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 beCassie. 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 couldtotallydo 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 justcould 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 awakeagain. Bloodyhell.
She must have drifted off at some point because she woke suddenly on Wednesday morning to find someonein 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.’ Therelief. ‘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.
