‘Hi. Cassie. I’m so sorry about Emily. Are you alright? What happened?’
‘I am okay, thank you, but if I’m honest, it wasn’t very pleasant. She wouldn’t believe that you’d moved out, and started hunting through the flat for you. She actually started going through all my stuff, like you’d be hidden in there. She didn’t leave until Henry escorted her out.’
‘That’s awful. I can only apologise. She’s been before but I didn’t think she’d come back, because I threatened the police if she did anything else.’
‘I kind of wish you’d warned me if there was even the tiniest chance of her coming back.’
‘Yep, again, I’m very sorry. I really didn’t think she would but I take your point,’ he said. ‘I’ll call Security and speak to them and I’m happy to call the police.’
‘Thank you but I’ve already done it. I made a complaint but I didn’t press charges. I think Emily was really shocked when she realised that she’d barged into a stranger’s home and she knows that I called the police, so I don’t think she’ll come back. And I had a long chat with Henry. He felt awful. I told him obviously it wasn’t his fault.’
‘Well, thank you for speaking to Henry and the police. I’m incredibly sorry that this happened and that you had to deal with it.’
‘Thank you. No problem. Well, I mean, it was a problem, but I do realise now that it wasn’t really your fault.’
‘Hopefully that’s the end of it,’ James said.
‘Yes. Okay, so goodbye then.’
‘Apologies again,’ he said. ‘Goodbye.’
Damn. Cassie shouldn’t have been dragged into his sordid nightmare-ex situation. He should probably ask Dee to send flowers.
Dee picked up the phone immediately. ‘Flowers,’ she said. ‘Absolutely. What’s she like? Any particular preferences?’
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 wasfurious. It was a big deal leaving your home city and moving halfway across the world for a few months. He’dtrustedCassie. 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.’
