The House Swap: An absolutely hilarious feel-good romance

by Jo Lovett

  They ended up talking for the whole of the rest of his walk to the cemetery. He told her about how Patrick was taking his nieces to the cinema in Leicester Square while he and Ella met, and how they were all then going to stay the night with him again and he was going to babysit while Ella and Patrick went out for dinner. Astonishingly, Cassie even managed to make him laugh a couple of times.

  ‘I’m here,’ he said eventually. The cemetery was very flat and he could see Ella in the distance. Even at a good couple of hundred metres he could tell that she didn’t look relaxed. Something about the way she held her body. He checked his watch. No, he wasn’t late. Ella was early. ‘I’m sorry; I’ve been talking about myself for the past fifteen minutes. How are you? Was there something specific that you wanted to talk about?’

  Cassie paused infinitesimally, before saying, ‘Nothing, just a chat, really. I hope it goes well now, with Ella. I’ll be thinking of you.’

  ‘Could I call you later? Or tomorrow? Hear your news?’

  ‘Of course. Any time. Don’t feel that you have to, though. You might not want to talk this evening. Or you might. Any time.’

  James would definitely like to speak to Cassie almost any time. He really missed her. ‘I hope it isn’t too difficult now.’

  ‘Thank you. You’re a good friend.’

  ‘So are you. I’ll be thinking of you. Speak soon.’

  ‘Bye.’

  ‘Hi, Ella.’

  She turned round and he saw that his sensible, organised, solid, unemotional older sister had tears running unchecked down her face.

  He really didn’t want to do this.

  He wanted to turn around and walk away so much.

  His feet were almost itching with the desire to run.

  It was all too much.

  He was going to go. He was going to let Ella down because he always let family down and he just could not do this.

  And then Cassie’s words echoed in his mind. One step at a time.

  Maybe he could get through this like that.

  Okay. Give Ella a hug.

  He moved closer to her and put his arm stiffly round her shoulders.

  Ella whispered something.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t hear that.’ He leaned his head closer to hers.

  ‘I failed her so badly,’ Ella said in a barely audible voice.

  ‘What? No.’ In contrast to Ella’s, James’s voice rang out ridiculously loudly, from the shock.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I was the one who failed her. You weren’t even there. It was all down to me and I messed up. I just couldn’t manage it. I was too young. I had work. I wanted to make a good life. I tried so hard but I just really, really messed up.’

  ‘But that’s the whole point. You were there and I wasn’t.’

  ‘But you couldn’t be. You were at uni. You did a fantastic degree and you have a fantastic job. You’re a doctor. You help people.’

  ‘I didn’t help my own brother and sister, though, did I? I left. I was so desperate for a better, saner, more structured home life that I basically deserted you when I was eighteen and left the daily responsibility for Leonie and Mum to you. I can’t believe you don’t hate me for it.’

  ‘I…’ James stopped to think. He’d learned from talking to Cassie that honesty was a good thing, even when it hurt. ‘Yeah. I did. A little. But also, I was so proud of you. I mean, medicine. So impressive. And you did come home in the holidays and your example really inspired me to work hard at school and get myself to uni too. And I had the same sense of being desperate to make a better life. That’s why I chose to work in private equity. It really wasn’t my vocation. I mean, it’s fine, I’m not complaining, I do enjoy a lot of it because I like being busy and it’s interesting, and I also love that the world of smart-suited high finance is so far away from a dirty, shabby, empty-bottle-filled flat in a horrible estate. But the only reason I did it initially was the money. I can’t rationally hate you for leaving. Really, the big difference between what we did is that you’re two years older, so you left first. If I’d been the older one I’d probably have chosen a university away from London not realising that that would mean that you’d have to stay.’

  Ella did an almost alarmingly gigantic sniff. ‘We should have had this conversation five years ago. If not before Leonie died. You know what? You know who failed whom? If we’re being magnanimous, we could say that life failed Leonie. And if we’re pointing fingers and speaking ill of the dead, we could say that Mum did. And all three of our fathers. Our neighbours. All the adults in the situation.’

