Life Swap (20 page)

‘It’s enormous!’ Vicky breathes out. ‘Christ! I’d kill to live in a house like this. Actually, it’s not a house, it’s a palace.’

‘No, seriously, describe it.’

‘I think it’s Georgian. White, stucco, ivy or something climbing up the walls. Huge floor-to-ceiling windows. Planters of bay trees on either side of all the windows, and there’s a, what do you call it – a parterre? Potager?’

‘Describe it.’

‘One of those gardens which is a pattern made of low hedges.’

‘A parterre, I think.’

‘Well one of those with little benches. Jesus. This is the most beautiful house I’ve ever seen. I feel as though I’ve just stepped into the pages of
World of Interiors
.’

‘And just think, you haven’t even seen the interior,’ quips Leona.

‘Okay, World of Exteriors, then. I want this life
swap,’ groans Vicky, quickly saying goodbye as the front door opens and a tall, dark-haired woman glides out to greet her.

‘You must be Vicky.’ Hope Nettleton smiles a nervous smile as Vicky gets out of the car and instantly feels inadequate. Not that Hope Nettleton is unfriendly, far from it, but she has the kind of natural beauty that women like Vicky can only ever hope to emulate, and even then with truckloads of beauty products and makeup. On a good day Vicky knows she would be described as pretty, on a spectacular day she may even make very pretty, but that’s with an awful lot of artificial help, and first thing in the morning Vicky is the first to tell you she looks like a monster.

One glance at Hope Nettleton tells you she
never
looks like a monster. Has never known what it is to wake up with puffy eyes and a spotty forehead. Has never stood in front of a floor-length mirror and squeezed the flab on her thighs, bemoaning just how much can be squeezed between a finger and thumb.

Hope Nettleton has clearly never had a bad hair day in her life. She is one of those tall, slim, elegant beauties. Large brown eyes, a perfect button nose, high cheekbones, and when she smiles Vicky is further aghast to see she has a set of the whitest, straightest teeth Vicky has ever seen.

Her glossy chestnut hair is pulled back in a low ponytail that sits perfectly over the shoulder of her crisp white shirt. Her brown linen trousers fit her toned
thighs perfectly, flaring ever so slightly over turquoise beaded sandals.

She has the kind of clothes-hanger body that can buy clothes at Marks & Spencer and carry them off as if they were Armani. She is, in short, everything that Vicky is not, everything that Vicky has always wanted to be; and with a start Vicky remembers that Hope Nettleton is the woman who has an unfaithful husband. How could any man be unfaithful to this? How could any man want anything more perfect than Hope Nettleton?

It turns out, over the course of several cups of Earl Grey tea in the Mark Wilkinson-designed kitchen, which is exactly the kitchen that Vicky would have chosen if she had all the money in the world and lived in a house just like this one, that Adam Nettleton didn’t want perfection.

Adam Nettleton, it seems to Vicky, seemed stifled by all this perfection, and the woman with whom he’d chosen to have the affair that has caused Hope Nettleton to write to Vicky in the first place, is the very opposite of Hope Nettleton.

‘That’s what I couldn’t ever understand,’ Hope keeps sighing over the kitchen counter. ‘I could understand if she was gorgeous. If she was brighter than me, or prettier than me, or more fun than me, but I know this woman, I’ve met her several times at work do’s, and Adam and I had always joked about how boring she was. Is.’

They are interrupted by the crunch of a car on the
gravel outside, and Hope’s face lights up as she goes out to meet her children from school.

Vicky can see how much she adores her kids, and for the rest of the afternoon she bakes jam tarts with the girls in the kitchen, then goes with Hope and the kids for their riding lesson at the stables down the road.

Vicky finally has hope, in more ways than one. I could live like this, she thinks, excitement fluttering in her stomach as she realizes that this is her dream life, that this could be the perfect swap.

Hope is upstairs giving the little one a bath while Vicky sits on the stone steps outside the front of the house, watching Sadie and Molly put on a play, when a large black BMW glides through the pillars.

‘Daddy!’ the girls shriek at the same time, and Vicky stands up, pushing her hair back, wishing she’d had a chance to blot the shine on her face and put on more lipstick, wanting to make a good impression because she’s pretty damn certain that this is going to be it.

