Life Swap (31 page)

‘Vicky?’ Gracie hasn’t stopped staring at Vicky since she walked in.

‘Yes, darling?’ Vicky stops shaking the bottle to look at Gracie.

‘Why is your face the colour of my socks?’ And she extends her legs to show off her purple socks.

‘It’s not the colour of your socks, silly,’ Jared interrupts, ‘your socks are purple and Vicky’s face is red. Red like a… fire truck.’

‘No!’ Gracie’s voice rises indignantly. ‘It
is
the colour of my socks.’

‘Oh I hope it’s not, darling, because that would be
really scary,’ Vicky says, leaning down and giving Gracie a painful squeeze. ‘But this is what happens when you don’t put enough sun cream on.’

‘Is that sunburn, then?’ Jared asks curiously.

‘This isn’t just sunburn,’ Vicky says, sighing with pleasure as she smoothes the thick white liquid all over her face and the children watch her in fascination. ‘This is practically sun roast. In fact, I’m not Vicky any more, I’m roasted Vicky. And it’s very very painful.’

Richard shakes his head. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t put any cream on. It was ninety-seven degrees yesterday.’

‘Well first of all I wasn’t planning on falling asleep on that lilo in the swimming pool, and second of all I thought my skin was fairly strong. You’re talking to the girl who used to sunbathe with olive oil in the back garden.’

‘Olive oil?’ Richard spits his coffee out with laughter. ‘That’s the most dangerous thing I’ve ever heard. And you must have smelt terrible.’

‘Are you kidding? I smelt delicious. Bit of salt and pepper, sprinkling of lemon juice and I was good enough to eat.’

‘Were you really good enough to eat?’ Jared asks seriously, Jared who is now at the age when he listens to everything. Even when he looks as if he’s focusing fiercely on a television show, he will still manage to hear every morsel of interesting adult conversation going on in the next room, and will then ask inappropriate questions about it at inappropriate times.

‘No, Jared,’ Richard says, ‘that’s just a figure of speech. But seriously, Vicky, didn’t you burn like crazy with olive oil?’

‘No,’ she shrugs. ‘I just went a lovely golden brown, although I suppose the English sun isn’t that strong. And worse, I used to lie on a sheet of tin foil.’

Richard starts laughing again. ‘And I thought you were joking about being roasted Vicky.’

‘Dad?’ Jared taps him on the arm. ‘What’s a figure of speech? Is that like an action figure?’

‘No, Jar, it’s just a way of saying something, so when…’ he tails off and rolls his eyes at Vicky. ‘It’s complicated, Jar. I’ll explain when you’re older. Vicky, there’s coffee over there, and because it’s Saturday I made French toast and eggs. Just help yourself.’

And Vicky does, sitting down to an enormous plate of French toast, bacon, scrambled eggs and maple syrup, reading the
New York Times
while Richard reads the business section and the children run into the family room to watch Saturday morning television.

This, Vicky thinks, sipping her coffee and surreptitiously looking at Richard, dressed today in a polo shirt and khaki shorts,
this
I could get used to. Oh stop, she tells herself. The last thing you need right now is to be lusting after another woman’s husband. And anyway, it’s not particularly Richard that she’s lusting after, she realizes. It’s the whole picture. It’s eating French toast that your handsome husband has made on a Saturday morning. It’s sipping fresh coffee at an antique breakfast table by the large French windows as sunlight
streams in and glints on the glasses of orange juice. It’s sitting in companionable silence with another person, able to read the papers separately, but together.

This is what I want with Jamie Donnelly, she thinks. This is exactly how I can see myself living with Jamie Donnelly, exactly the sort of feeling that I want to have, although it’s hard when she only sees him late at night, when they’re still in such early days, when passion is still the driving force behind their relationship.

Vicky would love to push the fast-forward button, take their relationship to exactly where she’s sitting now, but she’s trying hard to ignore that urge, because she’s felt it many times before, and it’s only ever got her into trouble. Never one to take things slowly, every time Vicky has thought that this time she may have met her Mr Right, she has jumped in feet first, and her relationships have always followed the exact same pattern: they meet her, fall madly in love with her because of what she appears to be – independent, funny, slightly aloof. As soon as they fall hook, line and sinker, Vicky feels she can trust them enough to let her true feelings show, at which point she becomes affectionate, warm, dependent. Convinced that this time it’s real, she will drop hints about the kind of future she wants, tell them of her dreams to have children, and animals, to live in the country. She will stop going out for dinner, and will start cooking for them, proving what a wonderful wife she would make.

And if their laundry needs collecting, their spare
room needs organizing, their letters need posting, then Vicky will do that too, all in the name of love and her future.

