Life Swap by Jane Green Read Free Book Online Page B

being ridiculous and says there’s no way he’s going to pay for me to have a non-existentchin removed, which is why I’m trying to get someone to take a piece on it, then I won’t have to pay, and if I wait until Dick goes on his next business trip, he won’t even have to know.’
    ‘You’re nuts,’ Vicky says as Deborah sighs. ‘So what’s this about a radio show?’
    ‘Oh yes. I’ve got a christening in the country this weekend but Radio Two want me to be a guest on some evening show talking about, you guessed it, speed sex. I can’t do it so I thought maybe you could.’
    ‘When is it?’
    ‘Saturday night.’
    ‘Oh great. How do you know I haven’t got a fantastically hot date on Saturday night?’
    ‘Have you?’
    ‘Wishful bloody thinking,’ sighs Vicky, because for the last few months her dating life has been disastrous, or, as she likes to say to Leona, ‘What dating life? I have no dates and no life.’
    Throughout her twenties Vicky had an incredible time. As a young staff writer she was constantly meeting eligible men, bedding them if she felt like it, having relationships if she chose, or affairs if that was what was on offer. She was, as the saying goes, footloose and fancy-free, never worrying about the future because it was assumed that sometime around thirty Prince Charming would show himself and she would then go on to live the life that her brother appears to have stolen from her, which is all the more irritating because he’s three years younger, and really, what right did athirty-two-year-old have to have everything she was supposed to have?
    Unlike some of her friends, Vicky had been dying to turn thirty, knowing that thirty was when it would all happen, when her happy ever after would start. It never occurred to her that it wouldn’t happen, that five years on she would still be exactly where she was ten years ago, except with a better wardrobe, a bigger flat, and fewer prospects.
    At twenty-five there were men everywhere. Tall men. Short men. Funny men. Ugly men. Nevertheless, men. So many men, so little time, she would say then, when elderly aunts would ask why she didn’t have a boyfriend.
    Now, at thirty-five, the good men have slowly dropped out of the dating pool leaving the weakest specimens behind, and Vicky is well aware that the older she gets, the harder it’s going to be.
    ‘There are always the divorcees,’ Kate said to her recently, but Vicky has always shuddered at the thought of inheriting someone else’s baggage.
    ‘What if they have children?’ she said. ‘I don’t want to be involved with someone else’s children, plus it means the ex-wife is going to be in your life forever. Thank you very much, but no. I need to find a single man, not a divorcee.’
    ‘But that’s ridiculous,’ Kate said. ‘Anyone thirty-five upwards is going to have baggage anyway, and frankly I think there’s something deeply suspicious about someone in their late thirties or forties who’s never beenmarried. The last thing you want to do is fall in love with a commitaphobe.’
    ‘I don’t buy that stuff about it being odd when men are single in their thirties. Look at Daniel. He’s not odd.’
    ‘So why aren’t you having a proper relationship with him instead of just the occasional shag?’
    ‘God, no. He’s not my type.’
    ‘But you like him and you fancy him enough to have sex with him?’
    ‘Yes,’ Vicky admitted reluctantly.
    ‘Then I bet there’s something wrong with him and you’re just not telling me.’
    ‘Okay, you got me. There is something wrong with him. His penis is orange.’
    ‘Oh ha ha. I just don’t want you to keep thinking your life is going to start when you get married.’
    ‘Thanks a lot,’ Vicky grunted. ‘I think my life already has started. Some people would kill to have my life.’
    ‘Just as long as you remember that,’ Kate said. ‘Does that mean you’re going to stop banging on about wanting my life?’
    ‘No. I do want