by Jo Lovett
‘Honey. I get a lot more sex than you do and that’s a good thing. But I tell you what: you stop disliking gorgeous men on sight and I’ll stop liking them on sight. And do not cut off your nose to spite your face. Please? This is the perfect apartment for you. It’s the perfect swap. And it’s not like you’ll ever have to meet him anyway.’
Yeah, maybe Dina was right.
‘I just got an email from James.’ Cassie gave her coat to Dina, put her phone back in her bag and took the glass Dina was holding out. ‘Thank you.’ She took a big sip. Wild blueberry sparkling wine was a relatively new speciality from a southern Maine vineyard that Cassie and Dina had visited on a wine tasting last summer. It was delicious, at least as good as champagne or Prosecco. Oh, God. Cassie was really going to miss her life here. ‘This wine is so good. So anyway, he wants to speak before we sign on the dotted line.’
‘Sounds reasonable.’ Dina chucked Cassie’s coat onto a sofa in her sitting room, pulled the door closed and led the way through the hall towards her kitchen, where the rest of the Hawk Egg lobster festival committee were assembled.
Cassie screwed her face up. ‘There’s no real point in us speaking,’ she told Dina. ‘I mean, we know a lot about each other now. He’s been very anal in checking my background.’ If they spoke on the phone rather than by email, there was a chance she’d end up snapping at him if he asked yet more questions. It seemed the basic SwapBnB checks hadn’t been enough for James. In the end, Cassie had, in the space of forty-eight hours, provided him with passport and driving licence details, proof of her dual British and US residency (she’d been born in the US before moving to Glasgow as a baby) – apparently he suspected her of some kind of visa scam – plus a bank reference, proof of ownership of her property, various health details, all manner of things. Frankly, it had been a surprise that she hadn’t had to supply her dental and vaccination records. She’d been on the brink of pulling out several times, but each time had remembered that his flat looked perfect – location, layout, size, niceness, everything – and none of the other options she’d found had looked remotely right for her.
They went into the kitchen and Cassie distributed hugs and hellos to her friends before taking another slurp of her wine. That was good.
‘It can’t hurt to speak to him, though, can it?’ Dina asked, as Cassie joined her at the side of the room to gather snacks to carry them to the table.
‘He’s very annoying. Very demanding.’
‘People often come across that way in writing and are sweethearts in person, though.’
‘That’s true.’ Cassie chewed her lip. ‘And it would be good to be on friendly terms with him. I just don’t want to discover that I can’t stand the man who’s going to be living in my house.’
‘Honey—’ Dina reached round Cassie for bowls ‘—you’re swapping homes. He isn’t an ogre. He’s a regular human being. If he isn’t a regular human being, you don’t want to swap homes with him. Speaking to him will be totally fine.’
Cassie nodded. Dina was probably right.
‘You know what?’ Dina waved a pretzel in Cassie’s face. ‘By the end of the call I bet you’ll be the best of friends.’ She handed the pretzel bowl and one containing cheesy crackers to Cassie. ‘Guaranteed.’
Cassie huddled into her coat and pulled her faux-fur-lined hood closer. She squinted through the bright-blue fluff of the fur at the steel grey clouds above the sea. She should have given James her landline number. Her mobile almost never worked inside the house, so she had to be outside to speak on it, and, even without the rain that was threatening, this afternoon wasn’t the most pleasant for sitting in the garden. She checked the time. One minute to go.
And approximately sixty seconds later, her phone rang. Not a surprise. You’d guess from his photo and emails that James was punctual. Anal. Not a hair out of place. Not a reference un-asked for. To be fair, Cassie did like punctuality, but not to a ridiculous extent.
‘Cassie.’
‘Hi, James.’
‘Thanks for agreeing to a call. I had a couple of points I wanted to discuss that I thought would be easier by speaking rather than emailing back and forth.’ He had a deep voice with a bit of a rasp, and was both extremely London and extremely confident-sounding. It was the kind of voice a lot of women liked. Cassie herself had gone for that type of man in the past; now she was older and wiser.
