The Sister Swap: the laugh-out-loud romantic comedy of the year!. Fiona Collins
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