It may take three weeks. Sometimes three months, and occasionally we’re talking longer, but at some point they always run away, always say they’re not ready for what Vicky wants. They thought they were at the same stage, but clearly Vicky needs much more than they can give; and Vicky is then left alone again, convinced she has done something wrong, convinced that she will never find her Mr Right.

But if she were to find her Mr Right, if indeed Jamie Donnelly is her Mr Right, then this is exactly how she would choose to spend her Saturday mornings. Reading the papers quietly, perhaps both reading out loud the occasional funny or interesting quote or story, taking the kids out to lunch, then perhaps a long walk in the park or on the heath with the dog.

Richard feels Vicky watching him and looks up to catch her eye. ‘I’m being rude, aren’t I?’ he says, putting the paper down. ‘I’m sorry. I just don’t know quite how to behave. Amber kept saying I had to treat you like her, which is completely ridiculous, not to mention impossible given that I barely know you. So I’m torn between being incredibly polite and trying to explain our lives to you, or doing what I normally do on a Saturday morning which is this. And now I realize that this is rude, and you probably have loads of questions, so go on. Shoot. Ask me anything.’

‘Whoa!’ Vicky laughs and puts her arms up. ‘I don’t
have any questions. I was just thinking that this whole… experiment… is so strange. I didn’t think that I would be able to really feel what it would be like to be married and have kids, and what I was thinking while you were reading the paper was that right now I think I do know exactly what it must be like, and I didn’t expect to have that feeling, and definitely not on my very first day.’

‘So what do you think it must be like?’

‘Well right now it feels very easy. Relaxed. Comfortable. I love that you’re sitting there reading the paper and don’t feel the need to entertain me. That’s exactly what’s supposed to happen, except I didn’t think you’d be able to do it so quickly.’

‘You mean you didn’t think I’d be able to be so rude so quickly.’ Richard grins.

‘Exactly!’ Vicky laughs.

‘Well I know what you’re saying, but this isn’t an accurate reflection of a typical Saturday morning.’

‘Oh no? What’s the difference?’

‘First, the kids are on their best behaviour because you’re here, but we’ll see how long that lasts. Secondly, Saturday morning television is a very occasional treat. Amber hates them watching TV, and only tends to use it as a last resort, so usually they’re bored by this time and are pulling at our sleeves and begging to go out somewhere.

‘And usually we’re not nearly this organized. My confession today is that because you’re here I got everything ready for breakfast last night so it was all incredibly
easy this morning. Usually Amber and I are both running around preparing the food, getting drinks, making our own breakfasts, dealing with fights between Jared and Gracie. Let me tell you, today feels like a vacation.’

‘Maybe Life Swap will show you a different way of doing things?’ Vicky grins.

‘How so?’

‘Maybe it will teach you to be a bit more organized,’ she laughs, as Richard shakes his head.

‘It’s a nice thought, but I can’t see Amber and me keeping this up.’

‘So what’s on the plan for the rest of the day?’

‘I thought we could go up to the farmers’ market in Weston. It’s much easier to hit the grocery store for vegetables, but the farmers’ market is a real experience, and I thought tonight we could do a barbecue, so we can get the salad stuff there. Plus you get to see what a country farmers’ market is like.’

‘Sounds perfect!’

‘We can take the kids out to lunch and then hang out here. I’ll take Jared to his Little League game at four, and you’re welcome to come with, or you can hang out here and swim with Gracie.’

Vicky gestures to herself. ‘I think the last thing I’m going to be doing today is swimming,’ she laughs.

‘You could wear a wet suit,’ Richard says.

‘Ouch! Even the thought of rolling a wet suit onto my poor, sore skin is painful. Nope. I’m covering up today and staying out of the pool.’

‘Okay. So if you give me twenty minutes I just have to make a phone call and then we’ll go.’

‘Sounds great,’ Vicky says, as Richard gets up and goes upstairs. Damn, she thinks. I wish I hadn’t noticed how nice his legs are.

They go to the farmers’ market, buy armfuls of fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and onions that came out of the ground that morning. They buy fresh honey and flowers, and home-made pecan slices that stick to their fingers, washing them down with sugary sweet lemonade.

Every single person at the farmers’ market comments on Vicky’s skin colour. ‘Wow, that looks painful,’ they say, one after the other, all curious as to how someone could be so negligent, all understanding as soon as Vicky opens her mouth and reveals she’s English.

It gets to the stage that Vicky offers the explanation before they say anything, and soon Jared joins in, leading Vicky to stands they haven’t yet been to, standing next to her and pointing at her face. ‘It’s sunburn,’ Jared shouts, to get their attention. ‘This is Vicky and she’s from England, and she fell asleep on a raft in the swimming pool yesterday because she’s jet-lagged.’

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.