The Switch Read online

  “No hope?”

  “Yeah. No hope. Lovely. We all know where we stand—alone, as we entered the world, so we shall leave it, et cetera, et cetera … Whereas dating, dating is full of hope. In fact, dating is really one long, painful exercise in discovering how disappointing other humans are. Every time you start to believe you’ve found a good, kind man…” She wiggles her fingers. “Out come the mummy issues and the fragile egos and the weird cheese fetishes.”

  The waiter finally looks our way. “The usual?” he calls across the café.

  “Yup! Extra syrup on her pancakes,” Bee calls back, pointing at me.

  “Did you say cheese fetishes?” I ask.

  “Let’s just say I’ve seen some photos that’ve really put me off brie.”

  “Brie?” I say, horrified. “But—oh, God, brie is so delicious! How could anyone corrupt brie?”

  Bee pats my hand. “I suspect you’ll never have to find out, my friend. In fact, yes, if I’m supposed to be cheering you up, why aren’t we talking about your ever-so-perfect love life? Surely the countdown’s on for Ethan to pop the question.” She catches my expression. “No? Don’t want to talk about that either?”

  “I’ve just got…” I flap my hand, eyes pricking again. “A big wave of the horror. Oh, God. Oh God, oh God.”

  “Which life crisis are you oh-godding about, just so I know?” Bee asks.

  “Work.” I press my knuckles against my eyes until it hurts. “I can’t believe they’re not staffing me for two whole months. It’s like a … like a mini firing.”

  “Actually,” Bee says, and her tone makes me move my hands and open my eyes, “it’s a two-month holiday.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “Leena, I love you, and I know you’ve got a lot of shit going on right now, but please try to see that this could be a good thing? Because it’s going to be quite hard to continue loving you if you’re going to spend the next eight weeks complaining about getting two months’ paid leave.”

  “Oh, I…”

  “You could go to Bali! Or explore the Amazon rainforest! Or sail around the world!” She raises her eyebrows. “Do you know what I’d give to have that kind of freedom?”

  I swallow. “Yes. Right. Sorry, Bee.”

  “You’re all right. I know this is about more than time off work for you. Just spare a thought for those of us who spend our allotted holiday at dinosaur museums full of nine-year-olds, yeah?”

  I breathe in and out slowly, trying to let that sink in. “Thank you,” I say, as the waiter approaches our table. “I needed to hear that.”

  Bee smiles at me, then looks down at her plate. “You know,” she says casually, “you could use the time off to get back to our business plan.”

  I wince. Bee and I have been planning on setting up our own consultancy firm for a couple of years—we were almost ready to go when Carla got sick. Now things have kind of … stalled a little.

  “Yes!” I say, as cheerily as I can manage. “Absolutely.”

  Bee raises an eyebrow. I sag.

  “I’m so sorry, Bee. I want to, I really do, it just feels … impossible now. How are we going to launch our own business when I’m finding it so hard just holding down my job at Selmount?”

  Bee chews a mouthful of pancake and looks thoughtful. “OK,” she says. “Your confidence has taken a hit lately, I get it. I can wait. But even if you don’t use this time to work on the business plan, you should use it to work on you. My Leena Cotton doesn’t talk about ‘holding down a job’ like that’s the best she can do, and she definitely doesn’t use the word ‘impossible.’ And I want my Leena Cotton back. So,” she points her fork at me, “you’ve got two months to find her for me.”

  “And how am I doing that?”

  Bee shrugs. “‘Finding yourself’ isn’t really my forte. I’m just doing strategy here—you’re on deliverables.”

  That gets a laugh out of me. “Thank you, Bee,” I say suddenly, reaching to clutch her hand. “You’re so great. Really. You’re phenomenal.”

  “Mmm, well. Tell that to the single men of London, my friend,” she says, giving my hand a pat and then picking up her fork again.

  2

  Eileen

  It’s been four lovely long months since my husband made off with the instructor from our dance class, and until this very moment I haven’t missed him once.