‘Okay, great,’ she said, not meaning it. There’d be a lot to say once the swap started, obviously, because they’d want to tell each other how things in their respective houses worked, give each other advice, all sorts of things, but there was no point going through any of that now, because they’d just forget.
‘Firstly, I thought it would be good to touch base, just really to confirm that we are who we say we are.’ What? He still didn’t believe she was definitely who she said she was after conducting possibly the most anal pre-house-letting due diligence of all time?
‘Right. Well, yes, I am me.’
‘Great.’ There was a pause. Maybe he’d just realised how ridiculous he sounded. ‘And I am me, of course.’
‘Excellent,’ Cassie said. Honestly.
‘The other main reason that I wanted to speak to you was to agree the start date of the swap. We should probably actually have done this before exchanging all our other details.’
‘Okay, no problem.’ When they’d filled in their online forms, James had said that he could start any time and Cassie had said she could start in about a month’s time. She wanted to be around for Dina’s daughter Amy’s eighteenth, plus it would take time to pack. She’d started preparing the house and she’d started on some notes for James, as and when things occurred to her, but she was in no way ready. So, since James could do any time, they would presumably start when Cassie wanted to. Ideal. ‘Thank you for being flexible.’
‘Sorry, but I’m not flexible.’
‘You aren’t?’
‘No. I’m afraid that I need to start the swap immediately,’ he said.
‘But you said on the online form that you could do any time starting now.’
‘The form was badly constructed in that sense. It didn’t give me the opportunity to say exactly what I meant, which is that not only can I start the swap soon, I do need to start the swap within the next week.’
‘But I can’t start for at least three or four weeks.’
‘Is that due to work or family commitments?’
James wasn’t coming across like someone who’d be sympathetic to her being a slow packer and wanting to be around for a birthday party and, if she was honest, just needing a bit of time to get her head round the whole big-move thing. Maybe it would be better to be vague.
‘It’s for a number of reasons,’ she said.
‘And there’s nothing you can change?’
‘Not really.’ Cassie went for her best assertive tone, the one she used when the alpacas wouldn’t do what she wanted. ‘Sorry.’
‘Apologies, then,’ James said, not sounding that apologetic. ‘I need to start the swap immediately. If you can’t commit to starting within the next week, perhaps we should both look for an alternative.’ Noooo. Cassie wanted to stay in James’s flat. But it would be a nightmare getting ready for the swap that quickly. And there was the party.
‘I can do three weeks from now,’ she said. She could go straight after the party.
‘Too late, I’m afraid. Not a problem. I’m sure we can both find other swaps that we like. Apologies for having wasted your time.’
There was no way Cassie was going to find another place that she liked as much. She didn’t want to spend several months knowing that if she’d just foregone one party and got her packing skates on she could be living somewhere so much better.
‘When’s the latest you could start the swap?’ she asked.
‘Next weekend.’
‘Right.’ Cassie stuck her middle finger up at the phone. Very satisfying actually. ‘Fine. Okay. Let’s do that.’ Crap.
She was going to have a lot to do this week. And she was going to miss the party. She could stay for it. Dina would definitely happily have her as a guest for a few days. But no, it would be too weird living next door to her own house. It would be better just to take the hit on the party and go. There’d be other parties.
‘Thank you.’ Not a hint of a smile in his voice. Honestly.
The following weekend, having moved mountains to get everything ready, Cassie heard wheels crunch over the stones in the drive, gave the flowers in the vase in the hall a final nudge into place, and grabbed her coat and bag.
By the time James had parked, she was outside the house, wearing her best welcoming smile. Which he probably wouldn’t be able to see, because, after a beautiful morning, this afternoon’s weather had been rain, rain and more rain, which was currently so heavy that visibility was almost as poor as if it were night-time, plus Cassie had her hood pulled tight round her face, because there was far too much wind for an umbrella.
