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The Sister Swap: the laugh-out-loud romantic comedy of the year!
Fiona Collins
‘A funny, feel-good read just perfect for the summer!’ Sarah Bennett, author of Sunrise at Butterfly CoveTwo sisters. Two very different lives…Meg simply doesn’t have time for men in her life. Instead, she has a strictly one-date rule, survives on caffeine and runs one of the biggest model agencies from her smart office in London. That is, until she collapses one day at work and the doctor orders her to take some R&R in the country…Sarah is used to being stuck behind tractors and the slow pace of her cosy village life. But now her children are all grown-up (and her ex-husband long forgotten) she’s ready to change things up a bit – starting with taking back her old job in the city!After a devastating falling out, the sisters haven’t spoken in years. Swapping houses, cars, everything is the only option – surely they’ll be able to avoid bumping into each other?Perfect for fans of Fiona Gibson, Zara Stonely and Christie Barlow.Praise for The Sister Swap:‘A funny, feel-good read just perfect for the summer! The Sister Swapleft me with a warm glow in my heart and a broad smile upon my face.’ Sarah Bennett, author of Sunrise at Butterfly Cove‘Perfect for you summer beach bag!’ Pretty Little Book Reviews‘Funny, uplifting, feel-good and absolutely wonderful. I loved it!’ Karen Whittard (NetGalley reviewer)‘Such a feel-good book!’ Mary Torjussen (NetGalley reviewer)‘Excellent!’ Nicola Clough (NetGalley reviewer)‘I love Fiona Collins books and this one is no exception!’ Claire Ross (NetGalley reviewer)‘A light-hearted read…this book will make you chuckle.’ Sara Oxton (NetGalley reviewer)


Two sisters. Two very different lives…
Meg simply doesn’t have time for men in her life. Instead, she has a strictly one-date rule, survives on caffeine and runs one of the biggest model agencies from her smart office in London. That is, until she collapses one day at work and the doctor orders her to take some R&R in the country…
Sarah is used to being stuck behind tractors and the slow pace of her cosy village life. But now her children are all grown-up (and her ex-husband long forgotten) she’s ready to change things up a bit – starting with taking back her old job in the city!
After a devastating falling out, the sisters haven’t spoken in years. Swapping houses, cars, everything is the only option – surely they’ll be able to avoid bumping into each other?
FIONA COLLINS
lives in the Essex countryside with her husband, three children and the noisiest cat in England. She likes to write feisty, funny novels about proper, grown-up women.
Fiona studied Film & Literature at Warwick University and has had many former careers including TV presenting in Hong Kong, radio traffic presenter and film & television extra. She has kissed Gerard Butler and once had her hand delightfully close to George Clooney’s bum.
You can follow Fiona’s witterings on Twitter @FionaJaneBooks (https://twitter.com/FionaJaneBooks) or find her swanning around on Facebook at facebook.com/fionacollinsauthor (https://www.facebook.com/fionacollinsauthor/)
Also by Fiona Collins (#ulink_a761959f-c6e0-5acf-b440-9d6b9d20c94b)
A Year of Being Single
Cloudy with a Chance of Love
Four Bridesmaids and a White Wedding
The Sister Swap
Fiona Collins


ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES
Copyright (#ulink_d933dcd2-9add-5592-9429-2fd5ab1f6f74)


An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © Fiona Collins 2018
Fiona Collins asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
E-book Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 978-0-00-822156-0
Version: 2018-10-26
Contents
Cover (#u2aa610ab-8677-57c1-ac2c-e545d9b9d8b5)
Blurb (#ud29c2d9f-7dcf-5e8b-8447-b6511aa391a9)
Author Bio (#u2d3abeab-5ae8-5c5c-9867-91dde73c430f)
Booklist (#ulink_c44f0e34-ae5c-5da5-adb7-937e5c2c1b9d)
Title Page (#ua2280e05-ec27-543f-b753-0ec34a2a86b6)
Copyright (#ulink_3ac43054-7b12-53fd-8ae1-b53a43e2501f)
Chapter One (#ulink_d2fb6400-f6f6-5f14-a499-89b94200471a)
Chapter Two (#ulink_715aa26e-1386-5ebf-9d12-1cfed6b3b789)
Chapter Three (#ulink_d51794f5-0adc-5191-bafb-885709a594c9)
Chapter Four (#ulink_b692534b-ba4f-5b1b-a721-02d7aa4cbd75)
Chapter Five (#ulink_247dffbd-448e-54f3-9bd1-5fc8ee4c83e5)
Chapter Six (#ulink_f300e524-89a0-5702-8ef5-d5b611d684fb)
Chapter Seven (#ulink_de596b12-1a71-5022-83c0-369a50ddb68b)
Chapter Eight (#ulink_7787e6cc-31a9-590b-9eb2-9869bd4fbb3a)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
Excerpt (#litres_trial_promo)
Endpages (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ulink_cc03634b-194d-5c62-89c7-5be8e9454a0e)
Meg
‘Oi, oi! Had a good night, darlin’?’
Meg tried unsuccessfully to yank her dress in the vicinity of her knees. It didn’t want to cooperate and sprang back up. This showstopper of a dress – claret red, tight, sleeveless – wouldn’t be dragged down, unlike its owner, clearly. It was a dress for midnight. A dress for a bar or club or fancy restaurant. A dress for peeling off and throwing with abandon on the bedroom floor of a man you probably (no, definitely) wouldn’t be seeing again. Not a dress for skulking up a London street at 5 a.m. on a Friday in early June, your shoes in your hand.
‘Walk of shame, is it?’
Meg tried to ignore the muscle-bound builder with the large expanse of over-tanned man cleavage and the orange hard hat – an unfortunate throwback to the Village People if ever she’d seen one – who was shouting at her from across the street.
‘Sod off,’ she muttered under her breath. Meg tugged at her dress again and put her head down. She was hungover; it hurt. She pulled her phone from the gold clutch bag under her arm and pretended to examine it intently whilst Village Person and the rest of his crew – the only bloody builders in London who started at five in the morning, it seemed – laughed. Why, oh why did she get a night bus that dropped her at the end of the road, rather than a cab? Why, oh why had she gone back to Mikey (Matty?)’s flat in the first place? She navigated a broken beer bottle and a fag butt, her bare feet protesting at every step.
‘Looking fiiine, lady,’ catcalled another builder, sporting a leer and a Bart Simpson T-shirt. Meg had got the night bus because it stopped directly outside Matty’s? Mikey’s? flat. Mikey, that was it. She’d put his number in her phone last night, after six gin and tonics and some extensive work, on his part, to chat her up – not long before she’d gone home with him. As if on cue, his name flashed up on her phone now. She ignored it. She’d text him later. Tell him it was fun but it wouldn’t be going anywhere. It never did. Meg was a firm believer in never getting emotionally involved.
‘Mighty fine!’ echoed a fat Daniel Craig lookalike in a high-vis waistcoat and he gave a long, loud wolf whistle, which she wouldn’t have minded, during the day – she was thirty-eight; she took what she could get. As it was silly o’clock and she was highly inappropriately dressed, it really wasn’t that welcome. She really must stop having one-night stands with men she didn’t particularly like.
Meg allowed a woman in a suit on a Boris bike to overtake her. A car beeped and Meg resisted the temptation to give it the finger. She was home. She ran up the three steps to her dark-blue front door, turned her key in the lock and stepped inside with relief, before throwing her keys on the table and her sandals on the floor and padding on sore feet over to the kitchen – which she barely used apart from uncorking Prosecco over the sink and storing perfume in the fridge – and pouring herself a large glass of water.
She was supposed to be at work in precisely ninety minutes.
*
‘Morning, Julianna, can you call Mimi and check she’s OK for the 22.55 flight to Milan, and tell her she’s got to be sober this time? Thank you. Frank – nice jacket – can you ring Nigel at Balmuccia regarding the New York Fashion Week shoot and tell them, as politely as you can, they strictly only have Rose-Leigh for Tuesday until Thursday, then she’s got to be back in London for another job –I’ve just had an email from them about it, trying to extend again. They’re driving me mad! Julia, glad to see you back – do you have that fee negotiation document, please – the latest one? On my desk in five, please.’
Meg was marching through the office, heels clacking, cherry-red lippy on, hair in a messy blonde and caramel chignon, her phone in one hand and an emergency caramelized pecan latte in the other. Her walk of shame forgotten, she was now on her usual power walk into the office, the walk on which lots of things got done. ‘Good morning, Frances, did you hear back from Cassie re. the Miami job – is she available? How about that girl we scouted – Poppy – when are she and her mother coming in? Can you please let me know as soon as?’
Meg was speed-reading emails as she clicked across the black, polished floor. She was ignoring her banging head, her slight nausea and the fluttering heart palpitations she blamed on the third latte of the morning. She was glad of her crisp, white cotton wrap dress, keeping her cool, as it was unusually hot in here. And her sunglasses, which she would keep on until at least ten o’clock, were successfully hiding all traces of bloodshot eyes.
She wouldn’t admit it to many, but her eyes had actually been red and wild-looking long before her caning it on gin last night; she’d spent most of the last crazy two weeks surviving on Starbucks and energy drinks, the odd canapé (literally) thrown in. Not out on the lash, she would hasten to tell you – yesterday’s drunken excursion was a now-regretted, temporary release, as was the man whose name she’d now completely forgotten – but working late, in the office. Tempest Models was her company; she had to. If she didn’t then she feared things Wouldn’t Get Done. They had a lot of big contracts on for their models at the moment: Meg had averaged five and a half hours’ sleep a night for the last fortnight.
She’d burnt the candle at both ends and halfway down the middle, before chucking it churlishly in the bin. She’d run, walked, negotiated, everything, on empty.
Waiting for her at the end of the huge open-plan office, under Tempest’s huge wall of models’ photo, or ‘comp’, cards, was her desk, a super-neat, gleaming specimen of white and chrome, and three days’ work, once again, to be done in one day.
‘Morning, Meg.’
‘Morning, Lilith.’
Lilith, Meg’s assistant – pinafore, ankle boots, gamine Mia Farrow haircut – was standing in the doorway of the small corner office behind. It was supposed to be Meg’s, but she preferred to be out on the floor, where she could see everyone, so they had swapped.
‘Another busy one today?’ Lilith enquired. ‘I’m ready for whatever you have to throw at me.’
‘Oh, there’ll be plenty,’ replied Meg, with a bright smile. ‘Thanks, Lilith. It’s going to be super busy.’
She placed her coffee on the desk and her bag under it. Without sitting down she leant over and tapped her computer into life. As owner and Head Booker, her inbox was full – both email and the physical one on her desk – she had a list of phone calls to make as long as your arm, five meetings, and after work she was going to Westfield shopping centre for drinks with a client and a little recreational scouting. There was no time for that in office hours: she did her spotting of upcoming talent after hours and she was very, very good at it. Britain’s top three models in the last ten years – including Clarissa Fenton-Blue, the darling of both Gucci and Calvin Klein – had all been discovered by Meg.
‘Twit!’ she scolded herself. She realized she’d actually placed her bag on the desk and her coffee on the floor. ‘Silly cow.’
She bent to retrieve the cup, put it next to her bag, and then, to her complete surprise, everything went kind of ‘whoosh’ and ‘fade to black’ and Meg, quite theatrically and almost gracefully, if she could have seen it to have appreciated it, collapsed like a folded envelope onto the polished black surface of her office floor.
*
She awoke, sometime – a long time? – later, blinking, with a white ceiling above her, the faint smell of disinfectant in her nostril and a feeling of overwhelming, bone-shattering tiredness. Where the bloody hell was she? Was she in a bed? She used her fingertips to feel the material under her hands, which were at her sides. Some kind of cotton, with a scratchy, crackly something underneath. She wriggled her toes. They were under constraint, held by a starchy, apple pie tucking in. Holy hell – was she in hospital?
A face – soft cloudy hair, rectangular glasses with navy frames – loomed into shot.
‘Hello … ?’ muttered Meg hoarsely. She tried to sit up but realized she didn’t have the energy. The pillow hurt under her head – everything hurt.
‘Good morning, Miss Oxbury,’ said a cool voice, above a white coat and a stethoscope. ‘I’m Doctor Field. You’re in University College Hospital. You collapsed at work. Fainted. Do you want some water?’
Meg nodded and the doctor handed her a blue plastic lidded cup with a straw sticking out of the top from which Meg took a couple of grateful sips.
‘I’m so sorry. I had too much to drink last night,’ whispered Meg, her throat sore and her mind racing. She’d collapsed? ‘And I haven’t really been eating that well recently—’
‘Neither would have helped,’ interrupted Dr Field, ‘but they’re not the reason you fainted. You’re suffering from hypertension.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Meg. She’d heard of it, vaguely. Probably via Holby City. She felt sleepy and wanted to close her eyes.
‘High blood pressure.’
‘Oh.’ Hell! High blood pressure! That wasn’t good.
‘Dangerously high. So much so, I’m afraid I’m signing you off.’
What? Meg’s weary and befuddled brain tried to compute the doctor’s words. Signing her off? Was that the same as writing her off? Was she going to die?
‘What do you mean?’ a stricken Meg asked.
‘I’m signing you off work. For eight weeks.’
Meg would have burst out laughing, if she’d been physically capable of it. ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she croaked. ‘That’s two months! I can’t be signed off work for two months! – I’ve got far too much to do!’
‘Which is precisely why I’m signing you off,’ said the doctor, in clipped tones. ‘You’re highly stressed and you have hypertension. You’re not going to be working for the next eight weeks and, ideally, I want you out of London.’
Meg started to panic. She wished she could heave herself up to a sitting position; she needed to prove she was perfectly OK. ‘But it’s my company!’ she protested. ‘I can’t just bugger off and leave everyone to get on with it! And what do you mean, out of London? Where on earth would I go?’
London was her life. She loved London. She loved Tempest Models. She didn’t want to leave either. This was ludicrous!
‘To the country, to the coast, to a nice quiet field somewhere … take up knitting, fall in love, whatever. I’m insisting on it, for the good of your health. You need to get away and it has to be right now. This weekend.’
‘I don’t believe in love,’ muttered Meg. ‘And I don’t want to get away.’ This was a disaster. An absolute disaster.
‘You have to,’ said the doctor firmly. ‘Don’t you have anyone you can call? Parents, siblings, friends in the country, or somewhere, who can put you up?’
‘No, there’s no one,’ replied Meg, shaking her head. ‘Everyone I have is in London.’
