Chapter 9 #2
‘Good point.’ Dan checks Lizzie’s watch across the table again and then he picks his phone up to check train times.
‘We’d better get the bill. I’ll order us an Uber to get to the station.
’ He swipes a bit on his phone and then says, ‘There don’t seem to be any Ubers available that will take four people, so we’ll need to take two.
’ That sounds like a very transparent ploy to get some time alone with Lizzie.
‘I can get one in two minutes and one in maybe ten. Why don’t you two take the first one?
’ He smiles at me and Jake. ‘And we’ll see you at the station unless you get a train before us. ’
After a slightly longer than acceptable pause, Jake says, ‘That’s very kind, if you’re sure.’
‘Yes, thank you, if that’s definitely okay,’ I chime in. We clearly have no choice.
From the way Dan’s grinning at Lizzie now, I very strongly suspect that it isn’t true that there are no Ubers around that would be able to take all of us.
We all hug goodbye (one or both of Dan and Lizzie is so clearly planning to miss the train), Dan whispers in my ear that Lizzie has told him the whole New Year’s Eve story and I wince (and, no, I’m not sharing it more widely), I dash to the loo (far too much mint tea) and then the first (and perhaps only) Uber arrives and Jake and I climb into the back.
The driver is very chatty and assumes we’re a couple.
I begin to correct him and then decide to just let it go and give vague responses to his questions. Jake says nothing at all. I look over at him and see that his stupidly perfect profile is pointed straight ahead and his features are totally unsmiling. That does actually cheer me up a little.
‘There you go,’ the driver says as he pulls into the station. ‘Safe journey and enjoy the rest of your evening.’
‘Thank you so much. You too. Good luck with your guitar exam,’ I say. He was just telling us how he took up the guitar for his fiftieth birthday and his teacher has him doing exams and he’s loving it.
I turn round and catch Jake rolling his eyes behind me.
‘What?’ I say as I wave goodbye to the driver.
Jake just shakes his head.
The train’s delayed by fifteen minutes. I decide that I’ve had enough of Jake for this evening so I go and sit on a bench by myself.
Within about twenty seconds I realise that there are greater evils than sitting on the same bench as him; there’s a big group of drunk men about ten feet away from me, who aren’t holding back on the shouted arsehole-letchy comments.
I’m actually – to my extreme annoyance – pleased when Jake comes and sits down next to me and gives them the evil eye and they shut up.
‘Thank you,’ I mutter.
‘Please don’t thank me. They’re stupid dicks and I’m not specifically being helpful to you, I’m just ashamed of the world we live in and the way some men behave.’
‘Okay. Well, good.’
‘Yeah. If it makes you feel any better, it really wasn’t personal. Like, we both know that I wouldn’t do you a favour.’ He’s making a rare fair point.
I nod.
Then we sit in silence.
‘No sign of Dan and Lizzie,’ Jake observes as the train pulls in.
‘No,’ I agree. ‘And this is the last train and it’s delayed.’ I wonder whether they’ve already found themselves a hotel for the night.
Jake follows me into the same carriage and sits diagonally opposite me in a four-group of seats, and I don’t object, because, given those drunk men, his company is obviously the least of the evils that could befall me right now, especially if we don’t talk.
Jake, however, is speaking.
‘Still don’t believe in love?’ he enquires. ‘After seeing such a blatant case?’
‘Love?’ I’m delighted to be on very sure footing for once. He’s so clearly wrong and I’m so clearly right on this. ‘That wasn’t love. That was mutual lust at first sight. Which might totally turn into lifelong love, definitely. But right now, it’s just lust.’
Jake nods, a hint of a smug look that I don’t like on his face. ‘Absolutely. But there’s definitely the potential for it to turn into love, isn’t there?’
Seriously. He cannot possibly think I’m going to fall for this argument.
I shake my head sorrowfully. ‘Yes, there is. For Lizzie and Dan. Not for me. I’m not going to meet anyone. You aren’t here to prove that people fall in love. We all know they do. You’re here to prove that I will fall in love. Which I won’t. So you cannot win.’
A small frown furrows Jake’s handsome brow for a moment, before he says, in a suspiciously friendly voice, ‘Why is it that you don’t think love is for you?’
I sit back in my seat. ‘Interesting change of tack,’ I observe.
‘Sorry?’ He’s still doing the friendly voice.
‘Trying to see whether I just have a nebulous “I don’t think love is for me” feeling or whether there’s a concrete reason for me saying I won’t be meeting anyone, which you might be able to talk me out of.’
To give Jake his due (which I do not like doing), he laughs.
Then he says, ‘But how can you say never? I mean… surely never say never?’
‘I just can.’
‘Fine.’ He drops the friendliness and leans back against the seat and closes his eyes.
I had warmed to him very, very momentarily, but there’s something about the extreme self-confidence of someone prepared to snooze, or at least have a very serious rest, in public that really annoys me.
I mean, to be fair, when other people look as though they’re preparing to sleep on a train, I don’t really mind.
When Jake does it, however… it’s extremely irritating.
Is he not worried that he might dribble?
Or snore a tiny bit? Or just look ridiculous?
Oh. Maybe he just really, really doesn’t care what I think of him.
Or maybe he’s pretending, to avoid me striking up another inane beverage- or fish-related conversation.
I should be grateful, not annoyed.
As the train pulls out of the station, I’m sure that Dan and Lizzie haven’t arrived and caught it; I think we would have seen them.
At least someone’s enjoyed this evening.
Actually, I did too, in part. The alpaca part. And now I’m going to put this train journey to good use by googling the different variables that would be involved in setting up an alpaca farm, and then thinking about the plot of my next book.
I can’t concentrate, though.
