Jessica
The next morning, as we all gather after breakfast, I’m feeling a little bit self-conscious in my Lycra leggings and top. I wish Jack had come down with me but I was so worried about being the last couple here I didn’t wait for him. We stand around in the hall like we’re waiting for a teacher to take us on a school trip. All the relaxed goodwill from last night, funded by champagne and food and candlelight, has evaporated and we’re back to a friendly but slightly awkward chat. Stuart and Grant are talking about some football game they watched in their room last night, and Verity is FaceTiming her very violent-seeming sons while Noah stands behind her saying nothing. Ken is helping Sue with her sturdy walking shoes. Just as I’m starting to get annoyed at Jack for leaving me alone this long, Chloe and Ben run down the stairs, tanned and toned in their matching Lycra, with Jack trailing behind them.
He pauses at the bottom of the stairs and puts a pair of leather brogues on his feet. I feel the irritation stir. The packing list for the trip was unbelievably clear. I realise that he’s much more comfortable with concrete than countryside, but I’m 100 per cent sure he must have something which would be at least a little bit weatherproof. I knew I should have packed for him.
‘Is that what you’re wearing?’
He looks down at his clothes. He’s wearing a blazer, for God’s sake.
‘What’s wrong? I didn’t know we were going to be doing the activity!’
‘But you knew we’d be going ... outside?’
‘Yes, Jessica. I knew we’d be going outside.’
‘Fine. Well. You’re going to get very wet feet.’
‘Yes, well, that’ll be my problem, won’t it?’ he says cheerfully.
Once we’re all ready, we’re guided on to the bus by Scary Will and Cait, at which point we sit in silence listening to the radio until we pull up in the leaf-strewn car park of a national park. Waiting for us as we step off the bus is a meaty man dressed in camouflage.
‘Everyone fall in!’ he shouts. We booked him from a website of army types for hire. He might have done something in a war zone once upon a time a long time ago, but for the last two decades he’s been running corporate retreats for financiers.
‘Welcome to North York Moors,’ he booms. ‘I’m Darren but you can call me Daz. Is everyone ready to have some fun?’
Everyone answers quietly in the affirmative. Daz isn’t exactly who I picture when I consider the concept of ‘fun’.
‘I said, is everyone ready to have some fun?’
We make slightly more noise, but not much. It’s not really a fair question because we are technically not here to have fun, we’re here to remember that honesty is the key to good communication in any relationship.
‘We’ve got a really fun challenge for you today,’ Suze says, full of pep. She’s dressed like a PE teacher; she’s even got a clipboard. ‘We’re going to walk over to the river. When we get there, there are going to be lots of lovely supplies for you all to build rafts. You’ll have fifteen minutes of building time, and then we’ll have a competition for who can get across the river on their raft the fastest. We’ll time each of your attempts to get from one point to another, quickest wins. And, just to keep it fun and competitive, there’s a cash prize for the couple who wins – and the couple who comes last doesn’t get a place on the bus home.’
‘The only snag,’ Suze adds, ‘is that you won’t be given quite enough materials for your raft. So, to get more kit, you’re going to need to go to Daz as a couple and tell him – and each other – some home truths. For every truth you share, you can pick something from his pile of goodies. Got it?’
I was about to start worrying what would happen if Jack and I won (we could hardly take a cash prize from our own event) but I don’t think there’s any risk at all of that happening. Everyone starts talking and we’re on the move. When we get to the river, there are little stations with our names on them, so we all take up position.
‘We should probably go easy,’ I tell Jack. ‘We don’t want to win at our own event.’
‘True. But we also really don’t want to walk home.’
He’s right about that. Especially as his silly leather shoes are already soaked and there’s a tide mark around the bottom of his jeans.
‘Ready? Get set. Go!’ booms Daz, blowing his whistle. Everyone jumps into action. Chloe and Ben leg it straight to Darren and start machine-gun-firing home truths. I hear snatches of ‘not as up for it anymore’ and ‘dented the Tesla’, but I’m trying to focus and sort through what we’ve been given. There are empty plastic barrels and some bits of wood, but nothing to join them together with. I can see Darren guarding a load of rope, duct tape, floaties, pool noodles and all sorts. No chance of doing this without the truth-telling bit, then. God, I wish I’d designed these activities with a loophole.
Across the field I’m surprised to see Verity working enthusiastically, given that her attitude so far has seemed a bit like she doesn’t want to be here. She stops for a moment, looks around, and then drags a reluctant-looking Noah towards Darren. I wonder, way too late, whether the cash prize thing might have been quite a bad idea, or at the very least a bit insensitive. Financial strain was a big part of Verity and Noah’s application. It’s not a fun game for them. If they go home knowing they could have had five hundred quid then the entire weekend will be soured for them. I should have thought about this. It’s the exact kind of thing I’d have hated back when I was working at the marketing company, spending my lunch break putting clothes in my basket on Net-a-Porter and then deleting the whole thing miserably because I could barely afford the Tube.
‘Jess?’ Jack shouts, holding up an armful of plastic floats. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
I crouch down and start arranging them into a sort of underside for our raft. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be doing this? You’re the man.’ Ten meters away I can see Ken and Sue laying out their materials and methodically building their raft, like the couple in the instructions that come with IKEA flat-pack.
‘We both know I’m not that sort of man. Can I interest you in a sonnet about the raft? A witty comment about the raft? Maybe a wry observation?’