‘Go and stay in a hotel then, or a B&B,’ said Dr Field distractedly. Something was buzzing in her pocket. ‘Right! I’m putting you on a course of tablets and by Monday I expect you to be on a beach in the Bahamas, or, at the very least, in the New Forest.’ The doctor was halfway out the door.
‘I can’t afford either,’ muttered Meg. Despite business being good, all money being ploughed back into the company meant she could barely manage the rent on her ridiculously expensive, just-off-Tottenham-Court-Road flat, let alone pay out for an additional place to live for the next two months.
‘Goodbye, Miss Oxbury.’
‘Goodbye,’ Meg mumbled weakly, but the doctor was already gone. She slumped back on the pillow. Eight weeks off work and enforced exile from London. This was a complete nightmare and actually completely impossible.
How could she get out of London when she didn’t have anywhere to go? There were no lovely parents in the country. No friends with coastal retreats. As she’d said, anyone who meant anything to her lived in London.
The only person she knew who lived in exactly the kind of place Dr Field was talking about, Meg really didn’t want to see.
Chapter Two (#ulink_8d2b3d94-751a-541f-ae87-43e3bcf8792a)
Sarah
Sarah idly scratched her left bum cheek under the flimsy material of her cotton shorts and stretched her right arm out into the warm, unmown grass. A plump bumble bee was nuzzling in some clover just beyond her fingertips; she admired his wriggling, furry form, his rotund work ethic, his purpose. The faint pong of distant manure nudged at Sarah’s nostrils. An ancient transistor radio stuck wonkily on the ground competed for her attention with an overhead wood pigeon. Smooth FM, the oft-repeated jingle kept proclaiming; music to fall asleep to. She thought so, anyway. The Carpenters were singing about rainy days and Mondays when today was hot, sticky, with no breeze, and Friday. Not that it mattered much to Sarah what day it was, when they had all pretty much merged into one this summer.
She had been drifting on and off all afternoon, in a languorous haze – very easy to do in her little orchard to the rear of her cottage, especially when it was this sunny and warm. In between snoozes she’d consumed three Magnums – dark chocolate, she might hasten to mention; they were clearly much better for you – and half a packet of custard creams. She really must stop adding those to the online shop, she thought; the twins didn’t even like them any more.
She considered letting her eyes lazily close once more, but her phone, a little away from her outstretched hand and half concealed by fat blades of grass, lit up suddenly and started angrily buzzing. Who could that be? Connor, needing to be picked up from his job at the factory because he’d got another puncture on his bike? Olivia, saying she was at a friend’s and wasn’t coming home for dinner again? Or her boss, Mandy, recruiting her for another hateful stint in her local job as second-in-command children’s party host? Sarah had better answer it. She reached for the phone with the tips of her fingers and slid it towards her.
The name flashing on the screen was Ginny Mulholland. At first Sarah didn’t recognize it, then, with a start, she twigged.
Sarah sat up, knocking her tall, half-drunk glass of cloudy lemonade all over her battered, thrown-off flip-flops and part of her left foot. A wasp immediately began to swarm close to it and Sarah swatted it frantically away.
‘Hello?’ She stood up and turned in the direction of the manure pong and Westins Farm, somewhere behind the orchard, where a tailwind from the pine trees sometimes made the mobile signal better than hopeless.
‘It’s Ginny! Ginny Mulholland. From House Events.’ The woman’s chirpy voice sounded like it was being buffeted through a wind tunnel, and Sarah was extremely surprised to hear it at all. She hadn’t expected to hear from Ginny again; she’d expected a polite rejection letter in the post and a good chuckle to herself at her own ridiculousness for applying for her old job. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine, thanks, Ginny,’ she replied, her voice shaking a little. ‘You?’
Sarah’s ridiculousness had happened during a very similar lazy afternoon in the orchard, in May, when she was reading the paper and eating more biscuits. She was crazy to even have it catch her eye, really – that ad in the Temporary Job section of The Guardian – but somehow, in a moment of absolute madness, Sarah had applied for an eight-week contract for the job she’d done twenty-five years ago. At the same company. In London. She’d almost laughingly emailed her CV before she’d had time to talk herself out of it: a hastily cobbled-together CV, done on her crossed legs, on the laptop, which stated she had been Events Organizer for House Events, London, for five years, from the age of twenty-one to twenty-six. A reign that culminated in a National Events Organizer award for Sarah, given to her at the Royal Albert Hall, just before she had to give it all up. She almost couldn’t explain why she’d sent it.
‘I’m marvellous. I’m calling from the tarmac!’ trilled Ginny. ‘Just leaving the Caymans by helicopter!’
Ginny had spoken to Sarah from the Caymans three weeks ago. An impromptu Skype interview had been conducted from her sun lounger, framed by an infinity pool and a magnificent sunset, from what Sarah could see, whilst Sarah had struggled to unearth a non-messy corner of her house for a backdrop, plumping for the front door of the fridge … after she had hastily slung some random and far-from-aesthetic fridge magnets to the sticky floor.
Boredom was why she’d done it. Why she’d sent the CV. Sarah was bored, bored, bored. Bored of wellies, of picturesque sunrises across the fields, of tractors, of puddles, of her cottage and the view from her bedroom window. Of the village she had been brought up in. Of the organized chaos. Of dressing up as Elsa or Belle or Spiderman and serving plates of jam sandwiches and cheesy footballs at children’s parties. And the twins no longer needed her, not really – they were nineteen, Olivia had nearly completed her gap year and was off to university in the autumn and Connor had his little local job, hopefully progressing to something decent later on (at least she sincerely hoped so). The pair of them now just bellowed ‘Mum!’ at her from far corners of the house, when she was on the loo, out of habit.
Sarah also wanted to do something for herself. Get her life back, somehow, however temporary. Get herself back. So, yes, indeed, it had been a moment of madness. What woman ever manages that, really – after children, motherhood and a soul-destroying marriage … even if that was a million years ago.
The exciting, transatlantic Cayman Islands to Tipperton-Mallet-in-Suffolk interview had gone fairly well, Sarah supposed, although Ginny kept getting distracted by ‘Bertrand’, a young man who hovered behind her in budgie smugglers and constantly interrupted to ask if she was coming to the beach and what time was lunch. Sarah answered all Ginny’s questions as best she could and had even made her laugh a shrill, tinkly laugh a couple of times, but Sarah had heard nothing from Ginny since. She had assumed her old company, House Events, were just going through the motions in interviewing her at all – fulfilling their positive discrimination quota whatnots in being seen to not exclude late forty-something women who had seen better days. She’d assumed she hadn’t got the job.
‘I’ll cut to the chase,’ trilled Ginny, ‘as I’m being called to board. We’d like to offer you the job.’
‘Sorry?’ Sarah felt like she may pass out. What?
‘I said I’d like to offer you the job!’
‘Really?’
Sarah was flabbergasted. She was also, suddenly, not bored, or feeling redundant, or like she wanted to get her life back, but petrified. She was forty-eight. She wouldn’t know the Tube map now if it came up and bit her on the backside. The only thing she’d organized herself in twenty years was Tipperton Mallet’s weekly art class and the tiny village phone box library. She didn’t own a pair of heels, or even a smart jacket. She wore wellies and cagoules. She had ‘it’ll-be-all-right’, short Mum hair and a face devoid of make-up because she long since couldn’t be arsed …
How could she do this job? How could she scrub up for London, both literally and figuratively? Sarah Oxbury had let herself go and it had all gone on other people … What on earth made her think she could do a glamorous, important job in London and return to something resembling her old life?
Because she once had done a glamorous and important job in London, a little voice inside her head told her. Because that life once was hers! Why not do something for her? Why not take this chance?
‘Are you sure?’ Sarah asked.
‘Yes!’ shouted Ginny. ‘Bertrand! Watch the Vuittons! Sorry, Sarah, between me and you he’s going to be dumped once we get back to Miami. Absolutely hopeless, although fabulous quadriceps … So, what do you say?’
‘Well …’ Sarah said.
‘You need to be quick,’ said Ginny merrily. ‘I’ve got approximately thirty seconds!’
‘I’d like to accept the job.’ Sarah began to shake.
‘Wonderful,’ said Ginny. ‘You remember I said it would be a very short-notice start?’ Had Ginny said that? Sarah had only skim read the finer details, but she did remember the job was a two-month post covering part of an employee’s maternity leave, with a possible chance for permanent employment.
‘It starts on Monday.’
‘Monday!’
‘Monday morning, yes. Blame HR – I always do. Is Monday morning a problem?’
‘No, absolutely not, it’s not a problem,’ stammered Sarah. Bloody hell. Monday morning?
‘Nine o’clock sharp then, please, in the office. I won’t be there for at least a couple of months. I’m off on the Mayor of Guadeloupe’s boat. Another interminable Caribbean cruise.’ She yawned. ‘So, all good?’
‘All good,’ said Sarah unsteadily. She’d applied for it – albeit on a digestive-fuelled, crazy whim – and now she’d got it.
‘Fantastic,’ said Ginny and, like people on telly, she hung up without saying goodbye.
‘Bye, Ginny,’ said Sarah, into the ether. She slid her feet into her sticky flip-flops and tried not to hyperventilate. She’d got the job! No more wellies, no more Elsa, no more cheesy footballs. She was going to be in London, on Monday morning, for nine o’clock sharp, back in her old job …
She was totally insane … Apart from everything else, how the hell was she going to start a new job on Monday morning, in London? When it was a two-hour commute, she had an old banger of a Fiesta that was barely guaranteed to make it to the next village, and there had been intermittent train strikes for the past god knows when? How the blazes was she going to get there every day? She needed to stay in a hotel or something, during the week, Sarah thought, but she knew her salary, despite being good, wouldn’t run to that.
Sarah left the orchard and walked to the back door of the cottage, picking up various Connor and Olivia discarded paraphernalia as she went: a Converse trainer, a broken shuttlecock, a pair of headphones. Her head felt fried. She had to think, she had to think very carefully about who she knew in London. And then she might have to – very, very reluctantly – call somebody she hadn’t spoken to for a very long time.
Chapter Three (#ulink_486a3103-6ad1-5274-b831-acc3c3ed73bf)
Meg
‘Hello, Sarah.’
Meg sat on the white swivel chair in the far corner of her studio flat’s tiny living room, and spun a half-turn on it. She waggled one foot, which had ruby red nail varnish drying on its toes, in the air, and hoped the familiar gesture would settle both her nerves and her frustration. She’d been cursing as she’d tapped in her sister’s number. Bloody high blood pressure. Bloody Dr Field. Even Lilith – who Meg had called last night, once she got out of hospital, to relay the awful news she was being signed off for two months – had betrayed her. She had almost sounded relieved Meg was taking some time off. She’d said, in an infuriatingly gentle voice, that she could tell Meg had been heading for a crash, which Meg had been, frankly, incensed by. She hadn’t been heading for a crash! She’d been flying high, soaring. Firing on all cylinders. It wasn’t her fault her stupid blood pressure had decided to play up. Apart from that minuscule medical issue, she was fine.
Meg had reluctantly signed all her current work over to Lilith, but she wasn’t happy about it. How could Lilith possibly fill Meg’s boots, deal with her models – who could be needy and demanding at the best of times – negotiate all the contracts, sort all the travel and spot new talent like she could?
‘Look,’ Lilith had said, at the end of their conversation. ‘You’re a travel agent, a nanny, a psychiatrist, a nutritionist, a friend, a parent, a timekeeper, and a negotiator, almost every second of every day. All things you shouldn’t have to be, not all at once, not as the owner of the company. You need to learn how to let go. Delegate. It’s no wonder you’ve burnt out. Take a well-deserved break.’
‘OK,’ Meg had muttered in reply, like a told-off child. She was furious about the whole situation, but she had no choice, had she, but to take doctor’s orders? She also felt railroaded into begging her only sister for a place to stay. Despite all her contacts and all her friends in high places, Sarah was the only bugger Meg knew who lived in the country.
Her sister had surprised Meg by not only answering second ring, but also by still having a landline phone. Meg had wondered if the number would even work, but it did, and Meg had then wondered if the phone was still in the same place – on the cluttered hall table of their childhood home, among the little jug of wild flowers and the brownish bowl of potpourri.
‘Meg?’ The surprise in her elder sister’s voice was clear, as was the suspicion. Meg would recognize that suspicion anywhere, even after ten years, which was the last time they’d spoken, when Sarah had phoned Meg in London out of the blue to ask if she was coming to Great-aunt Rosamunde’s memorial service and Meg had said ‘no’. History dictated Sarah’s voice was always suspicious in tone as far as Meg was concerned. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine, thanks. You?’
‘Fine, thanks.’
Suspicious. Sarah had employed the same tone when Meg had nicked a bottle of vodka from Budgens at sixteen and the security guards had made her call home from the supermarket office; when Meg had been cheeky to a policeman in Tipperton Mallet at seventeen, knocking his hat off his head to put it on her own, and she’d rung Sarah from the village phone box, cocky and freshly cautioned; when Meg had been kicked out – giggling – from an eighteenth birthday party and had to phone Sarah to pick her up. Oh, there had been plenty of escapades in the two years Sarah spent looking after her sister, when their parents had died.
Meg waited. Sarah was clearly enjoying a prolonged stunned silence, which gave Meg the opportunity to touch up the little toe on her right foot with more varnish and swallow down both her still-clanging nerves and her overwhelming desire to scream. She did not want to be doing this.
‘Well, how funny!’ said Sarah, when her stunned silence came to an end. She still sounded suspicious, though. ‘I was just about to call you!’
‘Were you?’
Meg spun back round. Well, that was really odd. Sarah had wanted to call her? Why? They hadn’t spoken in ten years; they hadn’t seen each other for fifteen – at Uncle Compton’s funeral, when Meg was relieved to have to be on her phone most of the time, assisting in booking a model for a big job. And it had been twenty years since Meg had fled to London, at the age of eighteen, to finally escape the continual disapproval and disappointment of her older sister and the hellish boredom of living with her, which she had livened up with booze and shenanigans.
‘Yes,’ continued Sarah, and layered under the suspicion was an air of slight breathlessness. ‘I presumed your mobile number was the same as when we last spoke.’
