Cassie hated baking. She was terrible at it. Cooking savoury dishes was no problem because they were really about the flavours, so you didn’t have to follow a recipe slavishly. Bakingwasa problem because you needed to use the right ingredients in the right quantities and bake them for the right length of time at the right heat.
Cassie had messed up at least one of those things withallof thefourbakes that she’d attempted. So now she had a lot of inedible food on James’s previously immaculate granite worktops and a lot of burnt raspberry juice to clean off the inside of his no-longer-pristine oven, andno foodfor the afternoon tea.
But it was okay because she was in London and she could use Wi-Fi and Google to find Luigi’s number and then buy cakes from him. And if he didn’t have any cakes left she was going to call another baker until she found someone who did. London was great.
‘This is delicious cake.’ Anthony beamed at Cassie.
‘Thank you.’ She beamed back. He was lovely. As were the elderly woman and the young couple from upstairs. ‘I say thank you… I didn’t make it myself. I had a little baking disaster. So I bought these cakes.’
‘Well, you bought very well.’ Juliet, the older woman, was as sweet as Anthony. And the two of them seemed to get on remarkably well, to the extent that it looked like something could even happen between them now they’d met properly.
Speaking of which. Dina and James. Cassie should ask about him, on Dina’s behalf, and also out of curiosity.
‘What’s James like?’ she asked.
‘James?’ Juliet was frowning.
‘James is apparently the owner of this flat.’ Anthony accompanied his explanation with a little pat on Juliet’s arm. She visibly fluttered at his touch.Definitelysomething could happen between them. ‘I don’t know him at all. He must keep very different hours from me. I might perhaps recognise him if I saw him. Did you say you’d seen him, Juliet?’
‘Yes, I think so. I didn’t know his name but I’m sure it was him,’ Juliet said. ‘Ever so dishy. Charming smile.’
‘Think he’s a banker,’ Jack from upstairs said. ‘Something like that. Looks like one.’
‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ his wife, Chloe, said, in a much more gossipy tone, ‘but Idoknow that he had a woman banging on his door and swearing away late at night about a month ago.’ That had probably been Emily.
‘Yes, I heard that,’ Anthony said.
Juliet nodded. ‘Me too.’
‘Does he have a lot of partners?’ Cassie asked. ‘Asking for a friend. Genuinely. He’s been a bit of a hit on the island.’
None of them thought that he brought a lot of women to the flat. In fact, the only one that they could describe sounded very much like Dee. Maybe he wasn’t quite the smooth operator he seemed to be. That would make sense, given he hadn’t jumped immediately into bed with Dina. Dina was very funny, and gorgeous in a brunette Marilyn-Monroe kind of way. Your average straight and single man did not say no to her.
An unwelcome vision of Simon came into Cassie’s mind. He definitely wouldn’t have said no, single or otherwise. He’d started seeing other women before they split up, after five years together, within a week of her miscarriage. It had been devastating, but, four years on, she needed to stop assuming every man was the same. There were plenty of decent ones out there.
The jury was still out on James, though.
‘Thank you so much.’ Chloe hugged Cassie as they were all leaving after their much longer than expected – in a good way – afternoon tea. ‘You’ll have to come up to us soon. Maybe dinner in the next week or two?’
‘That would be fabulous.’ Cassie hugged her back.
Jack, Anthony and Juliet all gave her pecks on the cheek as they left. As Cassie watched from her front door, Jack slung his arm round Chloe’s shoulders, sweet, andthenAnthony placed his arm kind of round Juliet in a chivalrous, ushering kind of way and she gave him alookfrom under her eyelashes. Would Cassie be flirting in her seventies? She hoped so. She wouldn’t mind the opportunity for some flirting several decades before then too, if she was honest.
* * *
A few weeks later, back from lunch upstairs, Cassie flopped down into the one comfortable armchair in James’s flat. She’d only been in London for a couple of months, but it was definitely beginning to feel like she belonged a little.
Her phone buzzed. James.
‘Hello?’ Cassie no longer expected an argument when he called. He hadn’t been grumpy with her at all since the marquee conversation. She was fairly sure that it was because he was taking a long view on the ecotourism thing and trying to butter her up over an extended period, but she was still pleased to be on friendly terms with him.
‘Hi, Cassie. Is this a good time?’
‘Yep, I’m in the flat feeling fat after a large and long Sunday lunch with your neighbours.’ Jack and Chloe had made a lot of delicious veggie sushi for Cassie, Juliet and Anthony, and it had been accompanied by a lot of great wine and great chat. Juliet and Anthony had definitely been flirting. Jack and Chloe were fully paid-up members of Cassie’s ‘Get Juliet and Anthony together’ project – which was more in Cassie’s head than an actual reality because they seemed to be getting themselves together pretty well and she’d done nothing to help, but she had plans to if necessary – and Chloe had sent Cassie aGet inWhatsApp before Cassie was even back in her flat. Chloe was definitely going to have a hangover before she went to bed this evening unless she was a stronger woman than Cassie. Cassie had only had two glasses of wine and wasn’t going to be drinking even a tiny amount from now on because she was starting her first IVF cycle a week tomorrow.
‘Sounds good. I should probably feel bad about the fact that I’ve never met my neighbours, but that’s London for you.’ James might have stopped the grumpiness but from what Cassie knew of him it was a stretch to imagine him actually feeling bad about stuff. ‘Idonow knowyourneighbours.’
‘I know you do. You’re the island hero now you’ve got the Wi-Fi sorted.’
