The Switch (7 page)

He had escaped from Finn. He had escaped from the Snarbys. But now he was on his own and wanted for murder. He had little money, nowhere to go. Tad found an entrance to an office and slipped inside, burying himself in the shadows. He was still there six hours later when the first of the traffic hit the streets and the city of London woke to another day.

Bacon sandwich
and a cup of tea, please.”

Tad had found his way to a run-down café in a Soho back-street. He was the only customer. He paid for his breakfast using the last of his money and chose a table in the farthest corner. He had bought a late edition of the morning paper and now he opened it, thumbing through the pages.

He found the murder of Lord Roven in a single column on page four. There was a photograph of the house in Nightingale Square and a headline that read
BRUTAL MURDER IN LONDON’S MAYFAIR
. The report concluded that the police had chased two intruders, a man and a boy, but both had escaped. So Finn hadn’t been arrested either! Tad didn’t know whether to be pleased or sorry. If Finn was free, he couldn’t lead the police to Tad. On the other hand, he would almost certainly be looking for Tad himself. After the disaster of the failed break-in, Tad didn’t like to think what would happen if he were found.

Tad bit into his sandwich and actually found himself enjoying it. He should have been terrified or in despair, but the truth was that he was neither. He felt confident . . . even calm. As he sat in the café with his elbows on the table and his long hair falling over his eyes, Tad wondered if he was changing in some way that he couldn’t understand.

A couple more people came into the café and ordered coffees. Neither of them even glanced in his direction. Cupping his hands around his tea, feeling the warmth, Tad tried to work out his options.

He was a thirteen-year-old, on his own in London, wanted by the police. He knew that he had been seen at Lord Roven’s house and it surely wouldn’t be hard to track him down. And what then? The fact was that it had been Tad who had broken into the house and let Finn in. He was as responsible for the old man’s death as if he had held the sword himself. If the police caught him, he would go to prison. It was as simple as that.

He had to get out of London. He knew that. But with no money in his pocket, it wasn’t going to be easy.

Briefly, he considered going back to the carnival. Whatever he thought of them, Eric and Doll Snarby would look after him. And they’d take him with them when they moved to the carnival at Great Yarmouth. But if he went back to the Snarbys, he would be going back to Finn. Tad remembered the look on Finn’s face as he stabbed forward with the sword. He shivered and took a sip of tea. He couldn’t go back to Finn. There had to be another way.

And that was when the idea came to him.

Not to the Snarbys but to his real parents and his own home. Sir Hubert Spencer had a house in Knightsbridge—only an hour’s walk from where he was sitting now. It was his only chance. He had considered it before, when he was at the carnival at Crouch End. But things had been different then. He had been too frightened to think straight, too frightened to act. Tad had come a long way since then. He was certain now that he could make his parents believe what had happened to him. After all, he knew everything about them. He could describe things that only their true son would know. All he had to do was talk to them.

He finished his breakfast and set off, up through Green Park and on toward the heart of Knightsbridge. He followed the road past Harrods department store and thought sadly of the times he had visited it with his mother. Lady Geranium used to take him there on his birthday and let him choose his own present. One year it had been a grand piano (although he had never played it). The next he had chosen the entire chocolate department. But now, of course, they wouldn’t even have allowed him through the door.

The Spencers’ London home was in a quiet street on the other side of Harrods. Number One Wiernotta Mews was a pale blue house on three floors with a kitchen and dining room in the basement. Tad had a bedroom on the first floor and slept there whenever the family was visiting London. He wondered if they would be there now.

It was eleven o’clock and the mews was empty. The other home owners were probably all at work. Tad crossed the cobbled surface and reached for the bell. It was only then that he had second thoughts. If the Spencers were at home and he rang the bell, Spurling would probably come to the door. And what would the chauffeur see? A dirty, disheveled boy whom he wouldn’t recognize. The door would be slammed before Tad had a chance to explain.

Tad sighed. It would be much easier to explain things once he was
inside
the house. But how was he to get in? Break in—for the second time in twenty-four hours? Then he remembered. His mother always left a spare key in one of the baskets of flowers that hung on either side of the front door. Tad quickly found it, opened the gate and followed the metal stairway down to the kitchen entrance.

