Life Swap (12 page)

Self-pity washes over her as she sinks her head in her hands, pushing her food away, wanting to just get away from all this pain.

‘Vicky? Whatever is the matter?’ Vicky looks up to see the concerned face of Janelle Salinger, a rarity only because Janelle usually goes out for lunch, rarely goes to the local sandwich shops or cafés herself. On the odd occasion she has a craving for a KitKat or a grilled chicken sandwich, she will send her assistant over, although today her assistant is off sick, and she’s spent the last hour dreaming of sour cream and onion crisps, which are now nestling at the bottom of her green ostrich Prada bag.

‘Oh nothing.’ Vicky attempts a bright smile, closing the paper so Janelle doesn’t see, because of course Vicky couldn’t keep it to herself – it was Jamie Donnelly, for heaven’s sake, how was she supposed to keep a pull like that to herself? She’d started off vowing to just tell Leona, but then she’d ended up confessing to Stella, and before she knew it assistants she barely even knew were standing admiringly at her desk and asking if it was true that she was going out with Jamie Donnelly.

I wish
, she had thought, but instead she had smiled serenely and said, ‘Oh I wouldn’t say that. We’re just seeing each other.’

And now clearly he is seeing Denise Van Outen.

‘I heard about you and Jamie Donnelly,’ Janelle says in a sympathetic voice, sitting down and noting exactly what Vicky had been reading and why she closed the paper. ‘You just saw the picture, didn’t you?’

At this show of sympathy Vicky’s voice finally breaks. ‘Oh God,’ she says, looking pleadingly at Janelle. ‘It wasn’t as if he was the love of my life, for God’s sake. It’s just that I’m thirty-five and it isn’t getting any easier and I hate being single and why the hell does this keep happening to me?’

Janelle nods in sympathy then places her hand on Vicky’s. ‘Vicky,’ she says. ‘I didn’t get married until I was forty. I was exactly where you are now. I never thought I’d find anyone but once I met Stephen it was just so right, and then I understood why none of the others before had worked out.’

But I don’t want to wait until I’m forty, Vicky thinks. I can’t wait another five years, and who’s to say it will even happen?

‘You will meet someone,’ Janelle continues. ‘Trust me.’

‘When?’ Vicky blurts out. ‘And how do you know? I don’t think I ever will. I’m going to end up with Eartha, pushing a bloody shopping trolley.’

‘Who’s Eartha?’

‘My cat,’ Vicky sniffs.

‘Oh. Maybe you’re romanticizing too much. Do you think perhaps that might be something to do with it? Because it’s not all a bed of roses. I think the problem with all you young girls today is you expect marriage to be like something out of a movie, and the minute it becomes boring, or bland, the minute your heart stops beating faster, you’re all running to the divorce court. Honestly, Vicky, you have a wonderful life being single, why don’t you just try and enjoy it, because once you start really enjoying it Mr Right will come along, and there are plenty of women who’d leave their husbands in a heartbeat to be single and have a fabulously glamorous life as the features director of
Poise!
.’

Vicky looks at Janelle in amazement, because Janelle is more romantic than the rest of the staff put together. She’s the one who comes in every Valentine’s Day spouting on and on about the benefits of sharing rose-petal baths with your partner, and how she and Stephen are still – yawn – as blissfully happy as the day they met.

‘That’s what my sister-in-law always says,’ Vicky admits eventually. ‘She says she’d swap with me in a heartbeat. I’d take her up on it except then I’d have to sleep with my brother.’ Vicky attempts a grin, but Janelle doesn’t smile. Her eyes have that faraway look in them that means she’s got an idea brewing.

‘Swap with a married woman,’ she says slowly. ‘What a brilliant idea! Not your sister-in-law – but it’s true, plenty of married women
would
want your job. We could run an ad in the magazine looking for a married woman
who would swap, then,’ she flashes a brilliant smile at Vicky, ‘you could go off and see what it would really be like to be married.’

‘You mean like
Wife Swap
on TV?’ Vicky says dubiously.

‘Yes, but we’d take it further.’ Janelle’s voice quickens as she grows more excited.

‘You mean I’d have to sleep with the husband?’ Vicky is confused.

