There was a long pause.
‘I write books.’
‘Oh, wow. Book books? Fiction, I mean?’
‘Yep.’
‘That’s really interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever met an author before. What genre?’
Another longish pause.
‘Children’s.’
‘Wow. So what’s your pen name?’ She clearly didn’t write under her own name, because he’d have found her when he was googling her. There was no pause this time.
‘I can’t tell you. I’d have to kill you. Not joking. No-one knows; I never tell anyone.’
‘No-one?’
‘Hardly anyone.’
‘Well, wow again. I want to say congratulations, but that’s probably quite patronising if you’ve been doing this for a number of years or published a lot of books.’
‘I’ll overlook the patronising thing and say thank you.’ She had a smile in her voice but she wasn’t biting on giving him any more information. ‘What is it exactly that you do?’
‘Private equity. Basically investing in businesses, turning around ailing ones, investing in start-ups.’
‘Interesting. So what made you choose that career?’
‘I guess I just love the human side of business, you know what makes people tick, behavioural cycles, that sort of thing.’ Women always loved that answer. It wasn’t up there with saying you were a fireman or a doctor, obviously, but it made his job sound better than it was. He never told anyone the real reason, that he’d needed to start earning as much money as possible as young as he could, to look after his mother and Leonie better, and this had been the best paid job going when he graduated from uni.
Woah. The heavens had suddenly opened. James flattened himself against the wall of the house to huddle under the porch thing that ran all the way along, to keep his phone dry. Not a good idea to stop the conversation now, when they were finally getting on well.
They ended up chatting for a good fifteen minutes longer. Cassie was a lot more fun to talk to than James had imagined she would be. She had a great line in sarcasm.
He managed to get another pleasant phone chat in a couple of days later, having struck gold in realising that he could eat some of Cassie’s freezer meals and call her to thank her for them.
They were definitely on good enough terms now for him to ask her about the land.
* * *
The next time he called her, he made sure the forecast was good and his phone fully charged, and that it was 5 p.m. in the UK, which felt like an hour at which she might not be too busy. All bases covered, hopefully.
‘Hey, Cassie. How’s your day been?’
‘Hello. Good, thanks. I’m just back from a guided tour of Buckingham Palace. How are you?’
‘Also good, thanks. Was that work or pleasure? Sounds interesting?’
‘It was for work and yes it was very interesting. You obviously don’t see the queen’s actual living rooms but it’s still her house. Lots of history and beautiful things. And you see a bit of the garden, which basically seemed to be a lot of lawn and trees.’
‘So not as nice as your garden?’
‘Exactly.’ Cassie laughed. ‘How’s my garden doing?’
‘Looks nice. Lots of flowers coming out.’ James knew literally nothing about plants. ‘The gardener’s been busy.’
‘How’re the animals?’
