The House Swap: An absolutely hilarious feel-good romance

by Jo Lovett

  What was Cassie like? Unreasonable at times – although she could have been a lot angrier about Emily. She had a nice voice. She was over-friendly when she wasn’t being unreasonable. She liked colour and lists.

  ‘Colourful ones, I’d guess,’ James said. ‘Whatever you think, really.’ Dee was fantastic at presents. ‘Actually, she needs bedsheets for deep mattresses. Super king-size. Could you possibly take them round tomorrow?’ Cassie probably wouldn’t want another unexpected visitor today.

  Right. Polite gesture sorted. He’d like to think there’d be no further need for him and Cassie to speak.

  James was going to have to call Cassie. He was furious, or about to be. He needed to know.

  The Wi-Fi had been great again at the crack of dawn today, like yesterday, but at around eight thirty this morning, it had just stopped working. Like it had yesterday. Today there’d been constant heavy rain, so he hadn’t been able to sit outside at all, so he’d been separated from his phone all morning for the hotspotting. Having to get raincoated up or soaked in order to check his messages had not improved his mood.

  And now it was lunchtime and the crap Wi-Fi situation had been going on for several hours.

  He really needed to know if it was always like this.

  Actually, Cassie might have mentioned it in her notes. That way he could find out without having to speak to her.

  Yep, ‘Wi-Fi and internet’ was one of the lines in her weird index.

  She’d said that if demand on the island was high, Wi-Fi could ‘quite often be slow’. And the best time to be sure of it was in the middle of the night when everyone else was asleep – as he already knew from his early rising. It seemed like ‘quite often’ was a euphemism for ‘all the bloody time during normal waking hours’ and ‘quite slow’ was one for ‘completely bloody dead’.

  In whose parallel universe was it okay that she hadn’t mentioned straight-up, in her SwapBnB entry, that the Wi-Fi was erratic at best? Right now, he could be living in an Alpine-style chalet in the mountains in Vermont with working bloody Wi-Fi.

  Outrageous.

  And the lack of phone signal inside the house as well. Again, she should have mentioned it.

  He dragged on boots and a coat and went outside to call her. He normally kept his temper tightly under control – as a child he’d seen enough anger-fuelled arguments at home to realise that if you wanted a good life you needed to avoid acting in anger – but he was furious. It was a big deal leaving your home city and moving halfway across the world for a few months. He’d trusted Cassie. And seriously, who pretended to be thoughtful and left a freezerful of food for you, but lied by omission about Wi-Fi?

  ‘Hi, James.’

  ‘Cassie. The Wi-Fi. I’m speechless. I can’t understand how you can have thought it was acceptable not to tell me until after I’d arrived here about the lack of phone signal inside the house and the lack of reliable Wi-Fi.’

  ‘I’m really sorry. I forgot to mention it before I wrote the notes. It was all a bit of a whirl. It all happened so quickly.’

  ‘Forgot? That’s ridiculous. It’s a huge deal. You should have mentioned it in your SwapBnB post.’

  ‘Again, I’m sorry. I forgot.’

  ‘How can you have forgotten? I mean, you effectively entered into this swap under false pretences.’

  ‘I did not do anything under false pretences.’ Her voice had gone very high-pitched.

  ‘You should have mentioned it.’

  ‘I’m sorry that I forgot to mention it but maybe you should have asked if it’s this important to you. A lot of places don’t have reliable Wi-Fi. I mean, a lot of people wanting to get away from it all for a few months might not feel the need to be fully connected at all times. Some people are actually seeking out a break from modern, connected life. And obviously, if you’d asked, I would have told you.’

  ‘Are you joking? I live in London. I have a job. And we’re in the US here. I didn’t choose to go and live in a remote village in a developing country famous for its lack of internet access, did I?

  ‘I have a job too, and I don’t have a problem with the Wi-Fi,’ Cassie said. ‘Surely the onus was on you to ask if you care this much?’

