Chapter 12
JAKE
Seriously, I think, as I sit down in the corner of the café at the end of my road. I work hard all week, and half the weekend, and my reward is to meet Sonja for a Saturday afternoon coffee and then Freya for Sunday dinner with Dan and Lizzie.
At least the café does excellent coffee.
‘Jake.’ Sonja is a vision in head-to-toe electric blue today.
I stand to greet her and she pulls me into a particularly close perfume-infused hug and plants actual kisses onto my cheeks rather than the distant air ones I would have expected.
I kiss the air rather than her and say, ‘Hello, Sonja.’
‘How are you?’ She releases me and sits down with a big swish. A further wave of strongly perfumed scent hits me.
I’m still trying to work out what it reminds me of when she asks, ‘Have you spoken to Freya today?’
‘Nope.’ Freya and I are not on friendly text-chat terms. Especially since she sent me a message earlier in the week calling me a weasel and I didn’t reply.
It was obviously a reaction to the newspaper article that ran that day reiterating my thoughts on romance, which happened to name-check Freya (them not me, but it might as well have been me).
The interview actually happened the day after the TV show but they only ran it this week (without telling me that they were doing it then; I presume they were waiting to see whether the challenge took off with the public).
I was only reiterating exactly what I said on the show, no more no less, and I do want to explain that, plus the timing, to Freya, but I’ve had an insanely busy week so I thought it would be best just to tell her when I see her tomorrow with Dan and Lizzie.
‘I’ll fill you in, then.’ Sonja waves her menu at the man behind the counter. ‘We’re going to send you on your bonding weekend sooner rather than later and I’d love to know all your personal likes and dislikes so we can give you the best weekend we possibly can.’
She’s interrupted by the waiter, who’s ready to take our order, which gives me a moment to think.
I have the strong impression that Sonja puts Sonja’s interests first at all times. She’s looking for good television, not trying to give Freya and me a lovely weekend away together. I wouldn’t put it past her to try to give us a terrible weekend because surely that would make better television.
I think I would like Sonja to know as little about me as possible.
I spend the next fifteen minutes batting all her questions away while I drink a latte and she alternates between taking reluctant sips of kale and carrot juice and gulping down hot chocolate as though it’s the nectar to end all nectars.
Eventually, she gets visibly irritated.
‘Jake. Are you being deliberately obstructive?’
‘Not at all,’ I lie. ‘I just don’t really have strong preferences either way. I’m very busy. I work very long hours. No real time for anything else.’
‘Right.’ She bites her lower lip and bats her eyelids and I blink. ‘Am I right in thinking there’s nothing at all between you and Freya?’
I nod, slightly alarmed by the way she’s reaching across the table now and clasping my arm.
‘In that case, when you get back from your weekend away, maybe we could meet one evening, and I could try to help you develop some preferences.’
‘That would be great,’ I lie, very heartily. ‘If I have time. Definitely.’
For fuck’s sake.
No good whatsoever has come of going on that TV show.
Once I’ve escaped Sonja’s clutches, the rest of Saturday – watching football with a few friends – is good, as is the first part of my Sunday.
I have a rare lie-in and then go over to my parents’ to take Max out for a drive.
The serious car crash he was involved in a few years ago means he is now in a wheelchair.
My parents are wonderful and devoted and very youthful for their age, but are approaching seventy now, and I’m always conscious that I need to be in a position to give Max a home with me when my parents can no longer look after him on a daily basis, which means working as hard as I can to be on the best financial footing I can be.
I also, obviously, have a fairly constant feeling of guilt, a sense of ‘how come this awful thing happened to him and not me’ accompanied by a determination to live the life I get to have as fully as I can, kind of in honour of Max, and an equally strong wish to do my best to inject as much happiness as I can into his life.
I take him for a drive to Richmond Park, where we go up to King Henry’s Mound to look at the views from there, which he always likes.
As we go, I tell him the latest on work, the challenge, the frankly weird art-embroidery evening, and how Freya thinks I’m a weasel.
I also admit that I do really wish I’d just kept my thoughts to myself when we did the TV show, because if I hadn’t said anything then none of this would have happened.
‘You’re an idiot,’ Max tells me.
‘I think you’re right. I’m going to have to complete the challenge, though.’
‘Yes. And the upside is that I’m enjoying watching you on TV. The montages are great.’