Sarah only had Meg’s number at the time of Great-aunt Rosamunde’s memorial service, ten years ago, because one of their cousins had given it to her, and Meg couldn’t attend it because it was London Fashion Week. She was a highly successful model booker by then, at a long-standing rival of Tempest’s where she had started as a runner and general dogsbody – a position she’d blagged her way into almost off the street – and had quickly worked her way up the ranks. They weren’t too pleased when she left to start her own company.
‘Always the same,’ said Meg. God, it was weird speaking to Sarah after all this time. Meg had underestimated just how weird it might be. She had no idea what Sarah even looked like now. Did she still have the same brown hair that Meg would have were it not for the expensive blonde and caramel highlights she had layered in every six weeks? Were her wide-set hazel eyes, also like Meg’s, lined now? What would her sister be? Forty-eight? She was ten years older, an age gap that was huge when Meg was sixteen and Sarah was twenty-six and she’d moved back into the family home from London to become Meg’s reluctant guardian.
For her part, Meg knew Sarah’s number off by heart. It had been her home telephone number for eighteen years, after all. A couple of extra digits got added to it, back in the Nineties, but it was the same number their mother used to repeat back to callers in a sing-song voice when she answered the phone after wiping floury hands on her apron. Meg had not planned on ringing it again. But this was an emergency.
‘Why did you want to call me?’ asked Meg. She wanted to cut to the chase. She hoped Sarah would answer quickly – with whatever it was – so she could get on to the matter in hand. Her matter. Which was to get out of London for two months, wish the time away and get back to work as soon as possible.
‘Well,’ said Sarah hesitantly. ‘I wanted to ask you a massive favour, actually.’
‘Oh?’ Meg set her just-dried toes on the floor. Historically, it had always been the other way round. Meg who wanted lifts into town, borrows of make-up, money, bottles of cider … and, further back in time: piggybacks, cuddles, a push round the garden on her trike … They had got on, a long, long time ago. So what did Sarah want from her? The last thing Sarah had ever asked from Meg had been twenty years ago and was for her to get out of her bedroom. Over the top, as usual. Meg had only been rooting around in Sarah’s jewellery box for something to pilfer. No big deal. Not long after, Meg had got fed up with it all, fled to London and changed her life. ‘Well, actually, that’s what I was calling you for!’
Of course it was. After all these years, Sarah still lived in Tipperton Mallet, in the Suffolk countryside. In Orchard Cottage, their childhood home, with the three bedrooms and the attic room – and the orchard and the acres of fields behind it, leading to the village. Sarah no doubt baked cakes and had a well-stocked fridge; Sarah probably had a hammock and made her own jam. Ugh. It was not Meg’s scene at all, but it had to be done.
‘Well, you go first,’ offered Meg. ‘What’s the favour?’ She really couldn’t imagine what it could be. She could imagine her sister, though, standing in the hall by the brown potpourri. She thought of the cottage, its kitchen, its scrubbed oak kitchen table. Then a tiny speck surprised Meg by sidling into her brain. A distant speck of a thought that she and her sister could sit at that table in Orchard Cottage and talk until they liked each other again, like they had when Meg was small … before they’d got so angry with each other. God knows where that had come from! She shook her head, trying to dislodge it.
Sarah started speaking really fast, her words tumbling over one another. ‘Well, I’ve been offered a job, in London, an eight-week contract. It starts on Monday morning …’
‘A job? What job?’ Meg’s brain started racing. What job could her sister possibly have been offered in London? She knew she worked in Events, a million years ago – that was the job she’d had to give up, after the coach crash, to come back to Tipperton and look after Meg. She didn’t think Sarah had ever mentioned it again.
‘My old job, actually,’ said Sarah. ‘In Events. It’s actually the same company I used to work for. Now the twins are nineteen and making their own way in life I decided it was time to do something totally for myself again … rather late, but, you know …’ Meg could almost see her sister shrugging; her sister used to shrug a lot. ‘So, it starts on Monday and I was wondering if I could come and stay with you? In your flat. Just Monday to Friday, obviously, well Sunday night – I’d go home at weekends – and I’d help you with rent. The trains here are up the spout, the commute would be terrible anyway, and if I was actually living in London, during the week, I think it could be the best plan. I’d be out most of the time, I promise.’
Meg was surprised to hear her sister almost gabbling. Sarah never gabbled; she was always so precise, so organized. Meg was the one who prattled on and hurtled headfirst through life. At least, she had been like that, until she’d come to London and re-invented herself. ‘I don’t believe this,’ she said, incredulous. ‘I was calling to ask if I could stay with you.’
‘What? When?’ Meg could hear Sarah taking a deep breath.
‘Now? This weekend?’
‘Why? For how long?’
‘Same as you, eight weeks,’ said Meg, tapping anxiously at the big toenail on her right foot to see if the polish was dry. ‘I’ve been signed off work – it’s nothing really, just a spot of hypertension, and nothing two months in the country wouldn’t cure, apparently. I’ve been told to get out of London and relax. A complete break,’ she added, and an idea came to her. A rather big, brilliant idea. It was genius, if Sarah would be up for it. ‘I’ve just thought – could we swap?’ she ventured.
‘Swap?’
‘Yes! Swap! You come to my flat; I come to Orchard Cottage.’
‘Well, how would that work?’ asked Sarah. Meg could hear the hesitation in Sarah’s voice. If they swapped, was her elder sister calculating how much time she’d have to spend with her little sister, when she returned to Tipperton Mallet from London at the weekends?
Luckily Meg’s brain was also calculating. ‘I’m thinking of a complete swap,’ she offered. ‘Maybe.’ Yes, this could work. If they swapped they wouldn’t have to be together at all. She was relieved at the thought of her sister not being there when she was, having the place to herself. Not having to share painful anecdotes, sad memories … The silly thought – the speck – of cosy chats at the kitchen table was flicked far, far away. ‘You could stay in London at the weekends, too. Think of all the art galleries, the museums … there’s no point trekking all the way back to the country every Friday night just to come back two days later. Not when there’s a summer of London to explore! And you’ll save a packet in train fares …’
‘I don’t know …’ Sarah hesitated. ‘There’s a lot of train strikes at the moment, so commuting back and forth could be a pain, but I was planning on the weekends to see the children, do things with them …’
‘Well, they can come up to you in London, trains permitting! Do some sightseeing. It could be a great opportunity for them.’
‘Maybe,’ said Sarah. ‘I would like to get to know London properly again … Show it to them, too. We never seemed to make it up there, in all these years …’
‘So, let’s do it!’ exclaimed Meg. ‘I think it’s a fabulous idea! Shall we?’
‘OK,’ said Sarah tentatively. ‘OK. It could maybe work.’
‘When would you like to come up?’ asked Meg. ‘Tomorrow? Today?’
‘Tomorrow would be better. Give me more time.’
‘Tomorrow’s fine with me. And don’t worry about paying me any rent and I won’t pay any to you. We’ll do it as a straight swap, and—’
‘Have you really got high blood pressure or are you running away from something?’
‘What?’ Meg was taken aback.
‘Are you running away?’
‘No!’ Meg did have form, she had to admit. Even before their parents died in the crash she used to do it; she’d assemble a little cardboard box of all her favourite possessions and march off down the road with it, to see how far she could get by teatime. When she and Sarah lived together she upped her game, although it was more running off than running away, and it usually occurred after half a bottle of vodka and sometimes some purloined Malibu. Her final running away had been when she fled to London at eighteen, but that had turned out to be a good thing, for all of them, hadn’t it? ‘I’m not running away. Why would I run away from a job that I love? The sooner I get back to it the better! No, this is a bona fide medical emergency. Hey, I could do things for you, at the cottage.’ Meg was already bored at the prospect of doing nothing in the country. She was just so busy in London – she couldn’t imagine not being so. It frightened her a little. ‘I could deep clean for you,’ she offered brightly. ‘Do some decorating?’
‘Deep clean!’ scoffed Sarah. ‘When have you ever cleaned anything?’
‘I’m pretty good now,’ Meg replied, in self-defence. ‘I’m tidy these days, too.’
‘Really?’ Sarah didn’t sound convinced. ‘And we haven’t seen each other for fifteen years, but you want to do some decorating for me?’
‘Well, it’s no weirder than us staying in each other’s houses!’ retorted Meg. Blimey, Sarah was snippy. Nothing much had changed with her then; she obviously still thought Meg was hopeless. Had she not been following Meg’s career at all? Didn’t she know how brilliant she was?
‘True,’ said Sarah. ‘Have you any decorating experience?’ She was scoffing again, wasn’t she? Meg felt quite angry.
‘That doll’s house,’ offered Meg.
‘The one you papered with toilet roll and tin foil?’
‘Tin foil makes excellent mirrors.’
Sarah made a sound that could have been a laugh, but Meg wasn’t sure. She felt glad her stubborn pride had got in the way of her getting in touch again with Sarah, after she had first moved up to London. That one month had eased into two, then three, then before she knew it, twenty years … The terse phone call they’d had ten years ago didn’t count; neither did Uncle Compton’s funeral when they’d said one ‘hello’, one ‘goodbye’ and that was it.
‘I don’t need any decorating doing,’ Sarah said, ‘but can you please just keep your eye out for Connor and Olivia? Your niece and nephew?’ Meg now detected a note of bitterness in her sister’s voice, but thought it unfair. Meg had never met them – they were too young to have been at that funeral – and why would Meg have been in contact with them when she wasn’t ever in contact with their mum, and vice versa? It worked both ways. ‘They’re nineteen, but if I’m going to be away for a whole two months I’ll be a lot happier if there’s someone else here—’
‘—that you can trust?’ offered Meg. ‘Aren’t I more likely to lead them astray?’
‘I’m hoping you’ve changed,’ said Sarah, with a great deal of sarcasm Meg didn’t like.
‘I have changed!’ she protested, indignant. She hated feeling like the naughty little sister again. ‘And I can keep an eye on them,’ she added quickly, but she wondered exactly what would be required. Would she have to fumigate rooms with air freshener, pick up socks, give advice on boyfriends, that sort of thing? She only ever had one piece of advice on relationships: keep things casual and always keep on walking …
‘OK. Thank you,’ said Sarah. ‘Oh, another thing. I’ve resigned from my part-time job in the village, but I’ve been running an art class and the local library here for a year or so. I was going to let the parish council know I can’t do them for two months, but if you get the urge …’
‘I don’t think so!’ Meg was mildly horrified.
‘And you can use my car if you like – it’s pretty terrible but it does start sometimes.’
‘I passed my test, but I don’t really drive,’ said Meg, ‘I live really close to the Tube. Where’s your new old job?’
‘Just off Tinder Street.’
‘Cool. I’m off Tottenham Court Road, that’s only four stops from there on the Central line.’
‘Yes, that’s right. I used to know the whole Tube map, once upon a time. So we’re really doing this? Tomorrow?’
Meg stretched out both legs straight in front of her and admired her jewelled toenails. If she had to get out of London, she would go to Tipperton Mallet and stay at her sister’s cottage. She would recharge, lower her sodding blood pressure and come back to be a better model agency owner than she’d ever been before.
‘Tomorrow,’ she said.
Chapter Four (#ulink_fddd83bb-d55b-5604-a107-f1b303888ea1)
Sarah
Sarah put the phone down. She extracted a dead peony from the vase on her hall table and straightened up the potpourri bowl. This mad, mad thing was actually happening. She was starting a new job in London after nineteen years as a stay-at-home mum, and not only a new job but her old job, at the same company. Plus – maddest of all – she was swapping homes with her estranged little sister for the next two months.
She headed to the kitchen in pursuit of a bottle of wine, tripping over one of Connor’s trainers, which had been lying in wait like a mischievous banana skin in the middle of the sitting-room rug. ‘Ow! Flipping heck!’ She picked it up, returned it to its messy friends in the porch and went to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of Sauvignon. A casserole was in the slow cooker, simmering away for tonight. She liked to make a home-cooked meal for the children, even if they didn’t always bother to eat it.
Sarah sat at the kitchen table and sipped her wine. She’d been so nervous at the prospect of phoning Meg, knowing only sheer desperation would make her do it. Sarah knew no one in London except her sister. She was the only person she could try. When Meg had phoned her first, Sarah was relieved; it would have been very easy for her to chicken out of doing it.
It had been so weird talking to her. So strange to hear her sister’s voice after so long … although she didn’t need to wonder what Meg looked like these days, she’d seen her in Glamour magazine; ‘Day in the Life of a Model Booker’ – an interview with accompanying photo. The punky, purple back-combed mess of old was now a honeyed, stripy blonde, all artfully tousled. The black, gothy make-up replaced by subtle tones of beige and peach. Her younger sister had always been very attractive, though, in whatever guise.
A complete swap, Meg had said. Sarah was relieved about that, too. She didn’t really fancy coming home at weekends only to spend them with Meg, and if she’d gone and stayed with her in the London flat they probably would have both ended up doing really long hours in order to avoid each other. This was better: Sarah would stay in London the whole two months and the twins would come up for lovely sightseeing weekends. It would be expensive, but they could manage it. And the sisters would not have to spend any time with each other at all.
‘Twit!’ Sarah gave herself a sardonic smile and poured another half glass of wine. Before she’d looked up Meg’s number she’d gone momentarily silly and nostalgic and for one tiny moment had imagined her and Meg in Meg’s London flat, getting back to how they’d been in the early days, when Meg was born and Sarah had adored her. To later on, when Sarah had given Meg cuddles and piggybacks round the garden. They could forget the cider binges and the stealing of money and the nightmare of those two years and get back to being the sisters they were before it all went wrong.
Sarah should have known they’d still manage to rub each other up the wrong way; she was silly to think that particular little dream could ever happen. Never mind. Some sisters could just never be close. Some sisters would always make each other angry. Both of them were getting what they wanted, and the swap was on.
‘Hi, Mum!’ There was a shout and a rap at the window. Connor was outside, grinning, in a sleeveless checked shirt and a cherry-red bandana. Sometimes he liked to think he was Axl Rose. ‘Can you get the door for me? I’ve got my arms full.’ Dangling from each of his forearms was a bulging white carrier bag.
‘Not more sandwiches!’ exclaimed Sarah as she opened the back door. ‘I’m doing a chicken casserole again.’
‘Sorry,’ said Connor, coming in and dumping the bags on the table. ‘They couldn’t shift these.’ ‘They’ was the factory where Connor worked – Larkins – where he cycled each day for a random shift in a dead-end job he’d done since completing his A levels last summer. A job he bizarrely loved, despite the hairnet and the white Crocs.
