Prologue
2023
Lady Agatha Bainbridge found the box in the attic under piles of dusty old clothing and half-broken furniture. It was remarkably well-sealed, but eventually opened under the combined pressure of a letter opener and a hefty wallop.
‘Jemima!’ she called out. ‘Come up here and look at this.’
A few minutes passed before she heard the creaking on the stairs and her sister appeared.
‘What is it?’ asked Jemima. ‘You know I’ve got to head out to my Stitch and Bitch group any minute now.’
‘Oh, shush now. You can afford to give it a miss this week. Look what I have found!’
Aggie angled the box forward to show what was inside: there was a bundle of notebooks tied together with a frayed-looking ribbon, along with a smaller box containing a delicate gold bracelet. Intrigued, Jemima untied the notebooks and they peered closer, inhaling the musty scent of old paper. The sisters might have had their differences, but both were old and wise enough to feel electricity crackle from the pages.
They opened the top book first – a faded red leatherdiary – to find it filled with beautiful handwriting. Aggie put her reading glasses on and tilted the page towards her as Jemima gasped, already a line or two ahead.
Dear Descendant,
If you’re reading this, my calculations were correct and these years of study have been worthwhile. I am unsure how to describe what it is that I have planned to do. The transformation, the metamorphosis … The Switch?
Chapter 1
2023
It was an ordinary day – much like the day before, and, Etta assumed, much like the next. A Tuesday. Etta hated Tuesdays.
She had a theory about them. Mondays marked a fresh new week in the office, hot off the back of a relaxing weekend spent eating paninis and embroidering woodland creatures for her Etsy store. She might not be getting up to much herself, but Etta liked listening to her colleagues talk about their weekends, their many friends and rambunctious families.
By Wednesday, it was the middle of the week – practically Thursday, and Thursday was practically the weekend. On Fridays she worked out of her tiny studio flat, with half an eye onJudge Judy. Then back to another quiet weekend lying in bed until lunchtime and poring over her friends’ Instagram feeds while stitching custom embroidery orders for Etsy – when she ever got any, which was increasingly rare.
But Tuesdays – oh, Tuesdays were the worst. On Tuesdays, the week stretched out ahead like elastic ready to snap. Nothing good ever happened on a Tuesday.
Etta clutched her coffee cup closer to her chest as shewaited on the platform for the Tube to arrive. She liked living on the Circle Line. Not really central, but pretty close. It was worth the mice and the fact she could see both her oven and her toilet from her single bed. She’d be in work in less than half an hour. For most people, everything in London took forty-five minutes to an hour to get to. Not for Etta, though. On the Circle Line, it was thirty.
She found a seat between two man-spreading businessmen and opposite a pair of chattering old ladies. She dumped herself down, wedging her coffee cup between her legs. She could smell stale sweat from the man to her left.Gross. Trying to make herself as small as possible – which was difficult, given she was unreasonably tall – Etta opened up her favourite mobile game and started matching little blobs. The plot was getting exciting: her character had renovated the entire mansion and Etta was wondering what on earth could possibly be left to do.
She was just about to find out when the carriage jolted. Checking she hadn’t missed her stop, she reached down to save her legs from getting covered in cappuccino foam and felt a prickle of awareness: the feeling of being watched.
The carriage had stopped in a tunnel. Alarming, but not as alarming as the fact that it was empty. Well, nearly empty. She looked across the aisle at the two old ladies, who were now completely silent and staring right at her. Etta became aware of the smell of petrichor on the air.
This can’t be real, Etta thought.I’ve fallen asleep. I hate horror films, but I bet this is what they’re like.
‘Are you going to kill me?’ she whispered.
The old lady on the right smiled widely. ‘Oh no, dear! Quite the opposite!’
‘You’re … going to, what,aliveme?’
The lady on the left was assessing her, beady-eyed. ‘In a way, yes.’
Etta paused, horrified. This must be a joke. She dismissed the thought. She had very few friends left in the city to organise pranks. Her closest friend had been gone almost as long as her parents had, and the others had scarpered to the countryside after Covid. Work, maybe. Perhaps someone at work.
Etta studied the two women in front of her. They certainly didn’t look like pranksters – or indeed murderers. They just looked like two – vaguely familiar – old ladies.
Rich old ladies, she thought. The one on the left was wearing an immaculate tweed suit jacket and skirt, with pearls. She could see the collar of a white silk shirt underneath the woman’s buttoned-up jacket and patterned green scarf. Hermes, possibly. The woman was stately – almost too tall to be old. Almost as tall as Etta, in fact.
The clothing of the lady on the right looked as expensive as her companion’s, but extremely brightly coloured. She was shorter, rounder, and far, far jollier than the aloof woman next to her, and reminded Etta vaguely of her own long-gone mother. She wore a patterned pink dress, underneath layers of cardigans, scarves and jewellery. Looking down, Etta saw a pair of Converse trainers.