  ‘Really? I mean, really? That’s ridiculous. Wi-Fi’s a basic necessity, like running water and central heating.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry. Although, we do have Wi-Fi daily, just not all the time. And, as I said, I have a job and I manage totally fine with it the way it is.’

  James shook his head and raindrops splattered his face. ‘You should absolutely have told me.’

  ‘Like you should have told me about Emily?’

  He gritted his teeth. ‘I apologise for that but I did not know that Emily would come back.’

  ‘I did not know that you would need constant Wi-Fi but would not tell me that.’

  James muttered a couple of words.

  ‘Did you just swear at me over the phone?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry but I am so annoyed. I bloody bent over backwards for you. I travelled earlier than I wanted to. I bought new bed linen and towels for you and apparently they weren’t good enough for you. I cooked food for you. I left notes for you. I did everything I could think of to make this a good stay for you. You got to travel when you wanted to. I’m grateful for the wine, thank you, but you didn’t even leave bread or milk for me and I had to buy sheets and towels the day I arrived.’ She was almost babbling.

  ‘Cassie. You’re in the middle of London with everything you could possibly need on your doorstep. And everything you need is readily available. This island’s the arse end of nowhere and what I need is working Wi-Fi so that I can do my job.’

  ‘Are you shouting at me? And calling my home the arse end of nowhere?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ he yelled.

  ‘Right.’ She paused. ‘I’m going to apologise again for having forgotten to mention the Wi-Fi, which does actually work, just not all the time. And I think you should apologise to me.’ She stopped talking.

  James said nothing. He didn’t want to carry on ranting at her but the Wi-Fi issue was huge.

  ‘Really?’ Cassie said. And ended the call.

  James held the phone in front of him and swore at it. He really wished Cassie could hear him.

  A message had come through while he’d been on the phone. Dee.

  Just to let you know that am on way to deliver your flowers and gift to Cassie

  Oh, for God’s sake. Perfect timing.

  Eight

  Cassie

  Cassie checked her watch. 6 p.m. A little early for a glass of wine maybe, but she needed one. Bloody James. And the bloody Wi-Fi. She should probably apologise properly, with no temper involved. Obviously she should have told him about it, but it just hadn’t occurred to her at any point before she wrote the notes for him. She’d been too overwhelmed by the whole Eek-I’m-moving-to-London-far-sooner-than-I-was-expecting thing.

  She found a bottle opener and poured herself a glass of his red.

  She took a big sip. And that was good. James wasn’t her favourite person but he had great taste in alcohol. Cassie sat in the sitting room armchair – the only comfortable seat in the flat – and wriggled her shoulders, feeling her tension begin to slip away. She took another sip. Yes, very good.

  And then the doorbell rang. She jerked upright in panic. Was it Emily again?

  Luckily, she leaned forward as she moved, so that she spilled her wine on the floor, not the chair.

  No, of course it wouldn’t be Emily at the door again. Cassie was just being paranoid.

  She mopped up the wine with loo paper – she should have bought kitchen roll yesterday – and tiptoed – like the doorbell ringer could hear her – over to the doorbell camera screen. It wasn’t Emily, obviously. It was, however, another beautiful woman. How many of them were there?

  She checked that the chain was definitely on the door and said, ‘Hello?’, over the intercom.
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br />   ‘Hi. Cassie? James asked me to bring a small present for you. He said it was an apology.’ Oh. Wow. She really hadn’t expected that. So soon after their call, as well. He hadn’t sounded apologetic at all on the phone. Well, that was nice. She was definitely going to apologise to him again too. She’d obviously misjudged him. And it was nice that he had close (beautiful) friends who would come round with presents, at the drop of a hat, even if he didn’t know his neighbours.

  The woman was even more beautiful in the flesh. She flashed a stunning smile at Cassie and held out a perfectly wrapped, rectangular gift and an enormous and gorgeous bouquet of flowers, deep purples and reds.

  ‘My name’s Dee, and James uses our concierge services. I’ve just popped my card in the bag,’ she told Cassie with another perfect smile. ‘You never know.’ Oh, okay. It seemed remarkably flash of James to use a concierge service but it was a nice gesture.

