The House Swap: An absolutely hilarious feel-good romance

by Jo Lovett

  ‘Thank you.’ She smiled at him from round the side of a large patchwork duvet that she’d just thrown over her washing line. ‘I probably owe you an apology for last night. I was a little drunk.’

  ‘No, no apologies. If anyone should be apologising it’s probably me. I’m pretty sure I did some terrible dancing.’

  Dina laughed. ‘Okay.’ Good news. Not too much awkwardness.

  The rest of the day was full of packing, clearing up, writing notes for Cassie (really – what had happened to him?) and stocking up the freezer for her and arranging a delivery of fresh food for her in ten days’ time for the day she was going to get back.

  This was great. The wind in his hair, the open road ahead of him, country music blaring out of the car radio. James had almost had a lump in his throat when his ferry had left the island, which was why this road trip had been such a good idea. Something to look forward to rather than the anti-climax of just going straight home. He was driving from Maine down to Chicago and then following Route 66 to Los Angeles before flying home from there.

  Time for a break. James had seen the signs for this viewpoint for the past few miles and had decided he should stop. One, he was tired. Two, it would be ridiculous to do this trip without taking in the sights regularly. And three, if he didn’t stop now he might not get another opportunity to call Cassie while she was still awake. It would feel strange now not to talk to her on a daily basis.

  He got out of the car and walked up to a viewpoint facing towards Montreal.

  There was a lot to tell Cassie. The staggering vastness of North America. The fact that right now he wasn’t far from the Vermont house he could have rented instead of Cassie’s, and how he was very glad that he’d rented hers. The meat, meat and meat menu at the diner where he’d had lunch.

  ‘Hi.’ She sounded sleepy. Good job he’d called now.

  ‘Howdy.’

  ‘You gone American cowboy already?’

  James smiled and settled in on his rock for their chat.

  Twenty

  Cassie

  Cassie smiled and snuggled herself into her duvet to listen to James’s gorgeous voice telling her about views and the Vermont scenery and ranting about his lunch. She’d have been asleep half an hour ago if she hadn’t carried on reading in the hope that he might call. They’d fallen into the habit of one of them calling the other at this sort of time pretty much every day, before his evening started and just as hers ended. They talked about all sorts. Big stuff, small stuff.

  It had probably been her turn to call him today but she didn’t know if it’d seem strange. He was on his road trip now, so the swap was pretty much over. But he’d called her and now she was feeling warm inside.

  ‘So what are you going to do this evening?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m going to drive on for another hour or two until I hit Montreal proper. I’ve got a hotel room booked. I’m going to have dinner and walk round the city this evening.’

  ‘Sounds like the road trip was definitely a good decision.’

  ‘Yeah, it really was.’

  ‘I booked a little trip of my own today. My Glasgow weekend.’

  ‘Wow, congratulations.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m feeling good about myself just for booking it. Demon slaying’s the way forward.’

  ‘Yeah, I think you’re right. I’m genuinely looking forward to seeing my sister and her family when I get back.’

  It was nice to feel like they were confiding in each other.

  Cassie shivered. She should have brought a thicker coat. Glasgow was not warm in the summer. She should have remembered.

  ‘How does it feel to be back?’ her cousin Meg asked her as they drove away from the station. Strange how when you grew up somewhere you didn’t really clock much about it on a daily basis. Now, after having been away for four years, Cassie was really noticing the imposing height and darkness of the stone buildings lining the city centre streets.

  ‘A bit weird, but good, actually. Like, it’s just a place of which I have mainly good memories, and I’m very unlikely to bump into Simon but if I do, whatever. He’s firmly in my past. The main thing is that I’m seeing you and everyone else.’

  ‘Good. Fecking taxis.’ Meg honked and middle-fingered a Toyota Prius driver who’d just cut her up. ‘Your mum and dad are arriving this evening.’ Meg’s husband was a vicar – Cassie adored the fact that the sweariest person she knew had married a very sweet and mild-mannered man of the cloth – and they lived in a large (and cold and ramshackle) vicarage in Hillhead, which was able to accommodate a lot of guests. ‘Your mum’s going to freeze.’ Very true. Cassie’s mum had spent the entire time she lived in Glasgow mentioning the cold at least once a day. She was a lot happier weather-wise in France.

