Life Swap (30 page)

And Amber is no one’s wife today! Admittedly the weekend wasn’t the best – there’s only so much shopping in Marylebone High Street that can remove the tinge of loneliness, and this is the first weekend Amber has ever spent away from her kids.

Saturday was lovely. She slept in until midday – oh the joy of sleeping in again! – had a croissant and coffee on a pavement café, then wandered around window shopping for most of the afternoon.

Saturday night was spent in, watching television, struggling to understand the regional accents of the people in the UK version of
Big Brother
, flicking the channels, fascinated by the differences between UK and US television, slightly horrified by the language – are people really allowed to say the F-word just on regular TV? – and the sex that seems to be accessible to all.

By Sunday lunchtime the reality of the life swap started to kick in. Still tired from the jet lag, and now lonely as well, Amber sat on Vicky’s bed for a while looking at photographs of Richard and the kids, and allowed herself a few tears.

‘I don’t know if I can do this for a month,’ she
whispered to herself, stroking Gracie’s face in the picture. ‘What was I thinking?’ And then she got up, grabbed the notes that Vicky had left on the kitchen counter, and picked up the phone to call Kate.

‘Amber! Hello!’ Kate’s voice was warm down the phone, and Amber knew instantly she would like her, that they would get on. ‘Welcome to England, or should I say welcome to Vicky’s world!’ She chuckled. ‘How are you getting on?’

‘Do you want to hear the truth, or the answer I’m supposed to say?’

‘How about both? Start with the answer you’re supposed to say, then tell me the truth.’

‘Well yesterday was amazing. Just to have all this time to myself. I slept in, I went shopping, I didn’t have to think about anyone other than myself, which I haven’t had to do for years. I watched TV last night without having to worry about providing dinner for anyone, and without a husband moaning that he hates reality shows, and I sat in bed reading and eating chocolate digestives, and got crumbs all over the sheets and there was no one to complain about it but Eartha, who couldn’t have been happier.’

‘Sounds like heaven,’ Kate moaned.

‘It was. And today I miss my kids, I miss my husband. I feel like I’m about to start crying all the time and I’m lonely as hell. And I don’t know why I’m telling you this when I don’t even know you, and I’m sorry, but I don’t know what on earth I was thinking, and this is only day two. How am I going to survive a month?’

‘Oh you poor love! I’d say come down and see us but by the time you got here you’d have to go home again, but I do feel for you. I always teased Vicky that I’d swap with her in a heartbeat, but I understand what you’re saying. You want to swap but only for a day or so, just to remember who you were before you became a wife and a mother.’

‘Exactly! I just felt that I’d lost myself, and now I’m like, okay, now I remember, thanks a lot but I’ll go back to my real life.’

Kate laughed. ‘The thing is it is an opportunity of a lifetime. From what Vicky has told me you’ve been feeling stuck, so maybe you could use this time to figure out what you want to do, where you want to go.’

‘I know that makes sense, but right now I just feel scared. I don’t know what I was thinking.’

‘Amber, everything happens for a reason. Vicky picked you for a reason, now you just have to figure out what that is. In the meantime, make some calls. Call some people in Vicky’s life, ring her friends and make some arrangements. If you don’t plan things not only will the four weeks feel like four years, but you won’t have achieved anything, and you’re supposed to be living Vicky’s life, aren’t you? Walking in her shoes.’

‘You’re right, you’re right. I will. I’ll call some people now.’

‘And next weekend I want you to come and spend the weekend with us. Vicky’s down here all the time and you can be mum to my lot while I have a lie-in. How does that sound?’

‘Perfect!’ laughed Amber, and as she put down the phone she knew she’d found a friend.

By Sunday evening she wasn’t feeling quite so bad. She had plans to go to Deborah and Dick’s for dinner on Tuesday, and a movie screening with Jackie on Thursday. She’d left messages for a couple of other people, and by the time she went to bed that evening she was starting to think that she could see the light at the end of the tunnel after all.

And now here she is. Standing outside the offices of
Poise!
, pushing open the swing doors, standing before the man sitting behind reception, giving her name and being told to wait on one of the purple modern sofas off to one side.

And then she’s directed up to the sixth floor, and as the lift zooms up, Amber feels as if she left her heart downstairs at reception, the nerves flooding in, apprehension and excitement causing a wave of nausea as the lift doors open and she finds herself staring into the friendly eyes of Ruth.

