The House Swap: An absolutely hilarious feel-good romance

by Jo Lovett

  ‘Are you alright?’ Ore asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Cassie nodded through the snot tears. ‘I was just really scared. I had a bad experience before.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. Everything’s looking exactly as it should be now, though. So focus on that and try to be happy.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Dina squeezed Cassie’s hand and Cassie smiled at her.

  ‘I should tell James,’ she said. ‘He sounded really worried. At the moment he’ll be thinking the worst.’

  Her message with the photo attached went straight to blue ticks and her phone rang seconds after that. She mouthed Sorry at Ore and Dina, and swiped to answer with one hand while she tissue-wiped the scan jelly off her tummy with the other.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Cassie. Thank God. I’m so relieved. I’ve been so worried about you. And the photo’s great, thank you. If you have others, I’d love to see them.’ He sounded genuinely interested. If he really was properly interested, what an idiot not to have been in touch before now. Or maybe she was being harsh. With his family background it was understandable that he would have panicked somewhat.

  ‘Yep, I’ll send them all through.’

  ‘Thank you so much. I hope you’re okay. You must have been so stressed. I certainly was. And it’s obviously worse for you. Could I ask a huge favour? I mean, please feel free to say no, obviously, but I wondered if I could come to the anomaly scan with you?’

  ‘But the hospital’s here in Maine and you live in London.’

  ‘I’ll fly to Boston and drive up.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’

  ‘Okay.’ Cassie didn’t know whether to beam with happiness that he wanted to come to the scan or throw her phone out of the window with frustration that it took a scare for him to be able to express his interest. ‘So I’ll see you then.’

  Wow. She was going to see James again soon.

  He was still talking. ‘I’d love to know your due date, too. I should have asked about the exact date before.’

  Wow, again. Would he want to come over for the birth?

  She was going to have to develop emotions of steel to deal with seeing him from time to time, if he wanted involvement in the baby’s life.

  Shit. What if he wanted some form of custody? Shit. She should not have got pregnant by James. They should not have got so carried away. An anonymous sperm donor wouldn’t want custody. Bloody hell. This was going to be so complicated.

  She pulled her skirt waistband back up over her tummy and swung her legs over the side of the bed. ‘I’m going to have to go. We’ll speak later.’ She was pretty sure that any more talk with the gorgeous, wonderful, infuriating father of her baby and she was going to be in tears, so it would be better to be alone.

  Thirty-One

  James

  James wiped his clammy palms against his jeans. Sweaty hands were never a good accessory, especially when you were about to see the woman you loved – he was always going to love her – for the first time in nearly four months.

  He checked his watch. All good. They still had fifteen minutes before the scan was due to start. Cassie would have texted him if they were going to be late.

  A large jeep, Dina’s – he recognised it – screeched round the corner of the medical centre and came to a very sudden stop just in front of him.

  And there was Cassie sitting in the passenger seat on the right of the car, looking slightly wide-eyed and clutching the dashboard. Probably most of Dina’s passengers finished journeys looking like that.

  James stepped forward and opened the car door. Good grief. His heart rate was sky high.

  ‘Hi.’ He knew that he was beaming like a madman, but it really was so great to see Cassie. He held his hand out to help her down and wondered immediately if it looked patronising or sexist. He hoped not. But she was pregnant and the car was high and it was icy underfoot.

  She placed her right hand in his and her left hand on the door and clambered down.

  He was truly pathetic. It felt fantastic to have her hand in his, support her weight for a moment.

  Cassie had to be really nervous about this scan. He was nervous too; you probably would be in any pregnancy, but it was particularly nerve-wracking given what had happened to Cassie before.

  ‘Thank you,’ Cassie said, standing up straight next to him.

  They both kind of hovered for a moment, and then James leaned in and kissed her cheek.

