The House Swap: An absolutely hilarious feel-good romance

by Jo Lovett

  ‘I’m sorry but that’s a ridiculous comparison. You go to London, you expect noise. You come to an island in the middle of nowhere, you expect silence. I mean, obviously.’

  ‘What, so people on islands don’t have parties? You’d complain if your neighbour threw a party?’

  ‘Maybe.’ What James should probably do now was read all her notes, find out to what extent it could be argued he was in the wrong. ‘Okay. Well, I’ve told the men to go ahead with the installation.’

  ‘Kind of you.’ Very sarky. ‘Bye then.’

  The notes were incredibly long. It took way longer to read them than it took to erect a large marquee on a somewhat uneven and still wet field. James took a break from the notes to see the men off and then got back to them.

  On paper, Cassie was warm and friendly. Like she’d been during their few amicable phone conversations. Funny, too. And remarkably loquacious. You wouldn’t think one person could have so many mini-anecdotes about their home and one smallish island. Or that all the anecdotes would be enjoyable to read. He almost wanted to meet some of the people she’d written about.

  He should probably call her back.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘I read the notes a little too fast initially and I missed the bit about the party. Apologies. Obviously I’m happy for it to go ahead and I’ll keep an eye out for the catering deliveries.’

  ‘You didn’t read them at all before, did you?’

  ‘No? In my defence they’re extensive and I’m not a big reader.’

  ‘You don’t read work stuff?’

  ‘Yes, I do, but I don’t read for leisure. Anyway. I’m trying to thank you for leaving them for me. I enjoyed reading them and thanks for taking the time to write them.’

  ‘Okay, well, no problem.’ Sounded as though she was smiling.

  Mid-afternoon, he decided that he’d better go and check on Laura. Strangely, he didn’t object that much now to visiting her. Too much solitude could get to you.

  There was no doorbell at Laura’s. James banged hard on the door. It opened way faster than usual.

  ‘Hey, James.’ It was Dina. This was the first time he’d seen her inside. She was even more attractive when she wasn’t soaking wet in a field. ‘How are the animals? And have you made any progress on the Wi-Fi? Laura and I were just talking about you.’

  James nodded. It was apparent that the arrival of a stranger on the island was big news.

  ‘Come through.’ She turned round and led the way to the kitchen at the back of the house.

  ‘Good afternoon, James.’ Laura pushed down on the arms of her chair to get herself onto her feet. ‘I’ll put the kettle on. You missed the dinner.’ Wow. How long would it take for island life to get seriously claustrophobic?

  ‘Yeah, stuff to do,’ he said. ‘Settling in. Unpacking. I was sorry to have missed it.’

  ‘Next time.’ Laura smiled at him comfortably.

  ‘They’re monthly. We could all go together next time.’ Dina’s smile implied that she had very X-rated plans for him. It was like James was a nineteenth-century eligible gentleman who’d turned up in a village full of marriageable young ladies and low on marriageable men.

  ‘That sounds great.’ He made sure his own smile was bland.

  ‘Tea or coffee?’ Laura asked.

  ‘Tea would be great, thank you. Can I help make it?’ James said.

  Laura and Dina were good company together. Dina laughed at Laura when she went down the inquisition route, and Laura tsked at Dina when she overtly ogled James and suggested that they go to Amy’s party together. Amy was apparently busy with her friends getting ready for this evening. Dina was going to go and join them soon and she’d love for James to join her later. James told her that he wasn’t sure how his schedule was but he’d look forward to seeing her at the party.

  The rest of the day wasn’t bad either. He finished up some work, enjoyed reading the remainder of Cassie’s notes and cooked dinner for himself. Turned out that a) there were some basic skills you didn’t lose and b) you could enjoy cooking when you could afford whatever ingredients you liked and you didn’t have your baby sister hanging round your ankles and your mother completely off her face and the feeling that your time would be better spent on seeing your mates or schoolwork.

  At this rate he’d be knocking up a pecan pie to contribute to the next island dinner and polishing Cassie’s lawnmower in pleasurable anticipation of the race.

