despite hair that was now almost completely snowy white. He held out his hand and when Sarah took it, pulled her in for a warm, fatherly hug. ‘It really is wonderful to see you again.’

  She’d had her interview with Michael, all those years before. He’d taken her under his wing when she’d first started. He’d said he was really sorry when she had to leave London and go home.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re still here! It’s lovely to see you, too,’ she said, into his comforting, well-suited shoulder and she not only felt a strange and overwhelming sense of relief, but she had a sudden, mortifying urge to cry, which she had to rapidly swallow down.

  ‘Yes, I’m still here,’ Michael said, releasing her. ‘Ginny showed me your CV and said she’d interviewed you. I pretty much begged her to hire you.’ He grinned. ‘Look at you!’ he added. He was taking in her wrinkles, she thought, and the dress and the hair; last time he’d seen her she’d had a brown bob and had been dressed in bootleg trousers and ankle boots, accompanied by a sensible blouse. ‘I like the hair.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Sarah, self-consciously reaching up to smooth the back of it with her left hand. She was so different now, wasn’t she, from the earnest, young twenty-something she had been? She hoped they liked the new version of her, whatever that was.

  ‘Are you sure you’re ready for all this again?’ he asked kindly.

  ‘I hope so,’ replied Sarah, her nerves now steadied a little.

  ‘Great, well, I know it’s a bit of a deep-end scenario for you, but we have a 9.15 meeting every morning now. We ditched the five o’clock powwow.’ He smiled. ‘If you’re ready, we’ll go straight into the meeting room?’

  ‘OK,’ said Sarah. A meeting? Now? All the nerves flooded back, and she was actually terrified. The only meetings she’d had in the last nineteen years had been with key workers at the twins’ nursery, about the library with Tipperton Mallet Parish Council and those hideous mediation sessions with Harry to force the correct maintenance for the twins out of him. How would she know what to do? What to say? What was expected of her? Would she ever live up to her earlier days of glory, her earlier promise? With trepidation, she allowed Michael to steer her into the swanky white box of a meeting room next door. It was so surreal, being here, going into a meeting; it was like she was having an out-of-body experience – her real body was lying in the orchard, in a frumpy pair of shorts, reading the paper and chomping its way through a Magnum.

  Michael directed her into a chair at the wide, rectangular glass desk and sat down opposite her, where he pulled a small laptop and a pile of files from a drawer underneath. ‘I hope you still like pastries,’ he added, and for the first time she noticed there was a large plate of assorted pastries in the middle of the table. ‘Felicity knows an excellent supplier.’

  ‘Indeed I do,’ said Felicity, bustling in behind them. ‘I know a lot of excellent suppliers. For all kinds of events.’ She sat down next to Sarah and drew her chair up neatly to the table before carefully placing her notebook and pen on it.

  ‘Danish?’ offered Michael, picking up the plate of pastries to offer to Sarah.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, taking a small apple turnover, but she knew her stomach was turning over too much to eat it. She attempted a brave smile and then just felt like a twit. You know what, she thought to herself, there was only one thing she could do, and that was fake it ’til she made it. She would just have to front it out, pretend she knew what she was doing and hope it would all be OK.

  ‘So, we’re just waiting for Hamish,’ said Michael, resting his elbows on the table and his chin on a steeple of his fingers.

  ‘Right,’ said Sarah brightly and, as if on cue, a small, rotund man in a colourful waistcoat blustered in, carrying a toppling huge pile of files and brochures. He looked both like Mr Tumble and the kind of man to have a Comic Relief red nose on his car all year round.

  ‘Hello!’ he sing-songed, his eyes alighting on the new girl. ‘You must be Sarah!’

  ‘Hello, Hamish,’ she said. ‘Lovely to meet you.’

  ‘Hamish is our number cruncher,’ said Michael. ‘Approves the budgets, sorts the accounts, he’s also responsible for organizing our sporting events.’

  ‘I love sport,’ admitted Hamish, as he sat down with a bump. ‘As you can see I don’t play an awful lot of it, though.’ His eyes darted over to the plate of pastries. ‘Oh for god’s sake, hand me an Eccles, Felicity, I’m absolutely bloody famished!’ Felicity looked disapproving and handed over the plate from which Hamish took two pastries and placed them in a paper napkin. ‘I’m really pleased to meet you, Sarah,’ he said robustly shaking her hand with his free one.

  ‘So, Felicity will be your assistant, Sarah,’ said Michael. ‘She’s been bearing a greater responsibility since Verity went on maternity leave, but we can relieve her of some of that now.’

  ‘I was happy to do it,’ said Felicity tightly. ‘More than happy.’

  ‘And you’ve been wonderful,’ reassured Michael and Felicity beamed a big, bright smile, ‘but it was a lot of pressure. Sarah has the experience to carry that pressure now, as Senior Events Organizer.’

  ‘And I can bring her up to speed on developments in the industry,’ said Felicity helpfully, ‘as she’s been rather out of the loop, all these years.’

