‘I’m going to miss you too.’ Cassie looked round the four of them, Juliet, Anthony, Jack and Chloe. Such lovely people. She wished she’d had more time to try and get Juliet and Anthony together. ‘We have to stay in touch. I’ll be back in London from time to time, so I’ll email and we can make a date, I hope.’
‘Definitely,’ Chloe said. She put her cutlery down. ‘Jack and I have news, which we wanted to tell you in person before you leave. We’re too excited to wait.’ Going by Chloe’s recent sudden abstention from alcohol it was kind of obvious what it was going to be; in fact, Cassie had been going to make a goat’s cheese starter and had changed her mind because pregnant people couldn’t eat goat’s cheese. ‘We’re expecting. Our due date’s in May.’
That was around when Cassie’s due date would have been if her IVF had worked out and she wasnotgoing to think about thatat allnow because this was Jack and Chloe’s news and it was thrilling for them. Cassie could not spend her whole life avoiding situations like this and she had in fact learned that this summer. If she could go to Glasgow and deal with hearing about Simon’s family, she could totally deal with this.
‘Congratulations. That’s fantastic. I’m so pleased for you.’ Cassie meant it. Good. Very good. She was a nice person after all. Maybe she’d just have a little slurp of her wine. Just to hide her face for a moment.
Fifteen minutes later, the excited pregnancy and baby-preps chat was dwindling.
‘We have news too,’ Juliet said into the conversational lull, looking coyly at Anthony.
‘Oh my goodness,’ Cassie said. ‘Oh. My. Goodness.’ Yes. Maybe her matchmaking efforts, all the dinners she’d cooked, had paid off. Anthony was returning Juliet’s look in a, frankly, somewhat nauseatingly fond manner.
‘We?’ Jack was looking backwards and forwards between Anthony and Juliet like they were playing an Olympic table tennis final.
‘That’s right.’ Juliet reached her hand out and Anthony took it.Sosweet. ‘I feel as though we should possibly put a little misconception straight.’
Cassie frowned. What?
‘Cassie, dear, I think that you might perhaps have been attempting a little matchmaking.’
Cassie screwed up her face. This was a bit embarrassing. ‘Maybe,’ she said. She must have been a bit too obvious. Although, it had clearly achieved its desired effect. Maybe they’d get married. She hoped they’d invite her to the wedding if they did.
‘Juliet and I have been married for twenty-seven years,’ Anthony said.
‘Are you… joking?’ Cassie said tentatively into silence. His delivery hadn’t been particularly joke-like.
‘No, dear.’ Juliet lifted her hand from Anthony’s and stroked his cheek. He leaned his face into her palm. Yep, that looked very familiarly intimate.Wow. ‘It just hasn’t really come up in conversation before now. And then, once you haven’t mentioned something, it becomes a bit awkward. And it felt even more awkward once we realised you were trying to get us together.’
‘Woah,’ said Chloe.
‘Congratulations?’ said Jack.
‘Yes, congratulations,’ said Cassie. Honestly. All that effort for nothing. Although she’d had a lot of good evenings with them. Shereallywanted some detail now. Why did they live separately? Or maybe they didn’t. ‘Are your flats linked inside?’
‘No, the flats aren’t linked. We live separately. We like it. It works for us. We started out like this because we’d both experienced sticky divorces and then we just carried on. And it’s great.’
‘That’s right. And it makes certain things easier.’ Anthony finished his glass of red and Cassie re-filled it.
‘Yes. We’re swingers.’ Juliet popped another dainty mouthful in.
Cassie, Jack and Chloe all looked at each other.
‘Oh,’ said Cassie eventually. Juliet did not look as though she’d just made a joke. On the other hand, she’d just said, very conversationally, that she and Anthony were swingers. Nothing wrong with swinging, obviously, if everyone involved was happy about it and you enjoyed it, but Juliet had possibly the primmest demeanour of all people that Cassie had ever met. And yet again, apparently, you should not judge a book by its cover.
‘Yes. Excellent lemon tart, Cassie. It works perfectly with the berries.’ Anthony put his spoon down and dabbed at his mouth with his napkin. ‘Yes. It works wonderfully well having two separate flats. It means we can bring people back to ours with so much less awkwardness. And we both have little alarm buttons in our flats, you know, in case of danger, but nothing’s ever gone wrong.’
‘Well, that isgreat,’ said Jack, a little too heartily. Cassie pressed her lips together so that she wouldn’t laugh. It was very funny seeing cool, hipster Jack looking thoroughly uncomfortable.
‘Don’t worry.’ Anthony leaned in. ‘Neither of us likes doing it withyoungpeople. We aren’t going to proposition you.’
Jack choked a lot while Cassie, Chloe and Juliet all laughed so much they nearly cried.
It was weird going to bed on the last night before she started her journey back home, not least because there was no call with James as he was already on his flight back from LA. Cassie was leaving at the crack of dawn to do the whole journey in one day, so she’d just miss his arrival by a few hours. Which was probably a good thing. It would be too strange to see each other in the flat.
The big question was, would they carry on speaking once they were back in their real lives? Realistically, probably not.
* * *