‘I’m not sure I can, either,’ replied Sarah, as she rifled through the bags. Egg mayonnaise with cucumber, on thick white sliced. About twenty packs of them. Yuk. ‘We can freeze them, or something,’ she said. ‘Eat them next week for your lunches.’
She wouldn’t be here next week, thought Sarah. And she was almost knocked for six by a massive wave of guilt. She was leaving her children, leaving them for two whole months. She felt terrible and wondered how to tell them without just blurting it out and risking their dumbstruck and stricken faces – perhaps a little grubby, too, like Victorian street urchins. Where was Olivia, anyway?
‘Do you know what time Olivia’s coming home?’ she asked. Connor had slouched over to the fridge and was helping himself to a carton of orange juice. He had honed his foraging skills by watching American teen movies – taking great bites out of things, swigging juice straight from the carton and never putting the lids back on anything so when Sarah picked up jars the bottom fell away and the contents went all over the kitchen floor.
‘No idea,’ he said, between slugs. ‘I think she’s got a new boyfriend.’
‘Has she?’
Sarah wouldn’t know; Olivia was always out. She would be glad when autumn rolled around and Olivia headed off to Durham University. Her daughter was coming to the end of a gap year she’d done nothing with except mooch around the village.
‘Yeah. Apparently he’s a playwright.’
‘A playwright? Really?’ Sarah hoped he wasn’t a very good one. She didn’t see the point in Olivia getting a boyfriend when she’d be off to Durham in three months and leaving Tipperton Mallet far behind. Thank goodness her daughter was going places. She wished Connor was. Perhaps Sarah going up to London to do a proper, exciting job now would stir him up a bit, and encourage Olivia to do something vaguely useful for the remainder of the summer? She hadn’t been a great role model for them, Sarah realized; she had done nothing for years except play Pocahontas at those parties and run the art class and the library. Perhaps now she was a go-getter, working in London, it would inspire her offspring. If it wasn’t for the overwhelming guilt about abandoning the twins, she might almost be excited to tell them. As soon as Olivia got home she’d do it …
‘I don’t suppose you saw Monty on your travels, did you?’ she asked.
Their cat hadn’t been seen by anyone for four or five days. Clearly, he was surviving on birds and the occasional wild rabbit, but Sarah was getting a little concerned. She adored that cat; her children teased her relentlessly about how soppy she was over him. Would she have to leave with him still missing? That would be awful.
As she flung the sandwiches in the freezer, guilt gripped her again.
Oh god, how could she leave any of them?
*
‘I’m going to London,’ Sarah said brightly. To avoid seeing her children’s reaction she reached for the suitcase which was sleeping under a layer of dust on top of her bedroom wardrobe. Olivia had just sat down on the bed – her honey-coloured hair in beachy loose waves over a floaty dress and DMs she was supposed to have taken off when she came in the house. Connor was leaning against the doorframe. The unusual scenario of their mother noisily dragging items of clothing out of the wardrobe and onto her bed had brought them into her room, as planned. She’d chickened out of telling them when Olivia first got home, about nine o’clock. She thought if she got on with her packing she could tell them in context.
‘What? When?’ asked Olivia.
Sarah turned back to the bed to dump the suitcase on it, catching sight of herself in the mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door as she did so. She looked awful. Shapeless shorts, an equally uninspiring pale-pink T-shirt and a cheap bra she knew had been a mistake. It made her boobs look like a uni-sausage. Perhaps she’d take a trip to Agent Provocateur in Soho, when she got to London … if they let frumpy people who hadn’t had sex for eleven years in there …
‘What do you mean you’re going up to London?’ asked Connor, his long fringe now released from the bandana and halfway through an exaggerated flick.
‘I’ve got a job there,’ said Sarah, almost gulping as the words came out. She ran suddenly sticky hands down her thighs. ‘An eight-week contract. I’m going up there tomorrow – Auntie Meg’s coming down to stay with you, and I’m going to stay in her flat.’ There, she’d said it. It was out there. A hideous twangy pang of motherly guilt flicked viciously at her stomach. She was abandoning her children to selfishly take a job she was far too greedy to have applied for, and to visit sexy lingerie shops. What a terrible mother.
She sat down on the bed between Olivia and the dusty suitcase.
‘What sort of a job?’ asked Olivia, incredulous. She tossed her wavy hair over one shoulder and gave a little pout. She looked gorgeous; Sarah felt like a galumphing troll next to her.
‘Who’s Auntie Meg?’ asked Connor. He’d suddenly got a chocolate bar from somewhere and was languidly chewing at the end of it, like a cowboy.
‘My sister,’ said Sarah. ‘You remember I’ve got one, don’t you?’
‘Barely.’ Connor sniffed. He was always sniffing. ‘And does she have to come, whoever she is? We can look after ourselves. We’re nineteen!’
‘I know, but I’ll be staying in her flat and she’s been ordered to come to the country by her doctor. It makes sense for us to do a swap. And she can keep an eye on you.’
Connor rolled his eyes. ‘We don’t need it,’ he said. ‘It’s ridiculous. Anyway, what sort of job could you do up in London? You’ve spent the last few years dressing up as Jess from Postman Pat!’
‘Among others,’ muttered Sarah. ‘And plenty of jobs!’ She got up from the bed and started further appraising the contents of her wardrobe for anything not too hideous. ‘I’m not so old I couldn’t try something new.’ She caught the scathing look between them but chose to ignore it. ‘But actually, I’m going back to my old industry.’
‘And what was that again?’ said Connor, chewing like John Wayne. ‘I can’t remember. Chimney sweep, down the coal mines—?’
‘—Dinner lady in a Victorian workhouse?’ joined in Sarah with a wry smile. She pulled out a ratty navy T-shirt with ‘Bonjour’ on it then quickly shoved it to the back of the wardrobe in disgust. ‘Ha ha, very funny. None of the above – events organizing.’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Olivia, examining her nails. ‘That.’ She sounded bored. Unimpressed. And Connor’s expression didn’t change either. They had never been interested when Sarah had told them semi-glamorous tales of working in London before they were born; in fact, brilliant anecdotes from one’s past never impressed one’s offspring, Sarah noted. She bet even Madonna’s kids rolled their eyes and huffed, ‘Yes, you’ve already told me,’ when she started waffling on about going to the Oscars with Michael Jackson or whatever. ‘Events organizing sounds a bit too swanky for you, these days,’ Olivia added.
Sarah looked past the green fleece she was holding up against her and down to her comedy socks – rainbow stripes with a grinning sheep on each foot. ‘I can be swanky, you know,’ she protested, vowing to dump anything frumpy in the Thames once she got to London, which might not leave her a lot. ‘And I was damn good at that job. They obviously think I’ve got it in me. My old company.’
‘You’re going back to work for your old company?’ asked Connor. The chocolate bar demolished, he shoved the screwed-up wrapper into his back pocket, currently somewhere halfway down his left thigh. ‘What happened to “never go back”?’
‘When I say that, I mean boyfriends and love affairs, not jobs.’ Sarah sighed heavily, that kind of world-weary sigh mums are so practised at. Picking up a pair of slippers, she pulled a face then flung them to the bottom of the wardrobe: no one in London wore slippers. ‘How about a “congratulations, Mum”? It might be nice to hear one.’
‘Congratulations, Mum,’ the twins offered in unison, like Kevin and Perry.
‘Thank you.’ Sarah rejected a peach floaty scarf. She would have to examine Google on the train up, see what fashionable people were supposed to be wearing these days. She didn’t want the first London siren she heard to be the sound of the fashion police coming for her …
‘How long are you going to be away for again?’ asked Connor.
‘Two months.’
‘Two months! That’s ages!’ Oh, finally! ‘Who’s going to cook our dinners?’
‘I have no idea. I don’t even know if Auntie Meg can cook.’
‘And who’s going to clean the house? Hoover our bedrooms?’
‘You are – you two. If you can find a square foot of carpet to do so.’
‘Can’t’ – Connor did the inverted commas thing with his fingers –‘“Auntie Meg” do it?’
‘I’m not expecting her to,’ replied Sarah, sitting back down on the bed. ‘I’m expecting you two to step up. Perhaps you could use my going as an opportunity.’ She waited for the eye-rolling. ‘Connor, I know you fell into the sandwich job – which was only supposed to be for last summer, by the way – but sticking labels onto packs of sandwiches is hardly a career, and you’ve been sitting on that electrician’s apprenticeship form so long it’s grown stuffing and a side zip.’ Connor rolled his eyes and gave another fringe flick, with the toss of his head, making his cargo shorts drop another two inches lower down his hips. ‘And, Olivia, your gap year has never been more aptly named as there’s simply nothing in it! I know you’re going to Durham in October, but all you’ve done since A levels last year is drift around. You could spend the rest of the summer more usefully than listening to depressing music with your mates or getting yourself a pointless new boyfriend.’
‘She likes The Smiths,’ said Connor, from the doorway. ‘And I promise I’ll take a look at that form thing again.’ He yawned.
‘I’ll think about doing something this summer,’ said Olivia unconvincingly. She was leaving it awfully late, thought Sarah. There’d been an opportunity to go to Kenya, to help teach English at a school, many months ago, but Olivia hadn’t taken it. Sarah really hoped her sudden flight to London would shake them up. Or at least make either of the lazy so-and-sos pick up the Hoover.
‘Can you give me a lift to the station tomorrow please, Connor?’ The station was walking distance, but Sarah didn’t want to walk to it with the family suitcase. It wasn’t one of those nice ones on wheels; it was a hefty, rock-hard red thing, a throwback from when she and her ex-husband Harry used to take the kids to Cornwall, before he decided to have multiple affairs and left them to move down there permanently. It looked at her accusingly from the bed.
‘Yeah, what time?’
‘Three o’clock?’
Sarah had already checked the current shambles of a train service: there was no miracle currently settling over Tipperton Mallet; the train staff were on strike again and she would be travelling on a bus replacement service from Tipperton Mallet to Ipswich, taking a whole hour and a half and going round all the houses, no doubt, then an actual train, from Ipswich to London. Then the Tube to Meg’s flat, which Meg had given her the address for at the end of yesterday’s phone call. The whole journey would take ages, almost four hours.
‘All right.’ He shuffled away from the doorframe, in the direction of his bedroom, and Olivia got up and left too. Hardly devastated, were they? They weren’t exactly weeping in the aisles. But she still worried how they would get on without her.
Sarah carried on with her packing and it didn’t take long; not many things made the London cut, just underwear and nightwear, her trusty black skirt, one or two old blouses she hadn’t worn for ages and one pair of boring, safe, black court shoes. Minimal make-up was packed; she didn’t have a lot. Meg was the one who had make-up and hair down to a fine art, thought Sarah, as she stared at a never-used Pound Shop eyeshadow palette. Meg used to have an eyeshadow called Black Jade, which she wore down to the tin doing big dramatic panda eyes for her various adventures.
‘Are you going out like that?’ Sarah had always asked, as the panda had slunk to the front door in a hitched-up mini and a scowl.
‘Can’t stop me,’ Meg had always retorted.
Meg had always looked gorgeous, Sarah reflected again as she zipped up her meagre make-up bag and put it in the top of the case. Ten-year-old Sarah had been in awe of the loud little sister with the big blue eyes when she was born, and loved running round helping with the new baby. She helped change her nappies and wind her. She helped with her bath and rubbing baby oil on her cradle cap.
‘You’ll be so good when you have your own,’ Mum had remarked more than once, after Sarah had brought the Gripe Water for her. ‘You’re a natural,’ Dad had added. And she had been, hadn’t she? thought Sarah, as she rolled another pair of sensible knickers and wedged them in the corner of her case. A natural for years and years and years. She had given her all to her sister, and then to her children. Now she was going to give something back to herself.
*
It was two forty-five, on Sunday afternoon, and Sarah was sobbing at the top of the landing.
‘I’m going to miss you so much,’ she wailed. ‘I just love you both so much.’ She had one arm round Connor’s shoulders, despite his attempts to lean himself out from under it, the other circled tightly round her daughter’s neck whilst she wriggled like a beleaguered worm and muttered, ‘Get off, Mum!’
‘Pull yourself together, Mother!’ chided Connor sternly, finally managing to prise Sarah off him. ‘It’s only two months.’
‘It’s really not a big deal, Mum,’ said Olivia, rolling her eyes and pulling a sheaf of golden hair out of Sarah’s grasp. ‘We’ll be fine.’
‘If you don’t stop this, you’re going to miss your bus,’ added Connor. ‘You’ve been hanging off us for twenty minutes. Please don’t do this when we get to the station.’
‘No. I won’t, I promise,’ said Sarah, attempting to pull herself together. ‘I’m OK now.’ She sniffed and snuffled her nose into a screwed-up tissue. ‘Let’s go. Be good for Auntie Meg,’ she said, giving Olivia a final hug and briefly wondering if Meg would be remotely good for them. ‘And come up and visit me. We can go to Madame Tussauds.’
‘Maybe.’ Olivia shrugged. ‘Bye, Mum,’ and the two of them practically herded their mother down the stairs and out of the door.
Connor threw her suitcase in the boot and Sarah climbed into her battered old blue Fiesta. It had certainly seen better days. It had scratches, a dented back bumper and one of the doors didn’t quite shut properly – capable of short journeys only, if that. Sarah never spent any money on it; everything she earned went on Connor and Olivia, mostly to keep them supplied with junk food and chocolate. Before she’d shut the front door, she’d left some money for them on top of the fridge along with strict instructions to ration it and to maybe actually buy some vegetables once in a while. She wouldn’t be sending any extra home unless it was an emergency.
The village flashed slowly by as the Fiesta couldn’t manage much more than 40 mph. Connor put the CD player on and sang tunelessly along to Foreigner. She looked across at him, her boy at the wheel. He had the hint of a whiskery moustache and a five o’clock shadow; his once cute features somehow metamorphosed into those of this incredible Boy-Man. She wanted to well up, but she had promised him she wouldn’t, so she forced the tears back down.
‘This is you,’ said Connor, as they pulled up outside the station. A coach was waiting, its engine running. This was it, she thought: she was really going. She was abandoning her children and going up to London to re-seek her fortune after all these years. She should really be taking a Dick Whittington-style knapsack.
‘If Dad makes one of his rare phone calls, tell him where I am,’ said Sarah, as she got out of the car. Connor got her case out of the boot for her and one of the coach drivers lifted it with a gruff ‘Ipswich bound?’ and threw it in the baggage compartment at the bottom of the coach.