‘Ha.’ I give his shoulder a gentle punch. ‘At least someone’s deriving enjoyment from this whole situation.’
‘Not just me. A lot of people are enjoying watching you. Everyone wants you to get together with Freya.’
‘Yeah, no. I do believe in romance. But definitely not with her.’ And not now. I don’t feel like I’m ready following my divorce, plus I’m just so busy with work and family. Maybe in a year or two.
We enjoy the rest of our trip round the park and it’s with reluctance, as always, that I say goodbye to my family when it’s time for me to leave.
It is also with reluctance that I set off for my dinner with Dan, Lizzie and Freya.
We’re meeting at a Thai restaurant in Covent Garden. I’m usually pretty punctual for things but decide to arrive a little late so there’s no danger of me arriving at the same time as Freya.
I arrive at exactly the same time as her.
Which is fine, actually; I can’t remember why I thought it would be bad to arrive at the same time.
We exchange hellos – neutral on my side and blatantly frosty on Freya’s – and then go inside.
We were always going to have to say hello.
Dan and Lizzie will already be here so there will be no one-on-one time for me and Freya.
And if there were one-on-one time it would be fine obviously. I really don’t know why I minded.
I’ll explain about the newspaper article when we have a moment, and Freya will presumably defrost a little. And, frankly, if she doesn’t, it really doesn’t matter. Soon we’ll never have to see each other again.
Oh, okay, it looks as though we’re going to have that moment right now, because Dan and Lizzie have not yet arrived, even though Dan is usually one of the most punctual people I know.
We sit opposite each other, Freya with her back to the wall facing out into the room, and me with my back to the room.
Freya smiles at the server who’s shown us to our seats and then immediately focuses on her menu.
‘Your weasel message,’ I begin.
‘Mmhmm.’ Freya doesn’t look up from her menu.
‘Yeah, I presume that was due to the newspaper article.’ I pause but Freya doesn’t say anything. ‘So I just wanted to clear that up.’
She finally looks up at me, tilts her head to one side, raises one eyebrow, and says, ‘Fascinating.’
‘I did the interview literally the day after we were on TV, and reiterated exactly what I’d said to you in person, nothing more.
They didn’t publish the interview then; they waited to see what would happen with our challenge, and when they saw that the weekly updates and montages are really popular with viewers, they decided to run the article.
Without telling me. So I didn’t realise it would be out this week.
And I didn’t realise they would spin it quite so nastily.
’ I suddenly do actually want to make her believe that I wasn’t being gratuitously mean.
‘Because no tabloid ever has spun anything nastily before?’
‘Yeah, maybe that was na?ve. In my defence, I don’t think I really cared because I was furious with you at that point.’
Freya replaces her raised-eyebrow look with a frown. ‘Are you no longer furious?’
‘Apparently not quite so much.’
‘Hmm. I am a bit furious still. I don’t like people attempting to trash my career for no good reason whatsoever.’
‘On the upside—’ I feel as though I’m somewhat grasping at straws ‘—according to Sonja you are very popular with the viewing public.’ Out of curiosity, I really want to ask her if her sales have improved off the back of this publicity but she doesn’t have the air of a woman who’d be keen to discuss that kind of detail with me right now.
‘Delighted to hear that.’ Freya looks the exact opposite of delighted. The frown is only intensifying. ‘So back to your explanation of what happened with the newspaper article. Your apparent need to describe in great detail how it arose screams guilty conscience.’
Our hostilities are placed on hold for a moment while a server places a basket of prawn crackers in front of us and we both thank him profusely.
Once he’s out of earshot, I say, choosing my words carefully, ‘I do wish, with hindsight, that I had kept my thoughts to myself.’
Freya studies me for a long moment, before saying, ‘And that would be because you yourself aren’t enjoying the challenge?’ She takes a cracker.
‘I… Yes.’
‘Not because you care about the impact on me or feel guilty about that?’
‘I obviously don’t want to negatively affect your career.’ I realise that is true.
‘Well, let’s hope it hasn’t.’ She takes quite a vicious bite of the cracker.
‘From what I hear, the viewing public love you.’
‘Likewise.’ She takes another angry bite.
‘Great, then?’
‘Yes, marvellous.’
I don’t love prawn crackers – controversial, I know – but I’d rather eat one than continue this conversation, which feels as though it could easily descend further, into a shouting match, so I smile and take one.