  To be fair to Cassie’s mother, Glasgow was a lot colder than London. And a lot rainier. It had been moderately sunny when they’d left the station but now the sky was grey and the car windows were splattered in large rain drops.

  ‘The sodding central heating’s broken down again.’ Meg turned right into busy traffic, causing several cars to slam their brakes on. ‘I’m wondering whether we should stop in town now, have lunch and then buy some extra blankets.’

  ‘Good plan. We should probably also buy my mum a couple of jumpers. She won’t have brought enough warm clothes.’

  So this was okay. Cassie and Meg were sitting in a hidden-gem-style little Chinese restaurant in the city centre eating dim sum. It was better than okay. Cassie should have come back to Glasgow before now.

  ‘I did an unsuccessful round of IVF with a sperm donor this summer,’ she told Meg. If there was one thing she’d learned over the past few months it was that you felt a lot better when you were open with the people you were closest to.

  ‘I’m so, so sorry that it didn’t work out,’ Meg said when Cassie had finished telling her the details, succeeding in only sniffling a bit. ‘But two things. One, you’re only young still. Plenty of people have babies well into their forties. And two, I’m so pleased that you’re finally over that bastard.’

  ‘I think I was over him almost immediately. I mean, once someone’s behaved like that you really don’t like them any more.’

  ‘Not the same as being over them, though. Not necessarily over him, but over how he behaved. He’s such a shit.’

  Cassie nodded. ‘Yep, you’re right. I honestly think I could see him now and feel nothing.’ A lot of which was due to her stay in London. And maybe a little to do with getting to know James.

  Meg opened her mouth and then closed it again.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Meg signalled at the waiter. ‘Let’s go and hunt down those blankets and jumpers.’

  Cassie and Meg had found a lovely soft polo neck jumper for Cassie’s mother and were trying to decide whether to buy it in cream or emerald green when a woman with a baby in a pram interrupted them to say, ‘Meg. Hello. I thought it was you. How are you?’

  ‘Good, thank you. So sorry, we’re in a bit of a rush.’ Meg took both the jumpers and started walking towards the till. Like she really didn’t want to talk to the woman. Odd. Meg never behaved liked this.

  ‘You dropped your umbrella.’ The woman held it out and Cassie, not having been as quick off the mark as Meg, and therefore still near to her, took it.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘No problem.’ The woman smiled at her and then looked more closely at her. ‘I’m Sophie. I feel as though we’ve met before. Not surprising, I suppose, given that you’re a friend of Meg’s. Glasgow’s a small place.’ Strange, because Cassie didn’t recognise her at all. She was tall, slim and blonde with a warm smile and startlingly blue eyes. Quite recognisable, really.

  Meg had only half-turned round. ‘Glasgow is a small place. Great to see you.’

  She turned away again and started to move away as Sophie said, ‘Have you seen Archie?’ Meg turned back round as Sophie pulled back her pram cover to give them a better view of
her truly gorgeous baby. ‘Eight weeks old. My third,’ she told Cassie. ‘I’m sure we’ve met before. It’s going to annoy me until we work out where. Do you work with Simon perhaps? Simon Grant?’

  Cassie froze.

  Meg sprang into action, looking at her watch with an exaggerated circular motion of her arm and saying, ‘Oh my goodness, Cassie, we’re late. Great to see you, Sophie. Archie’s beautiful. Love to all. You know what, I don’t think either of these jumpers are right. Bye.’ She put the jumpers down on the nearest display table, took Cassie’s arm and marched her towards the escalator.

  ‘So that’s Simon’s wife?’ Cassie said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And baby.’ The baby had actually looked quite like Simon. God. The pain. That was maybe what her baby would have looked like. Cassie felt a tear trickle out and opened her eyes really wide to stop any others following. She wasn’t bloody doing this. It was four years ago. It was sad but it was in the past and she had a lot of great things in her life and she was not doing this.

