The Life Swap

by Jeananne Craig

Genres: Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Two sisters. Two messy lives. One idea that's going to fix everything...

Sinead is a 'single girl living the dream'. At least, that's what her Tinder profile says. In reality, she's just been fired from the job she pretended was glamorous, her flatmates are fed up with her, and her sister won't answer her calls.

Single parent and out-of-work actor Sarah doesn't have the energy to deal with Sinead right now. Her home is, apparently, on the verge of collapse. Repairs are going to cost a fortune and she's counting on her agent to come through for her (her ex certainly won't).

When Sarah lands a high-paying movie role 100 miles from home, Sinead has a brainwave that will solve all their problems: she'll take care of her sister's kids in Dublin (what could be easier than keeping two six-year-olds out of trouble?) and Sarah will move into Sinead's house-share in Belfast while she resurrects her career. And possibly even has some fun for a change.

But the swap is less straightforward than expected. And as Sarah and Sinead step into each other's lives, they discover that they don't know each other as well as they thought - and maybe have a lot more in common than they realise...

Release date: July 2, 2026

Publisher: Hachette Books Ireland

Print pages: 368

Sample

In her six years of parenthood, Sarah had learnt to triage every call for ‘MA-MMY!’

To the untrained ear, each screech from her twins was delivered at the same volume and urgency you’d use to wake a lorry driver asleep at the wheel or inform a skier they’re about to be engulfed by an avalanche.

Rare guests in the house would seem surprised as Sarah blithely ignored the scrapping pair at her feet. Occasionally, she might intervene and tell her tiny charges to pack it in. And of course, anything serious was dealt with immediately: injury, illness, doing a poo in a ball pit. But in general, she chose a non-interventionist approach. As a self-employed single parent, she had enough worries without rushing to every whinge over a decapitated Barbie.

In Derry they had a better name for it: nyaming. But she lived in Dublin now, so called it whingeing.

‘It’s self-preservation,’ Sarah would explain to the visitor. ‘Like, you know when you’re in a shop and Maroon 5 comes on? Yes, it’s an assault on your ears. Yes, it all sounds the same. But you just learn to block it out.’

People often assumed that because her twins were different sexes, they wouldn’t squabble over the same toys, or scrap like two boys, or engage in psychological warfare like two girls – until they met Sam and Laurie, who could do all three with aplomb.

Today, Sarah was otherwise engaged at the kitchen table when Sam shouted her name from upstairs. It sounded like it was coming from the direction of the bathroom.

‘WHAT’S WRONG, PET?’ Sarah called upwards, then reverted her eyes to the laptop screen, a Jackson Pollock painting of buttery fingerprints and crusty little barnacles of Weetabix.

One minute fifty-eight seconds to go. No other bidders.

‘WHAT IS IT, SAM?’ she shouted again.

Sarah didn’t want her children to grow up expecting others to swoop in and solve everything for them. Her sister had always been mollycoddled by their mother, then expected Sarah to step in and do the same when Bernie died. Now, despite the fact that Sinead was nudging thirty, and somehow managing to hold down a full-time job in Belfast, she still behaved like a wayward teenager.

Sinead, who once called 999 when an ASOS parcel failed to turn up. Who couldn’t find her way out of a cul-de-sac without consulting Google Maps. Who, when a Starbucks barista was rude to her, started tweeting the chief executive. Because some fat cat in Seattle would really care that she didn’t get enough chocolate sauce in her morning mocha.

Sarah’s job was to love her twins fiercely, yes, but also to make sure they grew into independent adults who could fight their own battles. Navigate their way out of life’s cul-de-sacs. Clean up their own messes.

That said, cleaning up their own messes didn’t extend to the bathroom yet. Especially not for Sam, who made his twin sister – herself no stickler for cleanliness – look like Mrs Hinch. Poor Sam approached toileting like Lewis Hamilton spraying a bottle of champagne at the Grand Prix. So God knows what scene awaited Sarah up there this afternoon.

