What do you do when you find yourself in a strange body and a different life? The Girl Who Swapped is about to fill you in.
Lottie and Charlotte are not having a good morning. They've woken up in strange beds. Not to mention, unfamiliar bodies. What...
There was nothing better than a shower, especially a power shower you could turn to minimal temperature, stand underneath with your face upturned and allow the water pressure to drown out any feeling for a few minutes or so.
A shower always offered therapeutic effects, Charlotte felt. Despite the confusion about where she was, who she was and what the hell had happened last night, the minute or so before finishing the shower, stepping out of it and getting dry was all about living in the moment.
Pure relief. The hangover cure and drugs detox effects were put into motion by the shower and the familiarity of rubbing body lotion onto the skin, applying moisturiser to the face and antiperspirant to the underarms soothed her.
She dressed, pulling on a pair of shorts and a vest she found in the drawers in the bedroom. Inside the bathroom cabinet was a make-up bag and she applied a little light camouflage, marvelling in her youthful skin's resilience.
The unworthy and unbidden thought, "Oh, it's lovely to be young again!" popped up. Charlotte shook her head in irritation, trying to dislodge it.
She took a seat in the living room, armed with the handbag she had found earlier. Proprietary consideration be damned: the handbag was fair game when it came to finding out who she was meant to be.
She tried the phone first—a cheap Android model the real Charlotte would never have touched in a million years. Calls to her mobile, Ed's, Sean's and her office, the only numbers she knew off by heart, produced the same result: 'This number has not been recognised.' She tried them repeatedly in case she had put in the wrong numbers, but a ring tone never sounded. She flung the phone across the room. It bounced off the wall and slid across the floor.
Other than a phone, the handbag held little else. Everyone's bag, surely, gave a clue to identity? A wallet with store cards, loyalty cards and bank cards, perhaps? Or a diary with names, dates and appointments in it? Maybe some sentimental object: a laminated card with a pressed four-leaf clover a father had spent hours seeking out to present to his daughter, for example.
This handbag had:
The phone A wallet—money only, Australian dollars and coins: $157 in total. A flyer for a club in Perth. Perth, Western Australia that is. A silver charm bracelet with ten charms, including a miniature stiletto heel. Half a hot dog.
Disregarding the Australian dollars and the club flyer, Charlotte stared at the half-eaten hot dog in disbelief. Seriously, who did that? The crimes she contemplated began with: who bought a takeaway hot dog? Then, who ate part of it? Then, who put the uneaten half, not even wrapped up in a napkin or a takeaway wrapper, into their handbag?
But the Charlotte, who suddenly found herself in strange circumstances and who was suddenly ravenously hungry, snatched the half hot dog from the bag, sniffed it cautiously. It smelled of pork and salty smokiness. Then she ate it, stale bun and all.
Like the shower, the ingestion of food helped restore something.
Back to Australia though. The dollars and the flyer explained a lot. The voice on her answer machine. The sunny temperature and the bright sunlight. We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto, Charlotte grimaced at an imaginary dog wagging its tail at her feet.
"What oh what oh what oh what...Where is normality now, where's my normality?"
A picture of Ed and the cherubs came to mind. They were waving at her, their smiling faces hovering just in front of her field of vision so vividly she reached out a hand to touch them. They moved back, out of reach, smiling and laughing. She stretched her arms towards them, but they moved farther back, still laughing. The picture disappeared.
Patience lost out.
"Ed!" she shrieked, and then kept screaming, "Ed, ED, ED, ED, ED, ED!"
It did no good, of course, she heard thumping from up above—the sound of someone using a broom or something else to object to the excessive noise coming from a neighbour's flat.
"Bloody Australia," Charlotte muttered to herself. "I thought it was meant to be the most isolated country in the world where everyone lives miles apart from every other person!"
The thumps had given an answer, though. Screaming and shrieking for Ed was clearly useless. Charlotte regarded the list she had made earlier. Time to expand it, time to plan, and time to get back to Kansas.
She pulled up the paper she had scribbled on, relocated the pen, gathered together her thoughts. Who, where, why didn't cover it, so what else should she ask?
Just as she had begun to note down her thoughts—where am I, what do I know and what can I do to get myself back to Ed and the cherubs—the doorbell sounded.
"Janey Johnson! Open up! Police!"
AUTHOR'S NOTE - like what you've read so far? You can buy the book directly from me by scanning the QR code in the image below.
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