‘Doubtful,’ said Connor. ‘And isn’t he in France or somewhere at the moment, sketching muddy bits of water and getting pissed?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Sarah, trying to give her son another quick hug and kiss without crying. ‘Just tell him if he gets in touch.’ It was a few steps on from ‘Tell your father to pass the salt,’ this message relay between her, the twins and their father, but it worked for her. Only speaking to Harry through the children these days was a great relief.
‘Will do, bye, Mum,’ Connor said, and she was waving at him as she walked away, and she was blowing him kisses he pretended weren’t for him, and she was getting on the coach.
Sarah sat at the front, behind the driver – she felt like she wanted to fully see the road ahead – and watched from the window as Connor folded his long, lanky legs into the Fiesta and drove off. More people slowly trickled onto the coach. Chatting, laughing, and squashing bags between their knees; juggling packets of sweets and drinks bottles; adjusting the air conditioning above their heads. A mother and daughter were bickering about a flask of orange squash and who would sit in the aisle. A burly man with a Stephen King novel wedged himself next to Sarah with a grunted ‘Afternoon.’
‘Hello,’ she said, praying that Pet Sematary was suitably horrifying he wouldn’t talk to her on the journey.
Finally, the rumbling standby engine roared into action, the driver released the handbrake and he turned the enormous steering wheel away from the kerb.
‘OK, madam?’ he asked, over his shoulder.
‘Yes, I’m OK, thank you,’ she replied. She was better than OK.
She was ready.
Chapter Five (#ulink_e048af23-a269-57cc-b09c-105ca4b9d560)
Meg
When Meg finally arrived at Tipperton Mallet station, on that bloody coach, she realized everything looked exactly the same as it had twenty years ago when she’d got on the 9.42 and had escaped up to London. If she was expecting things to have moved on in any way, she was mistaken. There was the same little café, the one that served the dodgy doughnuts and the revolting coffee; there was the vending machine, which never worked unless you gave it a swift kick to the bottom right-hand corner; there was the heavy, dispiriting feeling that a big fat nothing was going on.
‘Tipperton Mallet!’ said the driver all proudly, as he parked the coach, as though he were responsible for the village’s existence. He’d been eyeing Meg up in his rear-view mirror since Ipswich station, the pervy old git. She’d had to sit right at the front as she was late getting on, and she’d clocked him looking at her bum as she’d squeezed her messenger bag onto the overhead rack. She wasn’t really dressed for the country, she knew, in her high-necked black minidress and gladiator sandals, but she didn’t own any jodhpurs or fleeces. She hoped Sarah had some she could borrow; if she had to do the whole country thing, she may as well look the part.
Meg got off the coach. She stood outside the station entrance, watching as her fellow passengers walked off with holdalls and rucksacks or were picked up in filthy cars or, in one unfathomable instance, a horse and cart. She was here now, and she’d better try to rustle up some of the right feeling for the place. She tried to put positive images in her mind: gambolling ponies, the smell of freshly mown grass, country pubs, open fires, a kind of Jilly Cooper-esque existence – romping with polo players on haystacks and sleeping off sloe gin in cart lodges … But no, she couldn’t do it. Tipperton Mallet meant boredom and sadness and oppression. She didn’t want to be here, and she missed London already.
It was a gorgeously warm afternoon. She perched on the edge of a bottle-green station windowsill, stretched out her legs and closed her eyes. She’d walk to Orchard Cottage in a bit. She was in no great hurry to get there, although she’d certainly been in a massive hurry to leave the place, all those years ago.
Meg opened her eyes again, on hearing a faint shout and a clicking noise. There was a field, opposite the train station, and a man was walking a horse across it. Well-honed calves, silky brown hair and an attractive gait, and that was just the horse. Well, she thought, there was her first hunky farmer. She had to fill her two months down here doing something, so it might as well be desirable men. She was wondering if there were any more and looking about her a bit, when a battered blue Fiesta pulled up and a lanky, sloping figure in a Van Halen T-shirt unfolded himself from it and flopped out onto the pavement. He approached, flicking a long fringe out of his face.
‘Excuse me, but are you Auntie Meg?’
‘Er, yeah?’
‘I’m Connor. Mum said I had to hang around here this afternoon, see if you needed a lift home.’
‘Well, yes please,’ said Auntie Meg. ‘I’d love a lift. Thank you, Connor.’ He was so tall, this lad, she thought. Well, Sarah was, and she wondered if Olivia was, too. Was it just Meg who had inherited the short-arse genes from their mother’s side?
‘It’s nice to meet you,’ added Connor and he stuck out his hand, giving Meg the impression he was doing what his mother had always taught him to do: be polite.
‘You too,’ said Meg. She felt a little guilty this was the very first time she’d ever clapped eyes on her sister’s son. That it was a shame. There was no aunt–nephew hugging, no laughingly telling him how much he’d grown. It was sad, really. Regrettable. That she and Sarah had made each other so bloody miserable they never wanted to set eyes on each other again once Meg left Tipperton Mallet.
‘Let me take your bag,’ said Connor. He had a very deep voice; he sounded like a Suffolk Morgan Freeman.
‘Thank you.’
Connor took Meg’s bag for her and put it in the boot of the car. When they got in the car, Connor’s legs were so long and his seat so far back it looked like he was sitting on the back seat; Meg had to turn her head a forty-five-degree angle in order to talk to him.
‘Has your mum left yet?’ she asked innocently as Connor motored up the road. She prayed Sarah had; being this close to her made her feel suddenly uneasy.
‘Yes, ages ago,’ replied Connor. He did another hair flick and his fringe landed back where it had started.
‘Great,’ said Meg. ‘I hope she likes my flat. It’s really tiny. Fancy her getting her old job back like that!’
‘Yeah,’ muttered Connor.
‘Do you mind?’
‘Mind what?’
‘Your mum going up to work in London and me coming here for a while?’
Connor just shrugged, then indicated left, navigating a woman on a bike with an enormous shopping basket. Two chickens appeared to be flapping in it.
‘I’ve left my job for two months,’ Meg added.
‘Oh, right.’
‘I own a model agency in London. Tempest Models? Perhaps your mum’s told you?’
‘Nope.’ Connor shook his head and didn’t look remotely impressed.
‘I look after models.’ Still nothing. God, she was at an awkward angle trying to talk to him, with him almost sitting in the back and everything. ‘One of my girls – my friend, actually – is Clarissa Fenton-Blue. Have you heard of her?’
‘Everyone’s heard of Clarissa Fenton-Blue,’ said Connor, finally showing a flicker of animation. ‘She’s hot!’
Meg felt gratified Connor was showing a bit of an interest at last. In London she was used to people being excited to meet her. She wondered exactly what Sarah had said about her successful sister. ‘Does your mum talk about me much?’ she ventured. ‘Mention me at all?’
‘No, never,’ replied Connor, keeping his eyes on the road. ‘I’d forgotten you existed until yesterday, to be honest.’
‘Oh,’ said Meg. Still, she shouldn’t be surprised, should she? She never mentioned Sarah to anyone, either. ‘What do you do?’ she asked.
‘I work in a sandwich factory.’
‘Oh, OK.’ Meg nodded. ‘Management?’
‘No, production.’
‘Oh, right. Well, cool. Good money?’
‘No’ – Connor smiled – ‘but it suits me. We’re here.’
That was quick. She’d forgotten how near the cottage was to the station. Connor pulled up onto the short gravel drive and Meg stared at the front of the house. It was how she remembered it, but different. Before, years ago, the mottled brick stonework had always looked grey and chilly, now it had more of a soft honey glow. Had something been done to it? Repointing or whatever it was called? The cottage looked homely and pretty in the afternoon sun, especially as it had pink roses winding round its chocolate-box leaded windows and window boxes bursting with all kinds of flowers she would never be able to identify. Meg was surprised by a wash of feeling. A feeling that she had missed this place, very much, which was ridiculous as she obviously hadn’t. She didn’t dare think of Mum and Dad. Mum, at the window, waving like a lunatic as she walked to school every morning. Dad, in the front garden with his top off and his chest all tanned, mowing the lawn to a backdrop of Radio 2 from a tinny transistor radio on a stretched-to-capacity extension lead. No, no, she would not think of them. She couldn’t. Oh god, it had been a big mistake coming here; what on earth had she been thinking? She should have just maxed out her credit card and gone to Antigua.
‘Well, are you going to come in?’ asked Connor. He was standing outside the passenger window, her suitcase in his hand.
‘Yes. Yes, of course I’m coming in.’
Meg got out of the car and walked up the drive. The cottage still looked like one of those make-believe houses children draw. Red front door – now a little faded – a garden that wrapped all the way round, a winding path down to the front gate. She’d drawn it herself many times, as a kid. With them all standing outside.
Meg looked up at the top window, in the eaves, with the floral yellow curtains. That would be her room, wouldn’t it? It had been hers as a child and a teenager; she presumed the gothic stars and crescent moons had been painted over by now, the ancient tins of stinky, contraband tobacco removed from their hiding places. She certainly hadn’t cleared out the room properly when she’d left. Done a bunk, that’s how it was referred to. By her, anyway. She’d stayed in another attic room recently, in Kensington – with a man she saw casually for two weeks: a man who thought Lynx Africa was a room spray and not a body one.
Meg followed Connor to the front door, which he unlocked. She stepped over the pile of shoes that were styling the porch and into the small front hall, where she almost gasped at how familiar the smell was. It hit her like a tomahawk, that slightly musty, unmistakable odour of Old House. She breathed it all in; the wonky walls, the wall-mounted family photos she knew she wouldn’t be in; the potpourri. She could see beyond into the sitting room. It looked the same – sunflower yellow walls, oak floorboards obscured by the ‘posh’ ‘Persian’ rug Mum had loved so much – yet distinctly more cluttered: a hoodie thrown on the back of a sofa, magazines lying on the floor; mugs and plates and glasses everywhere. Mum had never allowed clutter downstairs; neither had Sarah, back in the day. It was so, so weird to be back. Meg felt like grabbing her suitcase from Connor and running away all over again. Instead, she watched as a tall girl as graceful as a gazelle came wafting down the stairs in front of her. Thick, wavy honey-hued hair. Not a scrap of make-up but it was a face that didn’t need any. And the legs on her! Meg’s model scouting radar was twitching.
‘Olivia?’
Olivia stepped forward to give her aunt a vague, barely touching hug; she smelled of raspberries and freshly washed hair. ‘Hello, Meg. Auntie Meg.’
Again, Meg was assaulted by guilt and sadness that she’d never met her niece and nephew, had missed so many years of them. They were her flesh and blood. Olivia had the same wide-set eyes, the same brown hair as Connor. But how could she have had a relationship with them when she didn’t have one with their mother?
She smiled at Olivia then noticed something. A note of suspicion. Olivia’s wide-set eyes were narrowed, her head was slightly tipped to one side; Meg was being appraised.
‘I’ll go upstairs and unpack, shall I?’ said Meg brightly, deciding to ignore her appraisal. ‘Am I in the attic?’
‘Yes,’ said Olivia. Her eyes were still narrowed. Meg realized she was so used to staring at people, checking them out as prospective models; she didn’t like it when it was the other way round. ‘You look nothing like Mum, but at the same time you do.’
‘Right,’ said Meg. ‘So, I’ll go on up …’ Meg took her case and climbed both sets of stairs, momentarily amused that she could remember every creak, and walked into her old bedroom. It was now decorated a pale cream, with a fraying beige carpet, a double bed with white bedding with tiny yellow roses, a chest of drawers with a dusty jug and bowl on top and a huge oak wardrobe with a padded gingham heart hanging off the key in its lock. All very slightly down-at-heel country cottage, but far from the gothic den she had once wallowed in, Sisters of Mercy blaring from her stereo, black bitten-down nails skittering on bare boards in time to the music, joss sticks and weird lava lamps, blackout blinds permanently drawn, skull and crossbones scribbled on the walls and empty gin bottles sliding around under the bed.
Meg put her case in one corner, lay on the lovely white bed and looked up at the clean white ceiling and the little skylight where she had once hung a grotty wind chime thing. A seagull – a proper one, from the distant Suffolk coast, not the London variety, intent on nicking someone’s panini – circled overhead, cawing happily.
She was back. Back here for two months. Against her will, basically.
Meg felt a horrible sinking feeling in her chest which surely couldn’t be good for her blood pressure.
What the hell was she doing here?
Chapter Six (#ulink_224a13cd-4f16-5eb4-bd71-ce1baa5c7c80)
Sarah
‘The pavement’s for walking on, you dozy mare. Move out of the way!’
‘Oh, terribly sorry. Sorry about that.’ Sarah looked up from her phone and Google Maps to see a pugnacious man in a football shirt of unspecified denomination glaring at her before he rolled his bulging eyes back in his head and stormed past.
‘Sorry!’ she called ineffectually after him. She’d forgotten how busy London streets could be, even at eight o’clock on a Sunday night, and how she, too, used to get irritated by people who veered all over the pavement, or tourists who came to an abrupt stop when they spotted a blue plaque or some Ye Olde London monument.
She was outside Meg’s flat, or at least she thought she was. She double-checked the address again. Yes, this was it – 44 Raglan Street, W1 – and Meg was Flat 3, fourth floor.
It had been a long, arduous journey to get here – far longer and slower than she had expected – which she had mostly whiled away planning what clothes shops she was going to visit and browsing Pinterest for ‘work looks’ she could probably never pull off. By the time she’d got to Liverpool Street she couldn’t face the Tube, so she’d taken a taxi, with a very chatty driver who’d told her each and every famous person he’d had in the back of his cab. Each time she’d seemed remotely underwhelmed he’d added another one until the ‘celebrity’ pool was well and truly dredged; by Tottenham Court Road it was an H from Steps impersonator and a woman who’d once baked a Cornish pasty for John Major. The taxi had also been very hot and she’d opened the window all the way down and breathed in the smells of London: the food, a different cuisine for every restaurant they flashed past; the diesel fumes from rumbling, brake-hissing buses; the smell of beer and cigarettes from people enjoying a warm Sunday evening outside pubs and bars; and the unmistakable honk of opportunity and new beginnings. She was here; she was back in London. She was actually doing this.
Right, she thought. Meg had gamely said she’d leave a key under the front door mat of her flat for her, but how was Sarah to get into the building in the first place? She hung around for a bit; perhaps if someone turned up she could slip in behind them, like they did in the movies. Not that she belonged in the movies; she was in mum jeans, a creased lilac T-shirt and a pair of supermarket trainers.