  ‘I don’t want to think that Mum failed us. Her alcoholism was an illness. She couldn’t help it.’

  ‘Moot point. It’s too fatalistic for my taste to think that people can’t help themselves. But, yeah, maybe. The fact remains, though, that someone should have helped us. I mean, you and I were carers from when we were so young. People must have known about that.’

  ‘We were very good at hiding things.’

  Ella nodded. ‘We were. But even so.’

  ‘You still good at hiding things? I am. My best friends don’t know about my background.’ That wasn’t one hundred per cent true now, in fact. Cassie did. James’s other friends didn’t, though.

  ‘Similar. I tell people, but in a very potted-history kind of way.’ Ella smiled at James and he smiled back and hugged her properly, this time because he wanted to. ‘Leonie would be pleased to see us back together like this,’ she said. ‘We are properly back together now, aren’t we?’

  ‘We are,’ James confirmed. He stepped forward and pulled a weed away from Leonie’s gravestone. ‘She was beautiful,’ he said. He heard his voice go all wobbly like a heartbroken child’s.

  And then they both cried, a lot, which was much better than it might have been because this time, unlike when Leonie had died, James and Ella were very much crying together. They were standing close to each other, their arms round each other’s shoulders, instead of several feet apart, each of them with their arms clasped across their own chests, the way they’d been at the funeral.

  In the end, Patrick babysat the girls in the flat, while James and Ella went out for dinner together and talked a lot more. And then when James and Ella got home, they played poker with Patrick, and James put his Maine-gained skills into practice and thrashed both of them, ending up with a hundred and thirty-seven extra-long matches to Patrick’s three and Ella’s ten.

  James looked out of the windows towards the park. He wasn’t appreciating the view as much as usual. You couldn’t pass an entire Sunday evening just sitting on a sofa. He hadn’t planned anything this evening, imagining that he’d be grateful for some peace and quiet after Ella, Patrick and the girls had left. But now they’d been gone for fifteen minutes and the flat, and the rest of the day, just felt remarkably empty.

  Right. He was going to call Cassie. Let her know how yesterday had gone and ask her how she was.

  No. He was going to text her. He couldn’t deal with any more emotion this weekend.

  He really, really missed her.

  He wished so much that they could be together. But they couldn’t be. Cassie wanted children. And babies needed to be adored and wanted by both their parents. Like Ella’s girls. And not like Leonie. Babies should never be let down in any way by the adults in their lives.

  Of course, if he and Cassie got together and tried for a baby, maybe it wouldn’t happen. But that would be awful too. Cassie would be devastated, and James… wouldn’t be.

  Yep. Best just to stay in touch in a relatively distant way.

  Hi Cassie. Thanks so much for the chat yesterday. The one step at a time thing really worked. I got through the whole day and, to my surprise, it was great. Ella and I have got a lot closer again. We talked a lot about Leonie. Thank you. Demon slaying works… Planning to talk properly to my friends more too. How are things with you? What have you been up to? How are the animals? Laura? Dina? Jx

  And now
he was going to see if Matt and their friend Josh were up for a quick Sunday pint. Since they were his actual best friends and he had not had sex with them, nor was he wondering whether he would or would not ever want to try for a baby with them.

  ‘And, yeah, that’s basically it.’ James finished summarising everything about Ella, Leonie and his mother and father for his best friends, and took a big gulp of his lager.

  ‘Mate.’ Matt was shaking his head. He’d been shaking it for a while. ‘We were all just getting pissed the whole time and had literally no responsibilities and you were doing all of that? I’m so sorry that you didn’t feel you could tell us before. And that we didn’t realise. I mean, I suppose I kind of did, a little, but, you know, you get used to people being a certain way, and never talking about certain things, and you never really investigate further. Sorry, mate.’