As quietly as he could, he slipped the key into the lock and turned it. The house was silent. Tad stepped inside.

He stood for a few seconds in the quarry-tiled kitchen. His heart was pounding in his chest and he had to remind himself that he wasn’t a thief. He wasn’t breaking in. This was his house. He lived here. Even so, when he moved forward it was on tiptoe and his ears were pricked for the slightest sound.

He passed through the kitchen and crept upstairs. The first floor consisted of a single open-plan room with leather sofas, Turkish carpets and a huge wide-screen TV. A spiral staircase led upward and he followed it to the second floor, where his own bedroom was located. He stopped in front of a door, tapped gently and went in.

The room was just as he had left it—evidently nobody had been there in the last few days. His bed, with its quilt patterned like a giant dollar bill, was freshly made. His London toys, books and computers were exactly where he had left them. Tad ran his hand over one of the surfaces, taking it all in. He had come home! Quickly he stripped off his clothes and went through into the adjoining bathroom. He didn’t care if anyone heard him now. He turned on the shower and stood for ten minutes in the hot, jetting water. It was as if the shower were washing away not just the dirt but all the memories of the past week. He dried himself in one of his own American towels. He had never appreciated how soft and warm they really were.

Outside, he heard a car pull up. A door slammed and a voice called out. He recognized it at once. It was his mother! His parents had arrived.

He felt a surge of excitement. In just a few moments he would see them again, talk to them, tell them what had happened. They would be shocked, of course. But once they understood, they could all begin again. The nightmare would finally be over.

Moving quickly, Tad pulled some clothes out of the closet and tried to get dressed. It was only now that he realized he had a problem. The boxers he was holding were obviously several sizes too big. The pants were the same. Reluctantly, he picked up Bob Snarby’s clothes and put them back on. At least they fit, and washed and groomed, he felt a bit more like an ordinary boy, less like a street urchin. Even so he was nervous. What if his parents refused to listen to him? What if they simply threw him back out on the street?

He could hear footsteps coming up the stairs. Tad thought for a moment, then went over to a drawer beside the bed, opened it and pulled out a checkbook. It was his own checkbook, and he was certain that he would still be able to sign Tad Spencer’s signature. There was over ten thousand dollars in his current account; his pocket money for the past six months. Whatever happened, that money was now his.

He had just shoved the checkbook into his pocket when the door to the bedroom opened. Tad stared. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t this.

A short, fat, dark-haired boy in a ginger-and-brown-checked suit had just walked in and was staring at Tad with the same shocked expression with which Tad was staring at him. Tad tried to speak. He felt the bed pressing against the back of his legs and he sat down. The other boy smiled.

And that was when Tad knew. He had thought at first that he was looking at himself, and in a way, of course, he was. It
was
his own body that had just walked into the room, but there was somebody else inside it. And the suddenly narrowed eyes—the cruel smile—told him who that somebody was.

“Bob Snarby!” he whispered.

“Tad Spencer!” the other boy replied. “I been expecting you.”

Bob Snarby closed the door
and moved into the room. Tad watched him with a sense of wonderment. His first thought was how fat this boy was, how arrogant he looked with his puffed-out cheeks and slicked-back hair. But then he remembered that he was actually looking at himself! Bob was wearing one of his own favorite suits. The Rolex watch that his mother had bought him was on the other boy’s wrist. Tad realized that he was jealous, that he disliked Bob Snarby on sight.

But it wasn’t Bob Snarby. It was him! Tad rested against a chair, thoroughly confused.

For a long minute the two boys stared at each other; Bob Snarby in Tad’s body and Tad Spencer in Bob’s body. At last Tad spoke.

“Do I call you Bob or Tad?” he asked.

The fat boy smiled. “I suppose you can call me Bob,” he said. “You know that’s who I am.”

“What happened?” Tad demanded. “How did you turn yourself into me?”

“I didn’t,” Bob replied. “I didn’t have nothing to do with it.”

“You’re lying!”

Bob moved farther into the room. “I’ll tell you what happened,” he said. “But you’d better not get nasty with me. Spurling’s downstairs and one shout from me and you’ll be out on your ear. Know what I mean?”

