Life Swap (2 page)

Amber had a house that
begged
her to host Highfield League of Young Ladies’ coffee mornings,
ached
for her to hold trunk shows displaying beautiful children’s clothes from a young designer she’d just discovered,
insisted
she invite the girls around for girls’ nights in, pretending it wasn’t just to show off her house.

Of course what these girls don’t realize as they ooh and aah over her galleried great room, her huge marble bathroom with Victorian-style claw-footed tub, is that Amber, Amber resplendent in her Prada clothes and Hermès bags, Amber with the perfect husband and gorgeous children, with her golden retriever who had been sent off to doggy boot camp to learn how to be a dog, is not as to the manor born as she so desperately wants others to think.

Amber Collins, as she was before she met Richard, was a fighter. She was brought up in a run-down trailer park backing on to the railroad from which her father left to get cigarettes when she was two years old, and never returned. Her mother had a succession of boyfriends
after that, men who would supply her with cigarettes and sometimes money to pay the rent, and Amber was left in the care of neighbours, becoming as self-sufficient as any child who doesn’t have parents around to take care of them.

Amber put herself through college. As a teenager she watched her friends get pregnant by loser boyfriends, saw them repeating the patterns of their parents, and she vowed her life would be different. She would make something of herself. She would leave all this behind.

She was lucky because she was clever. And luckier still because she was driven, had the motivation to work hard, to have a number of jobs throughout school, to save enough money to put herself through college.

At her State University Amber was careful to study people from different backgrounds, the girls from the middle classes, the girls who had a confidence, a sense of entitlement that was entirely new to Amber.

She listened to the way they spoke, noted how their speech was far softer than her strong New Jersey accent, and she changed her voice accordingly. She watched how they dressed, not in the skimpy mini-skirts and revealing tops of her friends, but in pants and loafers, chic simple clothes, cable-knit sweaters and flat ballet pumps.

She grew out her perm, learnt to wear her hair in a sleek shoulder-length bob, redid her make-up so it was natural and understated, and when she went home for the summer after her first year of university, no one recognized her. She was delighted.

She met Richard at a dinner party hosted by some friends who were the perfect embodiment of the people Amber aspired to be. By this time Amber was a lawyer, and she and Richard immediately bonded over their professional aspirations.

But mostly she was drawn to Richard because he had grown up with everything she’d never had. Originally from Brookline, Massachusetts, close to Boston, he had been brought up in a house that looked like a palace from the outside, and inside appeared to be falling apart. Old, old patrician money. Money so old that in fact it had disappeared. There was still the family compound, and an ancient valet who looked after the family, there just wasn’t the money to maintain it.

Richard’s mother, Ethel, but known to everyone as Icy, was, as her nickname suggests, a cool blonde in the Grace Kelly mould. Their Christmas cards were always family photos, the parents, five children and three dogs snapped unawares at their grandparents’ summer house on Martha’s Vineyard.

Richard didn’t have the money, but he had the background and he had the name. As soon as she heard it – Richard Winslow – she knew he was of the
Winslows
, and Amber was determined to make him fall in love with her.

It wasn’t easy. Despite her glossy hair and simple chic clothes, Amber knew that Richard had women falling at his feet. And so she played hard to get. She sat next to him at dinner and ignored him, professing to be fascinated by the terribly boring man on her left.

When he attempted to speak to her she was cool and uninterested, and the couple of times after dinner when she caught him looking at her with a puzzled expression, she just looked away.

She played it perfectly. Richard wasn’t used to women not responding to his charm and boy-next-door grin, wasn’t used to women not responding to the very fact that he was Richard Winslow of, yes, those Winslows.

So although Amber wasn’t quite his usual type – brainless models and bimbettes of varying hair colours and heights – he was intrigued, and when he got her phone number from the host of the party and phoned, and she acted as if she couldn’t remember meeting him, he was all the more interested.

It was the hardest thing Amber ever had to do. Harder even than reinventing herself and hiding her background. For this was something she wanted more than she had wanted anything in her life. This was her opportunity to be truly accepted. If she could get Richard to marry her she’d never have to worry about anything ever again.