  ‘Thank you. The flowers are beautiful.’

  ‘Not at all.’ Dee flashed her perfect teeth again and she was gone.

  Cassie closed the door behind her and went into the sitting room with the flowers and wrapped present, interested to open it. Was it something James had suggested or was it Dee’s choice, something generic?

  There was a card tucked into it, simply worded: ‘Apologies. James’.

  The present turned out to be two deep-mattress, fitted bed sheets. Which would have been an excellent apology if it wasn’t a day late, after her one-and-three-quarter-hour round trip yesterday afternoon traipsing back to John Lewis and exchanging the other ones. And if you ignored the fact that he should have provided bed linen in the first place. Still, she’d better send him a text to say thank you.

  She got two blue ticks immediately. He must be outside to have reception. Oh. Right. Yes. That thought demonstrated that it would be quite annoying to be in his position, thousands of miles away from his friends and contacts but with unreliable Wi-Fi and no phone signal in the house.

  He’d replied.

  Np.

  Cassie really disliked ‘Np’. Just say ‘No problem’, or ‘No prob’, or even ‘No worries’. But, whatever, he’d apologised for their argument, and she was going to apologise too. Oh, three dots. He was typing again.

  Just to be clear, the apology was for yesterday, for Emily’s intrusion.

  What? No apology about his Wi-Fi tantrum? The rude shit. She was tempted to send a sarky message back, but she was going to be the bigger person here. And now that she’d calmed down she could appreciate that having no Wi-Fi might be quite annoying.

  Okay, well thanks. Apologies that I forgot to tell you about the Wi-Fi. I really did just forget because I was in a flap and I do now appreciate that it’s very annoying for you and I’m very sorry.

  One grey tick. Two grey ones, so therefore it had arrived.

  They didn’t turn blue. Rude.

  Well, whatever. She was going to ignore him and get on with her evening.

  Cassie really couldn’t be bothered to cook dinner today and that was fine. This being a fancy London neighbourhood, there were more takeaway places with outstanding reviews within a square mile than you could possibly count. The only question was, what did she feel like having? Hard to decide, except it didn’t matter; she could have a different one whenever she liked. On the island, you could only get takeaway from Joe’s Diner, and only when Joe was in the mood.

  Another thing, of course, that she could do here whenever she liked, was use the internet at wonderfully high speed, and order her takeaway online.

  Half an hour later, she was forking up Chinese – to-die-for sautéed squid in black bean sauce, with cutlery because she was terrible with chopsticks – while checking out some facts about the Tower of London for her books on her laptop, occasionally glancing at the leafy views from James’s sitting room windows.

  A message did ping through while she was eating her dinner, but not from James. It was Dina.

  Hey honey. Been teeming down outside today. Missing you babe. Alpacas missing you too. Chickens not so loyal if I’m honest. Just happened to pass by your place to check on the animals this morning while James was having a swim. OMG RIPPED :) :) :)

  Not so friendly though – definitely tried to avoid me this morning. I’m planning to overlook the unfriendliness because he is HOT.

  Yeah, if he was straight and single, Dina would have him under her thumb pretty soon.

  Hello lovely Dina. Missing you too. DO NOT HAVE SEX IN ANY BED IN MY HOUSE. If that’s okay. Take him back to yours. Please. LOVE YOU

  She hadn’t been comprehensive enough.

  Me again. Also please don’t have sex in my shower. Or in/on ANY sanitaryware in my house. Or on any furniture. Basically please don’t have sex with him ANYWHERE in my house. Thank you :) xxxxx

  When drunk, Dina had a lot of stories to tell about the different places she’d had sex. Cassie didn’t want her house to be one of those places. If anyone was ever going to have sex in Cassie’s house, surely it should be Cassie. Which it hadn’t been once in the four years that she’d lived there and wasn’t likely to be any time soon. Every date she’d had since she arrived in the US had been a one-off and an utter let-down, so none of them had made it past her front door. At least she’d had Dina to laugh with about her bad dating experiences, though.