Some words – Mammy something something – travelled down the stairs, but were largely indecipherable over the whirr of the bathroom’s broken extractor fan.

That bloody fan. She’d add it to her to-do list. Right after working through the dirty-laundry mountain, tightening the rickety bog seat, and fulfilling the twins’ costume requests for the upcoming Cultural Diversity Day at school. Getting an Indian sari for Laurie was easy enough, but Sam’s RuPaul ensemble was proving harder to source. There was a real scarcity of drag outfits for six-year-olds, although Sarah had chanced upon an Irish dancing wig in a charity shop, which could hopefully be brushed out into something more convincing.

One minute forty-five seconds to go.

‘IS IT AN EMERGENCY, SAM?’

More muffled words.

One minute thirty-two seconds to go. No other bidders.

‘JUST A SECOND…’

Sarah’s heart rate quickened as she watched the clock tick on her Zara boots. They weren’t technically hers yet, but they hopefully would be in the next one minute twenty-one seconds.

One minute twenty seconds.

One minute nineteen seconds.

Some people went to church on a Sunday; Sarah went to eBay.

A professional actress, she used to love stepping onto a stage and feeling the adrenaline coursing through her body. These days, though, with only the twins’ school hours to work within, Sarah was more likely to be recording a voiceover for a carpet warehouse than treading any boards. She had to get her kicks where she could. And the prospect of this moment, these Brand New with Tags Zara Tan Genuine Leather Knee-High Boots Size 5 going for a song, had got her through the entire week.

Sarah hadn’t bought herself any clothes, pre-loved or otherwise, in months; it was usually just stuff for the children she was getting online. But she had fallen in love with these boots as soon as she spotted them and waited patiently for the seven-day auction to end, checking several times daily to make sure no one else put in a higher offer. They were practically hers now.

One minute and two seconds to go. Still no other bidders. Yet.

She called out to her daughter, who was watching TV in the adjoining living room. ‘Laurie, love, would you run up and check on Sam? I’m just in the middle of something.’

Sarah could see Laurie through the glass door separating the rooms. Her eyes didn’t even flicker. She was too engrossed in a YouTube video of a nasal-voiced American child unboxing a new toy. Despite the shockingly low production standards, there was no chance of her daughter budging.

Forty-nine seconds.

If Sarah’s mobile phone hadn’t run out of battery, she’d be up the stairs by now. She could be tending to whatever mess awaited her and still have one eye on the auction. Instead, she was tethered to her ancient computer.

Forty-two seconds.

‘MAMMY!’ Sam didn’t sound overly distressed. Did he?

But what if.

Thirty-eight seconds. Another bidder!

It was alright. She could still swoop in and get the boots. Her boots. As long as they didn’t go above €30.

But what if something really was wrong?

‘MAMMY!’

What if?

‘OK, love! It’s OK!’ Sarah shouted. She jumped up and, not for the first time, silently cursed the twins’ father, Declan, who hadn’t set foot in the house in months. ‘I’m on my way.’

Unknown number. What kind of sociopath would ring first thing on a Sunday morning?

Sinead reached for her phone to press Answer, using the other hand to shield her eyes from the light. She went to speak, but no sound came out. Her mouth was shockingly dry, considering the volume of liquid she’d hoofed into it last night.

When she finally managed to formulate the word ‘Hello’, it came out pure raspy. Like she’d stolen Rod Stewart’s larynx. For all she could remember of the previous evening, maybe she had? She didn’t hate her new voice, though – it was kind of sexy.

There was a pause at the other end, a crackling sound, then a man spoke.

‘Hello, Miss… Sign-aid Sweeney? We understand you have been in an accident that wasn’t your fault.’

‘Hi, buddy,’ Sinead croaked. ‘Listen. No judgement here. We’re all trying to earn a crust. But I have a raging hangover. I either have to burp or boke – I haven’t worked out which yet. Would you mind scamming somebody else?’

The line went dead.