  ‘I was going to get tissues out,’ Meg said as they got off the escalator, ‘but you don’t look like you need any.’

  ‘I don’t. It’s in the past.’

  ‘I am so proud of you.’

  ‘Is that what you were going to tell me when we were finishing our lunch?’

  ‘Yes. Wish I had, now.’

  ‘Hard to predict that we’d bump into her. Also, honest truth, how old are her other kids?’

  Meg screwed up her face. ‘The oldest is about four. She’s the person he was having an affair with when you split up.’

  ‘Right.’ Cassie waited for the wave of emotion to hit her. It didn’t. ‘Wow. What an arse. How many times has he tried to get in touch with me? And the whole time he’s had at least one child.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wow. Thank you for not telling me when I couldn’t have coped with it and for giving it to me straight now. Do you know what I want to do?’

  ‘Castrate him?’

  ‘Nope. Better than that. I’d like to go back up and buy both those jumpers because Mum’ll love both of them and they’re a great price and I don’t want Simon to have any effect on my life whatsoever any more. And then let’s get on with having a fantastic weekend.’

  ‘We’re going to miss you.’ Juliet took a delicate bite of one of Luigi’s mini lemon tarts. Cassie had cooked the main course for their dinner but she wasn’t going near any baking – apart from anything else it had taken her three days to clean the oven last time she’d messed up and she was leaving tomorrow – so she’d bought in their puddings.

  ‘Yes, we are,’ the others chorused through full mouths.

  ‘I’m going to miss you too.’ Cassie looked round the four of them, Juliet, Anthony, Jack and Chloe. Such lovely people. She wished she’d had more time to try and get Juliet and Anthony together. ‘We have to stay in touch. I’ll be back in London from time to time, so I’ll email and we can make a date, I hope.’

  ‘Definitely,’ Chloe said. She put her cutlery down. ‘Jack and I have news, which we wanted to tell you in person before you leave. We’re too excited to wait.’ Going by Chloe’s recent sudden abstention from alcohol it was kind of obvious what it was going to be; in fact, Cassie had been going to make a goat’s cheese starter and had changed her mind because pregnant people couldn’t eat goat’s cheese. ‘We’re expecting. Our due date’s in May.’

  That was around when Cassie’s due date would have been if her IVF had worked out and she was not going to think about that at all now because this was Jack and Chloe’s news and it was thrilling for them. Cassie could not spend her whole life avoiding situations like this and she had in fact learned that this summer. If she could go to Glasgow and deal with hearing about Simon’s family, she could totally deal with this.

  ‘Congratulations. That’s fantastic. I’m so pleased for you.’ Cassie meant it. Good. Very good. She was a nice person after all. Maybe she’d just have a little slurp of her wine. Just to hide her face for a moment.

  Fifteen minutes later, the excited pregnancy and baby-preps chat was dwindling.

  ‘We have news too,’ Juliet said into the conversational lull, looking coyly at Anthony.

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ Cassie said. ‘Oh. My. Goodness.’ Yes. Maybe her matchmaking efforts, all the dinners she’d cooked, had paid off. Anthony was returning Juliet’s look in a, frankly, somewhat nauseatingly fond manner.

  ‘We?’ Jack was looking backwards and forwards between Anthony and Juliet like they were playing an Olympic table tennis final.

  ‘That’s right.’ Juliet reached her hand out and Anthony took it. So sweet. ‘I feel as though we should possibly put a little misconception straight.’

  Cassie frowned. What?

  ‘Cassie, dear, I think that you might perhaps have been attempting a little matchmaking.’

  Cassie screwed up her face. This was a bit embarrassing. ‘Maybe,’ she said. She must have been a bit too obvious. Although, it had clearly achieved its desired effect. Maybe they’d get married. She hoped they’d invite her to the wedding if they did.

  ‘Juliet and I have been married for twenty-seven years,’ Anthony said.

  ‘Are you… joking?’ Cassie said tentatively into silence. His delivery hadn’t been particularly joke-like.