  ‘Hi,’ he said again. ‘How are you feeling? You look great.’ Her skin was glowing, she seemed to have even more hair than usual – was that a pregnancy thing? – and her rounded tummy was beautiful. She was wearing a long, tight orange top over dark skinny jeans with boots, under an open woollen coat, and she looked perfect.

  ‘Bit nervous.’ She looked down at where they were still holding hands and wriggled her fingers. James let go of her hand immediately. ‘But a lot less nervous than I might be because something amazing’s been happening.’

  ‘What?’ asked James and then Dina walked round the car.

  ‘Hi, Dina.’ He smiled at her.

  ‘Hey, James.’ They shared a quick cheek kiss. ‘Congratulations on the pregnancy.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m very excited.’ Also nervous and confused.

  ‘Great.’ She gave him a hard stare. ‘So I’m going to leave you both to it. I’m going shopping, Cassie. Just call me whenever and I’ll come straight back. Any time, however long it takes. I can shop all day, or not. Okay, honey?’

  ‘Thank you so much,’ said Cassie.

  Dina pulled her into a big hug and said, ‘It’s going to be okay, I’m sure it is.’

  James waited until Dina was back in the jeep and revving the engine and then said, ‘So you said something amazing had been happening?’

  ‘Shall we go inside?’ Cassie turned towards the building’s entrance and started to walk. ‘I can feel the baby kick. Which I never did with my first one. So I know it’s alive.’

  ‘Wow. That is amazing. Wow. So what does it feel like?’

  ‘Well. People, and books, tell you that it’s like butterflies in your stomach, like there’s something light moving in there. So you imagine what it might feel like. Then when it does happen it doesn’t feel like you imagined at all but if you were describing it you’d absolutely say it’s like butterflies in your stomach or something light moving in there.’

  ‘Right. So what you’re trying to say is it’s indescribable?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  They went inside the building and Cassie gave her name at the reception and they got buzzed through into a waiting area.

  They sat down and after a minute or two, Cassie said, ‘It’s kicking now.’

  ‘Wow. So… you’re feeling butterflies right now?’

  ‘Kind of. Little squiggles of sensation.’

  ‘Wow.’ This was making it all feel remarkably real.

  ‘Would you like to feel it?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘If you put your hand on my tummy you can feel it from outside. Only a tiny bit because it obviously isn’t very big yet, but you can definitely feel something.’ She looked at him goggling at her. ‘My jeans have a very large elastic waistband that starts at the bottom of my bump, so you can feel through that. No undressing required.’

  James cleared his throat. ‘Great.’

  ‘So, it’s still moving. Right here.’ She pointed low down on her tummy. Oh, God.

  James placed his hand there tentatively. And felt something squirm against his hand.

  ‘That was it! That was actually it! I’m pretty sure I felt the baby! I felt the actual baby!’ He’d never felt so exclamatory in his life.

  ‘Yes, that was it.’ She was beaming at him.

  James wanted to put his arm round her shoulders and kiss her to high heaven, holding onto her tummy and their baby the whole time.

  But he couldn’t do that, so he said, ‘Wow,’ again.

 
; ‘I know.’ She was still beaming.

  They sat there, smiling at each other like loons, with James’s hand on Cassie’s tummy, until they were called for the scan.

  ‘Oh my God oh my God oh my God,’ Cassie babbled. ‘Now I’m scared. There could still be something wrong.’

  They stood up together and James clasped her hand. ‘I’m sure everything’s okay,’ he said. Please God he was right. ‘And I’m here.’ Yeah, not such a helpful thing to say. Where had he been the rest of her pregnancy to date? Sitting in London, worrying about her, thinking about her but not knowing what to say to her. What an idiot.

  They held hands right into the room, Cassie gripping his like it was the only thing keeping her standing.

  By the time she’d lain on the bed, rolled down the – frankly peculiar, but also clever – large, stretchy waistband on her jeans and had jelly smeared all over her tummy, and the sonographer had done some chat, James was feeling pretty jittery himself.