Sinead looked at the time on her phone: 2.07 p.m. So it was, in fact, afternoon. Still, plenty of time before she was due to meet her best friend Barry for brunch. Sinead and Barry didn’t stick to conventional mealtimes at weekends; brunch could be any time between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., depending on how messy things had got the night before.

Last night’s experiment of using Berocca as a mixer had not staved off a hangover. In fairness, it hadn’t been actual Berocca but a cheaper supermarket dupe. She’d be sure to buy the real deal next time.

Sinead popped two paracetamol from their foil packaging one-handed, then unscrewed the lid from a bottle of full-fat Coke. She’d had the foresight to place both within reach when she crashed in last night – this wasn’t her first time at the rodeo.

At the races. At the rodeo. Races. No, rodeo. Which was it? She’d done English at Queen’s. She worked in an ad agency, for God’s sake. Words were supposed to be her thing! But years of partying had killed off a few brain cells apparently. It certainly felt like her head was twerking up and down a cheese grater right now.

Perhaps that was why, in all her years of full-time work, she’d never had a promotion.

Sinead’s tummy gurgled. It sounded like there was a wee old man trapped in there, calling out for help. She needed some food, pronto.

She hadn’t eaten since that fish taco last night. Barry had made them pause their pub crawl and queue for fifteen minutes in the drizzle at some horsebox-turned-Mexican-taqueria ‘the whole of Belfast’ was raving about. ‘Do it for the ’Gram, Shin,’ he’d said, while Sinead tried to salvage the beautiful wavy blow-dry their hairdresser housemate Marta had given her earlier that day.

She’d always envied her older sister Sarah’s shiny shampoo-ad hair: thick, glossy, naturally straight, in keeping with her strait-laced personality. With Sinead’s frizz-prone wavy auburn locks and all her freckles, her late mother Bernie used to call her a ‘beautiful Irish colleen’. But Sinead just wanted to look like she could be on Selling Sunset, so she was out a fortune in fake tan and full-bleach-and-tone appointments.

‘Look at the shape of me,’ she’d cried as Barry uploaded his taco pic. ‘My hair’s a mess and I stink of fish. Who’s going to get off with me now? Captain fuckin’ Birdseye?’

Sinead’s prophecy had proved correct. No one went near her, whereas Barry had headed home later that night with a sexy tiler they’d met in the Kremlin. Maybe she’d have more luck if she didn’t drink almost exclusively in gay bars.

Anyway. No messages from Barry yet today. Presumably he was still getting LAID by the TILER. Ha. They were going to have a field day with the puns later. She loved it when one of them went with a tradesman.

She slowly eased herself up off the sofa where she’d slept, pawed around in her handbag for some coins, and slotted them into the vending machine in the corner.

Just another perk of sleeping in the staffroom.

What had started as a one-off after the Christmas do, when Sinead couldn’t get a taxi home, was now a weekly occurrence. The office had become her secret crash pad, her weekend pied-à-terre. And the occasional weekday too, if she’d been on the lash post-work.

And who could blame her? The Progress! office – exclamation mark mandatory – was tucked down a quiet side street slap bang in the city centre, making it much easier and quicker to get back to than her houseshare.

Sinead had left Queen’s eight years ago, and got the job at Progress! soon after that. But she was yet to graduate from living in the Holylands, the notorious student party area just behind the university. Her journey back to Cairo Street from a night out in town could take anything from ten to seventy-five minutes, depending on choice of shoes, mode of transport (taxi/bus/bare feet), and level of intoxication.

The office was deserted at weekends, the staffroom sofa surprisingly comfortable, and the vending machine choked out 50p coffees and decent hangover snacks.

There was even a shower to wash away the night before. The only other user was Derek, the office manager, on weekdays, after his cycle to work. Derek was crushingly boring, but the minty shower gel he left in there did make the extremities tingle, suggesting he might be a fraction more exciting than he let on.