I really want to know what Jake’s thinking about Lizzie and Dan. It’s so sweet. I genuinely think it could turn into a relationship. From Lizzie’s side, anyway. What about Dan, though? Is he likely to treat Lizzie well?
She’s had some very bad luck romantically, and been very hurt.
It’s rare that when one of your best friends meets someone you have the opportunity to ask a close friend of the person they’ve met what their intentions are…
I really don’t want to give Jake the opportunity to be rude to me again.
But I feel that I would be letting Lizzie down if I don’t at least attempt to ask him about Dan.
I’m just going to come straight out with it.
‘Jake.’ I wonder whether he’s genuinely asleep. His chest is rising and falling slowly, like a fit person’s would be when they were asleep, but he could obviously be pretending, to avoid speaking to me. ‘Jake?’ I give his foot a little nudge with mine.
‘Freya?’ He doesn’t open his eyes, which annoys me.
‘Lizzie is a lovely, kind, wonderful person,’ I begin.
Jake does not respond.
‘Jake?’
‘Great,’ he says, eyes still closed.
I pause, wanting to choose my words carefully, because obviously he can and might repeat anything I say to Dan, so I should only say things that Lizzie would be happy for Dan to know.
‘She’s been hurt before, and I don’t want her to get hurt again,’ I say, after a bit of thought.
Jake finally has the courtesy to open his eyes.
‘Dan is also a great person and I don’t think would ever intentionally hurt someone,’ he tells me. ‘I don’t think he would have a one-night stand, should that happen, with someone he thinks wanted more if he didn’t think he wanted more too.’
‘Okay. Well, good.’ I hope Dan realised that Lizzie looked (to my eyes) as though she was tumbling head over heels on the spot.
Jake closes his eyes again, and there’s something about the way he hasn’t even twitched during this little conversation, apart from the eye opening and closing, that suddenly makes me furious.
‘This evening—’ I nudge his foot again because I want him to hear what I’m saying ‘—and this whole situation, it’s all your fault.’
Jake opens his eyes for a second before closing them again.
‘That is incorrect,’ he says a moment later.
‘No, it bloody isn’t. If you hadn’t been so bloody rude on TV none of this would have happened. We’d have gone our separate ways and never seen each other again.’
He opens his eyes. ‘And no-one would ever have called you out on writing such dangerous nonsense.’
‘Oh, please. Literary snobs, broadsheets rounding up “books of the year”, crime writers, I mean, so many people are rude about romance novels and romance writers. You are not the first. You are the first to explicitly tell me that my books cause divorces.’
‘Yeah, well there you go. Good thing that I said it.’
‘What do you mean, it’s a good thing?’ I think my head might explode.
‘I’m going to carry on writing my books.
I like writing them and I like my readers and I like the fact that my stories and their happily-ever-afters make people happy.
People write to me to tell me that my stories have brightened their day, which is particularly important in the world we currently live in.
I like all of that. And nothing you have said has convinced me that anyone would split up from their partner because of a romance that they’d read.
And therefore the only result of what you said to me is this.
This stupid, annoying, ridiculous, time-wasting challenge. ’
Jake is frowning slightly.
I press on, because I have stuff to say and I really want to say it.
‘You cannot convince me and I cannot convince you. Neither of us is going to win. We’re going to be subjected to dreadful double dates every Tuesday and then in just under three months’ time we’re going to be going on a bloody weekend away doing our stupid, torturous team-building for two, because neither of us can win. ’
Jake frowns more, which – obviously – just annoys me more.
‘I mean this is so pointless,’ I continue. ‘Totally, completely, utterly, absolutely pointless. The best we can hope for is that we continue to provide a dating service for our friends. I mean, it’s ludicrous. We are in a really, really, really stupid situation. And it is all your fault.’
‘What about we admit defeat now? Both of us?’
I open my mouth to continue my rant and then register his actual words. ‘What?’
‘We could tell Sonja right now that we’ve completed the challenge because we have each agreed that we cannot win.’
‘We’d still have to go on the weekend, I think.’ My mind’s whirring. I do think Jake is (finally) making a good point. We could just give up now. ‘I personally do not want the British public to think I’m a quitter or a reneger.’
‘Yep, I think we do both have to do the weekend,’ Jake agrees. ‘But there will presumably be other people there too. We can do our own thing, come back, do the reappearance on the show, and then it will all be over.’
I nod slowly and say, ‘Finally you’re talking sense.’
He raises an eyebrow. ‘I always talk sense.’
‘Agree to differ.’
We do though obviously finally agree on something: that we want to minimise the amount of crap we have to go through before Sonja deems this challenge completed.
‘I’m happy to put a message to this effect on the chat tomorrow,’ Jake continues.
‘I will put a strongly worded agreement to your message on there.’
‘She might not agree to it, of course.’
I consider. ‘Yep, maybe not. I wish we could in good conscience throw Lizzie and Dan to the wolves. That would make a good story.’
‘I mean, no it wouldn’t? Boy meets girl and they get on well?’
‘Kind of an ironic finish to the challenge, though? And, some would say, quite a sweet one? Made for TV?’
Jake does a sceptical little sneer, I’d have to call it, and then says, ‘Well, to be fair to you—’ I mouth wow and he rolls his eyes at me ‘—who knows what the TV people will like. We clearly aren’t going to mention anything about Dan and Lizzie though?’
‘No, of course not!’ I’m insulted by him again. Like I’d throw anyone, let alone a very close friend under a bus like that. ‘Unless they have an insane urge to get on daytime TV by any means, that would be awful for them.’
‘Agreed.’ Jake looks at me, his mouth kind of quirked up at the corner, like he’s thinking and there’s a first. To be fair, I am also thinking that.
‘Anyway. We have a plan. Good news.’ And then he – frankly very rudely – closes his eyes again, and I glare at him for a few seconds before beginning to google alpaca farming again.