When Richard phoned, Amber would pretend to be out. She’d sit in the living room biting her nails as her answer machine picked up. She only relaxed when she could see it was working. When caller ID showed that he kept phoning. One Saturday evening he phoned every ten minutes until one in the morning when she eventually picked up.

‘Where have you been?’ His little-boy-lost voice.

‘Just out with a friend,’ she said lightly. ‘No one you know.’ When in fact she had eaten cold pizza alone in her apartment, worked a few hours, then watched a couple of videos.

Amber developed an air of mystery that Richard couldn’t penetrate.

‘I don’t know what it is about her,’ he said to Hal, his best friend, ‘but she’s different. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before.’

They were married at the family compound in Brookline, and it truly was the happiest day of Amber’s life. Before you think this was all too premeditated, too cold, know that Amber had fallen deeply in love with Richard. That yes, she had decided he would be hers, and for all the wrong reasons, but the more she saw him, the more he made her laugh and made her relax, the more she realized that she loved him.

In fact, when she wasn’t trying so hard to be something that she wasn’t, Amber found that she was able to relax with Richard in a way she hadn’t ever been able to before.

But those days, those early carefree days of their marriage seem like a long time ago now. Richard’s career is going better and better – so well, in fact, that Amber hardly ever sees him – and although she loves their house in Highfield, adores her children, Jared and Grace, there is something about the old days that she misses.

Her house may be beautiful, but often it feels as if it’s not her own. There is the constant presence of
Lavinia, the nanny, not to mention the cleaning team that comes in three times a week to thorough clean.

Sometimes she gets back from meeting friends for lunch and tries to enjoy a quiet coffee in the kitchen, then Lavinia will come in and start emptying the dishwasher, or Jared and Grace will get back from school and jump around her, climbing onto her lap, desperate for her attention regardless of whether or not she’s in the middle of something important.

And there’s the ever-present guilt. She knows she’s a better mother when she’s able to spend quality time with her children, when she’s able to give them to Lavinia when they’re tired and clingy and whining, and yet she always feels guilty about not spending enough time with them.

But her life is so busy. It’s not that she ever wishes she didn’t have children – God forbid that thought should even cross her mind – it’s just that sometimes she wishes life were a bit simpler. And mostly she wishes that Richard were home more, although she knows this isn’t likely to change, and after all, look at all she has, look at her beautiful house, beautiful clothes. If Richard didn’t work the hours he does she’d never be able to have all this.

Oh how far she has come.

Chapter Two

‘Damn, damn, bugger and damn!’ Vicky checks her watch as she grabs her coat and starts to run towards the lift, shouting instructions to her assistant, Ruth.

‘Can you just make sure the copy for that story on anorexia is given to Janelle tonight. I’m so sorry but I’ve got to go – I’m already going to be late for this bloody dinner party.’

‘Another set-up?’ grins Ruth as Vicky is about to disappear out of the door.

‘Not even.’ Vicky rolls her eyes. ‘This time they asked me to bring a date and I completely forgot. Don’t forget that copy!’ And she steps into the lift.

Until she hit her early thirties the vast majority of Vicky’s friends were single. There was the core group of hard-bitten journalists, most of whom had worked together at one time or another. Jackie had been the other staff writer on
Poise!
when Vicky had first started, although now she had moved on to producing on Radio 4, regularly relying on Vicky to come on and be a talking head when the issue of the day was anything vaguely concerning women. The same age as Vicky, Jackie had got married two years previously and had created a bohemian love nest in Islington. No children as yet. Jan had been Vicky’s first features editor. A
decade older than Vicky, she had married young, had two children, then got divorced and rediscovered her career. She now lived with Mike, an editor on
The Times.

Georgia was the only one left who was still in the same boat as Vicky, but Georgia didn’t seem to mind in the slightest, which Vicky never quite understood. Like Vicky she too had a couple of lovers she could call up when necessary, but unlike Vicky she didn’t crave more than the odd night of intimacy.

Georgia never let her ‘friends’ stay the night. ‘Are you crazy?’ she once said to Vicky, who always insisted Daniel sleep over. ‘I want to stretch out and sleep diagonally on my bed if I feel like it. Plus I’m a horror first thing in the morning and I don’t want to see anyone, never mind let anyone see me.’

