‘I did.’
‘May I ask, did the lease on the studio fall through?’
‘Oh no,’ Jasper said. ‘Why should it?’
‘I was under the impression that you—’
‘So was I,’ Jasper said. He smiled into the telephone. ‘I read myself wrong. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.’
‘Not wasted, I’m sure,’ the agent said bravely.
Jasper took another mouthful of his drink. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m not going to be buying in your area, after all. So if that counts as wasting your time, I’m very sorry.’
The agent cleared her throat. He could tell that she was trying not to compute the hours she had spent on him which had, just now, come to nothing, nor to anticipate exactly how she would tell the vendor that his prospective buyer had just pulled out, for no reason he cared to specify.
‘Perhaps,’ the agent said a little tensely, and as if reading his thoughts, ‘you would like to explain to me why a flat that fulfils every criteria you insisted on is suddenly no longer what you want?’
Jasper smiled into the telephone. He said warmly, ‘No, I wouldn’t, I’m afraid.’
‘I see.’
‘I wouldn’t expect you to see, either. It must be maddening when people behave like I am, but there it is.’
‘Is that your final word?’
‘Yes,’ Jasper said. ‘Yes, it is. Sorry again.’
There was silence on the other end of the line.
Jasper took the phone away from his ear and looked at the screen. ‘Call ended,’ it said firmly. The agent had rung off without saying goodbye, without ending the weeks of their weirdly close relationship with even the anodyne platitudes of good wishes for the future. How very – peaceful.
Jasper dropped his phone into his pocket. He felt elated at having extricated himself from a complicated situation without having to ask for help to do so. It was a good feeling, strengthening. It almost merited celebrating with a second vodka and tonic, but on reflection he would save that second drink to have with Susie when she joined him, as she had promised.
‘Are you working tonight?’ she’d said, ringing from her office earlier that day. ‘Could we perhaps have a drink together, at least? And not at home.’
No, he’d said, he wasn’t working. He would be on Saturday, though, if she’d like to come to the gig?
‘Yes,’ she’d said.
‘You don’t sound very certain.’
‘I’m – not very certain if you want me there.’
‘Oh, I do.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes,’ Jasper had said.
He looked across the pub now towards the half-glazed door to the street. Susie would soon come through it, and then he could tell her about his conversation with the estate agent. In fact, he could make quite a funny story about his conversation with the estate agent. He smiled down into his glass. What was that French phrase about having a parting shot through the staircase just as you left someone you’d had – or almost had – a row with? Something about un esprit de l’escalier. Susie would remember. And perhaps he could then tell her what he now wished he’d said at the end of his conversation with the estate agent from Hoxton, which was, ‘The thing is, I’m not looking for a property on my own any more.’ And then he would have laughed, in a jolly, we-blokes-are-so-hopeless kind of way, before adding, ‘You sometimes need to go down the wrong path a bit, before you find the right one. Don’t you think?’
The estate agent probably wouldn’t have had a clue what he was on about. She’d have just thought that he was mad as well as being, as a potential client, bad. But it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all what the estate agent from Hoxton thought. All that mattered, really, was that Susie understood what he meant, what he was driving at. What he had determined about their future together. And she would. He was certain of that. She would.
About the Author
JOANNA TROLLOPE is the author of seventeen highly acclaimed bestselling novels. She has also written a study of women in the British Empire, Britannia’s Daughters, as well as a number of historical novels. Born in Gloucestershire, she now lives in London. She was appointed OBE in the 1996 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.
Visit her website at www.joannatrollope.com
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
Also by Joanna Trollope
The Choir
A Village Affair
A Passionate Man
The Rector’s Wife
The Men and the Girls
A Spanish Lover
The Best of Friends
Next of Kin
Other People’s Children
Marrying the Mistress
Girl from the South
Brother & Sister
Second Honeymoon
Friday Nights
The Other Family
Daughters-in-Law
The Soldier’s Wife
Credits
Front cover: © Plain Picture/Johner. Girls in background:
© Elizabeth Ansley/Trevillion Images.
Back cover: © Johnny Ring.
Design by Claire Ward/tw
Author photo: © Barker Evans
Copyright
Balancing Act
Copyright © 2014 by Joanna Trollope.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPUB Edition May 2014 ISBN 9781443413077
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Originally published in Great Britain in 2014
by Doubleday, an imprint of Transworld Publishers
First Canadian edition
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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