  I stare at the jar on the sideboard with my eyes narrowed. My wrist is still singing with pain from a quarter of an hour trying to wrench off the lid, but I’m not giving up. Some women live alone all their lives and they eat food out of jars.

  I give the jar a good glare and myself a good talking-to. I am a seventy-nine-year-old woman. I have given birth. I have chained myself to a bulldozer to save a forest. I have stood up to Betsy about the new parking rules on Lower Lane.

  I can open this wretched jar of pasta sauce.

  Dec eyes me from the windowsill as I rummage through the drawer of kitchen implements in search of something that’ll do the job of my increasingly useless fingers.

  “You think I’m a daft old woman, don’t you?” I say to the cat.

  Dec swishes his tail. It’s a sardonic swish. All humans are daft, that swish says. You should take a leaf out of my book. I have my jars opened for me.

  “Well, just be grateful your dinner for tonight is in a pouch,” I tell him, waggling a spaghetti spoon his way. I don’t even like cats. It was Wade’s idea to get kittens last year, but he lost interest in Ant and Dec when he found Miss Cha-Cha-Cha and decided that Hamleigh was too small for him, and that only old people keep cats. You can keep them both, he said, with an air of great magnanimity. They suit your lifestyle better.

  Smug sod. He’s older than me, anyway—eighty-one come September. And as for my lifestyle … Well. Just you wait and see, Wade Cotton. Just you bloody wait and see.

  “Things are going to be changing around here, Declan,” I tell the cat, my fingers closing around the bread knife in the back of the drawer. Dec gives a slow, unimpressed blink, then his eyes widen and he swishes out of the window as I lift the knife with both hands to stab the lid of the jar. I let out a little ha! as I pierce it; it takes me a few stabs, like an amateur murderer in an Agatha Christie play, but this time when I twist the lid it turns easily. I hum to myself as I triumphantly empty the contents into the pan.

  There. Once the sauce has warmed through and the pasta’s cooked, I settle back down at the dining-room table with my dinner and examine my list.

  Basil Wallingham

  Pros:

  - Lives just down the road—not far to walk

  - Own teeth

  - Still got enough oomph in him to chase squirrels off birdfeeders chase squirrels off birdfeeders chase squirrels off birdfeeders

  Cons:

  - Tremendous bore

  - Always wearing tweed

  - Might well be a fascist

  Mr. Rogers

  Pros:

  - Only 67

  - Full head of hair (very impressive)

  - Dances like Pasha off of Strictly (even more impressive)

  - Polite to everyone, even Basil (most impressive of all)

  Cons:

  - Highly religious man. Very pious. Likely to be dull in bed?

  - Only visits Hamleigh once a month

  - Shown no signs of interest in anyone except Jesus

  Dr. Piotr Nowak

  Pros:

  - Polish. How exciting!

  - Doctor. Useful for ailments

  - Very interesting to talk to and exceptional at Scrabble

  Cons:

  - Rather too young for me (59)

  - Almost certainly still in love with ex-wife

  - Looks a bit like Wade (not his fault but off-putting)

  I chew slowly and pick up my pen. I’ve been ignoring this thought all day, but … I really ought to list all the unattached gentlemen of the right age. After all, I’ve put Basil on there, haven’t I?

  Arno
ld Macintyre

  Pros:

  - Lives next door

  - Appropriate age (72)

  Cons:

  - Odious human being

  - Poisoned my rabbit (as yet unproven, granted, but I know he did)

  - Cut back my tree full of birds’ nests

  - Sucks all joy from the world

  - Probably feasts on kittens for breakfast

  - Likely descended from ogres

  - Hates me almost as much as I hate him

  I cross out likely descended from ogres after a moment, because I ought not to bring his parents into it—they might have been perfectly nice for all I know. But I’m leaving the part about kittens.

  There. A complete list. I tilt my head, but it looks just as bleak from that angle as it does straight on. I have to face the truth: pickings are very slim in Hamleigh-in-Harksdale, population one hundred and sixty-eight. If I want to find love at this stage of my life, I need to be looking farther afield. Over to Tauntingham, for instance. There’s at least two hundred people in Tauntingham, and it’s only thirty minutes on the bus.