  ‘And if at any point I took the piss out of you about you never once having been drunk in the seventeen years we’ve known each other, I really want to apologise.’ Josh had spent over a decade trying to persuade James to get even a fraction as trashed as he got at least once a week, until he’d ended up with stitches in his head from falling off a pavement at Matt’s thirtieth and had decided to tone things down on the alcohol front himself.

  ‘You should meet my sister Ella and her family. What about if you all come over for Sunday lunch the next time they come for the weekend? And this time we’ll actually do it,’ James heard himself say. And he didn’t regret it.

  This was good. He was grateful – hugely grateful – for the fact that he’d done the house swap, and met Cassie, but this was his actual life, and he and Cassie clearly did not want the same things, so it was a good thing that he’d texted her rather than calling her back, because he should definitely move on from her. He had a busy life, so he’d stop missing her soon.

  He really bloody missed her right now, though.

  Enough. He was going to get the next round in and he was going to stop thinking about her.

  Twenty-Six

  Cassie

  ‘How did your conversation with James go on Saturday?’ Dina wasn’t even through Cassie’s door before she asked. It was great that Dina was okay about Cassie having slept with James, a huge, huge relief but, right at this moment in her life, Cassie could have done with a bit of space from Dina. From anyone knowing about this whole pregnancy thing.

  ‘Good. I mean, I didn’t actually tell him. It was an important weekend for him, so it didn’t seem like the right time.’ And now it might never be the right time to tell him again that she loved him.

  ‘Cassie.’

  ‘I know, but I really couldn’t. He had a lot of family stuff going on and it really wasn’t the time. And you know what, I now realise that it’s insane to tell him before I’ve actually done the test. I don’t know what I was thinking. I might not actually be pregnant.’

  ‘You said you were sure? Period two weeks late and counting? Nearly three weeks now? Every symptom under the sun?’

  ‘Yes, but who knows? Maybe my body’s playing tricks on me because of the IVF treatment earlier in the summer. Or because I had sex for the first time in so many years.’

  ‘Honey. The only trick your body plays on you when you have sex is to get you pregnant.’

  ‘Yep. Fair enough. Probably I’m pregnant. But I don’t know for definite and it really wasn’t the time to talk to James. Now I realise that it was a blessing in disguise because even if I am pregnant, it might not be viable given that I lost the baby before, and there’s no point going through that whole conversation with him if it isn’t going to work out. And I know that he doesn’t want children. So that would not make him inclined to want to be involved in a surprise pregnancy.’

  ‘Obviously it’s entirely your decision but I kind of think that you should give him the option of whether or not he wants to be involved. You don’t want to regret anything later on. I also kind of think that you should find out for definite right now whether you are in fact pregnant or not. And, on both counts, when I say “kind of”, I mean I really do think that. To clarify: you should take a pregnancy test now and if it’s positive you should tell James. In my opinion. Which is always correct.’

  Cassie gave her the evil eye for a moment, while she thought. Dina was partially correct, actually. ‘I do agree about doing a test. I don’t agree about telling James. I’m going to do a test now and if it’s positive I’ll tell James in a few weeks’ time.’

  ‘Okay. So yay. We’re doing a test. This is exciting.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Do you really want to do this by yourself?’ Dina was jumping up and down like an excited puppy. After briefly going alarmingly quiet after the Cassie-had-slept-with-James news, she’d been brilliant about it. And she was a fantastic best friend. And it would be great to have her support, whatever the outcome of the test.

  ‘No, I’d love you to be with me. But I’m doing the actual weeing alone.’

  ‘I’m going to be sick. This is terrible.’ Cassie stared straight ahead trying to do that eyes-on-the-horizon thing that idiots maintained helped. It didn’t. She was definitely going to throw up. ‘I hate ferries.’

  ‘It isn’t far,’ Dina said. ‘And it also isn’t that choppy. Keep your eyes on the horizon.’

  ‘Oh, please.’ Cassie whipped a sick bag out of her tote and had it open just in time to catch the contents of her stomach.