‘You must be Amber!’ Ruth says, shaking her hand warmly. ‘Come on. Let’s go and get you a cup of tea and then we’ll go and meet everyone. How’s everything going? We’re so excited you’re here, everyone on the magazine is completely obsessed with
Desperate Housewives
and Vicky said it’s just like that where you live, and we’re all dying to hear about it.’

‘Oh.’ Amber has joked about being a Desperate
Housewife but has never meant it to be taken seriously. But who else would answer an ad looking to swap lives? Who else would actually leave her beloved husband and children for four whole weeks to go and live the life of a single girl? No one other than a Desperate Housewife, that’s who. And with a sigh of resignation Amber follows Ruth into the kitchen to get some tea.

When Amber goes to the loo, Leona comes running into the kitchen.

‘Is she here? What’s she like? What do you think? Is she like Teri Hatcher? Or Bree? Vicky said she was more like Bree but with Teri Hatcher’s legs. What do you think?’

‘Sssh. She seems really nice and she’ll be back in a minute. She does look like a banana, though.’

‘What?’

‘No seriously. She looks like a banana. She’s wearing bright yellow and brown. It’s making me hungry just looking at her.’

‘Oh don’t be so horrible to the poor woman. She just got here. Anyway, isn’t she supposed to be wearing Vicky’s wardrobe? Vicky doesn’t have anything bright yellow.’

Amber rounds the corner, at which point Ruth introduces Leona.

‘Anything you need, you just ask,’ Leona says. ‘We’re sitting at the same desk and we work incredibly closely together, so I’m going to be helping you out. I’ve got
to run in and see the editor a second, but I’ll see you a bit later.’

‘What’s she like?’ Janelle is peering through the sidelights to the left of her door as Leona walks in.

‘Seems nice. Looks like a banana.’

‘Darling, what do you mean?’

‘I mean she looks like a banana. Wearing a very scary shade of yellow. Makes me want to put my sunglasses on.’

‘But is she a Desperate Housewife?’

‘I’d say in that shade of yellow she’s got to be pretty bloody desperate.’

‘Oh I see her!’ Janelle claps her hands as she sees Ruth lead Amber in and start introducing her. ‘Oh I adore that colour. Why is it that only the Americans can pull off those wonderful acid colours. Oh so smart,’ she muses to herself. ‘And the perfect colours to brighten up a dull winter day. Where’s Stella? Can you be a darling and go and get Stella in here for me? I’m thinking fruit bowl for Christmas. Orange and yellow and purple. Gorgeous! And do bring Amber in to say hello.’ Janelle watches her admiringly as Amber shakes hands and waves to people sitting at banks of desks around the room, and Leona slips out of the office.

‘Well?’ Ruth has deposited both Amber and Stella with a besotted Janelle, and turns to find Leona standing there.

‘Well what?’ Ruth says.

‘Well Janelle clearly has one of her crushes.’ Leona rolls her eyes. ‘She was almost licking her shoe soles.’

‘I’ll admit she’s very pretty, but I still maintain she looks like a banana.’

‘Well you’d better start thinking that’s a good thing, because Janelle’s decided to feature bananas, oranges and plums for the Christmas issue.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Look,’ and Leona gestures to Janelle’s office where Janelle is clearly getting excited about something, pointing to Amber’s sweater, as Stella nods, throwing in a few ideas of her own.

Janelle’s door opens and Ruth and Leona immediately put their heads together, pretending to be busy.

‘…and you must come over for dinner one night with Stephen and me,’ Janelle says. ‘We’ll host a dinner party for you, introduce you to some fabulous people. And if there’s anything you need, just knock on the door, otherwise the girls will look after you, won’t you, girls?’ And the deputy editor, celebrity editor and health editor all look up, all women in their thirties and forties, all married with children, all resigned to forever being ‘the Girls’ in their editor’s eyes. ‘Oh yes,’ they say in unison. ‘Absolutely.’

‘I thought she was supposed to be living Vicky’s life?’ Ruth whispers when Amber goes to get a coffee.

‘She is. Why?’

‘When was the last time Janelle offered to host a dinner party for Vicky?’