  ‘No, dear.’ Juliet lifted her hand from Anthony’s and stroked his cheek. He leaned his face into her palm. Yep, that looked very familiarly intimate. Wow. ‘It just hasn’t really come up in conversation before now. And then, once you haven’t mentioned something, it becomes a bit awkward. And it felt even more awkward once we realised you were trying to get us together.’

  ‘Woah,’ said Chloe.

  ‘Congratulations?’ said Jack.

  ‘Yes, congratulations,’ said Cassie. Honestly. All that effort for nothing. Although she’d had a lot of good evenings with them. She really wanted some detail now. Why did they live separately? Or maybe they didn’t. ‘Are your flats linked inside?’

  ‘No, the flats aren’t linked. We live separately. We like it. It works for us. We started out like this because we’d both experienced sticky divorces and then we just carried on. And it’s great.’

  ‘That’s right. And it makes certain things easier.’ Anthony finished his glass of red and Cassie re-filled it.

  ‘Yes. We’re swingers.’ Juliet popped another dainty mouthful in.

  Cassie, Jack and Chloe all looked at each other.

  ‘Oh,’ said Cassie eventually. Juliet did not look as though she’d just made a joke. On the other hand, she’d just said, very conversationally, that she and Anthony were swingers. Nothing wrong with swinging, obviously, if everyone involved was happy about it and you enjoyed it, but Juliet had possibly the primmest demeanour of all people that Cassie had ever met. And yet again, apparently, you should not judge a book by its cover.

  ‘Yes. Excellent lemon tart, Cassie. It works perfectly with the berries.’ Anthony put his spoon down and dabbed at his mouth with his napkin. ‘Yes. It works wonderfully well having two separate flats. It means we can bring people back to ours with so much less awkwardness. And we both have little alarm buttons in our flats, you know, in case of danger, but nothing’s ever gone wrong.’

  ‘Well, that is great,’ said Jack, a little too heartily. Cassie pressed her lips together so that she wouldn’t laugh. It was very funny seeing cool, hipster Jack looking thoroughly uncomfortable.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Anthony leaned in. ‘Neither of us likes doing it with young people. We aren’t going to proposition you.’

  Jack choked a lot while Cassie, Chloe and Juliet all laughed so much they nearly cried.

  It was weird going to bed on the last night before she started her journey back home, not least because there was no call with James as he was already on his flight back from LA. Cassie was leaving at the crack of dawn to do the whole journey in one day, so she’d just miss his arrival by a few hours. Which was probably a good thing
. It would be too strange to see each other in the flat.

  The big question was, would they carry on speaking once they were back in their real lives? Realistically, probably not.

  ‘Hi.’ Shit. She’d said that too quietly, kind of moonily, like a lovestruck teenager, while smiling. It did feel great, though, that James had called her.

  ‘You on the boat? I just heard seagulls and a foghorn.’

  ‘Yep. My flight was a bit delayed this morning. I just made the last ferry of the day, thank goodness. Imagine if I’d missed it.’

  ‘Yes, that would be gutting. So near and yet so far. You’d have had to swim.’

  ‘Exactly. So you must be back? Does it feel good?’

  ‘You know, it is nice, although I’m already missing the States, but what’s made it really great is the food and the notes you left for me. Dinner was fantastic, thank you. I love the mansaf, as you know, and a pistachio and orange cake from Luigi is one of the few desserts I really like. And I’m about to read your notes before I go to sleep. So thank you. That’s why I phoned, to say thanks. But now I’m here, tell me about your journey?’

  Not only had Cassie not finished telling him about the people she’d met during her day, she’d barely had a chance to ask him anything about his first day back at home when it was time to leave the ferry.

  ‘I haven’t heard about your day but I’m arriving,’ she said.

  ‘Happy homecoming and let’s speak tomorrow. I’m going to read your notes in bed now.’

  Cassie was still smiling from their conversation when she saw Dina waving manically at her from the jetty.

  Cassie turned her key and then the front door handle, and pushed. So lovely but also weird to step inside and have her own house back.

  There was an A4 envelope with her name on it on the kitchen table. She opened it and pulled the contents out. James had written notes for her, by hand. A lot of notes. So many that she wasn’t going to read them all now because it would take too long.