‘Good night,’ they chorused one final time as Jack and Chloe got into the lift and Anthony led a now very giggly and tactile Juliet into his flat.
‘Wow. So these are the neighbours I’ve been missing out on all this time,’ James said when he’d closed and bolted the door.
‘I know. I wasn’t expecting that level of entertainment.’ Cassie started to carry plates from the table to the dishwasher. ‘It’s usually all very friendly. I think maybe we had too much pregnancy chat and too much alcohol involved this evening.’ Cassie herself hadn’t actually had that much to drink.
‘Is it, um, difficult for you seeing a friend like Chloe?’ he said, and then did an immediate internal eye roll. How was he going to finish that question without upsetting her?Are you jealous or upset because she’s pregnant and you aren’t?Obviously not. What an idiot.
‘You mean because she’s pregnant? Yes and no. Yes, I did go through a phase of struggling not to be, I don’t know what, not envious – or not in a bad way, because I’d always be happy for a friend – but, yes, I suppose in some ways envious. And that is not good. It makes you feel like a bad person.’
James knew all about the envy thing. When he was young, he’d been envious of his friends’ families. Especially the ones with the mother, father, two point two kids set-up. A father who acknowledged and was remotely interested in his children. A sober mother. Food on the table provided by an adult instead of one of the kids. He’d been happy for them, but he’d have liked that for himself and his sisters too.
‘And no,’ Cassie continued, ‘because actually I reallyamhappy for her and sheshouldbe able to be bubbly and excited and obsessive about her pregnancy, ofcourseshe should. Really, it was a lot worse seeing Juliet. Maybe I’m scared that I’ll be bitter like that in thirty years’ time. Anyway—’ she pulled the cutlery rack and started loading it, fast, like she wanted a physical outlet for her feelings ‘—that’s a lot of blether about me. What about you? Have you ever wanted kids?’ She straightened. ‘Sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. That’s a very personal question.’
‘No, it’s okay.’ Hereallydidn’t want her to feel bad on top of everything else. ‘We’re friends. It isn’t too personal.’ It kind of was. He really didn’t talk about this stuff. Maybe he should. ‘No. I don’t want kids.’
Her eyes widened, a lot, and then she blinked, hard, but she didn’t say anything. Instead she took a dishwasher tab and put it into its compartment and pressed the ‘on’ switch.
‘I guess that’s unusual,’ he said, walking over to the sofas.
Cassie followed him, but keeping her distance.
He suddenly really wanted to explain. ‘But, no, I don’t. I suppose I don’t have a role model. My parents were only together very briefly. I do know who my father is and he has no interest in me. And my mother was great from the maternal love perspective but not so good in practice because she was an alcoholic so she wasn’t brilliant at looking after us.’ Wow. He’d just told Cassie about his parents. He never told people. It felt okay. Good, even. ‘My older sister, Ella, is two years older than me.’ Now he wanted to tell her about Leonie, but he couldn’t get the words out. How nowaywas he going to have kids because it was like he and Ella had brought Leonie up and he’d totally failed Leonie and she’d become an addict like their mother, and died. He just couldn’t talk about that at all.
Cassie’s eyes had filled and she had a hand stretched towards him. No. He couldn’t deal with sympathy.
‘I’ll tell you something funny about my father,’ he said. ‘He’s fallen on hard times financially since, but he was quite a famous singer in the early eighties, before he met my mother. You might have heard of him. He did quite a well-known Christmas song that still gets played. Dougie Finegan.’
‘Dougie Finegan is yourfather?’ Cassie gave a tiny, muffled snort.Yes. A very successful change of topic. ‘He’s got a lovely voice.’
‘Yep. I inherited my musical abilities from my mother.’
‘Wow.’ Cassie had her lips pressed really hard together like she was trying really hard not to laugh.
‘You thinking about me singing?’
She laughed out loud. ‘Yes.’
He kind of wanted to tell her about singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to a hostile audience at Emily’s party, except he didn’t want to remind her about Emily.
Wow. Emily and Cassie. So different from each other.
Cassie was different from any woman he’d ever dated, actually. She was still sniggering a little, her eyes alight. He was laughing too, just because she was.
She looked beautiful, sitting at the end of the sofa, her feet curled under her, in a soft blue dress this evening, more muted than the bright colours she usually wore but great against her warm skin tone.
James really wanted to sit down next to her.
He sat down at the opposite end of the same sofa.
Why had he bought such large sofas?
He really, really did not want to go to bed right now. Not alone, anyway. And obviously he wasn’t going to go to bedwithCassie.
‘Some late-night TV? Maybe a film?’ he asked.
‘Sounds good.’ She really did have the most stunning smile. He loved it when it grew gradually, like it was doing now as he watched her.
‘Great.’ He looked around for the remote.