  A wave of homesickness washed over her.

  She took another forkful of delicious squid and opened another tab to google Hyde Park. It was incredible to think that only a couple of hundred years ago there’d been sheep grazing there. She had to be able to work that into a scene.

  No, she wasn’t that homesick. She could totally do this. It was only for a few months, there were a lot of great things about being here, and she had a lot of plans. In fact, now she was here, her mind was buzzing with so many ideas and she was so ready to start writing that she was going to have to thank Jennifer and admit that she’d been totally right; of course spending a few months in London was the right thing to do.

  Another text from Dina.

  Babe. If we’re overtaken by passion, we’ll have no choice about where we do it.

  And another one.

  No, seriously, promise: I WILL ‘date’ him and I will NOT date him in your house.

  Cassie laughed. Her friends were only on the end of a phone. She could totally do this London thing.

  Cassie was the most wide-awake person in the whole of the northern hemisphere. Sleep was impossible. She’d eaten her meals at the right times. She’d avoided evening caffeine. She’d drunk warm milk. Nothing worked. Last night she’d been awake until three thirty UK time. Tonight was even worse. It was nearly four o’clock and she’d finished her book and she just could not sleep. No, that was okay, she was nodding off, she was. But, help, what if she overslept and missed her fertility appointment? Which was now in only seven hours’ time. Oh, and now, wide awake again. Bloody hell.

  She must have drifted off at some point because she woke suddenly on Wednesday morning to find someone in the bedroom with her, saying, ‘I’m sorry, good morning.’ Oh God Oh God Oh God, it was Emily. Cassie couldn’t get her arms out of the duvet. She was trapped. She was going to be murdered in her bed because she couldn’t get her arms free.

  The door closed loudly as Emily left the room. What was she doing?

  Cassie opened her mouth and screamed, ‘Help!’ Would anyone actually hear her, though? How thick were the walls? She screamed again, as loudly as she could.

  The door re-opened and Emily switched the light on. Cassie upped the screaming. Why wasn’t there a panic button? Where was her phone? She should call 999.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ Someone was shouting over her screams. It wasn’t Emily. It was someone with a different accent and much better manners.

  Everything was pitch-black but also a bit starry. Cassie realised that she had her eyes squeezed shut. She opened them. A pleasant-looking, and also distressed-looking, woman of maybe thirty was standing there holding a mop.

/>   ‘My name’s Ralitza. We haven’t met. I’m your cleaner.’ The relief. ‘James told me you would be living here but I thought you’d be out.’

  Frankly, it was a surprise that he’d thought to tell his cleaner about her. He certainly didn’t tell Cassie things. Apart from how annoyed he was about the Wi-Fi.

  Also, she didn’t really want a cleaner but obviously she wasn’t going to fire Ralitza because that would be awful. So she was going to be stuck with someone she didn’t want. Irritating. She’d better text him to ask how much she needed to pay her.

  The good news was that it was only nine o’clock and Cassie was now wide awake and pumped full of adrenalin and therefore definitely on course to arrive extremely punctually for her appointment.

  Cassie looked around the waiting room. The other people there were three very couply-couples. All male-female. There was a lot of PDA going on. Two of the couples were holding hands. The other pair were sitting so close together it looked vaguely obscene. Fair enough, really, because they were obviously all about to go through a highly stressful and highly intimate experience together. Together. No, she didn’t need to think now about how lonely her first pregnancy had been.

  She did need to do something to pass the time, though. She should have considered that her usual practice of arriving in good time for things wasn’t always the best way. It was great when you were queuing for a first-come-first-served ferry. Or anything first-come-first-served, in fact. It was also great when you had somewhere comfortable to wait and something to do. This waiting room was very nice, actually. Padded suedette chairs, low music, soft lighting, pleasant décor, large vases of vibrant orchids at strategic intervals. It almost felt as though the clinic were trying to get people in the mood. Which, in the case of the male halves of these couples, presumably they might need to be, for sperm production. Eurgh.