Life Swap

School

"Stop looking so worried, Olivia dear...I have already talked to your Auntie Sheila...and I will talk to Miss Cooper, when I drop you off with her...no one is going to tell you off about yesterday, I promise?" Caroline said as she zipped up my school coat to my throat, doing just about everything for me. Not that I felt capable of doing much for myself, but she had not given me the chance.

"I ruined everyone's day...everyone will hate me...and they all know about my accident?" I pointed out, feeling rather sorry for myself, genuinely nervous about going to Deepdene. I was starting to feel more comfortable about my predicament, after a long talk with Caroline, during which I had learned a lot more about Olivia and her life, but actually going to school as Olivia felt so daunting that I wanted to burst into tears, all over again. And actually, saying I felt more comfortable was relative. I had just about managed to stop freaking out, and tears were never that far away. But I was trying really hard to hold myself together, because my episodes, as she called them, upset everyone, especially the twins, and me. I knew it was blind panic, but they did not, and I really wanted to move on, so that I could work out what I was going to do to get my own life back. Because I just had to do something. No one else was going to help me, so I clearly had to help myself, and I could not do that if I kept freaking out all the time.

"We will come and find you at break and lunch, we promise." Chloe assured me, taking hold of my hand, sensing my nerves. "And we'll remind you to go to the loo?"

"If you want us too...you usually don't like it?" Grace added, uncertainly.

"Thanks." I mumbled, meaning it. The twins were so sweet, even if I hardly knew them, and I appreciated their support, more than I could ever say. "I do want you to help?"

"It's a fresh start, girls...for all of us...Olivia knows that the best way of not having to use her pull-ups is to go to the toilet every chance she gets...and she will go to Auntie Sheila if she is wet, won't you, Olivia?"

"Yes, Mummy." I promised, looking up at her.

"Because then, no one will have to check you, or change you, which is what upsets you most of all...isn't it, darling?" She persisted, fussing over the hood of my heavy coat, and my school hat, and the dreaded chinstrap. She had come up with a plan for me, to make me feel better. It seemed that Olivia had been fighting her bladder problems, or trying to ignore them, with rather embarrassing and disastrous results. But it was my body all of a sudden, my bladder, and I did not want to keep wetting myself. So, the fresh start idea was Caroline's way of forgetting how uncooperative Olivia had been, and starting again, which I was going along with, obviously enough, for my own reasons. But I really was not looking forward to going to school as Olivia and she had noticed, so she had gone into overdrive to try and alleviate what she thought were my main concerns.

"Yes, Mummy."

"And I have already asked Sheila to deal with any potential comments...about your accident yesterday...no one is going to say anything nasty to you, I promise pickle..." She said, before guiding us all out of the house to the car. Bundled up in the school uniform again, we were all strapped into our car seats, and Caroline got into her seat and drove off. I had not really taken much notice of the journey home the day before, or the house itself, really, but that morning I was taking slightly more interest, because as I had not turned back into a pumpkin at midnight as the magic wore off, which had occurred to me as a possibility at one stage, I was facing up to the simple fact that I was stuck as Olivia. So, I needed to get some sort of control of her life or everything would just keep spiraling out of control. It was my life, all of a sudden, hopefully temporarily, but I needed some control to allow me to think straight. It was a big house, and a big car, and there was a long drive, with electric gates. Caroline turned left onto what looked like a country lane, still talking away to us, jollying me along more than anything, I think, and I wondered where we actually were. I had no real idea where Deepdene was, and no idea where the Montague's lived, other than the fairly basic information that it was about a ninety-minute coach journey away from the Victoria and Albert Museum in central London, I suppose. That could be anywhere, in a vast circle around the capital, and that gave me my first pang of worry about my old life, about Kelly's life.