‘Good afternoon, James.’ Laura pushed down on the arms of her chair to get herself onto her feet. ‘I’ll put the kettle on. You missed the dinner.’ Wow. How long would it take for island life to get seriously claustrophobic?
‘Yeah, stuff to do,’ he said. ‘Settling in. Unpacking. I was sorry to have missed it.’
‘Next time.’ Laura smiled at him comfortably.
‘They’re monthly. We could all go together next time.’ Dina’s smile implied that she had very X-rated plans for him. It was like James was a nineteenth-century eligible gentleman who’d turned up in a village full of marriageable young ladies and low on marriageable men.
‘That sounds great.’ He made sure his own smile was bland.
‘Tea or coffee?’ Laura asked.
‘Tea would be great, thank you. Can I help make it?’ James said.
Laura and Dina were good company together. Dina laughed at Laura when she went down the inquisition route, and Laura tsked at Dina when she overtly ogled James and suggested that they go to Amy’s partytogether. Amy was apparently busy with her friends getting ready for this evening. Dina was going to go and join them soon and she’d love for James tojoinher later. James told her that he wasn’t sure how his schedule was but he’d look forward to seeing her at the party.
The rest of the day wasn’t bad either. He finished up some work, enjoyed reading the remainder of Cassie’s notes and cooked dinner for himself. Turned out that a) there were some basic skills you didn’t lose and b) you could enjoy cooking when you could afford whatever ingredients you liked and you didn’t have your baby sister hanging round your ankles and your mother completely off her face and the feeling that your time would be better spent on seeing your mates or schoolwork.
At this rate he’d be knocking up a pecan pie to contribute to the next island dinner and polishing Cassie’s lawnmower in pleasurable anticipation of the race.
* * *
‘Hey, James.’ Dina, looking good, very good, if a little scary, dressed in a tight, low-cut black mini dress and some impressively high heels, had knocked on his kitchen door and then opened it without waiting for an answer – James made a mental note never to be downstairs not fully dressed unless he wanted something to happen – and poked her head in. ‘You coming over to the field now?’
‘I’ll be there in about half an hour if that’s alright.’ Probably not a good idea to go to the partywithDina. ‘Couple of things to do first. Got to put the chickens to bed.’
‘Sure. Look forward to seeing you there.’
Cassie and Dina had apparently organised the whole party together, with a lot of virtual input from Cassie, at awkward times of the day due to the Wi-Fi issue. Didno-oneon this island know about hotspotting? James should tell them. And he should get back on the phone to the Wi-Fi engineer. Mid-week it had sounded like he had some good ideas about how to improve their service.
‘So I’ve been using my Wi-Fi all day every day,’ he told Dina over excellent mini-tacos and beers in a corner of the marquee.
‘No!’ Dina stopped with her taco halfway to her mouth. ‘How? Why does it work for you and not for anyone else? Did you bring it with you?’
Explaining to Dina, and then to the several friends she dragged over, about the hotspotting felt like being inBack to the Futureor something, like he was visiting the past from a time of greater technology.
‘No, really,’ he said in answer to a question from Laura, ‘we do not have different or more modern technology in London.’
‘Mom, everyone knows about hotspotting,’ Amy said when her mother had brought her over to be impressed. ‘Like everyone on the island under thirty. Probably some of the oldies too.’
‘Firstly, over thirty is not old. And secondly, what? Why didn’t you tell me? Do you think Iwantto set my alarm for two a.m. when I want to use the internet?’
Amy screwed her face up, like she was thinking hard. ‘Did I know you did that?’ she asked.
‘Yes, you know I do. I mention it alot. Like every day when I’m yawning over breakfast.Sheesh, Amy, I’m aperson, not just a food-making, lift-giving, bathroom-cleaning voice of wisdom. Like, pay some freakingattentionto me.’ Dina smiled at her daughter as she spoke, softening her words, and pulled Amy in for a hug.
‘Love you, Mom.’ Amy grinned at her mother.
James could barely look. There was something so great but also alien about a fantastic parent-child relationship. When you’d never had a relationship of any kind with your father, and the one with your recently deceased mother had morphed early on into you, the child, doing any parenting that was happening, it was sometimes hard to witness a well-functioning family relationship. Normally he was okay with it. It was great that his friends had good families. But today it was touching a nerve. Must be because he’d stupidly opened the email from his father last week.
‘So, James,’ Dina said to him. ‘Laura tells me you don’t have kids. Are you keen to start a family?’ Woah. Punchy question, and punchy timing.
‘Yep, no kids, and, no, no plans for any.’ That was an understatement. James was definitely not going to have children. One, he’d probably inherited some kind of terrible parenting gene from his own parents. Two, it had been too much responsibility for him and Ella having to bring their sister Leonie up and he’d totally messed up his part in it. Three, he liked his life as it was. His real life, his London life, when it didn’t involve angry exes or ex-employees.
Amy smiled at them all and waltzed off to dance in the middle of the marquee with a group of friends of her own age.
Dina leaned closer to James so that he could feel her breath on his neck and had to twist his head to an awkward angle to avoid seeing straight down her cleavage. ‘Maybe I could persuade you to rethink. I’m feeling broody again now that my baby’s grown up.’ Good grief. Hopefully that was just the many beers she’d downed talking.
‘Ha,’ he said, going for the treat-it-as-a-joke approach. ‘Yes. Good one. Like to dance?’