  The telephone rings; I get to the living room just in time.

  “Hello?”

  “Grandma? It’s Leena.”

  I beam. “Hold on, let me get myself sat down.”

  I settle back into my favorite armchair, the green one with the rose pattern. This phone call is the best part of any day. Even when it was bitterly sad, when all we talked about was Carla’s death—or anything but that, because that felt too painful—even then, these calls with Leena kept me going.

  “How are you, love?” I ask Leena.

  “I’m fine, how are you?”

  I narrow my eyes. “You’re not fine.”

  “I know, it just came out, sorry. Like when someone sneezes and you say ‘bless you.’” I hear her swallow. “Grandma, I had this—I had a panic attack at work. They’ve sent me off on a two-month sabbatical.”

  “Oh, Leena!” I press my hand to my heart. “But it’s no bad thing that you’re getting some time off,” I say quickly. “A little break from it all will do you good.”

  “They’re side-lining me. I’ve been off my game, Grandma.”

  “Well, that’s understandable, given…”

  “No,” she says, and her voice catches, “it’s not. God, I—I promised Carla, I told her I wouldn’t let it hold me back, losing her, and she always said—she said she was so proud, but now I’ve…”

  She’s crying. My hand grips at my cardigan, like Ant’s or Dec’s paws when they’re sitting in my lap. Even as a child, Leena hardly ever cried. Not like Carla. When Carla was upset, she would throw her arms in the air, the very picture of misery, like a melodramatic actress in a play—it was hard not to laugh. But Leena would just frown and dip her head, looking up at you reproachfully through those long, dark eyelashes.

  “Come on, love. Carla would have wanted you to take holidays,” I tell her.

  “I know I should be thinking of it as a holiday, but I can’t. It’s just … I hate that I messed up.” This is muffled, as if she’s speaking into her hands.

  I take off my glasses and rub the bridge of my nose. “You didn’t mess up, love. You’re stressed, that’s what it is. Why don’t you come up and stay this weekend? Everything looks better over a mug of hot chocolate, and we can talk properly, and you can have a little break from it all, up here in Hamleigh…”

  There’s a long silence.

  “You haven’t been to visit for an awfully long time,” I say tentatively.

  “I know. I’m really sorry, Grandma.”

  “Oh, that’s all right. You came up when Wade left, I was ever so grateful for that. And I’m very lucky to have a granddaughter who calls me so often.”

  “But I know chatting over the phone isn’t the same. And it’s not that I … You know I really would love to see you.”

  No mention of her mother. Before Carla’s death, Leena would have come up to see Marian once a month at least. When will this end, this miserable feud between them? I’m so careful never to mention it—I don’t want to interfere, it’s not my place. But …

  “Did your mother call you?”

  Another long silence. “Yes.”

  “About…” What was it she’d settled on in the end? “Hypertherapy?”

  “Hypnotherapy.”

  “Ah, yes.”

  Leena says nothing. She’s so steely, our Leena. How will the two of them ever get through this when they’re both so bloody stubborn?

  “Right. I’ll stay out of it,” I say into the silence.

  “I’m sorry, Grandma. I know it’s hard for you.”

  “No, no, don’t worry about me. But will you think about coming up here at the weekend? It’s hard to help from so far away, love.”

  I hear her sniff. “Do you know what, Grandma, I will come. I’ve been meaning to, and—and I really would love to see you.”

  “There!” I beam. “It’ll be lovely. I’ll make you one of your favorites for dinner and clue you in on all the village gossip. Roland’s on a diet, you know. And Betsy tried to dye her hair, but it went wrong, and I had to drive her to the hairdresser’s with a tea towel on her head.”

  Leena snorts with laughter. “Thanks, Grandma,” she says after a moment. “You always know how to make me feel better.”

  “That’s what Eileens do,” I say. “They look after each other.” I used to say that to her as a child—Leena’s full name is Eileen too. Marian named her after me when we all thought I was dying after a bad bout of pneumonia back in the early nineties; when we realized I wasn’t at death’s door after all it got very confusing, and so Leena became Leena.