  ‘Hey, James.’ Dina, looking good, very good, if a little scary, dressed in a tight, low-cut black mini dress and some impressively high heels, had knocked on his kitchen door and then opened it without waiting for an answer – James made a mental note never to be downstairs not fully dressed unless he wanted something to happen – and poked her head in. ‘You coming over to the field now?’

  ‘I’ll be there in about half an hour if that’s alright.’ Probably not a good idea to go to the party with Dina. ‘Couple of things to do first. Got to put the chickens to bed.’

  ‘Sure. Look forward to seeing you there.’

  Cassie and Dina had apparently organised the whole party together, with a lot of virtual input from Cassie, at awkward times of the day due to the Wi-Fi issue. Did no-one on this island know about hotspotting? James should tell them. And he should get back on the phone to the Wi-Fi engineer. Mid-week it had sounded like he had some good ideas about how to improve their service.

  ‘So I’ve been using my Wi-Fi all day every day,’ he told Dina over excellent mini-tacos and beers in a corner of the marquee.

  ‘No!’ Dina stopped with her taco halfway to her mouth. ‘How? Why does it work for you and not for anyone else? Did you bring it with you?’

  Explaining to Dina, and then to the several friends she dragged over, about the hotspotting felt like being in Back to the Future or something, like he was visiting the past from a time of greater technology.

  ‘No, really,’ he said in answer to a question from Laura, ‘we do not have different or more modern technology in London.’

  ‘Mom, everyone knows about hotspotting,’ Amy said when her mother had brought her over to be impressed. ‘Like everyone on the island under thirty. Probably some of the oldies too.’

  ‘Firstly, over thirty is not old. And secondly, what? Why didn’t you tell me? Do you think I want to set my alarm for two a.m. when I want to use the internet?’

  Amy screwed her face up, like she was thinking hard. ‘Did I know you did that?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, you know I do. I mention it a lot. Like every day when I’m yawning over breakfast. Sheesh, Amy, I’m a person, not just a food-making, lift-giving, bathroom-cleaning voice of wisdom. Like, pay some freaking attention to me.’ Dina smiled at her daughter as she spoke, softening her words, and pulled Amy in for a hug.

  ‘Love you, Mom.’ Amy grinned at her mother.

  James could barely look. There was something so great but also alien about a fantastic parent-child relationship. When you’d never had a relationship of any kind with your father, and the one with your recently deceased mother had morphed early on into you, the child, doing any parenting that was happening, it was sometimes hard to witness a well-functioning family relationship. Normally he was okay with it. It was great that his friends had good families. But today it was touching a nerve. Must be because he’d stupidly opened the email from his father last week.

  ‘So, James,’ Dina said to him. ‘Laura tells me you don’t have kids. Are you keen to start a family?’ Woah. Punchy question, and punchy timing.

  ‘Yep, no kids, and, no, no plans for any.’ That was an understatement. James was definitely not going to have children. One, he’d probably inherited some kind of terrible parenting gene from his own parents. Two, it had been too much responsibility for him and Ella having to bring their sister Leonie up and he’d totally messed up his part in it. Three, he liked his life as it was. His real life, his London life, when it didn’t involve angry exes or ex-employees.

  Amy
smiled at them all and waltzed off to dance in the middle of the marquee with a group of friends of her own age.

  Dina leaned closer to James so that he could feel her breath on his neck and had to twist his head to an awkward angle to avoid seeing straight down her cleavage. ‘Maybe I could persuade you to rethink. I’m feeling broody again now that my baby’s grown up.’ Good grief. Hopefully that was just the many beers she’d downed talking.

  ‘Ha,’ he said, going for the treat-it-as-a-joke approach. ‘Yes. Good one. Like to dance?’

  Dina did like to dance and they did in fact have a lot of fun on the dance floor until James begged for mercy and extricated himself to go and chat to some of the other guests.

  Around midnight, speeches started.

  ‘And now I’d like to ask James to come up onto the stage,’ Dina blared over the mic, at the end of a long and drunken speech, her arm round a smiling Amy.

