Free Life Swap by Jane Green

don’t hit him. Grace! Grace! Stop that! Sorry, Amber. Is everything okay?’
    ‘Yes, fine. I just remembered, though, I have a prescription at CVS, would you mind picking it up for me?’
    ‘Sure,’ says Lavinia, who is on the other side of town, with two over-tired and fractious children, dinner to cook when she gets back to the house, and a pile of laundry to get through tonight as she watches television in her room, with just the ironing board and Ginger, the golden retriever, for company.
    ‘Thanks, Lavinia, you’re an angel,’ says Amber, who suddenly spies a parking space next to the new French furnishing shop in town, one that she’d been meaning to go to since it opened three weeks ago. Perfect, she thinks, as she expertly manoeuvres the car into the spot then checks her watch. Just enough time to see what everyone’s talking about before going home and getting ready for dinner tonight with Richard.
    By the time Amber gets home the kids have eaten and are quietly watching Shrek 2 for the 149th time.
    ‘Lavinia!’ Amber shouts as she walks in the mud room, greeting Ginger then pushing him away so he doesn’t get dog hair all over her black coat.
    ‘I’m just clearing up the dishes. Do you need some help?’
    ‘Oh yes, please!’ Amber unbuttons her coat, throws it over the banisters from where she knows Lavinia will retrieve it later to hang it up in the coat closet where it belongs, and walks into the kitchen where she collapses on a chair. ‘I’ve got a load of shopping in the car. Would you mind bringing it in?’
    ‘Sure,’ says Lavinia, who truly is an angel for she sees that Amber walked in empty-handed and doesn’t resent being asked in the slightest because she loves the children, loves living here, and thinks that Amber and Richard are incredibly nice, if a little spoilt. But she is now part of the family, so much so that Amber regularly sits in the kitchen and chats to Lavinia, has even shared with Lavinia the secrets of her background, so whilst Lavinia sees that Amber is a little spoilt, she understands why, and she forgives her for it.

Chapter Six
    It may only be a BBC radio show where no one is going to see her, but as Vicky pulls on a skirt and flat pumps, shakes her hair out to give it some more body, checks her make-up in the bathroom mirror, she thinks of her mother and smiles to herself.
    ‘You never know who you might meet,’ her mother always says, and whilst, on the whole, Vicky tends not to listen to her mother, these words have been drummed into her so often it is now second nature to ensure she looks, if not her best, then certainly acceptable, before she leaves the house. Because her mother, she hates to admit it, is right. You just never know.
    There was the time when she was driving her Beetle along Chalk Farm Road and she had spotted a parking meter and zipped over, jumping out to find the car behind had also pulled over. She had looked at the driver strangely, wondering if he had something to say to her, but he hadn’t said anything and she had shrugged and walked off, only to return to find a note on her car asking her for a drink.
    That drink had turned into a five-month relationship.
    There was the time when, again driving her Beetle along Park Lane on the way to a club, she had passed a Triumph Stag, the roof down, crammed with laughingmen, one of whom had jumped out and climbed into her car at the traffic lights. She had slept with him a week later.
    There was the time she had taken the train to see some friends in Manchester, and had started talking to the man who had come to sit opposite her, even though the rest of the carriage was practically empty. She hadn’t fancied him in the slightest, but he had become a good friend, and was now married to a girl that Vicky had introduced him to.
    So her mother was right, you just never knew, although those times, those spontaneous, exhilarating meetings, hadn’t happened for a while, and every now and then Vicky