‘Hello, girls.’ Adam steps out of the car and gives the girls an absent-minded kiss, never taking his eyes off Vicky. ‘Where’s Mummy and who’s this pretty lady?’

Vicky looks at his raised eyebrow, his smile that – unless she’s going completely mad – seems to be flirtatious, and she knows that the affair that Adam had confessed to was not his only one.

It is obvious in the way he shakes her hand, the way he looks her up and down, undresses her with his eyes, smiles approvingly when she tells him why she’s there.

‘So you’re the woman who’s going to be my wife for a month?’ He grins, much like the cat that got the cream. ‘Excellent. I understand you’ll be swapping clothes as well? I have to say I was rather dubious when Hope told me about writing to you, but now I’ve met you I’ll have to make sure Hope leaves behind her sexiest underwear.’

‘Oh please,’ Vicky attempts, ‘your wife’s tiny. I’m supposed to swap with someone the same size as me so we can wear one another’s clothes. I don’t think I’d even get her trousers past my ankles.’

‘Good. No reason for them to go any higher anyway. I’ve always liked a woman with a bottom,’ and he looks at Vicky admiringly as a shiver of horror goes through her.

‘You do realize,’ she says tartly, ‘that if I were to choose Hope, one of the requirements is not to sleep with the husband.’

‘Not a requirement, sure. But a possibility?’ He looks around to check the girls are out of earshot, then leans closer to Vicky and lowers his voice. ‘If two people are mutually attracted to one another, why not? If no one will ever know? What’s the harm? It’s only sex, for heaven’s sake.’

Vicky shakes her head in disgust as Hope comes out of the house carrying the two-year-old, her face lighting up as she sees her husband.

‘Hello, darling,’ she says, proffering her cheek for him to kiss, and Adam obliges, winking surreptitiously at Vicky as he goes inside.

‘What did you think of Adam?’ Hope says, as Vicky prepares to leave.

‘He seems… charming,’ Vicky manages. A slimeball, she wants to say. Sleazy and a lech, and you deserve so very much better. So he’s good-looking. So he makes a huge amount of money to keep you in this lavish lifestyle. He cannot keep his penis in his pants, she wants to say. Look at you and look at me. Look at how gorgeous you are and how ordinary I am, and still he wants to sleep with me, just because I’m not you, just because he can, because weaker women than I, women less secure than I would be taken in by being flirted with by a man such as Adam.

I wish you would leave him, she wants to say, but instead she gives Hope a hug and says, ‘Take care. I’ll be in touch,’ and she knows as she drives away that she couldn’t stand spending four weeks fighting off Adam’s advances, and that even the firmest of rebuffs would only inspire him more.

No. Hope Nettleton, for all the wonderful things she has, is not the person with whom Vicky is going to swap. The grass is not greener here, she has seen. Is it possible that this whole experiment will fail? That the only people she has found to have grass that is greener will remain her brother and sister-in-law, and swapping with her sister-in-law, however innocent, is too bizarre to even contemplate.

Oh well. There is still one more possibility, and Janelle Salinger’s first choice all along. Amber Winslow.

Highfield, Connecticut, here I come…

Chapter Fifteen

Amber wakes up with a start. Oh my God, she realizes. Today’s the day. Today, 16 June, is the day Vicky Townsley flies in from London to see whether Amber is good enough to be the life swapee.

Poor Amber. This is not, for her, about Vicky. About Vicky choosing the person whose life she most would want. This is about Amber’s life being good enough for someone else to choose, and she is filled with anxiety that somehow she won’t make the cut. Last night she even took an Ambien to sleep, and she lies in bed for a while as the Xanaxcalls her from the top drawer in the bathroom, but in the end she decides not to take anything – surely better to be fully conscious than off in LaLaLand on Xanax– besides, there’s an awful lot to do today.

The house is spotless but she has to buy fresh flowers, fill each room with armfuls of wonderful-smelling blooms. Hazelnut-scented coffee must be freshly brewed, cinnamon buns baking in the oven – every realtor’s dream, except Amber isn’t selling her house, but using the same methods to sell her lifestyle,
herself
.

