No choice. A truly stunning woman walked into the room holding a gurgling baby dressed in a Babygro and waving a rattle manically around his head. He wasbeautiful. Cassie swallowed, hard.
‘Hey, Sammy.’ Jennifer walked towards him, arms stretched out, and he reached for her, chortling. ‘And Angela, of course. Hard not to relegate your partner to behind the baby at times. Cassie, this is Angela. And Angela, this is my wonderful client Cassie.’
Angela smiled at Cassie. She had a gorgeous smile. Cassie had the strange sensation that she was looking into a mirror that massively improved the way you looked. She and Angela both had alotof dark, curly hair and olive skin and dark eyes, but Angela was very tall and slim, which Cassie was not, and her hair was very under control, which Cassie’s was not. And she had an air of swan-like serenity, which Cassie was pretty sure she didn’t.
‘Hi, Angela. So nice to meet you.’
‘Likewise, I’m so pleased to meet you. And this is Sammy. Say hello, Sammy.’
‘Hi, Sammy.’ Mega heart-lurch. He wassocute. ‘I love your tooth.’ His wide, gummy smile, with one little front tooth just showing, was adorable. Sammy held his arms out to her.
‘He likes you,’ said Jennifer.
Angela lifted Sammy into Cassie’s arms. He was so gorgeously chubby and cuddly. Cassie closed her eyes for a moment. It was a surprise that neither Jennifer nor Angela appeared to be able to hear the frantic ticking of her biological clock.
‘Hey, Sammy,’ she said, hoping that her voice sounded normal. He smelled so lovely and his skin was so soft. And he was pulling her hair. Hard.Reallyhard. ‘Ouch,’ she yelped.
‘Sorry, should have warned you,’ Angela said, disentangling Sammy’s hand and holding out her fingers for him to play with instead.
Cassie smiled and shifted Sammy around in her arms and told him that he was very cute and very clever. She couldtotallyact normally and non-broodily around a baby.
‘You know, I feel I know almost as little about you as you did about me? Do you have children?’ Jennifer asked, pulling champagne flutes out of a cupboard.
‘No.’ Oh no. A voice wobble. Hopefully Jennifer wouldn’t have noticed.
‘I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. So insensitive of me.’ She’d noticed.
Cassie shook her head. ‘No, honestly, not at all insensitive. I don’t have kids and I’d love to have them one day, if the situation ever arises, but equally I’m very happy with my life if it never happens. I don’t currently have a partner, so it isn’t really likely to. And I do have three alpacas and eleven chickens, so they keep me pretty busy.’ Always a winner, mentioning the animals.
‘Alpacas! Hey, that’s so cool.’ And bingo, off the ‘do you want babies’ topic. Although, Cassie had some questions of her own. Meeting Sammy had got her veering back towards going for the fertility treatment. She’d regret it if she didn’t try. Maybe Jennifer and Angela had gone down the sperm donor route and would have some useful advice for her. It was a tricky question to bring up politely, though.
Angela took Sammy to put him to bed and, after some chat about childhood hobbies, Jennifer suddenly said, ‘So how’s it going with choosing a location for the books?’
Cassie only registered Jennifer’s words when she realised that she was looking at her differently, and that she’d used her business-mode voice.
Business Jennifer was a lot less appealing than Friendly Dinner Host Jennifer, frankly.
‘Not too bad,’ Cassie lied. ‘I’ve been researching all the different areas.’
‘Okay. And how far have you got? Because time is of the essence.’
Sammy gurgled over the monitor. So cute.
‘Cassie?’
Ow. That whole Listen-To-Me shrillness wasrightback. Cassie hoped for Angela and Sammy’s sakes that Jennifer never got like this about domestic matters. She experienced a sudden wave of sympathy for Future Sammy when he hadn’t made his bed or he’d dropped a grade at school.
‘I’m thinking that it’s so hard to choose a single area to focus on that I should have a different one for each book. So it’s like a pan-London series, rather than a Hampstead Heath or Hyde Park or whatever series. So they could be set in different-seeming places. More of a something-for-everyone vibe,’ she said, panicked.
‘That’s perfect,’ Jennifer said. ‘I’m sure they’ll go for that. Great work.’
Oh, okay, no decision to make then. It would involve more research but that was cool because Cassie was going to enjoy being a tourist in London.
Jennifer had a few more work-related points that she wanted to make before Angela came back into the room and then she switched straight back into nice Home Jennifer mode and served their main course, a restaurant-standard sea bream dish.
‘Do you both cook a lot?’ Cassie asked. It was remarkably difficult to reconcile Jennifer’s two personas. It was as strange as the recent change in James.
‘Angela normally does more of the cooking but she’s still breastfeeding, so it’s more difficult for her at the moment,’ Jennifer said.
