Here's Matthew side of the swap. Most chapters will be from a different character's perspective (Sybil, Matthew, Mary and Tom), although some will have to be broken up into two perspectives, depending on whose point of view I want for a particular scene. Should make sense as you go.
Matthew
"So why are you doing this exactly?"
Matthew Crawley looked over at his friend Tom Branson, sighed, and for what seemed like the hundredth time in the last week, explained.
"I need a change. This has been a hard year, and I have to clear my head before I decide anything. I don't want to be a tourist. I just want to be somewhere else for a while. Maybe the change should be permanent—I don't know, but I need to figure things out. That's what this trip is."
"And what about the part where a person you've never met stays at your flat?"
"That's the arrangement. You trade your houses. I can't very well rent a furnished London flat for a week, so I have to trade with someone. I've told you—"
"I know, I know. There are protections in place. I'm looking ahead to prepare. I'm the one whose door you'll be knocking on when this girl decides she wants to set fire to all of your furniture."
Matthew smirked. "So yesterday, she was going to paint it all pink. And today she's an arsonist?"
"I'm just going through all the possible scenarios in my mind," Tom said, with the tiniest bit of mocking in his tone.
"What about the scenario in which you shag her?"
"Since when have you known me to sleep with random women?"
"Do you really want me to answer that question?"
Tom laughed and added, "In recent memory."
"Fair point. Though I've told you that this self-imposed celibacy is at the root of your writer's block, haven't I? The editrix from hell can't have ruined you for all women."
"Sex never made my writing better. If anything it had the opposite effect—the editrix should be proof of that."
"You just haven't found the right girl."
"Well, if she ever materializes, we can come back to this conversation, but in the mean time I think the matter at hand here is me putting a spy-cam in the flat, don't you think?"
"No, I don't," Matthew said, rolling his eyes. "The matter at hand is you agreeing to take me to the airport this afternoon and then staying to pick Miss Crawley up and driving her back here."
"Oh, all right then. Chauffer Branson, at your service." Tom Branson laughed and looked over at his friend. Matthew's tired eyes gave him pause. "I know things have been tough mate, and being me I like to make fun, but I hope you know that I'm here to help no matter what."
Matthew smiled. "I do. And if I don't say it enough, thank you."
This had been a hard year, a hard couple of years. The sudden illness and eventual death of his girlfriend Lavinia Swire had put Matthew through the ringer, and the death of her father, who had come to depend on him so much, merely months after, only made the grieving process all the more difficult. Here he was, 15 months after Lavinia's cancer diagnosis, 14 months after her death, six months after Mr. Swire had passed away, and he was no closer to figuring out what to do with the small fortune the Swires had left him or with himself.
His mother had been putting a bug in his ear about returning to England, but Matthew couldn't make up his mind. He liked his current firm well enough, but lawyers could always find work in England. Dublin had been good to him, but it was time for a change. He needed to leave Lavinia and her father behind and start fresh. Not in Manchester, where his mother, Isobel Crawley, would drive him batty, but somewhere he could submerge himself in a new life—something like the life he'd pictured for himself when he and Tom were overly eager university boys at Cambridge, where they'd met on their first day.
Still, Matthew was nervous about how to go about it all, and after extensive thought—Matthew Crawley never made a rash decision—the house swap idea would allow him to dip his toe in the water, so to speak, and see if London truly was for him.
The hardest thing would be to leave Tom, a native Dubliner whom Matthew doubted would ever consider living elsewhere. Matthew knew all too well that Tom had been battling his own demons for some time. The bright spark from which his first novel had emerged, just months after their university graduation, was steam rolled in less than a year by an ill-advised affair with his editor and the death of his father the very week the book had hit store shelves. Five years later, Tom had barely recovered. Critics gave his book a warm reception but with an author who suddenly had no interest in doing publicity, sales of the book were modest and little came to be known to its readers about him. The editrix from hell, as Matthew later dubbed her, dropped Tom and his contract within months. He now worked at a small travel magazine and still "dabbled" as he put it, but he hadn't published anything of substance since.
In spite of everything, Tom had not wavered in his support of Matthew over the past year and a half. Matthew was not sure how he would have gotten through it all without his friend's absurd sense of humor and uncanny ability to get through to Matthew when his overly active conscience and overzealous sense of duty got the best of him. Despite his protests, Matthew knew he could count on Tom to be there for Miss Crawley in case she needed anything while she was in Dublin.
Not that a ride from the airport was part of the deal. That was just Matthew being Matthew, doing the chivalrous thing the way his parents had brought him up to do. Tom teased him about it, of course, but Matthew had a feeling Tom would be singing a different tune when he got a look at her. He wasn't setting them up, not really. He was merely curious as to what would happen when they met.
And anyway, exchanging photos before the swap had been her idea.
"Think of it as a kind of introduction," she'd said in their first phone call. "You'll see me in photos in my flat anyway. Besides, I think I could tell if you're likely to root through my knickers if I can see what you look like."
"My assurances to the contrary won't help?"
"Humor me."
Yup, Matthew thought now, looking over at his friend. She was definitely Tom's type.