Nobody came. She stood there for quite a while. OK, this was no good … Perhaps someone on the list of names and buzzers to the right of the door would take pity on her and let her in.
She pressed the top buzzer. Nothing. The second, ‘C. Clegg’. The buzzer rang twice, then, ‘Hello?’ a clear voice rang out.
‘Oh hi, my sister lives in Flat 3, fourth floor, I’ve got a key for it, but I can’t get into the building. Is there any chance you could let me in, please?’
‘You’re Meg’s sister?’
‘Er … yes?’
‘I didn’t know she had one, darling!’ the voice laughed. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Sarah.’
‘Sarah …’ The voice sounded like she was mulling it over, trying it out for size. ‘OK, Sarah, I’m buzzing you in.’
A buzz sounded, the door clicked and Sarah pushed it and stepped inside. The hall was blank, devoid of personality or any feature apart from a lift at the back. Sarah didn’t like lifts; she took the stairs, and four floors later she was outside Meg’s front door, as was a blonde in a pair of ripped boyfriend jeans, a white vest and a striped neck tie, who was sitting crossed-legged and bare-footed at the foot of it, tapping away on a phone.
‘Hi, Sarah.’ The woman looked up, and stood up, and Sarah did a massive, quite embarrassing double-take. Bloody hell, it was Clarissa Fenton-Blue! She’d recognize her anywhere. She had calves longer than most people’s full legs. She had sapphire blue eyes that could pierce bubble-wrap. And what Harry would have declared a ‘rack that could stop traffic’. And she completely surprised Sarah by lunging forward and enveloping her in an enormous hug. ‘I’m Clarissa,’ she breathed in the direction of Sarah’s ear. ‘I live downstairs.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Sarah. She wished she’d taken the lift now; why had she thought it a good idea to lug the awkward family case up three flights? Clarissa was (of course) all cool looking and stunning; Sarah was sweating like a pig and feeling incredibly frumpy in front of this goddess. She decided to burn all her clothes immediately.
‘So, Meg’s gone away for a while,’ said Clarissa, releasing Sarah and tossing her long blonde ponytail from side to side. ‘She texted me from a coach.’ She screwed her face up.
‘Yes,’ said Sarah as the ponytail swung like a propeller above Clarissa’s head. ‘She’s gone to stay in my cottage in Suffolk and I’m coming to stay here for a couple of months. We’re doing a bit of a swap.’
‘A bit of a swap? She didn’t mention that! I didn’t know she had a sister, either. She always says I’m her sister from another mister.’ Clarissa laughed, then her beautiful face turned more serious. ‘A bit scary about the blood pressure thing, isn’t it? Probably sensible for her to get out of London for a while. You don’t look much alike,’ Clarissa added, looking Sarah up and down. ‘You’re a lot taller. Rocking body, though.’
Sarah was taken aback. A rocking body? Really? She looked down at her horrible jeans then back up to Clarissa’s clear, earnest face.
‘So, what will you be doing in London, honey?’
‘Events Organizer,’ said Sarah. ‘It’s what I used to do.’
‘Cool!’ Clarissa put her phone in her jeans’ back pocket and suddenly loped off down the corridor, her impressive thigh gap about a foot wide. ‘Come for gin and Hobnobs with me sometime?’ she called over her shoulder.
‘OK,’ said Sarah, to Clarissa’s retreating figure. ‘Thank you.’ And she reached under the mat for the key and let herself into Meg’s flat.
*
It was just as she would have imagined a trendy London studio flat. Super modern: all character features long stripped out and replaced with white walls, a polished floor and one of those modern, inset fireplaces on the wall with nothing in it, not like Sarah’s ever-unswept sitting-room fireplace with its permanently foot-high fire basket of ash, grotty hearth, and accompanying log basket full of sweet wrappers. The whole place was tiny, though; Sarah could virtually see the entire flat from the front door. The kitchen was simply a corner at one end of the room, the ‘bedroom’ another – it was just a bed, a narrow wardrobe and a chest of drawers – and a door to the left was open to a minuscule bathroom which was sparkling white and very clean-looking.
Sarah would never have imagined this to be Meg’s flat. It appeared the sisters had not only swapped dwellings, but domestic ranking. Sarah always used to be the stickler for tidiness; since having the twins she lived in a cluttered pit. Meg used to be a messy little rat; Sarah was astonished to find she now had Howard Hughes’s standards of cleanliness.
Sarah paced around, taking it all in. There were Warhol pop-art prints of Marilyn on the walls, framed arty photos of models on floating shelves, a huge stack of Vogues on the floor, by the ‘fireplace’. The bathroom had black and white tiles and a large canvas of Ava Gardner above the loo. The ‘sitting room’ had a squishy pink suede chair and white voile drapes at the window. It was all rather gorgeous.
‘I bet the cupboards are bare, though,’ muttered Sarah to herself, as she went to the corner where the kitchen was. Her own were always bulging at the seams. ‘Bingo!’ she said, flinging a door open. There was a box of low calorie Cuppa Soup – half empty – and a small tin of sweetcorn. Another yielded a packet of unopened spaghetti and a jar of pesto sauce, use-by date three years ago. The fridge was bare too, except for a miniature bottle of champagne and two of perfume in a Perspex box. Sarah checked the oven expecting it was used to store jumpers, but it was empty, and she saw a pile of cards for posh takeaway places on the counter, weighted by a bottle of vitamin C tablets. She doubted Meg would get any home-cooked meals at Orchard Cottage either – there’d be three of them there now who couldn’t cook.
Sarah lugged her case over to the corner of the flat where the bed was. It was freshly made with white sheets – Egyptian cotton? There were no cushions, no fraying, slightly grubby throws. The whole ‘bedroom’, apart from the Marilyn portraits, was stark, spare and pared down. Perfect. She could do with some pared down in her life, she thought, as she sat on the bed. Clear the decks, start afresh. Get her life back as it had been a long time ago. Although of course she didn’t want it exactly back to how it was, because then she wouldn’t have Connor and Olivia. She sent her son a quick text.
Has Auntie Meg arrived? Everything OK?
Yeah, she’s here, a text winged back. All good thanks.
Expansive, as always. Connor would be on the beanbag in his room, playing Minecraft, eating the last of the Pringles.
Don’t forget to tell her how to work the hot water.
I won’t.
She could see him flinging his phone down on the beanbag, sniffing, then resuming his game. He didn’t really want to talk to her, but that was nothing new. He was a boy of few words. Then she started worrying. Did he sound particularly clipped? Bitter? Despite his chilled nonchalance when he took her to the station, was he secretly angry with her for leaving them? Was he furious she’d abandoned them to go up to London? Sarah smoothed the immaculate top sheet with her hand. Maybe both her children would resent her forever for leaving them.
Her heart started pounding. She shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be up in London and in this strange flat of the sister she didn’t know any more; she should be home, with her children, cooking them hot meals and looking after them. How could she have been so happy on the way up here, so excited, when she was leaving starving, suffering urchins at home?
Sarah decided to worsen her sudden anguish by pulling a photo of her babies from her handbag and had to suppress a giant sob (thank goodness Monty wasn’t also in the picture or she’d be inconsolable). Look at them! Look at their faces! Placing the photo on one of Meg’s pristine pillows, she stared at it. She’d always been the ultimate helicopter mum, hovering over them, micro-managing their every move; hot-housing them into clubs and activities of every description … and yes, overcompensating for the lack of philandering, adulterous Harry, who’d buggered off down to the West Country after they’d divorced. She liked being all-encompassing, smothering Tiger Mum. She’d poured her heart and soul into it. She’d kind of given up on it in recent years and let the chaos take over, but they needed her. They couldn’t function without her; they would flood the house, burn the kitchen down, forget to put the bins out … and she knew Meg would be no use in stopping these disasters. Sarah had an overwhelming urge to go home. To lock Meg’s door behind her and go. But she couldn’t. Meg was there now; they had promised to swap. She’d also agreed to take this job, which started tomorrow. She’d made her bed and she’d just have to lie in it, so she lay back on her sister’s and took a deep breath.
There was a ring at the doorbell. Who on earth could that be? Clarissa, brandishing Hobnobs? The fashion police come to wrench these heinous trainers off her feet? Sarah got up from the bed and opened the door to a very well-dressed thirty-something bloke sporting loafers and no socks, chinos and a white shirt, and an expensive-looking navy jumper slung over his shoulders.
‘Oh hiiiiii,’ he drawled. ‘I was visiting someone else in the building. My uncle,’ he added, vaguely – Sarah guessed he had used the ‘slip in behind someone’ approach she hadn’t had the patience for. ‘Is Meg here?’
‘No, she’s not here. I’m her sister.’
‘I’m Mikey.’ He looked past Sarah’s shoulder as though she hadn’t been telling the truth.
Very posh, Sarah decided. And sort of good-looking, if you had a thing for reptiles. ‘Hello, Mikey.’
‘I was wondering if she might come for dinner.’
‘Well,’ said Sarah, ‘she can’t as she’s not here.’ She was instantly taken back to her twenties when all sorts of undesirables had come knocking for Meg and she’d sent them away with an increasingly far-fetched range of excuses, depending on her mood: Meg was in the bath, Meg was out at a Girl Guide meeting being presented with her Hostessing badge, Meg had run away to join the circus and wouldn’t be back for three years. That last one Sarah had actually hoped was true on a number of occasions. Then, she wondered, was this man Meg’s boyfriend? Meg always had a boyfriend. ‘Do you want me to tell her you called?’
‘No, I’ll text her.’ He looked fairly jolly about it.
‘Super,’ said Sarah, out of nowhere. Is that what they said in London? And Mikey jogged off in the direction of the lift, the arms of his jumper swinging.
Her sister’s boyfriend. Interesting. Meg had never mentioned anything about leaving someone behind in London. Then again, why would she? The two sisters knew nothing of each other’s life, especially not love life. Meg would have met Harry at distant Uncle Compton’s funeral fifteen years ago (not that she would have paid much attention; she was on her phone most of the time) – it was just before the straw that broke the camel’s back; the discovery of affair number four – but she didn’t know the story of Harry. How after Meg had left for London, Sarah had met him in The Duke of Wellington and had virtually leapt into his arms. How he’d been staying in the room above the pub, that he was an artist, painting local pastoral scenes. That, from his very first word, he had treated Sarah like she mattered – which was just what she needed. She had drunk him in, lapped up his love like a thirsty dog at a bowl; she had moved him in within a month. The twins didn’t take long to follow, but a mere few years after that Harry, a historical loner, clearly found the cottage too crowded. Solitude and solace were sought elsewhere. Many elsewheres, in many beds …
After Harry, Sarah had been war wounded. She’d only met one seemingly decent man since, when the twins were about eight – a solicitor called David – and she’d fallen hard, again, but he’d turned out to be married, inflicting Sarah with another wound as fresh and painful as the first. She decided she was done at that point. That she was better off on her own. Just her and the twins would do from now on – no complications, no upset. Hadn’t she already been through enough? Falling in love and getting hurt really wasn’t good for her and she was determined not to ever do it again.
Sarah closed the door. She decided she needed to get a major grip. What had she told herself? That she was going to get some life back for herself. It was time for her to stop thinking about the past – Harry and all the bad times – and even about the twins too much. Now was the time to focus on her and the return to her career.
She walked back over to the bedroom, unclasped her case and unpacked her stuff in whatever space she could find in Meg’s tall, thin wardrobe and chest of drawers. Meg had a lot of clothes – all neatly arranged and hung and folded, and Sarah enjoyed having a good nose through them. They were still about the same size, she realized – big boobs, non-existent hips – although, as Clarissa had rightly pointed out, Meg was quite a few inches shorter. Sarah pulled out a pair of red suede court shoes – perilously high, in a shoebox with a photo of them glued to the front – and tried to stuff her long size sevens them. They were way too small. Shame.
By the time she was done, and the horrid red case shoved under Meg’s bed, Sarah realized it was ten o’clock. She’d better get to sleep; after all, she had work in the morning. She was thrilled about it, excited, and nervous as hell.
All OK?
She was in her pyjamas and under Meg’s cool sheets. She texted Olivia before she turned out the light.
All’s fine, Mum.
How is Auntie Meg? Do you think you’ll get on?
I don’t know. We don’t know her.
No. Neither did Sarah.
What are you going to do tomorrow?
Probably go to the cinema with Jude.
Jude? Who was Jude? The new boyfriend?
New boyfriend?
Yes. Smiley face.
A casual one I hope?
Night, Mum. Oh, she was being dismissed. Served her right, she supposed.
Night, Olivia.
Sarah slipped further down under the covers. A siren went off in the street below and a car alarm started shrilling angrily. Sarah couldn’t help but smile to herself as she turned her face towards the pillow.
Welcome to your new world, she thought. You’re not in Tipperton Mallet any more, my girl.
Chapter Seven (#ulink_01fbccfc-ad91-50ea-ba67-d971b35c5515)
Meg
Meg was woken by a cockerel crowing lustfully from somewhere beyond the window. She groaned. Really? There was still a cockerel here, making a row loud enough to wake the dead every morning? It used to drive her nuts. Stuffing a pillow over her head, she tried to get another five minutes, but the cockerel wouldn’t shut up, so the pillow was shoved off and Meg sat up.
What time was it? Quarter past seven. Oh, pretty early, but country folk always got up early, as far as she remembered. They had boring things to do like livestock to feed and crops to water and stuff. Anyway, she got up earlier than this in London. She’d be on her way to the office by now, doing the first leg of her power walk. God, she wished she was on it right now. What on earth was she going to do here all day?
She checked her phone, her emails. There were loads, all being forwarded to Lilith. It made her blood boil to think of Lilith sitting at her desk, doing her work. Actually, it made her heart race. Palpitations, oh god. She took one of her tablets and forced herself to calm down and breathe. She was here to get better, not worked up, and once she was better she could get back to London. She sent silent pleas to her blood pressure to lower. And then she texted Clarissa.
Hi, lovely, all OK for the Rome job today?
Yes, Lilith already called me. Everything all arranged.
Great. Meg texted this with her teeth firmly gritted. Don’t forget we need to get you a new passport at the end of August.
Yes, I know. Guess what? I met your sister.
Already? Obviously, they might bump into each other, in the lift or something, but Meg hadn’t thought it would be so soon.
Really? How was she? It was strange that after fifteen years, Clarissa had seen Sarah and she hadn’t.
Nice. Nothing like you.