It was nearly May now, and in all her months of office sleepovers Sinead had never encountered another human being out of hours. Sinead’s boss, Carmel, decamped to her north-coast holiday home every weekend, the CCTV at the building’s entrance hadn’t worked in years, and the cleaners were only in on weekdays.

All it took was a swipe of her work pass. And Sinead would never abuse the privilege by bringing anyone else back there. This was her space, and hers only. As much as she loved her housemates, she liked having her hangovers in peace, with only the glow of the vending machine for company.

Sinead selected F3 (Tayto Cheese & Onion) and returned to the sofa to eat her crisps and commence some life admin.

Nothing too incriminating on the socials, just a seventeen-second TikTok of her and Marta lip-syncing to Adele in a rickshaw between bars. Her make-up looked good, so that could stay up. She’d also posted an Insta Story of the ‘Best. Tacos. Ever!!!’ (Lies.) Happy days, the taco truck had shared it on their page too. Over on Facebook, Sheena from school was still trying to flog her Mooncup on Marketplace. ‘Brand new, in box’. Hope it hadn’t been in Sheena’s box. Ugh.

Banking app: still overdrawn. She’d ask Barry or Marta for a sub until payday. Although, she still owed them for the last sub.

Sinead was in the middle of typing ‘Paul Mescal relationship status’ into Reddit when she heard a door swing in the corridor. Shit. Was it the cleaners? They didn’t usually come at the weekend, though. Hopefully they’d head to the office floor first.

She grabbed her coat (black faux-leather trench, £16.99 on Depop, class looking) and reached for her shoes. Of course it would be the lace-up gladiator heels from Shein. (Also class looking, but a nightmare to get on.)

She could hear footsteps now.

Getting closer.

No.

No.

NO.

She’d recognise that walk anywhere.

Sinead’s eyes darted around the staffroom – no space behind the sofa, no time to crouch beside the vending machine. How the hell was she going to style this out?

It was too late. The door opened and in walked her boss, all 5 feet 11 inches of her, swathed in Lululemon gym gear.

‘Carmel!’ Sinead’s voice and trench coat squeaked in unison as she lurched forward to greet her manager. ‘What are you doing here?’

Carmel’s face was devoid of emotion, though that might have been due to the £600 of premium Botox and fillers pumped into it. She said nothing as she surveyed the scene: her bedraggled employee, the hum of stale sweat and vodka, the crisp crumbs scattered on the sofa.

Then she looked Sinead dead in the eye. ‘I could ask you the same thing.’

After racing upstairs and kicking open the door with the force of a SWAT team, Sarah had found Sam on the toilet, staring awestruck at the ceiling like a tourist in the Sistine Chapel.

‘Look, Mammy! There’s loads of them!’ he’d said, lisping through his missing front teeth as he pointed upwards.

Sarah had followed Sam’s index finger to the farthest corner of the room, high above the retro faux-wood-panelled bath and the phlegm-green wall tiles.

What the actual…?

They were almost jaunty in the way they sprouted out from the ceiling, proudly announcing their arrival: five or six mutant mushrooms of varying sizes, their perfectly smooth, grey-brown heads dangling on bendy white stalks.

How long had they been growing there? How had Sarah missed this?

Probably because, in the rare moments she got to sit on the toilet in peace, she was head down, scrolling on her phone. It turned out Sam and Laurie’s little lungs had been breathing in fungal air, on her watch. Her stomach lurched.

Initially, Sarah presumed the busted extractor fan was the culprit, but as she looked closer, she could see a faint tea-brown stain above the mushrooms and some bubbling in the old ceiling paintwork. The only thing above that was the attic. Was there damp up there too?

By this stage, Laurie had come upstairs to see what the fuss was about. Sarah got Sam sorted and off the toilet, then ushered both twins downstairs. Once they had settled in front of the TV, she unplugged her phone, which now hopefully had enough charge to see her through a trip to the loft.

She pulled down the wooden ladder, taking the utmost care as she ascended the creaky steps. Casualty had been mandatory Saturday-night viewing in her house growing up (Bernie had been hugely invested in Charlie and Duffy’s will-they-won’t-they narrative arc), and no one emerged from a precarious ladder unscathed.