  ‘I’m sorry that you feel so rough,’ Dina said, rubbing her back, which actually made Cassie feel worse, except she had nothing left in her stomach to come out, ‘but this is probably still better than going to the island general store and having Mrs McGinty telling the whole world that you bought a pregnancy test.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh.’ Cassie had three different pregnancy tests from the drugstore nearest to the ferry terminal, and finally they had a table in a – somewhat downmarket – Mexican restaurant, because she really needed spicy food, and now she was finally going to find out for definite. ‘Here I go.’ She took a deep breath, and stood up, and then sat down again. ‘I don’t think I can do it.’

  ‘Yes, you can. Or do you mean you haven’t drunk enough? Have a glass of water.’

  ‘No, I mean I think I might be about to have a nervous breakdown.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s go. Come on.’ Dina took her jacket off and put it on the back of her chair, moved out from behind the table and took Cassie’s arm and gave it a gentle pull. ‘The restroom’s over there in the corner.’

  It was really small. Dina waited, squashed up against the wash basins, while Cassie squeezed herself into one of the two, remarkably small, cubicles.

  ‘So are you gonna do it?’ Dina said after a while.

  ‘Just reading the instructions again.’

  ‘Which one are you doing first?’

  ‘The expensive one. Dina, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I hate weeing in front of people and these cubicle doors are small. Could you maybe wait outside?’

  ‘Sure. But call me as soon as you’re done peeing because I want to be here for the big reveal.’

  ‘Okay.’ Bloody hell.

  This was a lot worse than when she took her test the first time she’d got pregnant. She’d done the test in the swish en-suite bathroom of the master bedroom in Simon’s swanky Glasgow townhouse. There’d been no need to spread loo paper around the seat of the loo, because it was obviously clean and strangers did not sit on it. It hadn’t smelled vomit-inducingly strongly of urine mixed with grim air freshener. And it hadn’t had a cracked loo roll dispenser or sticky floor tiles that you really didn’t want to touch at all.

  Okay. She’d done it. She’d weed for the right length of time. Two minutes to go.

  She was out of the cubicle, holding the test flat, carefully not looking at it and calling to Dina still with one minute to go according to the timer on her phone.

  Dina hurried back in, looked down and said, ‘Oh my Go
d, oh my God. Oh my God.’

  Cassie looked down too. ‘But it shouldn’t be ready,’ she said.

  ‘You’re pregnant,’ screamed Dina. ‘Honey, I’m so, so happy for you.’ She flung her arms round Cassie.

  ‘I’m pregnant. I’m bloody pregnant.’ Cassie knew without a shadow of a doubt that if this worked out, she was keeping it.

  She also knew that if it worked out she’d be the luckiest woman in the world. And that James was really not going to feel the same way.

  ‘Congratulations. Such wonderful news.’ Dina was kind of running on the spot in excitement.

  ‘Thank you. I can’t believe it. Oh my goodness.’ To hell with worrying about James. She was going to enjoy this moment. This incredible moment. This was actually so much better than when she got her positive test the first time she was pregnant. Yes, this loo was scummy, but Dina was here and she was happy for her and she was a great friend and she’d be a great support, whereas Simon had been spectacularly unimpressed by the news.

  Yep, she wasn’t going to tell James yet. She didn’t need to talk to an unenthusiastic father-to-be in the near future, even if he was the one person in the world she couldn’t stop thinking about, and who she so often wanted to talk to so badly. Now, she was going to let herself be absolutely bloody ecstatic.

  ‘I’m having a baby,’ she squealed.

  And then she joined in with Dina’s jumping and speed running on the spot until it made her feel sick.

  Twenty-Seven

  James

  Christmas Day. Ella’s sitting room. An enormous tree covered in silver baubles and tinsel. A roaring log fire. Ella and Patrick, Daisy and Lottie, Patrick’s parents and his brother and his wife and kids. It was one of those happy family scenes that James had never imagined himself in. He’d even less imagined himself enjoying such a scene. But he was enjoying himself, hugely. He adjusted his paper hat and turned to look at Daisy.