Charming!
I mean looks wise. You’re tiny, she’s tall.
The genetic lottery. She got Dad’s, I got Mum’s. What did you think of her?
She was nice. Friendly. How come you never told me you had a sister? That was a difficult question for Meg to answer. Because she found it easier to not mention Sarah, to not explain why she didn’t see her. Because she was happier trying to breeze through life without thinking about her. Clarissa liked her sister, though. Interesting. Although first impressions did have the tricky habit of being deceiving.
It just never came up, texted Meg, lamely.
OK, replied Clarissa. She was a smart girl; she knew when to let things go. I invited her for coffee sometime.
Oh, not so smart. Why?
I don’t know, I just felt sorry for her. She seems … vulnerable.
I doubt it, responded Meg. When had Sarah ever been vulnerable? Controlling, condescending, strict, and implacable, yes. Vulnerable, no. So, have a great time in Rome. I’ll speak to you soon x
Will do. Hope you’ll be ok down there. Don’t break any farmers’ hearts!
I’ll try not to x
Meg got out of bed. She hadn’t brought her white waffle dressing gown as there hadn’t been room in her bag, but the bathroom was down on the landing and she was wearing her short cotton nightie, the one with the straps that kept falling down, so her eyes darted round the room for something she could put on. Oh, there, on the hook on the back of the door was Sarah’s old faithful – that yellow dressing gown Meg used to hate. Sarah had worn it more than once picking Meg up from various pubs. It was fluffy and made Sarah look like Big Bird; Big Bird had usually sat in the driver’s seat, looking highly disapproving and sour faced. Meg couldn’t believe Sarah still had it.
After a quick shower and a good old nose at Sarah’s toiletries (all supermarket brand and totally uninspiring), Meg, dressed in designer jeans and an old Gentlemen Prefer Blondes T-shirt, walked down to the kitchen. All was quiet – except for the sound of gentle snoring coming from Connor’s room upstairs. Meg opened the fridge, took the plastic milk carton out of the door by the lid and the whole thing fell on the floor, splattering milk everywhere. What the hell? She grabbed a cloth from the side of the sink and quickly cleared it up. Teenagers! She would have to get used to living with them, and living with people in general again. She hadn’t shared anything much with anyone for a long time.
Meg poked about in the fridge and the cupboards and was not surprised to see them all groaning with food. Sarah had always been good at keeping groceries stocked up. When she came back to Tipperton Mallet to be Meg’s guardian she’d primly said, on the very first night, that Meg had always been very well fed when their parents were alive, and she was going to have to keep that up. Meg had been served ‘proper’ home-cooked meals by Sarah – martyring around the kitchen in Mum’s ‘cat’ apron – for two whole years, which Meg still felt resentful about. Every dinner in their mother’s repertoire had been replicated: spaghetti Bolognaise, cottage pie, smoked haddock and cheese sauce, endless casseroles … Each recipe had been un-deviated from. Except nothing had been the same. All those meals had done was make Meg feel sad and angry. Every mouthful had just filled her with further bitterness and grief.
Meg slammed shut the door of the last cupboard, which was stuffed with different types of pasta. She made herself a quick piece of toast and Marmite, then called up the stairs to any teenager who might be listening. ‘I’m just going out!’ She would go for a walk, lower the blood pressure, follow the doctor’s bloody orders … see if, miraculously, there was anything interesting going on around here these days.
From upstairs came the sound of a door opening. ‘Are you going to Binty’s?’ grunted an almost indecipherable Morgan Freeman. Bloody hell, Binty’s, thought Meg – was that still there?
‘I don’t know,’ shouted up Meg. ‘Why?’
‘I fancy some doughnuts,’ grunted Connor. ‘Please.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Meg called up. ‘What time are you going to work?’
‘Not ’til tonight. I’m on shifts. Thaaanks.’ The door banged shut again.
‘OK,’ muttered Meg to herself. ‘Doughnuts.’
She pulled on a pair of Sarah’s wellies that were in the tiny boot room by the back door – she may have to have a sort out at some stage; it was as messy as the porch – adding a thick pair of socks she managed to extract from the huge pile of footwear and miscellaneous items there, as the wellies were too big. And she stepped out of the back door.
‘Bloody Nora!’ A thick, pungent pong of manure slapped her right in the face and nearly knocked her for six. ‘Muck spreading’, that’s what her parents called it; Dad sometimes used to put a comical washing line peg on his nose as he mowed the lawn. Mum used to laugh and say it was good for clearing the sinuses. Meg shook her head and tried to zone out the stench – she preferred Eau de London: traffic fumes, food of every denomination, the occasional drain – and stomped down the stony path that wove through the overgrown back garden to the low hedge and wooden gate at the end. Beyond, all she could see were fields. Fields and yet more fields. Ugh. Meg prayed for an oasis of a Starbucks or a Costa on reaching the village. Maybe one had sprung up since she was last here. She could lounge on a sofa with a latte, read the emails she wasn’t allowed to reply to and pretend she was back in London.
The field was on a slight incline and furrowed, so Meg followed the lines. If she went straight up this field and right along the next two she would reach the village. Not that she was in any rush. She, sadly, had all the time in the world. It was a hot morning – she should have worn flip-flops not wellies – and she tried to make the effort to appreciate it. Not that she ever had – this walk across the fields to the village had only ever been highly dull. Birds were chirping overhead, bees hummed in the hedgerows, there was the distant sound of shots … Shots? Meg ducked automatically, going into a kind of comedy walking squat, peering around her. Then she remembered. Mad people in green tweedy jackets liked to shoot pheasants around these here parts. She straightened up again.
Meg was on the second field now. There was a bull in the neighbouring one, trumpeting and looking angry about something. The third was planted with some kind of shaggy grass – she remembered, with a giant yawn, that each field had something different every year – and sloped downwards. Finally, she came to the road. It looked exactly the same as it had twenty years ago: dead boring. To get on to it she had to climb the old stile set into the thick, dense hedge. She’d done it a million times before, to be picked up seconds later by some rusty old banger with an unsuitable boyfriend in it, who would take her to pubs in various neighbouring towns and villages, or, sometimes, to Ipswich, for a night of usually underwhelming underage clubbing. There was a huge cowpat on the road, the other side of the stile, but she wouldn’t be falling for that one. She was an old hat at climbing stiles; she used to live here.
The beam that crossed the middle of the stile was worn and a little slippery. The further two steps to the top were rough and sturdy. Once up there, Meg looked over to the village. She could see The Duke of Wellington, her local old stomping ground, where so many hilarious and terrible nights had taken place. The awful hairdresser’s, old-fashioned even back then. The ancient village green, looking just the same. No Starbucks, no Costa. Oh well, what did she expect? Covent Garden? A life-size replica of the London Eye?
Meg stepped down onto the beam the other side. She was still looking over at the village, wondering what time the pub opened, when her foot, sliding around in the too-big welly, made slippery contact with the edge of the beam and skidded off. It flailed, trying but failing to land, and, before she knew it, she was crashing through the air and landing right on her backside in the enormous cowpat. Oh god! She was hapless City Girl, wasn’t she, she thought, as she landed – like in books – who falls into a cowpat only to be rescued by the handsome local vet, whom, after a few chapters of resistance, she marries on the village green with all the locals cheering and waving bunting … Yuk.
‘Oh, sh—’ she was about to say, but before she could get the very apt words out or even begin to struggle to get up, she was highly surprised to be suddenly and forcefully flattened into said cowpat by a steamrollering, rushing grey hulk of taut muscle and tickly, silky fur.
‘Oof! What the bloody hell?’ Meg, with a very soggy bottom and shocked limbs, was prone, on the ground, and something was licking her face with a very large, wet tongue. ‘Get off me!’
There was a whistle, from somewhere in the distance, and the thing that was licking Meg stopped licking her and raised its head away, tilted in curiosity. It had huge, floppy, silky ears, jowly chops and eyes that said ‘I wish I could lick you again.’ Then there was another whistle and the creature bounded up and galloped over to a man who was walking swiftly up the road.
‘Come on, boy! Good boy, Garfield. Oh god, I’m so, so sorry.’
Meg slowly picked herself up off the ground. She checked herself out for physical damage – none, apparently, apart from a sore arse and – sartorial disaster – oh, not good, designer jeans probably ruined. Still, at least she was alive. Miraculously, she had survived being rugby tackled by the biggest dog in the world.
‘I’m so sorry,’ repeated the man. He now had the enormous beast on some kind of lead and had almost reached Meg. She recognized him, didn’t she? He was the man from the field outside the train station. The one with the horse. She’d been right – he was handsome. He looked thirty-something, tall, floppy brown hair, brown eyes, wearing jeans and a checked blue shirt. Very good-looking, for a country sort, she acknowledged. Shame his dog was an absolute animal.
‘That’s one big dog,’ she commented dryly, checking her elbows for grazes. ‘And isn’t Garfield a cat?’
‘Sorry he’s such a brute,’ said the man. ‘And he’s named after Andrew Garfield, from the Spiderman movies. I’m a Marvel fan.’
‘Marvellous,’ she retorted.
‘I’m sure he’s very sorry, too.’ The man gave a sheepish grin; it would have been quite cute had he not indirectly tried to kill her. ‘I guess he saw you and just had to come and make friends.’ He patted Garfield the dog, who snuffled his wet nose into the man’s hand.
‘Some way to make friends.’ Meg sniffed. ‘Knock a person to the ground and then lick them half to death!’ She looked at the dog suspiciously. It was staring at her with love in its eyes and an overactive tongue. Meg was not a dog person; never had been. They were smelly, they needed walking all the time, they ambushed people on the street and their not-sorry-enough owners had to apologize for them … She was really glad Sarah only had a cat, not that she’d seen hide nor tail of him yet.
‘I really am very sorry.’ The man ran a hand through a head of floppy hair; it had a slight wave and looked overdue for a cut. ‘He has form for this, I admit. Great Danes do get very excitable, I’m afraid.’
‘Fabulous, I’ve been mauled by Scooby-Doo,’ said Meg. ‘I guess that makes you Shaggy?’ She glanced at him, from under her stripy side-sweep fringe. He was really rather good-looking, she had to admit. Not her usual type, but definitely flirtable with. She smiled a wide, slow smile and ran her fingers through her tousled hair, a couple of classic ‘pulling’ gestures of hers. This man could be a fun, no-strings-attached dalliance, like the ones she had in London – a ‘thing’ to stop her being bored, and it was not like she was going to fall in love with him or anything. She knew better than to fall in love. People you loved left you; any fool knew that. Her parents, the two men she was foolish enough to have serious love affairs with in her early years in London … The first had left her for a revoltingly talented opera singer; the second had been cruel throughout and then had broken her heart by simply falling out of love with her in the most devastating way. She was not stupid enough to go anywhere again where she might get hurt.
The man responded to her two shameless classic pulling gestures with a look of suspicion. ‘I’m not sure I possess the Seventies slacker clothing or the gormless expression,’ he replied, his voice suddenly gruff. Oh. He patted Scooby-Doo on his silky back and looked at her ruefully. Moody type, despite the initial bonhomie, she surmised. Oh well. Trying to lighten him up might be entertaining; she had nothing else to do.
‘Well, you’d look cute with both,’ she said. ‘Shaggy could do with a re-boot.’ She gave him a slight wink, for good measure and her own amusement. Surely he would go back to smiling, nice country-person now and start flirting with her back.
‘Where are you headed?’ he asked; his expression still guarded. ‘Are you going into the village?’
‘Yes, I’m off to have a little look around,’ she said.
‘I’m going that way,’ he said brusquely. ‘I’ll walk with you.’
They walked for a while in silence. He had wellies on, too. Those posh ones with the band of leather round the top. Garfield the Great Dane trotted next to them. That dog really was enormous, thought Meg. If he stood up on his hind legs you could do the foxtrot with him. There was more silence: this man was certainly not the chatty type. Funny, thought Meg; he’d seemed exactly that when he’d first approached.
‘What’s your name?’ Meg asked him.
‘Jamie Chase.’
‘I’m Meg.’
‘Nice to meet you, Meg.’ He said it without looking at her. He didn’t sound like it was ‘nice’ at all.
‘What do you do?’
‘I’m a vet.’
Meg threw her head back and laughed.
‘What’s so funny,’ he asked crossly.
‘Nothing, honestly.’
‘You think everyone in the country is a farmer or a vet?’
‘Well, you could include doctors – with their own country practice, a view of the fields and a stream of genial patients with minor and satisfying-to-treat ailments.’
‘Very good.’ He still sounded sour.
‘I read a lot of books,’ she offered, still teasing.
‘I see.’
Oh, she gave up! Perhaps he was busy, distracted, on his way to somewhere, she decided. He probably had a hamster to put down, or something, or somewhere unmentionable he needed to stick a Marigold-gloved hand. Shame, really. She switched tack and opted for polite small talk.
‘I’m staying here, at my sister’s cottage. Well, it used to be mine, too – once upon a time. Sarah Oxbury. Do you know her?’
‘You’re Sarah’s sister?’ He turned to her, surprised. ‘I never would have guessed that!’
What did he mean? Looks wise, probably, like Clarissa had said. Or did he mean Sarah was all grown-up and sensible, whilst she was all ridiculous and prone to falling in cowpats? She gingerly tugged at the wet backside of the jeans to temporarily release their vacuum suction from her knickers. Ugh.
‘Well, I am,’ she said defiantly. She wasn’t sure if she was defending her sister, or herself. ‘I used to live here. I left when I was eighteen. I work in London. I run my own mo—’ She stopped herself; he looked like he wasn’t interested. His mouth was set like one of those presidents on Mount Rushmore. Only Garfield looked animated. He was all bouncy, like he might leap up at her at any moment and have another go. ‘So, you know Sarah?’ she said instead.
‘I know Monty, mainly,’ said Jamie. ‘Her cat? But Sarah’s very nice.’ A car passed them, its windows down.
‘All right, Jamie?’ came a voice.
‘All right, Trevor!’ Jamie waved, a huge grin on his face suddenly, and he gave another cheery wave as the car’s horn made a jaunty beep. Oh. He was friendly to other people, noted Meg. Maybe it was just her. ‘That cat certainly makes its presence known. Last time it came into the surgery it knocked over a week’s supply of prescriptions.’ He chuckled to himself. They were at the village now. One final corner to turn and before them was a tiny circular village green, raised and bordered by a low wall and surrounded by a circumference of lopsided pastel-painted houses, wedged tight and leaning on each other and all characterized by flinty, weather-beaten roofs, sunken skew-whiff doors and weeny small-paned windows. To the left of the houses was a timbered peach and black pub with a swinging sign – The Duke of Wellington. A ginger cat stretched itself full-length on a solitary picnic table outside, basking in the early-morning sun.