  James nearly choked on his lemonade, experiencing a strong, and not pleasant, feeling of déjà vu from Emily’s birthday party. He shook his head slightly. Obviously Dina was not going to tell the room that he was about to propose to someone. That would be the most unbelievable coincidence ever. Plus Dina didn’t seem at all delusional. This was going to be fine.

  He walked over to the stage, receiving a lot of pats on the back from complete or near strangers on his way.

  As he jumped up onto the stage, Dina mic-catcalled, ‘Nice butt, James,’ to a lot of cheering. James nodded and bowed. He’d take that; a lot better than her expecting him to propose. ‘Amy and I just wanted to thank you for hosting in Cassie’s absence.’ She handed him the mic.

  ‘My pleasure,’ James said, smiling. Thank God no-one wanted to marry him. ‘Really, I did nothing. Thank you, Dina and Amy, for inviting me. I’ve had a great evening and I hope you have too.’ He looked at Dina and Amy and then he looked at everyone else, including the two-man band (trumpet and drums, the island electrician and odd-job man respectively, and genuinely at least as good as Emily’s fancy band had been). Then he leaned into the mic, did a big conducting motion, and started singing ‘Happy Birthday’. Might as well put his expertise to good use.

  Everyone joined in and no-one booed or slapped him.

  Not too bad an evening.

  Twelve

  Cassie

  Cassie pushed the front door open with her back and heaved her shopping inside. She loved London shops. If you realised on a Sunday morning on the island that you might have all the ingredients you needed for a pre-afternoon-tea baking-fest but you didn’t have any baking trays, you’d be buggered. In London, off you went to the nearby shops, and if one shop didn’t have exactly what you wanted, you just went to another one. Or you could Amazon-Prime it. On Wednesday, she’d had some stationery delivered within six hours of ordering it. Deliveries took a lot longer when you were a ferry journey away from the nearest depot.

  Her phone pinged. James. What now? Did he want to suck up to her again to try to persuade her to agree to his ecotourism plan – which was never going to happen – or was he going to have a go at her?

  Hi Cassie. Party went well – marquee, loos, food, drunkenness levels – all good. Laura pretty much outlasted us all (directing the dancing from the sidelines with her stick…). Great evening. Alpacas and chickens not too traumatised – checked on them this morning.

  Hmm. Sucking up.

  Dina had sent a whole series of texts.

  Party was a-maz-ing. My beautiful girl is eighteen. Can’t believe it. Same age I was when she was born. Thank you so much for the field and all your wonderful help.

  James also amazing. Sooooo HOT. Seems like we’re taking things slowly (aka NO ACTION WHATSOEVER YET) but I’m thinking that’s just because he’s a gentleman, which is GREAT but I want something to HAPPEN…

  HOTSPOTTING. Always thought it was a menopausal thing BUT NO: it’s more expensive BUT you can get internet on your laptop through your phone!!! Any time of day obviously!!!!! Amy already knew!!! James getting Wi-Fi fixed.

  Sending more photos from party later soon but here’s one for now.

  She’d sent a group one of herself, Amy, Laura, a couple of other good friends and James.

  Cassie shouldn’t be interested in checking out James in party gear.

  She was interested. She stretched the photo into a close-up of him. So good-looking. His bone structure and the shape of his mouth. His hair had grown and was slightly wavy. Gorgeous. The photo showed him wearing a navy shirt and smart jeans, a very affluent-Londoner look. Exactly the kind of man she’d learned the hard way not to like. Exactly the kind of man who of course Dina was going to fall for if he had any kind of wit and charm at all and who was of course going to let her down. Not to judge a book by its cover.

  Cassie now knew that he did have a lot of charm, when he wanted to. He was tenacious too – he must have put a lot of effort into finding that she was the owner of her land. Wasted effort.

  He was probably used to getting his own way about everything. No doubt he’d have another go at schmoozing her.

  Another ‘James is soooo amazing’ text came through from Dina.

  It was a teensy bit annoying how everyone was so enamoured of James.

  It looked from the photos as though the party had been great. And Cassie had missed it. However, she’d had a fab catch-up yesterday evening with a couple of old university friends, and there’d be other parties. Like Laura’s – maybe she’d take a long-weekend trip home for that one and see everyone.

