Life Swap

Positivity

"Mummy would love to send me to Deepdene." Louise sighed, as Grace rolled the dice with grim determination, desperate not to land on Chloe's hotels. We were playing Monopoly, just for something to do, because it was the twin's favourite board game. Just the five of us, because Felicity's brother had stayed with the adults, sitting on the floor around a low table, in the huge conservatory. Again, it was a new experience for me. My family did not really do Sunday lunch as a big thing. Mum would either be working or recovering from a night shift, and we did not see a lot of my grandparents, because they lived a fair distance away. My Sunday routine was usually to sleep late and then slob around in front of the television, or on my phone. But there I was, in my prim dress, with the twins dressed identically, Felicity in her tartan frock and my old friend Louise, who looked nothing like the girl Kelly knew, all playing together like good little girls, passing the time before the Sunday roast was ready.

"It's such a good school," Felicity said, rather misconstruing Louise's intent I thought, but I was objective enough to realise that she had a point. I might have only spent about two thirds of one day actually at Deepdene in my first week as Olivia, but the differences between it and Redstone were already obvious to me. Redstone was a huge school, with big classes in mixed ability streams, and lessons tended to go at the pace of the less able pupils. Like me, but almost certainly for different reasons, considering her mother, Louise usually tried to work, because we both wanted to get decent grades and pass our exams one day, but either the teachers were busy dealing with the kids who were lagging behind us, or they were trying to control the class jokers. But at Deepdene, the classes were really very small, with two teaching assistants plus the teacher to just twenty girls, and no one had messed around in the few lessons I had managed to complete. Not at all, not even one stupid joke, because everyone in the school was dedicated to actually learning something or scared of the consequences of misbehaving. "If your Daddy gets his promotion at work, and his big raise as well, you might be joining us?"

"When do you see a tutor?" I asked, feeling really weird speaking to someone I knew so well when she thought that she had only just met me. But I also had the feeling that I was only just meeting the real Louise, too.

"Oh...an hour after school every weekday and then three hours on Saturday mornings...she comes to our house," Louise explained, looking embarrassed about it. And that explained why she had never walked into town with us, after school, because she clearly had to rush home to meet her tutor. "It's so horrible...she sets more homework than my teachers do!"

"Does Kelly study with you?" I asked, rather clumsily trying to turn the conversation onto my alter ego, for obvious reasons. I wanted to know how Kelly had been since the life swap happened, and having Louise right there was too good an opportunity to miss. "She seemed so nice...and she was really into the museum...she is probably a really good student...like you are, Louise?"

"No one studies with me...but Kelly is quite bright, when she tries...her grades would soon get me spanked, but she does better than most people at Redstone." Louise sighed, offering me a rueful smile. "Not that it is a high bar...it's such a bad school..."

"She wasn't hurt in the accident, was she? Mummy was very impressed that she came over to ask after Olivia?" Felicity chipped in, presumably realising what I was doing as I took my turn in the game. "I think Mummy was going to contact Redstone...to praise her?"

"She had a few bruises...nothing serious...and the headmaster called her out during our last year assembly on Friday to give her a book token and say well done." Louise replied, looking less than pleased about Kelly's good fortune. "He was really there to tell everyone off again for what happened, but she got a lot of credit for being thoughtful and caring...although...she was really weird about it all..."