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

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

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 her self 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?