Life Swap

Face to Face

"Thanks for this, Jenny." Mum said, two minutes later, after we had all rushed back into the house for our surprise to find Kelly/Olivia and mum standing in the kitchen, waiting for us. No one could deny that it was a proper surprise. My heart had just about stopped when I saw them both, but luckily, Felicity and Louise covered for me. "Kelly is just so nervous about starting at Deepdene tomorrow...so, I thought that if we could reconnect with Louise, and Olivia...and get to know Felicity a little bit better...she would at least have a few friendly faces around her in the playground?"

"Of course...Louise was nervous, too...this time, last year...weren't you, darling?" Auntie Jenny said, smiling at us. She had known Mum as long as Kelly had known Louise, meeting at the school gates when we were all five. They were never exactly friends, because Auntie Jenny was a little bit of a snob, but they were certainly on friendly speaking terms, and I could see why Mum had turned to Auntie Jenny for help. But my addled mind was not really stuck on that subject, because I was focused entirely on dear Kelly/Olivia. Her appearance in the school uniform shop had suggested that there had been some big changes in her life, and the news that Professor Hoyte was suddenly sending her to Deepdene had certainly confirmed that something was going on, but he had appeared to be primarily concerned with her education in the uniform shop, and her distinct lack of progress at Redstone. But the rebirth of Kelly Hoyte-Hughes, as we had discovered she was now called from Auntie Sheila, who had dealt with her registration at Deepdene, just as she had for Louise of course, was obviously not just about school.

"Yes, Mummy...knowing the triplets and Felicity really helped?" Louise replied, as her mum put an encouraging arm around her shoulders. Kelly/Olivia stood beside our mum, wearing a green and white sailor dress, white ankle socks and shiny black sandals. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail again with a green ribbon, and she looked really miserable. And I knew precisely why she looked like that of course. She was not nervous about starting at Deepdene. She was furious about it. Being sent to Deepdene, with the twins, was a major part of the unhappiness that drove her to swap lives with me in the first place, when Hoyte presented her with the opportunity to do so, somehow. So, to find herself being sent back there, as Kelly, and also wearing exactly the sort of dress that Caroline would have had her in, had to be a really horrible surprise. And possibly deliberate, I thought. Professor Hoyte knew all about her, and yet he was turning her back into the sort of girl she really did not want to be. I could not see anything particularly righteous about that.

"Good...so, I know that you three will help Kelly settle in...why don't you take Kelly back outside with you, finish your cookies and get to know one another? Louise...take a clean glass for Kelly, please?" Auntie Jenny suggested, and we all had to do it, obviously. It was actually quite surreal, for all of us, I think. Louise was actually meeting a face she had known well for eight years, off and on, but she had never really met the girl behind that familiar face. Felicity knew Kelly/Olivia quite well, although they were never friends, but the face was the unfamiliar thing to her. She knew Kelly, me, extremely well, after a year of close friendship, but the face was that of a stranger, only really seen two or three times. And I was looking at myself. I had got used to seeing Olivia whenever I looked into a mirror, but it was still strange. I was still very much the old Kelly inside, but I was walking across the patio beside my old body in what really was an out of body experience.

"I don't need help from any of you." Kelly/Olivia muttered, when we were far enough from the back door not to be overheard. I exchanged glances with Felicity, who frowned, whilst Lou put the clean glass on the glass table, which we had been sitting around before.

"Help yourself to a drink and a cookie, then?" Louise said, sweeping her dress beneath her as she sat down. I did the same, settling next to her, on the end of the bench, so that Kelly/Olivia could not sit next to me. Felicity glanced back at the house, and then sat on Louise's other side for the same reason.