by Jo Lovett
Had she misjudged things with James just then? She’d been certain he was feeling what she was; he’d just had that look, like he’d had in the kitchen earlier. He’d been half smiling, his eyes on hers, and on her mouth, and on the base of her neck. God, she was shivering just thinking about it. Ridiculous. But it had felt so intense. And then something had made him stop.
Which was a good thing, obviously. They’d swapped homes and it would be weird to do anything even approaching also swapping bodily fluids, plus – and way more importantly – Dina was halfway in love with him. She really liked him.
Cassie really liked him too, if she was honest.
Anyway. Maybe in another life. In this life, she’d totally be up for meeting someone, one day, but realistically James was not that person.
She did like him a lot, though. He was much nicer than she’d thought. And it was good to know that he was no longer just trying to butter her up.
‘Thank you again for listening to me,’ she said.
‘Seriously. Not a problem. Pleased to be of listening assistance.’ He was definitely for real. No-one could fake that smile and the warmth in his voice, combined with a tiny bit of gorgeous I don’t normally have conversations like this awkwardness.
And hooray. They were back at the tent.
‘Hey, where have you been?’ Dina hurried towards them from halfway across the marquee. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I just drank a bit much,’ said Cassie, not looking at James. ‘I felt a bit sick. James was kind enough to take me outside for a minute to cool down.’
‘Always the gentleman.’ Dina flashed a smile at James. Cassie smiled generally at everyone, still not looking at him. This was terrible. She felt like she’d just committed adultery or something. Dina would be so hurt if she knew that they’d nearly kissed in the field. ‘You okay now?’
‘Yes, all good,’ Cassie said, grabbing a glass of wine from a passing waiter, one of Amy’s friends from the mainland. ‘Where’s Laura? It’s cake time!’
Laura was sitting in state on the Birthday Girl Throne that Dina and Cassie had decorated with flowers earlier while James was collecting her in his car. She was holding a non-alcoholic cocktail and a sausage roll, surrounded by lots of friends, and apparently asking Soraya, from the village, who had four adult children and was nearly fifty, if she was pregnant. From Soraya’s reaction, it looked as though she was and did not want to tell anyone. And Cassie was not going to be affected by the ‘everyone except me is pregnant’ thing again. She was going to react like an averagely happy person, and focus on Laura.
‘Honestly—’ she took a big slurp of her wine ‘—I don’t know how she gets away with it.’
‘Well, speaking as someone who met her relatively recently and got the full Laura treatment within literally minutes of meeting her, I think it’s her sweetness and her earnestness that get you,’ James said. ‘You really want to tell her to shut up, but you just can’t. So you give her a little bit and then she takes a bit more, and half an hour later, she knows a lot.’
Cassie nodded. ‘Yup. You gave in very easily. I know that. She passed a lot of information on to me about you immediately. Literally. I knew a lot about you by your second day here.’
James swivelled his eyes. ‘I’m worried now. What did I say?’
‘Ha. You’re just going to have to wonder.’
Cassie loved the way James’s lips twitched when he was amused.
‘Hey.’ Dina’s voice cut through her thoughts. ‘What are you two smiling at?’
What were they smiling at? Other than each other?
‘We were talking about Laura,’ James said, after a slightly too long pause.
‘Yes, we were,’ Cassie said. ‘About how she drags information out of people and how they’re powerless to resist.’
‘She does do that. Now. Cake time.’ Dina clapped her hands. It was a loud clap and it did cause everyone to turn to look. She cupped her hands round her mouth and repeated, ‘Cake time.’
‘You nervous?’ Cassie nudged James with raised eyebrows as Laura pressed the point of the cake knife into the middle of the top tier.
‘Yup.’ He nodded. ‘Genuinely am. I mean, a) Laura’s the queen of baking and b) I don’t want to poison people. And c) I really don’t know whether it’s going to taste good or not because I have no frame of reference because I don’t eat cake.’
‘What? At all?’