Gracie has a new dress just for today. A smocked, pink cotton dress, little ankle socks and black patent
Mary Janes. And Jared will be in a chambray shirt, navy chinos and loafers, just a touch of hair gel to slick his hair back, make him look ever so handsome. They will look as if they stepped right out of the pages of a catalogue. Amber stands in Gracie’s bedroom admiring the new dress. How could anyone resist children as adorable as this?

Amber herself has decided to be low key. Chameleon that she is, today she is aiming for all-round good girl. Casual, warm, friendly. Nothing too intimidating, nothing that might put Vicky Townsley off. Stretchy khakis, a pink cable cashmere sweater, suede Tods on her feet, and her hair pulled back in a casual, girlish ponytail. She’s aiming for Hope and Michael from
Thirty-something
. The perfect people with perfect lives. The family that everyone hopes one day to have, particularly the thirty-something single girl from London.

Richard, however, is the only fly in the ointment. Effortlessly charming, unfailingly well dressed, pleasant-enough-looking to still attract second glances that Amber notes with pride when they go out, he is still not happy, to put it mildly, about this journalist, about Amber writing in, about the increasingly real possibility that Amber will be disappearing for four weeks and a woman he doesn’t know will be taking her place.

Richard has barely spoken to Amber since the night of the argument. They are communicating mostly through their children, and every time Amber tries to bring up the subject again, he refuses to speak about it.

And so last night, after Richard had fallen fast
asleep, his back turned towards Amber, she crept out of bed and went down to the desk in the kitchen, pulled out some notepaper and started writing Richard a letter.

My darling Richard,

I want you to know that I love you today as much as I loved you when we took our wedding vows. If anything, I love you more. When I talked about making changes I didn’t mean you, would never mean you, because you and the kids mean so much to me. I just meant that I have some questions, some issues in my life that I can’t seem to resolve. It just feels that there must be more to life than this, and if I get picked for the swap (which, by the way, may not even happen…), I wouldn’t be doing this because I want to get away from my family, I would be doing it just because I need to step out of my life for a bit to try and figure out what it is that’s missing. Maybe it’s that I need to be working again. Maybe we do need to think about moving somewhere other than Highfield. But right nowmy mind feels as if it’s filled with squirrels, and the only way to stop them running is to take a break. If there was a way to take you and the kids with me, I would, but then if I did I suspect I wouldn’t find the answers I’m looking for.

I love you more than life itself. I promise you this isn’t about you, and it’s not about hurting you. The last thing in the world I want to do is hurt you, and that’s why I wrote in. To be honest, it was a spur of the moment thing, I never even dreamt I’d be one of the contenders. But the journalist, Vicky Townsley, is coming today. She’ll be here when you get home…

I hate that we’ve hardly spoken the last few days. I hate that you turn away from me when we go to bed. I miss your laugh, your smile. I miss having a bath with you last thing at night when we tell one another about our days. I love you, love you, love you. Please try and understand!

Me xxxxx

As Amber polishes the stainless steel of the microwave for the fourth time that morning, Lavinia sailing past her with vases of flowers, Vicky presses the recline button on the plane seat and smiles to herself as she flicks through the movie channels waiting for the next film to start.

Not that she can particularly concentrate on the movie, not with so much to think about. She hasn’t actually stopped smiling for the past week, has barely thought about this trip to meet Amber Winslow, because for the first time in her life Vicky thinks she may truly have found the one.

Okay, not quite the first time. In fact if Vicky were to be entirely honest with herself she has said this many times before. Despite being thirty-five and single, despite telling people she has hardened herself, she is strong, she thinks of herself as something of a ballbreaker, take a good-looking man with dimples in his cheeks, have him gaze into her eyes as he softly strokes her hair, allow him to sneak up behind her as she’s making coffee in the morning and put his arms around her waist, burying his face in her hair, and the ballbreaker will turn to jelly.

Which is exactly what happened when Jamie Donnelly phoned.

Vicky abandons the movie altogether and gives herself up to the movie in her head, which stars Vicky Townsley and Jamie Donnelly.

He phones! And he doesn’t just phone, he phones whispering that he is desperate to see her. That the papers lie, they always do. That he and Denise Van Outen are old friends, that nothing happened, and that they phoned one another the next day and roared with laughter about the ridiculousness of the thought of them sleeping together.