Chapter 18
JAKE
As I walk over to the dining tent for breakfast, I wonder if I might be slightly delirious from tiredness. Or from something.
I don’t think I’ve ever revised my opinion of someone so strongly from meeting them to… well, to having mind-blowing sex with them.
It’s fair to say that when I met Freya I couldn’t stand her.
It’s also fair to say that now I… well, right now, I’m missing her, because she isn’t next to me. Even though I’m going to see her in a few minutes’ time.
That might just be a hangover from the out-of-this-world sex.
But the sex wouldn’t have been so good if there hadn’t been some kind of emotional connection between us.
As in, she’s very beautiful, obviously, but there are other beautiful women.
Although few with such a stunning smile.
But her smile isn’t the point. The point is how much fun she is.
Her sarcasm. Her humour. The way she laughs.
How extremely nice she is. How much I love her writing.
Her basically. All of her. That was why the sex was so good.
It was because it was with her, not just a beautiful woman.
‘Jake. Where’s Freya?’ Sonja’s right in front of me, wearing her usual gimlet-eyed look.
‘She’s on her way. She was just a little tired after yesterday but she’ll be here any minute.’
‘Good to hear. I wouldn’t like to think of her missing breakfast and having to confront her fear of heights on an empty stomach.’
‘Same,’ I agree. ‘Fingers crossed she arrives on time.’ I wonder whether Sonja is going to ask for breakfast to be cleared away early just to spite Freya.
I take an enormous pile of food from the buffet so I can save some for Freya if necessary. I catch Sonja looking at me and my plate, so, when she does finally turn her back, I fill a couple of rolls with ham and cheese, wrap them in napkins and sneak them into my pockets.
True to form, Sonja waits for Freya to arrive and then immediately claps her hands and tells everyone that breakfast is over.
‘It’s okay,’ I whisper. ‘Got you some food.’
We slip behind some trees for me to hand over the food and for Freya to scoff it as fast as she can. I kiss her a couple of times on the forehead as she does so, because apparently I can’t resist.
‘Jake. Freya,’ calls Sonja. That woman is everywhere. ‘Time for the treetop activity.’
‘I feel like a teenager round the back of the sheds at school smoking,’ says Freya, her mouth full.
‘I know. I genuinely feel like we’re committing a serious misdemeanour right now. It’s like we’ve strayed into some Big Brother world run by Sonja.’
‘Jake. Freya.’ Sonja’s openly yelling now.
‘I’m done,’ Freya says.
I look at her and laugh. ‘There’s a lot of evidence of your crime,’ I tell her.
‘What?’
‘Crumbs, everywhere.’ I wipe them away for her carefully with my fingers, and then can’t resist kissing her everywhere that I touched.
She’s wrapping her arms round my neck when Sonja goes incredible full throttle on the yelling.
‘Oh. We should go,’ Freya says.
‘Yep,’ I agree.
‘Where have you two been?’ asks Sonja.
‘Toilet break,’ Freya says blandly.
‘Together? In the bushes.’
‘Both desperate,’ Freya says.
‘Fucksake,’ says Sonja, not quite under her breath.
‘Fuuuuck,’ breathes Freya a couple of minutes later. ‘That is high.’
She isn’t wrong. I have no fear whatsoever of heights beyond not wanting to fall from one without any safety equipment, but I’ll definitely be keen to check that our harnesses are properly secured.
‘I feel like breakfast was a mistake.’ Freya does look quite green in the face now.
‘Okay. This is going to be fine,’ I tell her. ‘There’s no way they’re going to let anything bad happen to us on a programme made for Wake Up Britain. It would be the end of loads of people’s careers. Especially Sonja’s. Also, people go on treetop walks all the time.’
‘I don’t think we’re just going to be walking.’ Freya’s pointing up towards the sky.
I follow the line of her finger and see that there are hoops and parallel bars and other gymnastic equipment along the walk.
‘Well, that looks like fun,’ I say, weakly. I mean, it does look like fun. But not, I’m guessing, if you’re scared of heights.
‘Yeah, can’t wait.’
‘Honestly,’ I say. ‘I know that you don’t like heights and I really, really get that, but it truly will be fine. And since this is a team-building weekend, I’m guessing we’ll be doing it in pairs, in which case I’ll be there the whole way and I’ll help you.’
‘That’s true.’ Freya’s beginning to look just pale rather than ocean-on-a-stormy-day green.
I really want to take her in my arms to try to cheer her up, but I’m certainly not doing that under Sonja’s eagle eye. It doesn’t take a lot of thought to determine that Sonja is one of the last people in the world we want to know about last night.