‘Nope.’
‘Wow. You know what you are?’ The wine was making Cassie feel more chilled again. She poked James in his gorgeously wide and solid chest. ‘You are a man of steel in the face of inquisition. And a man of mystery. Because Laura thinks you do like cake. She thinks you love her blueberry cake.’
‘That,’ said James, giving her an eyebrow waggle, ‘is because I—’ he leaned in and lowered his voice ‘—told her that I loved the cake.’
Cassie gasped. ‘You lied to Laura.’
‘I did.’ James nodded very seriously. ‘It was a white lie.’
Cassie smiled at him. He was so gorgeous.
He was so Dina’s.
She should walk away.
Cassie downed the rest of her wine and moved over to join the others close to the cake.
‘This is an awesome cake,’ Dina told James. ‘Moist. But not too moist. Great flavour.’
‘Thank you.’ He smiled at her, but really not in the way he’d been smiling at Cassie today. It was hard to know why not. Dina looked fantastic. She’d poured her hourglass figure into a black velvet dress, her make-up was still perfect five hours down the line and her hair was bouncy loveliness. And she was funny and loyal and kind.
And Cassie really wanted to go to bed and forget that she’d nearly betrayed Dina this evening. She was so, so glad that nothing had actually happened between her and James.
‘I’m just going to go and chat to a couple of people I haven’t seen in a while,’ she told Dina and James, and left them to it. She took a quick glance over her shoulder when she was a few feet away from them. They looked great together. Blond James and dark Dina. Both glamorous in their party gear. They’d look incredible going to a black-tie event together, for example.
‘James is great,’ Don Brown told Cassie. ‘Great fishing companion.’ Cassie nodded. Don was the sixth person in a row who’d told her how much they liked James. Good job James had pointed out to her that his neighbours liked her too, otherwise her nose would be feeling seriously out of joint.
Dina was clapping again. Cassie had never really noticed before how loud her claps were. She must have very hard hands.
‘Time for us to sing “Happy Birthday”,’ she announced. ‘And I’m going to ask James to start us off.’
‘I think Cassie should join me.’ James beckoned her over. ‘She set all the arrangements in train and booked everything and this is her field. Credit where credit’s due. All I did was put a shirt on and turn up.’ Very sweet. Apparently he was genuinely very kind under his initially hard exterior, and very self-deprecating because the cake must have been a lot of work.
Also genuinely very tuneless. By the last ‘to you’, Cassie was laughing so much she thought she might be sick. James was laughing even more than she was. So endearing.
‘Cassie, honey.’ Laura held her arms out to her. ‘Thank you so much for travelling so far across the world for my birthday. You didn’t have to but I’m so happy that you did.’
Cassie put her arms round Laura. ‘I’m so pleased to have been able to come.’ She felt Laura sway a little. This was a late night for an eighty-year-old. ‘You ready for bed yet?’
‘I think I might be.’
‘Me too. Come on.’
‘Right here with the car keys,’ James said.
Cassie had moved firmly onto London time and was sound asleep in Dina’s spare room within under five minutes of them rolling in through Dina’s front door, so it wasn’t until breakfast time that Dina started on the post-party analysis.
‘What
do you think of James in the flesh?’ Dina poured more black coffee into a mug. ‘He’s gorgeous, isn’t he? And so good to talk to. And from everything I’ve learned he seems like an all-round good guy. And he is so not interested in me.’
‘Thank you.’ Cassie took the mug gratefully. Her head didn’t feel good. At least she’d been drinking white and not red last night. With red, she always started her hangover before she was even in bed. ‘You don’t know that he isn’t interested.’ She took a long drink. Should she have said that?
‘I do know. I’ve given him a lot of opportunities and nothing’s going to happen.’ Dina shook her head. ‘I should just accept it. And, you know, I’ve only known him for four months. I shouldn’t be this upset.’ Cassie looked into her mug and gave the coffee a little swirl. What should she say? She was pretty sure that Dina was right, because the way James had looked at her was definitely different from the way he looked at Dina. False hope was not a good thing to have. Like when you thought you were pregnant but you weren’t. As a good friend, she should definitely not tell Dina about the moments she’d had with James yesterday, but she should also maybe encourage her to face reality.