  ‘And everything looks great,’ the sonographer told them a few minutes later. The relief was immense. ‘Let me talk you through all the different things we check for.’

  James leaned forward so that he could focus better on the screen. Apparently he and Cassie were holding hands again.

  The baby had grown so much since the last scan. There was a miracle going on inside Cassie.

  ‘Would you like to know the baby’s gender?’

  ‘No,’ Cassie said. ‘Yes. I don’t know. James?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ James said. It had to be her decision. Common courtesy. He might be the father but she was the one doing all the hard work here. He really wanted to know, though. Right now. All his friends, all of them, who’d had babies, had chosen not to find out the sex. And he did get that, totally, because obviously surprises were cool. But equally, this sonographer woman knew whether or not the baby was a boy or a girl. So James wanted to know too. ‘You choose,’ he said.

  Cassie was still thinking.

  ‘Yes, please,’ she suddenly squealed.

  ‘You sure?’ James asked.

  ‘Are you certain?’ the sonographer asked.

  ‘Yes. I am.’ Cassie spoke so loudly that both James and the sonographer jumped a little and then they all laughed.

  ‘Okay, so here goes.’ The sonographer paused. Cassie squeezed James’s hand so hard that he wondered if it might be possible for someone to break a bone like that. ‘It’s a girl.’

  ‘Oh my goodness.’ Cassie turned to look at James and he leaned down and hugged her, hard, with the arm that didn’t have the possibly broken hand.

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ she said again when he finally sat back up.

  ‘Yup.’ No other words. James would never have believed you could love a baby so much before it was even born.

  ‘I’ll print the photos out for you now,’ the sonographer told them.

  ‘Could we get two sets of all of them?’ Cassie didn’t look at James as she spoke.

  When they left the room, Cassie carefully gave one set of the photos to James, again not looking at him.

  ‘Thank you.’ He took them equally carefully.

  This was awful now. They couldn’t just part like this. They needed to talk more.

  ‘Would you like to have lunch with me?’ he asked. He looked down at Cassie. She was pressing her lips together, like she either didn’t know what to say or was about to say something she didn’t think he’d want to hear. ‘We’re having a baby together,’ he said, not quite sure even as he said it where he was going with that.

  ‘Lunch would be great,’ she said, after a few seconds. ‘Is Mexican okay for you?’

  ‘Mexican’s great.’

  They didn’t chat much on the way to the restaurant, because Cassie kept nearly falling over, so they were both occupied in keeping her upright.

  ‘Is it rude of me to ask how it is that a woman who lives at the end of an island in the Atlantic, which by all accounts gets several hefty dollops of snow every winter, doesn’t have the right footwear to deal with conditions on the somewhat tamer mainland?’

  ‘Well, that’s the point.’ Cassis clung onto James as her right foot slid on the ice. If he was honest, he was enjoying this. Lots of close contact for a very legitimate reason. ‘During the winter I don’t have a lot of opportunity to wear anything other than serious boots with serious treads, so I save my nice grip-free boots for the mainland. I just hadn’t bargained for the change in my centre of gravity due to pregnancy.’

  James nodded. ‘Fair enough.’

  When they were seated in the restaurant – Cassie still in one piece fortunately – and had menus, James said, ‘I have a really big question for you.’

  Cassie’s head jerked up from studying the menu, her jaw somewhat dropped. Damn. It looked like she’d misinterpreted what he’d said.

  ‘Not really big,’ he said. Damn, that sounded bad too, like he thought she thought he was going to ask her to marry him or something. ‘But quite big. I wondered whether you had any ideas about names for the baby.’ Now he thought about it, he did of course want to marry Cassie. Except he couldn’t ask her, could he, because he’d messed up big time when they had the baby conversation in London. And then he’d messed up even more by not calling her for three weeks. Why had he done that? How was it okay? He’d been thinking about her and the baby pretty non-stop the whole time, but Cassie didn’t know that, did she? She probably just felt that he didn’t care.

