Cassie
Cassie twizzled her pen between two fingers and thumb and stared hard at the panelled wall above her laptop. She really needed to make some progress on her plans for Books 2 to 6. She’d never had a mind blank like this before. It was like London was too big and there were too many choices about settings. If she was honest, it was also because she kept obsessing about the IVF decision. She was having her final investigations on Monday, in case she wanted to go ahead.Ifshe wanted to go ahead. Did she?
Shereallyneeded to focus. She was seeing Jennifer this evening for dinner, and a lack of concrete plans always made Jennifer tetchy.
It felt weird to finally be meeting her. Cassie, a Glaswegian in the US, and Jennifer, an American in London, worked together remotely. Cassie had become Jennifer’s client and got her first book deal with a big London publisher, who she’d also never met, just before she left Glasgow. When she’d lost the baby, she’d just wanted to escape. Luckily, as a writer you could live anywhere. She’d bought the island house with an inheritance from her grandfather, the sale proceeds from her Glasgow flat and her publisher’s advance. And then when she’d got her TV deal, she’d used the money to buy a wildlife haven on the island.
A message pinged in on her phone. Dina. Much more fun to be texting her than panicking about work, and clearly Cassiehadto check that something bad hadn’t happened to the animals.
Hey babe. How you doing? I’ve been busy – soooo much work the last couple days. My news: BEEN TALKING TO JAMES. Even hotter up close (AND PERSONAL SOON I HOPE). Little bit more friendly than I thought but turned down invite to the island dinner on the weekend – not gonna be popular. Laura’s good. Tonight your agent dinner? Have fun xxxxx
It was a mistake on James’s part to have decided not to go to the island dinner.Everyonewent. He seemed so unfriendly. Although, to be fair, he’d sent a surprisingly nice reply to her – unashamedly arse-licking – email asking him to keep an eye on Laura. Maybe in fact he was just too busy to go to the dinner.
James himself called her just after she’d finished her text conversation with Dina and was reluctantly returning to her notes.
‘Hey, Cassie. How are you?’ That was an oddly warm greeting from him.
‘Good, thank you. How are you?’
‘Yes, great, thanks.’ He actually sounded quite smiley. His deep voice was bordering on very sexy when he wasn’t biting out grumpy comments. ‘I thought I’d just let you know how Laura was.’
‘Oh my goodness, is she okay?’
‘Yes, she’s absolutely fine. I just went round to check on her. She was up a ten-foot ladder, clearing ivy away from the top of a wall. I had to promise to drink a lot of tea and eat a lot of blueberry pie before she’d get down.’ This was like talking to a different person from the grumpy man with the Wi-Fi issue. Very Jekyll and Hyde.
‘Thank you so much for checking on her,’ Cassie said. ‘Kind of you.’
‘Honestly not a problem. That’s what neighbours are for.’
Really? Cassie had arranged to have tea with James’s London neighbour Anthony at the weekend, and Anthony had repeated that he’d never met James. Well, whatever. It was great that James had visited Laura.
They exchanged a few more platitudes before ending the call.
Well. That had genuinely been pleasant.
* * *
‘Come in, come in.’ Jennifer was beaming at Cassie like nobody’s business.
‘Thank you so much.’ Cassie stepped over the threshold into Jennifer’s hall and Jennifer flung her arms round her, nearly squashing the flowers Cassie was holding. Fortunately, Cassie’s biceps were more powerful than she’d suspected – must be all that kayaking recently – and she managed to hold the bouquet away from her. You didn’t want a lily stain on a silk dress.
‘Those flowers are gorgeous. Thank you. And I love Sancerre.’ Jennifer took the flowers and wine from Cassie, led her through the hall and laid them on the worktop of the island that stood in the middle of the Tardis-like, quite narrow but gigantically long, kitchen. ‘It’s so wonderful to meet you.’
‘I know,’ Cassie said into another huge hug. Actually, soweirdto finally meet. On email, social media and the phone, Jennifer was ferocious. The kind of woman Cassie imagined wore monochrome, edgy fashion and extreme lipstick, lived in an amazingly glamorous industrial warehouse apartment in a trendy location and could use chopsticks perfectly. And didn’t cook. She’d be too busy going out for power drinks and dinners. The kind of woman who, if youwerehaving drinks with her, would constantly be looking over your shoulder for someone better to talk to. The headshot she used on all her profiles definitely backed up all of those assumptions. Cassie had been astonished when Jennifer had suggested that she come over to her house for dinner. She’d thought they’d be going out to a restaurant.
In fact, Jennifer was dressed in a long, floaty, floral skirt and lived in a beautifully but traditionally decorated and furnished Edwardian semi-detached house in the lovely and leafy but not edgily trendy London suburb of Barnes.
And in the extended kitchen at the back of the house there were quite a lot of baby accessories. A playmat. A highchair. Some toys in a wooden chest. Jennifer had never mentioned children.
‘Yes, I’m a proud mom,’ Jennifer said, gesturing towards the baby stuff. ‘Angela, my wife, is just doing Sammy’s bath time and then she’ll bring him down to introduce him, before he hopefully goes down for the night, and then we can eat without interruption.’ Jennifer’s face had lit up just talking about them. Soat odds with her over-the-phone work persona.
Never judge a book by its cover. Which was what Dina had said about James, and until their phone call today he’d turned out to beexactlylike he looked.
‘Wow. I had no idea. How old is he?’
‘Six months. Yeah, I kind of don’t mix business and pleasure unless I’m going to meet someone in person. So I don’t post about home stuff, or talk about it on business calls.’ To be fair, there was a lot that Cassie didn’t share with most people.
‘Well, wow again. Congratulations. I can’t wait to meet him.’ Not totally true. She adored babies but, in the middle of huge indecision over whether or not to go ahead with fertility treatment, she was worried that she might actually cry or something if she met one today, and she didn’t want to blub in front of anyone else.