‘Maybe he just doesn’t want a relationship at the moment,’ she said.
‘Yeah. Anyway. I can’t believe we’re talking about me and my unrequited lust for James after what you told me yesterday. I’m being self-centred.’
‘No. Dina. Never self-centred.’ Cassie put her mug down. This was awful. Dina was feeling bad when she, Cassie, if anyone, should feel bad. Although it wasn’t like she’d chosen to feel that connection with James last night. Maybe it had been because they were living in each other’s houses. Very intimate. ‘Let’s do something nice this morning when we’ve finished breakfast. Have a swim and sunbathe? What’s Amy doing today?’
Cassie put her arms round Fred’s neck and looked at his familiar, dopey face. ‘I’m going to miss you,’ she told him. ‘But don’t worry. I’ll be back in a couple of months’ time.’ Donna and Maisie wandered over.
There was a bit of throat clearing behind her. She turned round, leaving an arm round Fred’s neck.
‘Afternoon.’ James was wearing shorts – he had great legs – and a T-shirt and carrying a bucket. He stopped a good ten feet away from her, which was an extremely good thing. ‘Hope I’m not disturbing you. I thought you were leaving this morning.’
‘I’m catching the ferry soon and then driving down to Boston and catching the last red eye. Just thought I’d have one last cuddle. With the alpacas.’ Honestly. Just the word cuddle had her thinking about last night in the field and what hadn’t happened.
‘They are great for a quick cuddle. I’ve been known to sneak one in myself. I just came to collect eggs. Hannah and Holly in particular have been laying later in the day recently and I don’t like leaving them because I did once by mistake and they pecked into them and ate them.’
‘James Grey. You’ve become a devoted chicken farmer.’
‘I really have. I think I’ll miss them when we swap back. Not joking. You’ll have to send me news of them.’
‘Yeah, I’m going to miss your neighbours when I leave London.’ She was going to miss James too.
‘Maybe we should make it an annual thing. For a holiday. Again, not joking.’
Cassie nodded. ‘That does sound like a plan.’ And then she and James would have to stay in touch.
‘Okay, great. So I’m going to go over to see the chickens. Have a good journey.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Probably speak soon about something.’
‘Yes, probably.’ Cassie smiled at him and he walked round her, giving her a wide berth.
James had demonstrated that he was a lot lovelier than she’d ever have expected, but Cassie still felt a little awkward about having a full-on one-sided chat with the alpacas within possible earshot of him, so she just gave each of them a kiss and left.
Cassie thanked Henry fervently for his help with her luggage and closed the door of the flat behind him. Arriving here after the long journey from the island felt different this time. It genuinely did feel like a second home.
This time, she had food, she had towels and she had friends, and this evening she was going to the cinema with Chloe, Juliet and Anthony. Juliet had suggested a film based on what was apparently a great example of nineteenth-century German literature, and Cassie had invited Anthony – he read a lot of quite serious books – for another good opportunity to try to get him and Juliet together. A lot could happen under cover of the darkness and noise of a film auditorium.
‘Hi, Jennifer.’ Cassie put her phone on speaker and turned the volume down. The cinema last night had been one of those fancy ones with a lot of velvet and a wine bar, and she’d had more glasses than she should have done because the film had been dull, so she had a headache this morning. She could increase the volume if it turned out that Jennifer was in Friendly Home Jennifer mode rather than Business Bitch mode.
‘How’s it going? We have a meeting with the TV people lined up for next Tuesday.’ Business mode. Cassie adjusted the volume down further.