It was all the same as it ever was. How very disappointing.
‘One of your charges?’ asked Meg, referring to the cat.
‘Lord Hamish the Third, yes. So, see you around,’ said Jamie and he turned and headed off down the lane to the left of the green which promised the village hall, according to an old-fashioned sign. The ginger cat looked up from its slumber.
‘Bye, then,’ said Meg, somewhat petulantly. Her charms were clearly deserting her. Or he was simply a moody git, even if he was annoyingly handsome. She hoped she wouldn’t see Jamie or Garfield again. Especially Jamie, and she’d prefer Garfield, actually. A close eye would have to be kept on this Monty, she realized, when he showed up – no skirmishes with other cats, no eating things he shouldn’t … absolutely no trips to the vet.
Once Moody Jamie had disappeared off down the lane, Meg looked around her. Yep, there was Binty’s – a Wall’s Ice Cream metal sign gently swinging next to a wooden stool with a cardboard tray of eggs on the top; a brown stone front, brown tinted glass in the window and a brown painted door. And there was Les Metcalfe Hair, the near-fossilized hairdresser’s with a faded poster of Farah Fawcett in the window. Shiny Metropolitan London could not feel further away.
The door to Binty’s opened with the familiar clang of an ancient bell. Brown uneven oak floorboards? Check. Scowly ancient person behind counter in brown jumper, despite the heat outside? Check, although Meg noticed it was a new ancient person. Not Scowly Steven, who always used to tell her off for being too loud. There were shelves of old-fashioned sweet jars behind the new old scowly person, a basket full of freshly baked bread and doughnuts on the counter and shelves all around filled with approximately one of everything – a tin of beans, a packet of jelly, a tin box of teabags, reminding Meg of when she and Sarah used to play ‘shops’. She wondered if Binty’s still had one of those old-fashioned cash registers, with the ping.
‘Morning,’ said a scowly voice.
‘Good morning!’ said Meg brightly. ‘How much are the doughnuts?’
‘Five for two pound.’ Oh, they were cheap! She’d get a magazine and a bar of chocolate as well. ‘I’ve never seen you before,’ said the woman peering over the top of horn-rimmed glasses and stroking her beard. ‘Are you a tourist?’
‘No. I used to live here.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Er … Meg Oxbury.’
‘The hooligan? Oh, I’ve heard about you! Your poor sister!’
‘Oh. Right.’ Meg was taken aback. ‘Well … er, five doughnuts please?’
Meg hurriedly paid for her purchases and dashed out of the shop as quickly as she could. Hooligan! What an exaggeration! She hadn’t been that bad. Clutching her brown paper bag of doughnuts, Meg strode round the path which circled the green.
‘Morning.’ An old man in a flat cap greeted her as he walked past. This was better; someone who actually looked pleased to see her.
‘Morning!’ she replied chirpily. She’d forgotten everyone greeted everyone else in the country. No one said ‘Morning!’ in London – people avoided each other at all cost. Woe betide you if you caught someone’s eye on the Tube, and if you dared say ‘hello’ to anyone, they called the police.
She walked the perimeter of the green, perched on the village’s Witching Stone outside the pub, and munched on one of the doughnuts. She supposed she should find ‘hooligan’ funny. Silly old bat. How did she even know about Meg? And Meg had just enjoyed some drunken skirmishes, that was all. Teenage shenanigans. Some people liked to make a big old fuss about nothing. Including Sarah. Especially Sarah.
It was only eleven o’clock; the whole rest of the day to fill. Perhaps Meg would have a mosey down to the village hall, see if anything exciting was happening there; there certainly never used to be. That’s where Sarah had said she held the art class, wasn’t it? And the library used to be there. She’d go and have a look. Perhaps she’d soon be bored enough of Tipperton Mallet to actually take both of them on. Lord knows she needed something to do. God, she missed London.
Back Lane, which ran down to the village hall, was flanked by slightly larger cottages than those on the green and set back on the right-hand side, on a raised grassy knoll, was an old red phone box. It had been there for donkey’s years. She peered in as she passed. It was always nice to see one; the ones remaining in London absolutely thrilled the foreign tourists. Meg expected to see a broken receiver dangling from a battered cradle; some dog-eared cards offering dubious services; at least one shattered pane of glass; and possibly an old phonebook, yellowed apart from the blackened corner where it had been set alight by bored teenagers. Just like it had been when she’d last stepped a scuffed Adidas trainer inside.
‘Oh, wow!’ she exclaimed out loud. Why this was delightful, and so, so cute. The phone box was a library. The whole back panel had been fitted with wooden shelves and was floor-to-ceiling crammed with books. A small sign hung from the top shelf with string saying, ‘Please help yourself and donate your old books. Thank you.’ Sarah’s familiar handwriting.
This was the library her sister ran; the big one in the village hall must have closed.
Meg pulled open the door and stepped inside. She adored the smell of books – sometimes she went into London City Library, if she was near, just to breathe in that gorgeous library smell – and it was not what these phone boxes used to smell of, that was for sure. It was lovely in there; there was also a tiny white table and chair, suitable for a toddler – Meg may have sat down on it were it not for her cowpat-splattered rear.
She had a browse. There were self-help books and non-fiction on the top two shelves, children’s books at the bottom and general fiction in the middle. Meg’s eyes scanned along. Modern chick lit, thrillers, historical romances; quite the little goldmine. She might take something out – Lord knows she had plenty of time on her hands. Her eyes alighted on a very familiar title. Little Women. One of those old navy bound classics, with the gold-embossed writing. Funny, it looked like Sarah’s old copy. Meg pulled it out. Oh my goodness, it was Sarah’s old copy. She opened the dust cover. Yes, inside in neat, childish handwriting, ‘This book belongs to Sarah Oxbury’. It had probably been doing the rounds of village readers for years. Meg smiled. Sarah had read Little Women to Meg when she was, what, six and Sarah had been sixteen? They’d loved that one of the sisters was called Meg; they’d laughed at the funny bits and been sad at the sad bits. Sarah had sat on the end of Meg’s bed and had read a chapter a night in a soothing, steady voice. What a different sixteen-year-old Sarah had been to Meg’s. Sensible, careful, quiet and organized. Then again, the sixteen-year-old Sarah didn’t have dead parents.
Meg decided in a fit of nostalgia she would read Little Women again. She took it, shifting the other books up slightly to fill in the gap. Was it OK to just take it? She presumed it wasn’t a library where you had to have a card, or your book stamped? What did Sarah have to do? Just keep it tidy? Then she headed further down the lane to the village hall, a red-brick Thirties building with a pitched roof and white pillars out the front. The double doors were open, so she wandered right in to the front entrance.
‘Garfield?’
The Great Dane was bounding out of a side room towards her and barking like an explosion in a biscuit factory. Meg shrunk back against the wall in mild terror.
‘Garfield!’ An elderly lady dressed in a red jumpsuit and flat silver mules bustled up the corridor, a pile of papers in her arms and her hair swept back from her face in an enormous Princess Anne cottage loaf. ‘Step away from the young lady! There’s a good boy.’ Garfield stopped, gave a long drawn-out sound like Chewbacca having a yawn, then trotted over to the lady who patted him on the head. ‘There’s a very good reason it was a Great Dane which led the Twilight Bark to get news of the missing puppies out in 101 Dalmatians.’ The woman smiled at Meg.
‘Yes, that’s quite a bark,’ agreed Meg. ‘I met Garfield earlier,’ she added. ‘Is Jamie here?’ She hoped not.
‘Jamie? He’s gone to the surgery. Are you looking for him?’
‘No, I met him earlier, too. I thought Garfield was his.’
‘No, Garfield belongs to me. Jamie just walks him for me. He’s my son,’ she added.
‘Oh, right.’ The village was still as close knit as ever, then. She’d never seen this lady before, though; the family must have moved to Tipperton Mallet after she’d left.
‘Did you get that from the library?’ enquired the woman, looking at the book in Meg’s left hand.
‘Yes,’ said Meg. ‘I hope it was OK to take it?’
‘Yes, yes, fine. I’m keeping an eye on the library at the moment. It’s not normally our job, but our lovely library lady is away.’
‘I know,’ said Meg. Well, she didn’t know how ‘lovely’ Sarah was; it certainly wasn’t how she remembered her. ‘I’m her sister.’
‘You’re Sarah’s sister?’ Another one. Why did everyone have to say that? ‘Why, you’re nothing alike!’
‘Right, well, I’m staying at Orchard Cottage for two months,’ said Meg. ‘Sarah’s in my flat in London. She’s got a job there. We swapped houses.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said the woman. ‘Tell me, would you like to run the library while she’s away?’ Oh, very direct, thought Meg, but she could already tell this was that kind of woman.
‘She’s already asked me,’ said Meg. ‘Kind of. What would I have to do?’
‘Keep it tidy; sort any books that get donated. The decent ones go on the shelves, the others we get rid of. Sorry, I should introduce myself. I’m Violet Chase, I’m head of the parish council.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Violet. I’m Meg. OK, I might be up for doing that,’ Meg said. ‘And the other thing Sarah mentioned was running the art class.’ Well, she might as well. There was nothing else to do. No dalliances to be had. If she was busy, the time would go quicker and she could get back to London faster.
‘Yes, it’s life drawing. Thursdays at eleven a.m. There’s not much to it. I’ll be here to let everyone in. You’ll just have to make sure everyone behaves, really.’
‘Life drawing? I didn’t know that. So there’s a model?’
‘Yes.’ Violet smiled. ‘I think Sarah books someone different each week. She’ll have a list somewhere.’
‘OK, I’ll do it. It sounds … fun.’ Meg would rather be booking models for her clients in Paris, but hey, this would do, for a while. Needs must.
‘Fantastic. Meet you here on Thursday at ten forty-five, then,’ said Violet. Meg turned to go, but then Violet called after her, ‘Did Jamie ask you out when you met him?’
‘No …’ said Meg, wondering how to respond. Of course he hadn’t; he’d pretty much detested her on the spot.
‘Surprising,’ said Violet, looking at Meg quizzically. ‘You’re just his type.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Meg, rather at a loss for what else to say. ‘So, OK, thank you. I’ll see you on Thursday.’
‘See you then,’ said Violet, and Garfield gave a bark as if to punctuate things.
Meg left the village hall for the trudge back across the fields to Orchard Cottage.
Chapter Eight (#ulink_221a8fd5-c9fc-5faf-8988-9fef03bcc736)
Sarah
Sarah had been at her new job in London for approximately three hours and already felt mentally drained. It had been a long morning. She wondered what to have for lunch and where she would get it from. She wondered if the coffee machine in the corner of the office was free or whether you had to pay for it. She wondered why she had not returned to her former career sooner as she was absolutely loving it.
She’d let herself out of the flat at eight o’clock this morning, quite a civilized hour, she’d reasoned, then travelled the four stops on the Tube feeling extremely nervous, and worrying about how she looked. When she’d laid her clothes out on Meg’s bed early this morning, she’d realized her black skirt and white blouse was going to make her look like a waitress, so she’d rooted around in her sister’s wardrobe for something less Service Industry. Everything Meg had hanging up was so glamorous, but she’d found a navy shift dress which, though far too tight, she hoped she could tone down, glamourwise, when she added her boring black courts.
It was weird wearing Meg’s dress, she’d thought, as she looked in the mirror. This was what her sister wore, when she did her glamorous job and lived her glamorous life. How jealous Sarah had been of it over the years, while she’d changed nappies, and got divorced, and picked up pieces of fish finger from the floor, and wept over Harry’s affairs, and had endless nights on her own, watching telly, and trudged over the fields in the rain with two whingeing children, to nursery in the village hall. Now here she was, in London, doing a job that called for a dress like this.
Her hair didn’t match, Sarah had decided; it looked so mumsy she felt she was going to a PTA meeting from the neck up, so she’d consulted Meg’s many expensive-looking lotions and potions in the bathroom and ended up slicking back her hair into a kind of wet look quiff with some trendy hair gel. Not bad, she’d thought, as she’d looked back in the mirror. She did look rather accidentally sexy, though, and hoped nobody would notice.
Her heart was thumping as she’d travelled down the escalator at her final Tube stop, realizing she’d forgotten the rule about not standing on the left – she’d had to move over when she got a giant tut from somebody behind trying to power climb. She stood on the right and stared at the posters she was gliding past: West End shows, new book releases, weight loss programmes – all in identical oblongs framed in chrome. They had changed since she’d been here last – lots of these moved, and videos advertising all sorts talked at her as she descended.
The office for House Events had also moved, from a dark and poky office above a cigarette and magazine kiosk in Soho, to a gleaming glass-fronted office, just off Tinder Street. As she stood outside, Sarah realized House Events was now impossibly trendy and wondered how she would possibly fit in. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door and walked into the marble lobby. Ahead of her was an opaque reception desk with a shiny silver lift glinting beyond it, and the receptionist behind it looked about eighteen.
‘Good morning, welcome to House Events, London. How may I help you?’
‘Good morning. I’m Sarah Oxbury,’ said Sarah, her voice wavering. ‘I’m starting work here today.’
‘Sarah, welcome. We’ve been expecting you. I’m Joanna. Let me just give you a pack’ – she reached into her desk for a coloured file –‘and then we’ll get you whisked upstairs.’
Joanna handed Sarah the file and then buzzed through to someone on her snazzy-looking phone: ‘About to bring Sarah Oxbury up.’
Joanna escorted Sarah to the lift. Its surfaces reflected all parts of her like an exposing kaleidoscope. Her bum looked big in this outfit and Meg’s dress suddenly looked not only tight and a tad too short but also indecent – Accidental Office Sex Bomb was really not a role Sarah wanted to inhabit. She realized she was shaking in her courts as the lift rose one floor and the doors whooshed open. Waiting outside it was a very tall, thin girl – early twenties? – with poker-straight white-blonde hair tucked behind her ears. She had a tight little smile, eyes that looked like turquoise precious stones, a tan drape-y dress with yards of material spun all around her, so she resembled a spindly chrysalis, and nude platform heels three sizes too big. She thrust out an arm at Sarah as though it were a baseball bat.
‘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.

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