  “Love you, Grandma,” she says.

  “You too, love.”

  After she hangs up the telephone, I realize I’ve not told her about my new project. I wince. I promised myself I would tell her the next time she called. It’s not that I’m embarrassed to be looking for love, exactly. But young people tend to find old people wanting to fall in love rather funny. Not unkindly, just without thinking, the way you laugh at children behaving like grown-ups, or husbands trying to do the weekly shop.

  I make my way back to the dining room and, when I get there, I look down at my sad little list of eligible Hamleigh men. It all feels rather small now. My thoughts are full of Carla. I try to think of other things—Basil’s tweed jackets, Piotr’s ex-wife—but it’s no use, so I settle down and let myself remember.

  I think of Carla as a little girl, with a mass of curls and scuffed knees, clutching her sister’s hand. I think of her as the young woman in a washed-out Greenpeace T-shirt, too thin, but grinning, full of fire. And then I think of the Carla who lay in Marian’s front room. Gaunt and drawn and fighting the cancer with all she had left.

  I shouldn’t paint her that way, as if she looked weak—she was still so Carla, still fiery. Even on Leena’s last visit, just days before she died, Carla would take no nonsense from her big sister.

  She was in her special hospital bed, brought into Marian’s living room one evening by a group of gentle NHS staff, who put it up with astonishing efficiency and cleared out before I could make them so much as a cup of tea. Marian and I were standing in the doorway. Leena was beside the bed, in the armchair we’d moved there once and never shifted back. The living room didn’t center around the television anymore, but around that bed, with its magnolia-cream bars on each side of the mattress, and that gray remote control, always lost under the blankets, for adjusting the bed’s height and shifting Carla when she wanted to sit up.

  “You’re incredible,” Leena was telling her sister, her eyes bright with tears. “I think you’re—you’re incredible, and so brave, and…”

  Carla reached out, faster than I’d thought she could, now, and poked her sister in the arm.

  “Stop it. You’d never say that sort of thing if I wasn’t dying,” she said. Even with her voice thin and dry, you could hear the humor. “You’re way nicer to me th
ese days. It’s weird. I miss you telling me off for wasting my life away.”

  Leena winced. “I didn’t…”

  “Leena, it’s fine, I’m teasing.”

  Leena shifted uncomfortably in the armchair, and Carla raised her eyes upward, as if to say, Oh, for heaven’s sake. I’d grown used to her face without eyebrows by then, but I remember how strange it had looked at first—stranger, in some ways, than the loss of her long brown curls.

  “Fine, fine. I’ll be serious,” she said.

  She glanced at me and Marian, and then reached for Leena’s hand, her fingers too pale against Leena’s tanned skin.

  “All right? Serious face on.” Carla closed her eyes for a moment. “There is some stuff I’ve wanted to say, you know. Serious stuff.” She opened her eyes then, fixing her gaze on Leena. “You remember when we went camping together that summer when you were back from uni, and you told me how you thought management consultancy was the way to change the world, and I laughed? And then we argued about capitalism?”

  “I remember,” Leena said.

  “I shouldn’t have laughed.” Carla swallowed; pain touched her features, a tightening around the eyes, a quiver of her dry lips. “I should have listened and told you I was proud. You’re shaping the world, in a way—you’re making it better, and the world needs people like you. I want you to kick out all the stuffy old men and I want you to run the show. Launch that business. Help people. And promise me you won’t let losing me hold you back.”

  Leena was crying, then, her shoulders hunched and shaking. Carla shook her head.

  “Leena, stop it, would you? Jesus, this is what comes of being serious! Do I have to poke you again?”

  “No,” Leena said, laughing through her tears. “No, please don’t. It actually kind of hurt.”

  “Well. Just know that any time you let an opportunity slip, any time you wonder if you can really do it, any time you think about giving up on anything that you want … I’ll be poking you from the afterlife.”

  And that was Carla Cotton for you.

  She was fierce, and she was silly, and she knew we couldn’t manage without her.