‘Okay, so all great then,’ Jennifer wound up. ‘And now I’d better go. Gotta try to find another babysitter. We have tickets for Hamilton this evening, which we don’t want to miss, and our babysitter just fell through. Teenagers. She got asked out on a date with the boy she’s been into for months and she said yes and binned us. And you know what, you can’t do that.’ Screechy but fair. ‘I’m not going to be asking her again. Disappointing because we know her mother and that’s why we felt confident leaving Sammy with her, but, you know. You do need a babysitter to be reliable.’
‘And you wouldn’t want her date to help her babysit?’
‘So she can make out on the couch and ignore any sounds from the baby monitor? No. I’m actually really pissed at her, which is why I’m talking to you about it now and mixing business and displeasure. It’s our anniversary and it was the first time since Sammy that we were going to venture out beyond Barnes. Anyway. Maybe I’ll find someone. I’m going to call around.’
‘Why don’t I do it?’ Cassie heard herself say. What? She didn’t want to be alone all evening with Sammy. She’d be beating down the door of the IVF clinic again by the time Jennifer and Angela got home.
‘I couldn’t accept your help. I hope you don’t think I was asking you.’
‘No, of course I don’t. But, honestly, not a problem. I was only planning to work this evening. I can bring my laptop with me.’
‘Are you really sure?’
‘Totally.’ Not. But Cassie couldn’t avoid babies for the rest of her life just to stop herself feeling broody. That would be ridiculous. And how rubbish if Jennifer and Angela had to miss out on their anniversary evening.
‘Well, then I will accept very gratefully but on one condition.’
‘Mmm?’ Never say yes to Jennifer until you knew exactly what the question was.
‘You have to accept whatever very OTT thank you present I buy for you with no quibbling.’
Cassie laughed. ‘No present OTT or otherwise is necessary but, yes, should there be any such present I will accept it quibble-free.’
‘Perfect. Thank you so much.’
‘Bye. Have fun.’ Cassie closed Jennifer’s front door and turned to look at Sammy. She could totally, no question, do this. Of course she could. She was a competent adult. He was a very small person. How hard could it be for her to look after him?
He started crawling away from her along the hall towards the kitchen, really quite fast. He had a gorgeous kind of commando action, not your classic crawl, and it looked so determined and so cute. And, woah, he was about to go headfirst down the two steps that led to the kitchen.
Cassie pulled a very quick short sprint out of the bag and picked him up just before he reached the first of the steps. He was so soft and chubby and just adorable.
And wriggly.
‘Head,’ he said and hit her –
remarkably hard for someone so young – on the side of her face.
‘Ow.’
‘Head.’ Bang.
He got three more massive hits in before she got him into his playpen. She’d always thought they seemed a little mean, in an animal-in-a-zoo way, but, yep, less than five minutes into an evening’s babysitting and she could totally see that as a full-time carer to a baby you’d need some significant breaks from being smacked round the face and constantly having to run after them while they crawled into danger.
‘Hey, Cassie.’ It was Real Jennifer, not Scary Dream Jennifer who’d been yelling in Cassie’s dream that Cassie should not move back to Maine. Cassie had just been asleep on the sofa in Jennifer and Angela’s kitchen. Really quite sound asleep. It was hard work looking after a baby. He hadn’t gone to sleep until about ten. ‘How was he?’
‘A delight,’ Cassie said. He’d been gorgeous. Also, way more tiring than she’d expected. ‘I have to tell you that I messed up his first nappy change and put the nappy on back-to-front. It was a lot more complicated than I’d thought. Anyway, he weed out of the side all over his sheets. I found clean sheets in the wardrobe and put the wet ones through the washing machine. I wasn’t sure whether to tumble dry them so I hung them up.’ He’d actually needed four nappy changes, and three of them had been messy – what had he been eating? And thank goodness the one when the nappy had been on the wrong way had only been wee.
‘Thank you so much,’ Angela said.
‘My pleasure. He’s lovely. How was the show?’
‘OMG. Sensational. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s a genius.’
‘It was brilliant,’ Angela agreed. ‘Thank you again.’