‘But don’t you miss the cuddling?’ Vicky said.

‘Are you kidding? I can’t bear anyone to touch me when I’m sleeping.’ Georgia shuddered. ‘Frankly as soon as they’ve done the dirty deed they can leave.’

Vicky laughed. ‘I’ll never understand you,’ she said. ‘You make it all sound so clinical.’

And Georgia shrugged. ‘I guess it is but that suits me. No point confusing sex with anything else. And really, at the end of the day, that’s all it’s about – sex. No strings attached. That’s your problem with that Daniel. You think it’s just about sex but how can it be when you want him to stay the night and wrap you up in those big manly strong arms of his?’

‘Oh shut up,’ Vicky said. But she had a point.

*

Ah, Daniel. Wouldn’t he be the perfect guest to this dinner party tonight? The dinner party held by Deborah, the final member of the core group who had not only dropped out first but had dropped out quicker and more absolutely than any of the others had dared.

Deborah and Dick. And their three gorgeous towheaded children. Deborah who had left her staff job on the
Daily Mail
when her second child came along, and now did the odd freelance job working from home. Deborah who was never happier than when standing outside the school gates of her eldest son’s exclusive Hampstead prep school, chatting to the other mothers about what exactly they would do to solve this bullying problem everyone was talking about.

Tonight was Deborah’s attempt to blend some of her new friends with some of her old. The friends from school were Lisa and Christopher, Chris and Vanessa – old friends of Dick’s, Jackie and Pete, and Vicky plus one. She did think about trying to find an appropriate single man for Vicky, but really, who has the time?

As for Vicky, the only reason she had accepted was because Jackie was going, and she never gets to see her socially these days, but why, oh why hadn’t she remembered she was supposed to bring a date?

Single men are not an easy thing to find when you’re thirty-five years old and you’ve got precisely one hour to catch the tube home, jump into the shower, make yourself presentable then turn up to a dinner party with a gift under one arm, trying not to look utterly frazzled.

But Daniel would be perfect. Hurrying to the Tube Vicky calls him on her mobile.

‘Lo?’

‘Daniel? It’s Vicky.’

‘Hey, Vicky! How are you?’

‘I’m great, Daniel, but listen, I know this is short notice but I’ve got to go to this dinner party tonight and I’ve only just found out I was supposed to bring a date. Please,
please
tell me you’re free.’

There’s a pause. ‘Oh Vix, I wish I’d known earlier, but I can’t. I’ve got a dinner myself.’

‘Oh please get out of it. Can’t you?’ Vicky lowers her voice seductively. ‘I’ll make it worth your while.’

‘Vix, I really couldn’t, but seeing as you’ve made such a strong case, how about I come over later? Say, around 11.30?’

‘Oh forget it,’ Vicky snaps. ‘I’m not your bloody sex toy,’ and with a sigh of irritation she clicks her phone shut.

It is only when Vicky walks into the living room that she remembers quite how much she detests being the only single person at events such as this.

Jackie and Pete are not here yet, and perched on sofas are women that Vicky doesn’t know, and even though Deborah sweeps her over and introduces her, it is clear from the outset that these are not people with whom she will have much in common.

Oh stop it, Vicky admonishes herself for these habits of old. I will not feel inferior to these people just
because I am single. I am Features Director of
Poise
!, for God’s sake. I am just as good as they are. Hell no, I am better.

But from the very first second Vicky knows she won’t be accepted. It’s the way the woman introduced to her as Vanessa glances at her boho chic outfit, so very different from Vanessa’s own Joseph trousers, Jimmy Choo boots, and chic little cashmere cardigan.

‘These are Maloles!’ Vicky is tempted to shout, proffering her gorgeous new shoes. ‘Yes that’s right, too trendy for you to even have heard of them in your uniform of Joseph and Jimmy Choo! I’m trendier than you. Ha!’ But of course that voice in Vicky’s head is only attempting to drown out the slightly stronger voice that tells Vicky she’s not quite good enough, she doesn’t fit in, she doesn’t have the uniform.