Who would a hospital phone now as her next of kin? Sinead?

With that chilling thought, Sarah slowed her pace even more and decided not to risk putting her full body weight on the attic’s old, possibly soggy floorboards. From the top rung of the ladder, she used her phone torch to scan the space, taking in the bin liners full of Christmas decorations she’d slung through the hatch in January, the dusty empty suitcases, and the previous summer’s crumpled paddling pool.

Further into the roof space, she could see several cardboard boxes from the clear-out of Bernie’s council house. That painful task had, as with all of the other admin, fallen to Sarah when their mother died.

She took a deep breath before directing the phone torch to the area above the bathroom. Had it always smelled this musty up here? And was she imagining it, or did the wooden beams look a bit darker, moister, over there?

They were harder to spot this time, camouflaged by the dark wood and lack of light. But sure enough, in amongst the crevices, there they were. Maybe ten or fifteen of them, some even bigger than Sarah’s face.

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘Jesus Chrise! Jesus Chrise!’

The twins had appeared at the bottom of the ladder.

‘Did you find more mushrooms?’ Sam was jostling with Laurie to climb up. ‘I want to see them!’

‘I’ll take a photo of them for you.’ Sarah could feel the ladder groaning under the weight of the three of them. ‘It’s not safe up here. Downstairs. Now.’

‘If we go, will you bring down the paddling pool?’ said Laurie.

‘Not this time. But you can get some Skips from the cupboard. A packet each,’ said Sarah.

Still no retreat.

‘And a Fruit Shoot?’ Laurie negotiated, very much the union rep of the pair.

‘OK, and a Fruit Shoot. Now go! And be careful on those steps.’

The twins began heading back downstairs, chanting ‘Jesus Chrise!’ as they went.

Once they were safely out of the way, Sarah took some photos of the darkened wood and the mushrooms (plus a couple of close-ups of the freakiest-looking ones, to keep Sam happy). At least the other end of the attic, above the twins’ bedroom, looked clear. But how long before the mushrooms spread that way? She was going to have to get this sorted as soon as possible.

The best person to message was Deborah, whose daughter Oliwia was best friends with Laurie. Deborah’s partner, Zuzanna, was Polish, and the couple had an impressive array of builders, plumbers, electricians, and contractors on speed dial.

There was no point telling the other two members of the School Mamz WhatsApp group. Cleona, whose name reflected her impeccable hygiene standards, would be horrified and desperate for more details of Sarah’s filthy living conditions. And, lovely as she was, Emma Jane would probably offer to make the mushrooms into some sort of nourishing woo-woo broth.

As Sarah scanned the attic one last time, the light caught on something gold poking out of a box. It was Bernie’s beloved painting of Jesus, with its light-up Sacred Heart, which had hung in their kitchen in Derry. Sarah hadn’t seen it in years.

In her teens, she’d thought the picture was tacky. She’d unplug it before friends came over. But Sarah felt remorseful now for relegating something her mother had cherished to this dank dumping ground.

She put her phone in her pocket and hoisted herself into the attic, just far enough to reach over and grab it from the box. Sam and Laurie weren’t going to be impressed when she appeared with religious merch instead of a paddling pool, but she could plug it in for them, see if the heart still glowed red. Although they never got to meet Bernie, Sarah made a point of telling them stories about their granny to keep her memory alive.

She shut the attic door, gladly, and carried the painting down the ladder, resting it on the carpeted landing and kneeling down to get a proper look. Its gold-painted frame and heavy glass were covered in dust, the plastic plug discoloured to a margarine shade, and the painting itself was a cheap reproduction. But despite Sarah’s lack of faith, there was something beautiful about it: the gentleness in Jesus’s eyes; the way his head tilted; the glowing halo around him.

She could see now, having been through the mill herself and left to manage alone, why it might have given her mother comfort in difficult times.