  ‘Thank you, that’s kind,’ said Sarah. It would all be much the same though, wouldn’t it? A party was a party was a party. And it wasn’t as though she’d been living in a cave! She did know what Facebook and Twitter were. She also knew things like what the current food trends were; after all she’d watched every series of Masterchef for about the past ten years. She and John and Gregg were practically on first-name terms.

  ‘Right,’ said Michael, flicking on his laptop. ‘Let’s get down to business. Agenda for this week, Felicity?’

  Felicity opened her notebook. ‘Opening of Swank art galle
ry, the pitch to Timpsons for their Christmas party at the Tate, and the finalizing of the Hutchinson account. Plus, I’m pretty safe to say we’re expecting a huge bouquet of flowers later this morning from Jones’s Jeans to thank us for the launch of their see-through boyfriend last Thursday.’ She looked all proud, then added, to Sarah, ‘The boyfriend is a kind of jean.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Sarah cheerily. See-through jeans, though? Perhaps she had been out of the loop.

  ‘Splendid, Felicity,’ said Michael. ‘Hamish?’

  ‘Tennis Association’s annual do, at the All England. Canapés and Björn Borg, quite straight forward.’

  ‘Budget?’

  ‘All on track.’

  ‘Perfect.’

  Michael tapped something on the keyboard of the laptop. ‘So, Sarah, there’s a baby shower this Thursday. Hosted by Laura-Faye Allington. It’s all been fairly last minute, but she’s coming in this lunchtime for a meeting. Does that give you enough time to get some brief ideas together, check out the trends? We should be done in here by, what, half ten?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Sarah with a confidence she wasn’t feeling. Oh god, her first project; the loop had to be jumped back into, fast.

  ‘But, I’ve already checked out the trends,’ stuttered Felicity. ‘I’ve prepared a file. I thought I could do the meeting …’

  ‘You can pass the file on to Sarah,’ said Michael. ‘Thank you, Felicity.’

  Sarah tried to flash her new assistant a smile of thanks and sympathy, but Felicity now had her head down, staring intently at a paperclip she was flicking quickly between her fingers.

  ‘I also have two more files to give you, Sarah,’ said Michael, handing a stack over. ‘Women’s charity lunch for Baroness Trott, and the John James’s London fashion show. The clients know you’re taking over from Verity.’ Felicity nodded, and Sarah nodded, too, although she felt like a big, fat imposter, in a very tight dress. ‘I think that’ll do for starters. Right, let’s go through the finer details of the Timpsons’ pitch …’

  The meeting had rumbled on, not finishing until twenty past eleven. Sarah’s head hurt by the end of it – there was so much to do and so much to remember. She’d also drunk three whole cups of black coffee on an empty stomach and had spent the last hour sipping water to try to counteract it, while she sat at the swanky computer at her desk and researched baby shower trends: what was hot in New York; what had travelled across The Pond to the UK in a yellow-ribboned pram studded with Swarovski crystals. There seemed to be a lot of bling involved – a lot of excess, and a plethora of infant-themed party games. When she had her babies, there were no such thing as showers, if you didn’t count the ones she stepped out into on her daily jaunts round the village, with Olivia and Connor in their juggernaut double buggy. Baby showers were a relatively recent American import, along with school proms and Black Friday.

  She enjoyed the research, she always had, and this time around was so much easier as she had the internet. She soon lost herself in the work, and as she made neat notes in red biro on an A4 pad, she suddenly thought, I can do this. I’ve done it before and I can do it again. The more she immersed herself in her work, the more confident she felt.

  She was still starving, though, and wished she’d eaten the apple turnover, but she couldn’t go out to get something now as Laura-Faye Allington was due any second. Sarah had been fully briefed: Laura-Faye was a divorced (earth) mother of four, the CEO of The BabyGaagaa Boutique (all fabrics ethically sourced) and holding a baby shower for her friend Clementine Scott-Harris at her own three-storey house in Richmond.

  The lift pinged open and Sarah looked up from her desk. The ultimate London yummy mummy, or what she knew of them, these days, was heading briskly her way. Glossy, waist-length hair; clanging bangles competing on long, tanned arms; and a voluminous stripy scarf, so long it swept the floor.

  ‘You must be Laura-Faye Allington,’ said Sarah, standing up and walking over to her. She employed her warmest smile. She could do this.

  ‘And you must be Sarah. Delighted to have you taking care of me,’ said Laura-Faye. She had a slight lisp and smelled wonderful – one of those celebrity lifestyle perfumes which gave a person an ‘aura’, Sarah suspected. She ought to buy some perfume herself, she thought, as not having worn any for years her aura consisted of a combination of Sanex shower gel and Dove deodorant.

  ‘Take a seat,’ said Sarah. ‘I’m buzzing with ideas and I can’t wait to go through them with you.’ She smiled to herself; this was a line she had used many times before, but clients always seemed to like it.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Laura-Faye, sitting down. She crossed her gamine legs, her maxi skirt rising to reveal a gorgeous pair of embroidered sandals and pretty coral toenails. ‘I’ll tell you what I don’t want,’ she lisped, counting on her fingers, ‘a tacky gender reveal, by cake or otherwise. Games involving sniffing nappies with Nutella in them, dummy spitting or any other hideousness. Storks. Ducks. Any kind of sweepstake guessing how big the baby’s going to be.’ She paused for breath; she was on her thumb of her other hand now. ‘Or a plastic figurine centrepiece of a woman pushing a baby out of her foof.’

