The Girl Who Swapped (15+) SAMPLE ONLY

Sleeping on your Front

Charlotte peeled open an eyelid. Yes, that was the right way to describe how she opened her eye, as she needed to use a forefinger to gently pull her upper eyelid away from the lower. It appeared stuck fast.

The eye she had opened was struck by bright sunlight streaming in from the window, and she blinked rapidly, hoping the sky would cloud over in the time between blinks. It didn't.

She appeared to be lying on her front, a position she rarely slept in, believing it to be damaging to the skin and destined to end in long-term unhappiness à la unsightly wrinkles. What was also disturbing was the taste in her mouth, which could only be described as...absolutely disgusting. Almost as if she hadn't brushed her teeth for several days.

And Charlotte always, always brushed her teeth before going to bed.

A rapid inventory of other symptoms. Headache? Check. Heartbeat pounding loud and clear in her temples? Check. Faint sense of nausea revealing itself in the form of a gurgling belly? Another tick. This could only mean one thing: a hangover.

She hadn't had more than a glass or two of wine on any occasion in the last ten years. Drink—especially the demon wine that so many of her fellow forty-somethings fell victim to—was dreadful for the complexion. It gave you wrinkles, blotchiness and puffiness around the jaw. And then there was what it did for your metabolism, the stomach and its correlation with cellulite. Charlotte could always tell the forty-something drinkers a mile away, and she despised them for their lack of willpower.

What the hell had been in that glass or two of wine she must have had last night? The thing was, she couldn't remember having a drink last night. It had been a Saturday. That was her spa night, the night she did face masks, nail varnish, all-over dry skin body brushing, and the encasing of fingers and toes in cotton gloves and thick, luxurious moisturiser. All the better for preserving the soft, smooth quality of one's carefully nurtured skin.

A glass of wine would undo everything her spa night was supposed to achieve It spelt the difference between waking up with smooth, even skin or waking up with blotchy cheeks.

Having run through the reasons why she would not have had a drink last night, Charlotte felt a wave of guilt crash itself on the shore of her barely-there consciousness. Vanity, Charlotte! Of course, she wouldn't have had a glass of wine last night. Ed had been away on a golf trip, and she was on her own with the children, who might have needed to be taken to friends' houses. Or could, heaven forbid, have needed rushing to A&E following a terrible accident.

The mere thought of the hypothetical accident sent shudders down Charlotte's prone frame. She didn't do irresponsible drinking, and certainly not as far as the little cherubs were concerned.

Speaking of cherubs, where were they?

A mobile phone had been buzzing beside her for some time, so she rang the answer machine. A male voice boomed out.

"Janey, Janey! Wakey-wakey! Or are you still awake? That was one ripsnorter of a party, and it was all going on when I bailed. Love ya, baby. Call me."

Who was Janey? Interesting too that her mystery caller had an Australian accent.

Charlotte pushed herself up from the bed slowly into a cobra position. The one eye that had been opened was joined by the other. It was an equally painful process to widen that one too. Both orbs slowly took in their surroundings.

They were completely alien to her. The incredibly bright sunlight streamed in through two French windows, one of which was open. The bed Charlotte found herself on was a double—so far, so good—but it lacked the matching bedside cabinets she had picked out from Habitat when she redecorated the bedroom. And the sheets on it bore no resemblance to the Laura Ashley honeysuckle set that she'd treated herself to as an anniversary present last year.