‘No, don’t be ridiculous. Not unless you fancied him. But I mean swap lives. Swap wardrobes, swap everything. Wear her clothes, go out with her friends. See if you could really experience what it would mean for you, a single girl, to be married with children, and see if a married woman could go back to being single. It’s brilliant. We always think the grass is greener on the other side, and this would be a real opportunity to find out.’

‘But why would a married woman leave her husband and children to do it?’

‘Because she’s bored, unfulfilled, would love to work for
Poise!
. Who knows why, a myriad of reasons, but I bet you if we advertise we’ll get hundreds of replies. Maybe even thousands…’ She sits silently for a few seconds, staring into space. ‘Life Swap!’ she announces loudly with a flourish. ‘We’ll call it Life Swap and if we hurry we can probably get it in the June issue. Oh Vicky,’ she leans over and gives Vicky a hug, ‘this is a genius idea. Well done. Quite brilliant.’

‘It’s a pleasure,’ says Vicky, leaning back, trying to
figure out what just happened as Janelle disappears off in a flurry of Prada. Oh God, she thinks, standing up wearily as she puts the
Sun
in the bin. Did I really just agree to a life swap? Am I out of my tiny mind?

But maybe it won’t be so bad, she decides, getting into the lift. After all, given this most recent Jamie Donnelly fiasco, could her life really get any worse?

Chapter Nine

Richard Winslow has a Sunday morning routine. Leaving Amber asleep in bed, he dresses the kids, piles them and the dog into the car, picks up doughnuts, muffins, orange juice and coffee and heads down to the beach in the neighbouring town of Westport.

They start with breakfast at one of the picnic tables, Jared and Gracie ending up feeding the remains of the food to Ginger, the retriever, who spends the entire meal begging hopefully before happily devouring the leftovers. Amber keeps quizzing Richard as to why Ginger is so enormous given that he is walked every day by Lavinia and that he is not allowed to eat food from the table, but that of course is only when Amber is around, and Amber is so often not around for the children’s mealtimes, so often not around to see how the children delight in throwing food on the kitchen floor to be eagerly lapped up by a grateful Ginger.

Sunday is Richard’s time with the children. During the week he leaves the house too early and gets home too late to have any real quality time with them, and although he sometimes wishes he had just a bit of downtime to himself on the weekends, the idea of being with his children is so wonderful – occasionally far more wonderful than the reality, when they’re both
screaming and fighting – that he sacrifices what little time he might have for himself and spends it with the kids.

They walk Ginger along the beach, then leave him tied to a bench as Jared and Gracie spend a good couple of hours climbing on the playground. Richard has now come to know the Sunday morning playground regulars – the other fathers who don’t see the kids during the week, who bring them down to the playground as an excuse for themselves to bond with the other dads.

And the children have become friends too. They have formed a big pack, the older boys and the younger ones who struggle to keep up, leaping off the huge slide, pretending not to be scared even as their little jaws wobble with fear.

‘Hey, Rich!’ A tall man in a baseball cap, cradling a Starbucks coffee, waves to Richard from across the playground. ‘How’s it going?’ He wanders up, shaking Richard by the hand.

‘Hey, Steve, how’s the world of Hedge Funds?’

‘Great. Beats the Street. No commuting, no hassle, and what a market. We’re up ten plus year-to-date. How ’bout that KKD trade?’

‘Not bad.’ Richard starts looking around for the kids.

‘Come on,’ Steve grins. ‘You guys must have made boatloads. What did you take on that – five bucks?’

‘Well…’ Richard shrugs.

‘More than that?’ Steve raises an eyebrow. ‘Come on, how much did they hit you for?’

‘I don’t kiss and tell,’ Richard says. ‘Listen, I’ve got to go find the kids,’ and with a wave he quickly leaves.

Richard can’t stop worrying about money. Mostly, he tries to keep these worries to himself, but when he does mention his concerns to Amber, she teases him, tells him not to be so ridiculous, he is a Winslow after all, not to mention the most successful Winslow of this past generation.

He’s trying to relax, but every month his Platinum American Express bills arrive, and every month he gives Amber a pep talk, explains that she has to curb her spending, that she can’t just buy everything she wants just because she wants it, and that next month he expects the bill to be lower, and the next month the bill is even higher.