  Right. She’d better get baking so that she’d be ready before Anthony and the neighbours from the floor above arrived. She sent some heart emojis and a ‘Speak later – in baking crisis’ message to Dina.

  Baking was going to be a lovely, civilised way to spend a couple of hours.

  Cassie hated baking. She was terrible at it. Cooking savoury dishes was no problem because they were really about the flavours, so you didn’t have to follow a recipe slavishly. Baking was a problem because you needed to use the right ingredients in the right quantities and bake them for the right length of time at the right heat.

  Cassie had messed up at least one of those things with all of the four bakes that she’d attempted. So now she had a lot of inedible food on James’s previously immaculate granite worktops and a lot of burnt raspberry juice to clean off the inside of his no-longer-pristine oven, and no food for the afternoon tea.

  But it was okay because she was in London and she could use Wi-Fi and Google to find Luigi’s number and then buy cakes from him. And if he didn’t have any cakes left she was going to call another baker until she found someone who did. London was great.

  ‘This is delicious cake.’ Anthony beamed at Cassie.

  ‘Thank you.’ She beamed back. He was lovely. As were the elderly woman and the young couple from upstairs. ‘I say thank you… I didn’t make it myself. I had a little baking disaster. So I bought these cakes.’

  ‘Well, you bought very well.’ Juliet, the older woman, was as sweet as Anthony. And the two of them seemed to get on remarkably well, to the extent that it looked like something could even happen between them now they’d met properly.

  Speaking of which. Dina and James. Cassie should ask about him, on Dina’s behalf, and also out of curiosity.

  ‘What’s James like?’ she asked.

  ‘James?’ Juliet was frowning.

  ‘James is apparently the owner of this flat.’ Anthony accompanied his explanation with a little pat on Juliet’s arm. She visibly fluttered at his touch. Definitely something could happen between them. ‘I don’t know him at all. He must keep very different hours from me. I might perhaps recognise him if I saw him. Did you say you’d seen him, Juliet?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. I didn’t know his name but I’m sure it was him,’ Juliet said. ‘Ever so dishy. Charming smile.’

  ‘Think he’s a banker,’ Jack from upstairs said. ‘Something like that. Looks like one.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that,
’ his wife, Chloe, said, in a much more gossipy tone, ‘but I do know that he had a woman banging on his door and swearing away late at night about a month ago.’ That had probably been Emily.

  ‘Yes, I heard that,’ Anthony said.

  Juliet nodded. ‘Me too.’

  ‘Does he have a lot of partners?’ Cassie asked. ‘Asking for a friend. Genuinely. He’s been a bit of a hit on the island.’

  None of them thought that he brought a lot of women to the flat. In fact, the only one that they could describe sounded very much like Dee. Maybe he wasn’t quite the smooth operator he seemed to be. That would make sense, given he hadn’t jumped immediately into bed with Dina. Dina was very funny, and gorgeous in a brunette Marilyn-Monroe kind of way. Your average straight and single man did not say no to her.

  An unwelcome vision of Simon came into Cassie’s mind. He definitely wouldn’t have said no, single or otherwise. He’d started seeing other women before they split up, after five years together, within a week of her miscarriage. It had been devastating, but, four years on, she needed to stop assuming every man was the same. There were plenty of decent ones out there.

  The jury was still out on James, though.

  ‘Thank you so much.’ Chloe hugged Cassie as they were all leaving after their much longer than expected – in a good way – afternoon tea. ‘You’ll have to come up to us soon. Maybe dinner in the next week or two?’

  ‘That would be fabulous.’ Cassie hugged her back.

  Jack, Anthony and Juliet all gave her pecks on the cheek as they left. As Cassie watched from her front door, Jack slung his arm round Chloe’s shoulders, sweet, and then Anthony placed his arm kind of round Juliet in a chivalrous, ushering kind of way and she gave him a look from under her eyelashes. Would Cassie be flirting in her seventies? She hoped so. She wouldn’t mind the opportunity for some flirting several decades before then too, if she was honest.