James
James waved at Dina as she walked past on her way to feed the animals, and carried on buttering his toast.
Maybe he should go and help her with the feeding. He needed more reasons to call Cassie, get to know her better, before he suggested buying her land, and the animals would be an obvious excuse for a call. He had the time to help with them. With no commute and close to no socialising, you could work north of twelve to fourteen hours a day and still not be that busy unless you needed a lot of sleep. And he’d be happy to hang out with Dina a little. She was good company plus she could put in a good word for him with Cassie; they were clearly close.
He finished his toast and grabbed shoes.
‘Morning, Dina,’ he said when he got to the animal enclosure. She spun straight round with a big smile on her face.
‘James,’ she practically purred.
Oh-kay. A little bit of flirting would be great, but he didn’t want to end up in a situation where she’d be bad-mouthing him to Cassie. Maybe better if he looked after the animals entirely by himself.
A good twenty minutes later, he said, ‘Great,’ as she finished a lengthy demonstration, all of which he was pretty sure would be covered in Cassie’s notes. ‘Thank you so much. I’m sure I’ll see you soon. With eggs I imagine.’ He should definitely get involved with the eggs; he had the impression that Cassie was someone who’d enjoy an egg distribution anecdote.
‘Great.’ Dina kept her eyes on his for a lot longer than an animal husbandry conversation warranted. ‘If you change your mind about the island dinner, let me know. And you’re very welcome, it should go without saying, to come to Amy’s party. We’ll hopefully see you at both. Happy animal feeding.’
Yeah, he still wasn’t going to the dinner but he’d maybe think about the party, whoever Amy was. Presumably another neighbour.
Feeding the alpacas and chickens wasn’t so bad, it turned out. James had rarely had anything at all to do with animals other than a couple of school visits to zoos. During his childhood, they’d never had a pet – a fortunate thing, given that it would have either died from neglect or been yet another far-too-early responsibility for him and Ella. And as a single adult with a busy job and a smart London flat, you just didn’t own animals.
You could in fact spend a fair amount of time watching them. This would be why zoos were a success and why people liked owning cats and dogs. Was he going mad or did alpacas have quite intelligent and kind faces? And the chickens; it was like they had actual personalities. There were definitely some who were bolder and some who were more timid. Who knew?
James scanned the index on Cassie’s notes one more time. He needed a water-tight reason to call her; there wasn’t a lot to say about the animals yet, and it clearly shouldn’t be to discuss something that she’d covered in the notes. Whale watching. She hadn’t mentioned that. It related to nature. She was clearly a nature lover. And it would be a good lead-in to discussing ecotourism and the financial benefits for locals.
‘Cassie. Hi. How are you?’
‘Good thanks. How are you?’
‘Yeah, great, thanks. I was just calling to ask your advice about something. Take advantage of your local knowledge, something you didn’t mention in your notes.’ Nice. Strong implication there that he’d read them.
‘Oh, okay. Of course.’ She actually had a very attractive voice.
‘I’d really like to do some whale watching and obviously I could just google it—’ if the bloody internet worked ‘—but I thought it would be better to get advice from you.’
‘I’m really sorry but I can’t give you any advice.’
‘Oh. Have you never been?’ Whatever. It had still been a good excuse to start this conversation.
‘No.’
‘I suppose it’s like I’ve never been to Buckingham Palace. You don’t do the tourist things close to home.’
‘Kind of. It’s more of a considered choice, though. Not to say you shouldn’t go if you want to, obviously, but I think a lot of conservationists are against it. I mean, you can do it safely for whales, but I think there’s a lot of evidence that peoplearen’tdoing it safely. They get too close, in large boats, and it’s affecting whale behaviour and migratory patterns and breeding cycles and so on.’ Right. Probably not the moment to mention ecotourism. ‘So my view is that it’s probably best not to support it as an industry. I don’t think there’s anything in it for whales. And you can see them occasionally from the beaches, if you’re lucky.’
‘So what would you recommend?’
‘Well, I mean, there’s so much to do. As I mentioned, possibly at too much length, in my notes.’
James laughed politely. ‘Not at all. They were fascinating.’ He needed to get off the notes topic, fast. ‘How have you settled? Is your work going well?’ Whatever it was that she did exactly.
‘Yes, it’s great thank you. It’s a fab location, obviously, and the flat’s amazing. And, yep, work’s good, thanks.’
‘You said you were a writer?’
‘Yep.’
‘What kind of writing do you do?’ Most people liked talking about themselves.