Still kneeling, Sarah pulled the picture towards her and embraced it.

Sinead stared at the blank Word document on her computer screen and did her best to focus on the flashing cursor instead of this morning’s toast, which was starting to lurch back up her oesophagus.

Again, she rehearsed in her head what she planned to say to Carmel. Yesterday’s encounter had been excruciating, but mercifully brief. Carmel had told Sinead she was ‘in no fit state’ to explain herself and to meet her in her office first thing. Sinead had grabbed her belongings and scuttled out, spluttering ‘sorrysorrysorry’. Talk about a walk of shame.

She and Barry had sacked off brunch at vågen (hipster café and home to Sinead’s current lust object, Thom the Hot Barista) and snuggled up on the sofa to work out Sinead’s official line for Carmel: her friends had left without her, she couldn’t get a taxi, the night buses were full, it was a one-off thing, it would never happen again et cetera.

‘Look sad and give it the Bambi eyes. If that doesn’t work, turn on the waterworks and go in hard on mental health,’ Barry had advised. ‘Now. Sort out your mascara and get that blanket off you. You look like a hunger striker.’

So here she was: hangover-free and at her desk at 8.57 a.m. to show her dedication. She’d even dressed in all-black, a nod to her boss’s signature colour.

Image was everything to Carmel. Progress! was sandwiched between a charity shop and a hearing aid specialist, but that hadn’t stopped Carmel from going for a Mad Men theme. The meeting room was called Don Draper, the pokey staff kitchen was Betty’s Diner, and the reception area was decorated with canvases of the New York skyline. The overall effect felt more TK Maxx than Manhattan to Sinead, but the clients lapped it up. Everyone from celebrity dentists to crisps brands parted with large sums of money to be ‘Carmel Campbell-Collinsed’.

Despite the company name, Sinead hadn’t progressed much in the years she’d been there, but she couldn’t complain. She hadn’t been replaced with Chat GPT yet, and coming up with social media posts about vitamin gummies and advertorials about surprisingly tasty pork by-products meant she could pay her rent and stay in Belfast, the only home she had now.

She could not afford to lose this job.

Shannon was the only other person in so far, stinking out the entire office with her Tupperware breakfast of ‘calorie-controlled kedgeree’. The office nepo baby, she sat opposite Sinead and had a completely made-up role as Head of Culture, gifted to her by ‘Aunty C’. The absence of any work to do left Shannon plenty of time to brain dump to Sinead about skinny jabs, the status of her Love Island application form, and her various intolerances (gluten, the unemployed, people with dreadlocks).

Sinead pulled her polo neck up over her mouth and nose. Normally, she’d berate Shannon for the stench, but it wasn’t the day for upsetting the boss’s niece. And at least it was keeping Shannon’s mouth occupied.

Couldn’t get a taxi. A one-off thing. It will never, EVER happen again.

Couldn’t get a taxi. A one-off thing. It will never, EVER happen again.

Sinead’s inbox pinged.

From: Carmel Campbell-Collins.

Subject: Meet me in Don Draper

Carmel was already sitting in the glass-walled meeting room, leafing through a folder of printouts. In her cheap polo neck and polyester trousers, Sinead felt like a Simon Cowell tribute act compared with Carmel’s Isabel Marant leather pencil skirt and crisp white shirt.

‘Hi, Carmel!’ Sinead said, testing the water with some pleasantries. ‘How are you?’

Her boss pointed at a chair across the large boardroom table, not even glancing up from her directional fringe and nonagonal glasses. Sinead knew they were nonagonal because she had once counted all nine sides during a client meeting, bored out of her skull.

Sinead sat down and tried to rearrange her flushed face into something less guilty looking. Confident; yet contrite. Professional; yet vulnerable. But Sarah was the actress, not her. She felt, in that moment, a grudging respect for her sister’s skills.

At last, her boss raised her head. She took her time with that, too – had she slipped a disc during yesterday’s workout, or was she enjoying making Sin. . .