  ‘I hadn’t thought of any names.’ She put the food menu and the drinks menu down on the table one on top of the other and patted their long sides together and then their short sides. All very neat and tidy. Unlike their relationship, such as it was. ‘I was feeling superstitious before the scan, so I didn’t want to think about it then. Now, though, I’m thinking that I might be investing in some baby name books.’

  ‘So are you thinking traditional? Out there? Jordanian? Scottish? American? Just something that takes your fancy? Do you care about the meaning of the name?’

  ‘I would say that I do care about the meaning of the name and I’d like a name that I like and that ideally all my relatives on both sides of the family would like. So, yes, although my Arabic is bad – I mean, I speak it with exactly the same Glaswegian accent that I speak English but with a much smaller vocab – I’d like one that’s good in Arabic as well as English. What about you?’

  ‘Me?’ It didn’t feel like James should be making any choices here.

  ‘Yes, you. You’re her father.’ It sounded huge, vocalised like that.

  ‘I think I’d agree with you, on all counts.’

  ‘Okay, cool.’

  ‘I mean, obviously we might not agree on what’s a pretty name and what isn’t,’ James said, ‘but it should obviously be your decision.’

  ‘Why is that?’ Cassie was looking him right in the eye, and she wasn’t smiling. Confusing, because wasn’t he just being polite?

  ‘Because you’re the one growing her and that’s a lot of hard work?’

  ‘I’d still like you to like her name. And I’m sure she would, too.’ Still not really smiling.

  ‘Okay, well, great then. I’d like to like her name too.’ James felt like there was a subtext to this conversation that he really wasn’t getting. Like it symbolised some bigger stuff. Oh, okay, yep. It symbolised all the bigger stuff. ‘I’d love to help you choose it.’

  ‘Great.’

  Luckily lunch morphed into a great experience after that, because they spent a long time talking about girls’ names, some good suggestions, some not so good, on both sides.

  By the time they were finishing their desserts, they’d laughed a lot, they had a very long longlist and an empty shortlist of names, and James was in utter despair about the fact that he loved Cassie, and their daughter, so very much but he just didn’t have the words to communicate that properly.

  Maybe it was for the best. Maybe they’d be better off without him.

  ‘I love you,’ he blurted ou
t, just before Dina was due to drive into the parking lot to pick Cassie up.

  ‘I love you too.’ Cassie’s beautiful deep brown eyes misted over.

  Maybe James should say more. Maybe he shouldn’t, though. Maybe he wouldn’t be a good enough partner and father for Cassie and the baby.

  Cassie broke the silence between them to say, ‘You know what? We haven’t discussed your involvement in the baby’s life. You’re welcome to be as involved as you’d like. She’s our daughter, not just mine. And you need to understand that you aren’t either of your parents – you’re you, just like the baby isn’t me, or you; she’s already a perfect mix of both of us, her own person. You’re totally capable of being a great father. You didn’t let Leonie down. You were her brother and you were a great brother to her. You’ll be a great father. I’m really happy that you’re my baby’s father. Our baby’s father.’ A couple of tears slid down her cheeks. ‘Although I do want her to read and I do not want her to watch as much football as you do.’ She smiled a lopsided, teary smile at him. ‘Or any Hitchcock films.’

  James’s heart squeezed. He so much wanted to say something. But he had to get it right. And it was so hard. Having opened up to Cassie about Ella, and then to Ella herself recently, he knew now that something had closed off inside him when Leonie died, like he’d just shoved all his emotions away. He’d got better at talking. He’d been able to tell Cassie more than once how much he loved her. But this just felt huge. This wasn’t just saying I love you. This had to be more than that. And should he even say anything when he couldn’t even work out whether or not he could be the man that she and their baby needed? And there were practical considerations too. They lived on opposite sides of the Atlantic for a start.

  He did have to reply to her.