‘Darling,’ Leona does a horrifyingly accurate impersonation of Janelle, ‘if Vicky were a Winslow, Stephen and I would have her over for dinner all the time. Don’t take it personally, darling, but she’s almost an equal, and were she not American, she might even be someone I’d want to be friends with.’

‘Well this is certainly going to be interesting,’ Ruth says. ‘Meanwhile what’s she actually going to do while she’s here?’

‘Bloody good question,’ Leona says. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’

Amber is not a young temp, and cannot be treated as such, so going through press clippings and offering tea to the desk is not something that can be asked of her. She is not a journalist and cannot be asked to write pieces for the forthcoming issues. She is a confident, fairly intimidating American wife and mother, and as such is proving to be something of a problem.

Because it was never the case that Amber was really ever going to step into Vicky’s shoes at work. How could a novice come in and deputize for the features director when she doesn’t know the first thing about magazines? There are, admittedly, a few things Amber could do, but none of them would be the types of things Vicky would do.

She can attend meetings with Janelle, even though everyone else at the meeting would know that she was there as a courtesy rather than for what she could contribute. She could possibly write small editorial
pieces, even though Vicky left those types of pieces behind many years ago.

Perhaps she could sift through the thousands of unsolicited features that arrive on the features director’s desk daily, and who knows, being inexperienced she may even bother to read some of them before consigning them to the bin.

The last thing they want is for her to sit around bored, and in the end it is Leona who comes up with the perfect solution. ‘Let’s send her out to do a story!’ she says. ‘It gets her out of the office, it’s something that Vicky might do once in a blue moon –’

‘Bollocks!’ interjects Ruth. ‘Vicky only goes out to do stories if they’re off to luxury spas in Thailand.’

‘Well, okay, you’ve got a point, but why not send her on a press trip? If her writing’s crap we can just rewrite it for her. Now all we have to do is think up a piece and find somewhere for her to go. Ruth, you go through all the press releases that came in over the last week and pull anything that sounds interesting and put it on my desk.’

‘What should I do with Amber in the meantime?’

‘Oh God,’ groans Leona. ‘I know! We’re running that piece on taking time for ourselves when the kids get too much. I’ll ask her to do a box on ten things that give us breathing space. She’s a mum. I’m sure she can do that. And let me have those press releases this afternoon.’

*

Amber hasn’t written anything creative for around fifteen years – not since she was in college. She spends the morning reading through British newspapers and magazines to familiarize herself with them, grabs a sandwich from Pret à Manger to eat at her desk with the rest of the girls, then spends the afternoon struggling to come up with ten things that give us breathing space.

When six o’clock comes she finds she hasn’t thought about Jared, Gracie or Richard all day. She’s joined in the banter across the desk, including answering the many, many questions about life in America, and feels, for the first time in years, that she’s actually used her brain somewhat.

At six Leona comes over and congratulates her.

‘I’ve just read the piece and it’s perfect!’ she says. Truthfully. ‘We’re going to run it as is. Looks like we’ll have to find more pieces for you.’

‘Really?’ Amber is thrilled. And surprised.

‘Really. You’re obviously a natural. Listen, I’m off to a screening tonight at the Charlotte Street Hotel. Do you want to come?’

‘I’d love to,’ Amber says, ‘but I’m really tired. Can we do it another night?’

‘Sure,’ Leona says. ‘There’s one on Thursday in Soho. How does that sound?’

‘I’m already going with Jackie,’ Amber says.

‘My my!’ Leona laughs. ‘You are busy already, aren’t you? Tell you what, how about lunch tomorrow? We’ll go somewhere nice.’

‘Great!’ says Amber. ‘I’ll put it in my book.’ And as
Amber rides down in the lift, as she walks home past Selfridges, cutting through to Hinde Street, Amber finds that the smile never leaves her face.

Perhaps this wasn’t such a mistake after all.

Chapter Twenty-three

‘Ouch!’

Richard looks up at Vicky and winces in sympathy as she walks gingerly into the kitchen, trying not to let her thighs rub against one another, nor her arms touch her sides.

‘I know,’ she tries a smile, her skin feeling hot and tight as she does. ‘I think I overdid it a bit yesterday.’

‘Oh my God,’ Richard jumps up and goes to the medicine cabinet on the other side of the kitchen. ‘You’d better put something on that immediately. I think this should help,’ and he hands her a bottle of calamine lotion.