‘Hi, James,’ she said as he got out of his car. Leaped out, really. He was a lot bigger than she’d expected – both tall and broad – rugby-player big. He wasn’t dressed like a rugby player, though. Through the rain, she could just about make out that he was wearing smart jeans and a cashmere-type jumper, with suede loafers. His hair was blond and sharply cut, and definitely gelled. His handsome face held a polite but aloof smile.
‘Good afternoon. Excuse me for a moment.’ He gestured at the rain and turned and reached inside the car for a very new-looking khaki-green waxed jacket. The kind that your rich city-dweller might imagine that a country-dweller wore but which in fact they did not wear. Cassie wondered whether it was properly waterproof. James would know the answer to that within a small number of minutes if they stood outside for too long. His feet would be soaked, too.
‘Why don’t we go inside?’ she said, loudly, so that he’d be able to hear her over the downpour. ‘I can show you around outside later, when it stops raining. I know that this seems very heavy, but according to the forecast it’s only a shower, and there’s blue sky over there. The weather can change remarkably quickly here. I think it’ll be dry and sunny within fifteen or twenty minutes.’
‘Inside? Apologies. I didn’t catch your name.’ Who did he think she was?
‘I’m so sorry.’ Should she go and shake hands with him? He seemed like quite a formal person. Best not, actually; it was far too wet. ‘I should have said. I’m Cassie.’
‘Cassie? Cassie Adair?’ He frowned. ‘We did agree today?’
‘Oh, yes, we did, I just thought it would be nice to stay and show you around. I mean, I left you some notes, but, you know, I thought maybe I should talk you through things.’ She took a couple of steps towards the house. James didn’t follow. He just stood there next to his hire car, his hair now completely wet and the shoulders of his coat already dark from the water. She’d bet good money that some of the water had already soaked through the coat onto his jumper.
‘Stay?’ he asked, with barely a hint of a smile, and his eyebrows raised.
‘Oh, no, not here,’ she told him. ‘I moved out yesterday. I’m staying with my neighbour and good friend, Dina. You’ll meet her soon, I’m sure.’ He was actually pursing his lips slightly. ‘I’m leaving tomorrow.’ It suddenly felt important to clarify that. ‘I just thought it would be useful to meet and run through a couple of things in person.’
‘That’s very kind, but I think I’m good. Pretty sure I can work everything out for myself. If you could just leave me the keys, that would be great.’ He smiled only very slightly, and turned his back on her, like he was dismissing her, opened the boot of his car and started taking out very new-looking smart, dark-grey luggage. All matching.
Cassie glared at his back. She’d bent over backwards to accommodate his request to start the swap a good two to three weeks earlier than she’d wanted. She didn’t expect actual thanks but she also didn’t expect him to be rude to her.
Right. Well, she should just go, then.
No. She shouldn’t just go. She’d moved on in the past four years, and she was no longer a woman who took this kind of crap. They were obviously going to need to be in touch while they were living in each other’s houses. She wasn’t starting their swap relationship like this. She was going to tell him what she thought.
Five
James
James walked round Cassie and over to the porch outside her front door and placed the first two of his suitcases on the dry ground there. Hopefully, by the time he’d got back to the car to get the other two cases, she’d have buggered off back to the neighbour’s house.
He was an adult. He didn’t need to be shown round the house by its owner; he needed to look around and unpack in peace. The drive up from Boston to Maine via the scenic coastal route had been glorious, but the long queue for the ferry out to the island had been pretty un-glorious, as was this bloody rain. He clearly didn’t want to talk to a complete stranger right now.
The complete stranger was ranting at him, he realised, as he turned round. He couldn’t hear a word that she said, due to the rain and the fact that she was about fifteen feet away from him. He also couldn’t see her face, or anything of her other than some long dark hair escaping from her hood and the fact that she was quite short, but her body language was clear. She had one hand on where her hip would be underneath her enormous coat, and with the other was gesticulating in a finger jabbing kind of way.
