The Swap

It was Siobhan Kelly who found the website. She had been staring at the rain on the kitchen window in Galway for most of June when she typed "house swap Spain August" into her laptop. Two days later she was messaging Pilar Ruiz, a dentist from Malaga with a husband, two boys and, according to the photos, a terrace with a view of the sea. Pilar, for her part, was desperate to escape the heat. A house by the Atlantic sounded like heaven.

The first message arrived on the second of August, a few hours after both families had landed. "Hi Pilar! We're in. Your flat is SO bright. The boys have already been to the beach twice. Is it always this hot? Seriously, is it? It was thirty-four degrees at eight in the evening. Siobhan."

"Hi Siobhan," Pilar wrote back. "Yes, it's always this hot. Sorry! Your house is lovely. It's much bigger than ours, and the garden is so green that my husband keeps taking photos of it. One question: it's August, so why is it twelve degrees? And why does it rain sideways? Pilar."

Over the next few days, the messages became longer, and the comparisons became more and more passionate. The Kellys could not believe how late people in Malaga had dinner. "We went out at seven to find a restaurant and they were still cleaning the tables," Siobhan wrote. "Then at eleven the whole street was full of grandmothers and babies. Where do your children get the energy?"

"The question is how your children sleep when it's still light at ten," Pilar replied. "And what they eat for breakfast! What Mateo loved most was the Irish breakfast at the cafe in town. He says it's the best meal he has ever had. He also says your sausages are better than ours, which I'm choosing to forgive."

The weather remained the main topic. Siobhan's husband, Declan, became such a fan of the afternoon siesta that he started setting an alarm for it. The Ruiz boys, meanwhile, discovered that Irish rain was nowhere near as terrible as they had been told. "It isn't the rain that bothers them," Pilar explained. "It's the wind. Yesterday Lucas's umbrella went inside out and flew into the bay. He has never been so happy."

In the second week, things went slightly wrong in both houses at the same time. In Malaga, the air conditioning stopped working during a heatwave, and the Kellys spent a long, sticky night on the terrace. In Galway, a storm blew down part of the garden fence, and Pilar's husband spent a long, wet morning trying to fix it with a hammer and a YouTube video. Neither family mentioned it to the other until it had been sorted out.

When the truth finally came out, it was Pilar who wrote first. "I have a confession about your fence." Siobhan replied immediately: "I have a confession about your air conditioning." After that, the messages became even friendlier. It was such a relief to know that the other family was not perfect either.

On the last night, both families did the same thing without planning it. The Kellys cooked a paella on the terrace, following a recipe Pilar had sent, and it was nowhere near as good as the one they had eaten in town. The Ruiz family made Irish stew in Siobhan's kitchen, and it was so heavy that nobody could move afterwards. Both families sent photos of the results at almost the same moment.

"Same time next year?" Siobhan wrote, just before midnight. Pilar's answer came with a photo of her two boys in raincoats, grinning on a gray beach. "Of course. But this time, could you leave us a better umbrella?"