Tad nodded.

“All right.” Bob sat down on the bed. “I’d had an ’orrible day at the carnival. Up in Crouch End. Moving in is always the worst part and I was dog tired . . . only if I was a dog they’d ’ave put me out of my misery. Mum and Dad were out at the pub. I went to bed.”

“What time?”

“It must have been about ten-thirty. Anyway, I fell asleep and woke up in your place. That’s all there was to it. One minute I was in the van, the next . . .” Bob shook his head. “It gave me a nasty shock, I can tell you. Waking up in that bed! It was so big it took me a while just to find my way out.”

“So what did you do?” Tad asked.

“I couldn’t believe it at first. There I was, surrounded by all this gear—CDs and computer games and the rest of it. You know what my first thought was?”

“I can guess,” Tad said.

“Bob, my boy, I thought, you’ve got to steal as much of this stuff as you can carry. You can ask questions later. But right now you’ve got to get out of here before someone comes and throws you out.” Bob sighed. “That was when I caught sight of meself in the mirror.” He paused. “I mean,
my
self, don’t I. I’ve got to learn how to talk proper, haven’t I! Anyway, that was when I started screaming the place down. It was like a horrible dream—only I knew I was awake.”

“That’s more or less what happened to me,” Tad muttered.

“I bet. You must have been sick waking up with Eric and Doll! I wish I could have seen your face!”

“You’ve got my face!” Tad retorted angrily.

“Let’s not make it any more confused, shall we?” Bob Snarby said. “Where was I? Oh—right. I’m screaming my head off when the door flies open and this old biddy comes rushing in. I didn’t know who the hell she was, but then she starts calling me ‘Master Tad’ and tries to get me to calm down . . .”

“It was Mrs. O’Blimey,” Tad said.

“That’s right. The housekeeper. Well, I got back into bed and the old lady fussed over me, but I kept my mouth shut. You see, I knew something strange was going on and I didn’t want to screw things up, like. You know? I could smell the money and I was thinking to myself—Bob, old buddy, I don’t know what’s going on ’ere. It’s a right mystery and no mistake. But you could do yourself quite nicely out of all this. Just take your time. Try and work it all out . . .”

Bob Snarby pulled a bar of chocolate out of his pocket and broke a piece off. “I never used to like this stuff,” he said, half to himself. He offered the bar to Tad. “You want some?”

Tad shook his head.

“Well, I did manage to work it out in the end,” Bob continued, munching the chocolate. “Somehow—Gawd knows how—I’d switched bodies with a fat, rich boy called Tad Spencer. It was like something out of a comic. Or maybe a film. I once saw a film on TV where something like that happened. I don’t know. Anyway, as I lay there in that great big bed, surrounded by all that lovely stuff, I realized it had happened to me and after a bit I stopped worrying about how or why and just decided to . . . go with it.”

“But how could you persuade them?” Tad thought back to his own experiences with the Snarbys and with Finn. “My mother and father would never have believed you were me. You’re much too common. You don’t know anything. You never been to private school.”

“You mean—‘You never
went
to private school,’” Bob corrected him. “It’s true what you’re saying, although if you don’t mind me saying so, Tad, you’re not exactly in a position to be snobbish.” He smiled. “But all right, I admit it. There were a lot of things I didn’t know that I ought to if I really was going to be you. I knew that.”

“So what did you do?”

“In the end it was easy. I hadn’t said much yet, so they didn’t know anything was wrong. The old woman—Mrs. O’Blimey—thought I’d just been having a bad dream. And that afternoon, Spurling asked me if I’d like to go out riding. I said yes—I thought he was talking motorbikes or something. I didn’t realize he meant on a horse! No, thank you very much, I thought. But then, as I said, I had this idea. I got on the horse and the two of us trotted along for a bit. And then I fell off.” Bob rubbed his backside. “I didn’t have to fake that bit, I can tell you. Your mum saw me fall. She had the horse shot immediately—but this is the good part.” He winked at Tad. “I told her I’d banged my head when I fell and I wasn’t seeing things straight. You know . . . like I had amnesia or something.”