Whatever. If he didn’t engage, hopefully she’d just go away. The only thing he needed from her was the front door key.
‘Great,’ he said, when she’d finished her inaudible tirade. ‘Is the front door open?’
She took a couple of steps closer to him and said, ‘Great?’ Okay, so she was within earshot again.
‘Yes. Is the front door open?’
‘What do you mean great?’
James shook his head slightly. He turned back round to try the door. It was open. Good news. He would need the key, though.
He turned back to Cassie. ‘This is great,’ he said. ‘Fantastic. Thank you. Kind of you to welcome me. Could I get the key?’
‘Frankly, that’s a poor apology.’
‘Sorry, what am I apologising for?’
‘As I said, I moved heaven and earth to change my dates for you, and I think a lot of people would have acknowledged that.’ She had a very attractive accent. He’d noticed it on the phone and again now. Scottish. Or Irish. He could never tell the difference, which he knew was shocking, especially given that Matt was from Dublin, but in his defence he was pretty sure that there were a lot of similarities. Her voice was attractive too, warm and soft. Her attitude, however, wasn’t that soft. She’d been snippy from start to finish. She’d been reluctant to provide the extra documentation he’d asked for – very reasonably, surely, in that they were entrusting each other with their homes. She’d been awkward about the start date for their swap, with no reasonable explanation given. And now she wanted ‘acknowledgement’. Her face was obscured by the ridiculous bright-blue fake fur all the way round her large hood, but at a guess she’d be looking angry.
Well, fine. He’d both apologise and thank her, and hopefully she’d just leave, immediately.
‘I’m sorry and I’m very grateful,’ he said. ‘Thank you. Very kind. If I could just get the key?’
Cassie pulled it out of her pocket, took a couple of steps forward and plonked it into his hand.
‘Have a great stay,’ she said. ‘Let me know if you need anything.’
‘I’m sure I’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘Thanks again. Have a good flight.’ He hoped she was leaving tomorrow.
‘Thank you.’ She didn’t sound like she meant it, which made no difference to him. Hopefully they’d never speak again.
‘Bye,’ he said. His feet were soaking. These loafers were new, and they were probably ruined. If Cassie hadn’t been here, either he’d have waited in the car until this shower blew over – if it was indeed sh
ort-lived – or he’d have got himself inside quickly. Either way, his shoes would probably have survived a lot better.
‘Goodbye.’ And, thank God, off she squelched.
By the time James had all his luggage inside the flamingo-wallpapered – yes, really – hall, the rain had, as Cassie had predicted, suddenly stopped. Probably a good idea to explore outside now, in case another shower started.
The setting was as perfect as Cassie’s photos and Google Earth had indicated. When Cassie had quibbled about the start date, he’d nearly pulled out. He’d had his eye on another couple of options, one in Vermont, in the mountains, and the other by a lake in New Hampshire, but he’d liked the idea of island living, and the tourism business opportunities it might present, and now that he didn’t have Cassie in his face, he could see that this was looking great.
It didn’t seem likely that he’d be disturbed by neighbours, which was ideal. Cassie’s plot was on the tip of a headland at the end of the island furthest away from the little ferry terminal, down a lane from the centre of the nearby village, in a cluster of five or six houses.
The house itself was low, wide and wooden. James walked round the side of it and found a large and beautiful garden. The views from the garden were stunning – the ocean, some other islands, or fields and woodland, depending where you looked. He nodded. Idyllic at first sight.
He continued through the garden towards the ocean. And, yes, there was an actual gate onto a little beach. The beach was the stuff of fantasies, particularly those of investors in the tourism industry. Fine white sand. Blue ripply sea. Great views including nearby uninhabited-looking islands. Silence apart from sea birds, lapping water and an odd animal clicking kind of sound somewhere to his right. Essentially unspoilt and yet easily accessible from the East Coast of America. Pretty spectacular. There had to be some great business opportunities here. People loved holidays in this kind of environment.