  She sat back, looking pleased with herself, and challenging Sarah for a reaction. Sarah was dying to say the figurine and the ‘foof’ had been the first thing on her list.

  ‘Luckily we’re on the same page.’ Sarah smiled. She’d seen it all, online: the storks, the ducks, the nappies full of melted down Mars Bars – some of the games had looked quite fun, she’d thought, though she’d rightly guessed not Laura-Faye’s cup of tea. Sarah took a deep breath and spoke with as much confidence as she could muster. ‘I was thinking a garden party,’ she said. ‘Vintage teacups, pastels and pinks, flowers, a long trestle table and white, ladder-back chairs. A pretty cake, home-made shortbread with strawberries and cream. Macarons. Individual Victoria sponges. It’s a little traditional, a little modern shabby chic, but I think it could be lovely.’

  ‘That sounds heavenly,’ said Laura-Faye thoughtfully. ‘I do have a wonderful garden. Yes, that could be perfect.’ Sarah gave an internal sigh of great relief and Laura-Faye flicked a glossy sheaf of hair over one shoulder. ‘Sarah Oxbury, isn’t it?’ she added suddenly. ‘I don’t suppose you’re related to Meg Oxbury who runs Tempest Models?’

  ‘Well, yes I am,’ said Sarah, feeling like she was under some sudden spotlight. ‘She’s my sister.’

  ‘I can see the resemblance.’ Laura-Faye nodded. ‘I met her at a party. She’s lovely, isn’t she? And so professional. Two sisters together conquering the world, eh?’

  ‘Er, yes,’ said Sarah. She and Meg weren’t doing anything together. They were two sisters that couldn’t be less together. She moved swiftly on. ‘So, anyway, the weather’s set to be nice for the next couple of weeks so the shower in the garden should work wonderfully.’ Sarah clicked on her mouse and brought up some images on the PC she’d saved from Pinterest and Instagram. ‘These are some of the ideas I’ve been looking at. See, here,’ she said, pointing at the screen, ‘mocktails in glasses wrapped in daisy chains. And another idea I had would be an old-school lucky dip, with Tiffany bracelets and charms as prizes …’

  ‘I’m on-board,’ said Laura-Faye. ‘Yes, yes, yes, just darling and just fabulous.’ Then she stood up. ‘I give you the green light on it all,’ she said. ‘Carte blanche on whatever you think best. My time is always tight,’ she added, glancing at the huge man’s watch on her arm. ‘I need to dash now. Can I just leave it all with you?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ Sarah nodded. ‘How about I email you by six o’clock tonight with a mood board, budget breakdown and list of ideas and suppliers. Or I can bike a mood board over? Always best to see it in the flesh, feel the textures.’

  ‘I’d love a mood board.’ Laura-Faye looked delighted. ‘And six o’clock would be absolutely hunky-dory.’

  Hunky-dory? Were people saying that again? No matter; Laura-Faye seemed really happy with her and that was a
ll that mattered.

  ‘Hello, I’ll be assisting.’ Felicity was suddenly behind them, blocking Laura-Faye’s flight path. ‘I’m second in command, as it were.’ She gave a tinkly laugh. ‘I’ll be doing all the dog work, behind the scenes – you know, the important stuff.’

  Sarah joined in with her own tinkle but thought, the dog work – she’d be doing that herself, surely? She wasn’t sure she wanted or needed an assistant on this particular project.

  ‘Fabulous,’ said Laura-Faye. Sarah could tell she was itching to go; that scarf looked ready for take-off.

  ‘I have lots of fresh ideas,’ continued Felicity, those gimlet eyes blinking. ‘The young perspective.’ She clicked her fingers, all snappy, whilst looking at Sarah, who suddenly felt about a hundred.

  ‘Thank you, Felicity,’ she said.

  ‘Delighted,’ said Laura-Faye distractedly. ‘Now I must fly.’ And she breezed past Felicity, hair and scarf and skirt flapping, and dashed for the lifts like a skinny schooner in full sail.

  Sarah sat back down at her desk and Felicity plonked her neat bottom on it. She crossed her legs at the thigh, happy to let her chrysalis ride up and one of her nude shoes to dangle off a tanned foot.

  ‘I think Laura-Faye will be really happy with the dream team,’ she trilled.

  ‘The dream team?’ Sarah flicked her screen back on and scanned through her Pinterest screenshots. She had a lot to do if she was going to get this mood board done.

  ‘Yes, you and me, old and new blood. Mature experience combined with a sparkling, young take on things. It’s going to fabulous!’

  ‘Indeed,’ agreed Sarah vaguely, concentrating on a range of antique saucers.

  ‘I expect “mummy brain” will take a little while to shake off,’ continued Felicity, with enough syrupy sympathy to make Sarah feel irritated and look up from her screen.