‘But it’s the League gala coming up,’ she had crooned to him one night, after his anger had dispersed somewhat. ‘I can’t wear Gap to the gala. I’m on the committee. I have to look good,’ she’d said, kissing his neck in a way usually guaranteed to make him forget all his worries.

‘Several thousand dollars?’ he had gasped, attempting to push her away.

‘It’s Oscar de la Renta,’ she’d whispered, straddling his lap in a way she didn’t tend to do much these days. ‘It’s a classic,’ she’d whispered again, reaching down with her right hand, and soon he hadn’t thought about anything much at all.

It had been so different when they met. In the beginning,
those heady, early days, he had loved that Amber wasn’t a gold-digger. He was so used to the high-maintenance Manhattan socialites that Amber was a breath of fresh air. She may have looked high-maintenance, but he quickly discovered that she painted her own nails, dyed her own hair in the bathroom sink, and bought her exquisitely tailored clothes at huge discounts from Loehmanns.

He’d never met anyone that resourceful before, never met anyone so seemingly uninterested in finding Mr Right, or Mr Rich, to keep them in a manner to which they had always been accustomed – Park Avenue and Prada.

He would go to parties all the time and meet these gorgeous girls, each one thinner, blonder and prettier than the next, and at the mention of his name – Richard Winslow III – he would see their eyes widen slightly in recognition, notice that suddenly they were placing a hand on his arm rather more often than was altogether necessary, leaning in and laughing as they flicked their hair around, even if what he was saying wasn’t the slightest bit funny.

Amber had been different. Where the others were flirtatious, she was cool. Where they were keen, she was diffident. Where they were eager, she was nonchalant. In the beginning she was a challenge. After all, who was this woman who didn’t want him? She wasn’t as thin, as blonde or as pretty as everyone else, and yet
they
all wanted him. She intrigued him, and part of that intrigue was her background, the fact that she didn’t come
from money, didn’t need money, didn’t even seem to particularly want money.

When they had started living together they lived like every other couple on the Upper West Side. Sunday brunches at Sarabeth’s, strolling through the park in sweats and sneakers, both of them in matching baseball caps.

Jared had been born at Mount Sinai. They had subsequently turned their dining room in their one-bedroomed apartment into a makeshift nursery, then moved ten floors down to a two-bedroomed apartment in the same building, and then, when Amber discovered she was pregnant again, they had decided to look further afield.

They had looked at Westchester, but neither of them felt particularly at home there. The
New York Times
had recently run a piece saying Highfield, Connecticut, was the hottest place for young families and Wall Street hotshots, and both of them had immediately sped up there, had strolled down pretty Main Street for an ice cream at the old-fashioned ice-cream parlour, and had decided, by the time they reached the other end, that Highfield was home.

At first glance Highfield appeared to have country charm galore, to be the quintessential New England town, with just a touch of city sophistication. There were art galleries dotted along Main Street, proving the old stories that Highfield had started as a small creative community of artists and writers.

They had walked into a realtor’s office, Jared in his
stroller, and before they knew it were looking at properties, and compared to Manhattan real estate prices this seemed to be a bargain.

Within six months they had packed up their apartment and bought the house that was to become the house of their dreams. Richard’s bonus had been a small fortune that year, and they were able to build exactly what they wanted, no compromise.

If only he’d known then what he knew now.

At first it had felt that they had more of a simpler life, it had felt quieter, more peaceful, more real than Manhattan. Richard would commute on the train every day, and as they passed from New York into Connecticut he would feel able to breathe again, as if all the tensions and stresses of the day were leaving him as he crossed the state line.

He had loved looking out of the window and seeing tree tops. Waking up in the morning to see a herd of deer grazing at the hostas in their front yard, which he knew would send Amber into a fury, but was nonetheless magical.

And he had loved their house, both the sixties colonial they had torn down, and the huge house they had built from scratch in its place. Their huge, brand new house that a jealous person might describe as a ‘McMansion’, but which was exactly the sort of house Richard had always dreamt of living in.

The house had everything Richard could possibly want. A cherry-panelled library, a gas Viking barbecue next to the swimming pool, room for a tennis
court should he so desire, and a fully decked-out screening room in the basement.