Freya is amazing. She gets tearful once or twice, she mutters, ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ a lot under her breath, she tells me more than once that she can’t carry on, but she manages it. I do my best to encourage her but when it comes down to it, it’s all her. She’s basically amazing.
‘I’m so impressed,’ I tell her as we finally reach the ground. ‘You’re brilliant.’
‘This is wonderful,’ Sonja gushes, having popped out from behind a bush somewhere to our right.
She’s wearing camo army-style fatigues, and I think there actually was a camouflage purpose to her wearing it.
Thank fuck I wasn’t hugging Freya in the way I would have liked to.
‘The two of you really have bonded. Which is wonderful, because you came last in that task – we timed you – so you’ll be doing one final ice bath, but this time you’ll be doing it together, in one big bath. ’
‘Great,’ says Freya, very miserably.
I think Sonja and the producers imagined that being in a bath together might somehow cause something sexual to happen between us, but it’s an ice bath and there are many onlookers.
I’m pretty sure that they’ll have got max a second or two of showable footage from it, because we both just climb in, don’t react and then get out again when our time is up, while the others clap.
Sonja rounds us all up, tells us that we’ve all been wonderful, instructs all twelve of us to set up a group chat to stay in contact, informs Freya and me that she’ll be in touch very soon with details about the live show, and finally leaves us.
‘Hooray,’ says Freya.
I nod.
When we’ve dutifully set up the chat (to be fair, the whole weekend was bonding and the other participants are a really nice group of people), everyone goes off to get their luggage before we reconvene for final goodbyes.
I wait until I’m sure everyone’s out of earshot and then say to Freya, ‘I drove. Why don’t I give you a lift back to London?’
‘That would be great,’ she replies with no hesitation, ‘but should we drive off together?’
‘Yeah, no, we shouldn’t. What about if you get a taxi to the station and then say you’re catching a different train from anyone else, and then say you’re going to the loo and sneak back out and I’ll pick you up?’
‘I feel like I would definitely bump into Sonja,’ Freya says. ‘But what about if I say I’m getting a cab to a different station and actually just meet you in the middle of nowhere?’
‘Good plan,’ I approve.
As we leave, luggage in hand, Freya hugs absolutely everyone, apparently already very close friends with most of them.
I pick her up twenty minutes later from a water fountain in a nearby village and it isn’t an exaggeration to say that when I round the bend of the road and see her standing there, I feel as though my heart swells. Like, again, I was missing her.
‘Well, hello,’ I say as she climbs into the car. ‘Do you come here often?’
‘Never,’ she says, leaning back against the car seat and closing her eyes. ‘I never do weekends like that. What the actual fuck happened there? What world did we get sucked into? Sonja’s an actual lunatic.’
‘Good weekend overall, though?’ I ask. I really don’t want her to regret the whole thing.
She opens her eyes and gives me a slow smile. ‘Yeah.’ Then she smiles more and says, ‘Some of it was amazing.’
I nod, pleased. It was amazing.
‘I loved the baking,’ she says.
Oh. Okay. I nod.
‘And I didn’t actually hate the assault course in some ways. The net bit was fine. I was pleased to discover that I was good with mud. And the whole thing did feel like a big achievement, and who doesn’t love to achieve?’
I nod again.
‘And the ice bath,’ she continues. ‘Obviously I hated it and obviously we all know that they’re a fad and not genuinely health-giving, but at least I can now say with authority that I’ve done one. Two, in fact.’
I pause my slight disgruntlement that she still hasn’t mentioned our night together. ‘What? They are health-giving? Well-documentedly?’
She shakes her head. ‘Nuh-unh.’
‘Hmm. I’ll let that pass until I’m not driving and then I will send you some definitive articles on the benefits of ice baths.’
‘And I will retaliate with definitive articles on the quackery of the ice-bath movement.’
‘Okay, no. I’m going to prove my point as soon as I finish driving.’ I look both ways before turning off our country lane onto a main road. ‘Anything else good about the weekend?’
‘The treetop thing this morning. I hated it in the moment. But I have at least proved to myself that I can do things I hate and that I’m not wrong when I say that I absolutely hate heights and so I’m not holding myself back unnecessarily from things like bungee jumping because I really would hate them. ’
I nod.
‘Also I enjoyed you thwarting Sonja on the reptile experience,’ she continues.
I nod.
‘Also, the salsa dancing was obviously amazing. So much fun.’
I nod.
‘Yeah, so I think that’s it.’
‘Nothing else stands out in your mind?’ I enquire.
‘I don’t think so.’ She’s leaning back again with her eyes closed, grinning while she does so.