I laugh and then try to stick a couple of the bits together, but it’s just impossible with the bog-standard Sellotape they’ve provided clearly out of a desire to torment us. ‘I can’t do it,’ I say, practically stamping my foot in frustration.
‘Let’s just go and see Darren,’ Jack says, standing up.
Stuart and Grant seem to have finished their raft. They’re carrying it carefully towards the water and everyone pauses to cheer for them. Chloe and Ben have been working quickly and aren’t far behind, either, so that only leaves us three other couples. For fuck’s sake! If we end up being the ones to walk home, everyone’s going to think it’s really funny and I’m going to have to pretend to have a sense of humour about it.
‘We can’t go and see Darren,’ I hiss, ‘we’re supposed to be one hundred per cent honest all of the time already. How are we going to have any home truths to spill?’
Jack gives me a ‘Babe, please’ look.
‘I’m serious! Isn’t it going to look bad if we run over there and start talking about all the secrets we’ve been keeping? And wait, hang on, have you actually been keeping secrets?’
‘I’m sure I can come up with something,’ Jack says weakly as he sees Sue and Ken, almost twice our age, carrying their rafts with surprising speed.
‘Fine,’ I say. ‘We can just make something up.’
‘We said we were going to do this properly!’
‘Okay, okay,’ I say, taking him by the hand and dragging him over to Darren who seems to be having way too much fun playing God.
‘Hi,’ I say. ‘We’re Jack and Jessica, we wrote the book that this weekend is based on.’
Darren looks out at the couples throwing themselves around the floor trying to make junk into boats. ‘This is based on a ... book?’
‘Yes,’ I say, determined. ‘It is. And we need to just grab some duct tape and whatever else you’d recommend so that we can join in.’
‘Great,’ says Darren. ‘Spill.’
Jack laughs.
‘You couldn’t just slip us some rope?’ I say, higher pitched than intended.
‘Afraid not.’ Darren smirks.
I take a deep breath. Jack wants me to be honest? Really? He wants me to tell him that I message Clay when I’m worried about work because I know he’ll take me seriously? Or that I’ve been spending hundreds of pounds on pregnancy supplements with no proven medical benefit on a secret credit card? Probably not.
‘I moved your bookmark,’ I bark.
‘What?’
‘In the hotel, after our launch party. You were in the bathroom. I deliberately moved your bookmark so you’d lose your place.’
He laughs. ‘You psycho.’
Darren hands us some rolls of duct tape while giving me a concerned look. There’s a huge shout from the water where Stuart and Grant’s boat has capsized.
‘Thank fuck!’ I shout.
Jack shakes his head. ‘How am I always surprised by how competitive you are?’
‘Honesty, please? Jack? Time is of the essence right now because I don’t want to walk back to the house later.’
‘I can’t think of anything.’
‘Yes, you can, come ON.’
‘I’m trying.’
‘Try harder!’ I shout. ‘Try faster!’
‘I WAS A VIRGIN WHEN WE SLEPT TOGETHER THE FIRST TIME,’ he shouts. There’s a silence across the field. Everyone turns to look at us. Darren bites his lip, then finally hands over the rope we wanted.
‘Good luck,’ he says. ‘And listen, mate, I think it’s nice to wait.’
I start frantically binding the plastic bottles together with the duct tape. ‘You were a VIRGIN?’ I hiss at him.
‘Yes,’ he replies, delicately screwing the lids on to them so they don’t fill with water the moment we’re on the river.
‘And you LIED about having slept with “some girl at school”?’
‘Do we really need to talk about this right now?’ he pleads. ‘And I had done basically everything with her apart from that.’
‘Still!’ I stand up, hands suddenly still. ‘I’m the only person you’ve ever slept with!’
He looks up at me, bright red. ‘Oh, piss off,’ he says, also sort of laughing. I put my hand over his. Look at him. His handsome, beautiful profile.
‘I wish you’d told me,’ I tell him.
‘It’s embarrassing.’
‘It’s not embarrassing. It’s romantic.’ I look at him again. ‘Jack. It’s lovely.’ I reach up, running my hand over the stubble which shadows his jawline. I brush my lips against his. ‘I just wish I’d known.’
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Well, everyone now knows that I was a virgin until I was twenty-two, so if we could crack on and make this thing float so we don’t also lose this game, then that would be a little bit of a help.’
We work together, me directing and Jack listening, offering suggestions intermittently, and eventually we’ve got a sort of raft-looking thing. We drag our attempt down to the water and Suze gets ready to time us. We get into the water and paddle frantically, splashing each other, the boat (boat in the very loosest sense) rocking madly from side to side. The water looks cold and brown underneath us, my trainers are soaked, but we’re doing it. We cross the finish line made of life buoys and float gently back to the shore. I jump down in relief. Jack attempts to avoid standing in the deep water and whimpers slightly as he looks down at his brogues, soaking and caked in mud.
‘How did we do?’ I ask Suze, panting.
‘You made a really good attempt!’ she says.
‘Are we one of the fastest?’
‘Uh. You had one of the smoothest turns ...’
Jack laughs and puts his arms around me. ‘I’m sorry, darling.’ I lean into his body, warm despite the wet day. He’s always so warm. Before we lived in a house with reliable central heating and double glazing, I used to use him as a radiator in bed at night.
The rest of the group are standing around by the water and Suze waves to get everyone’s attention. ‘Right,’ she shouts, ‘we have a tie for the win!’
Everyone makes an ‘ooo’ noise.
‘Verity and Noah, you had the same time as Chloe and Ben. So it’s time for a tie-breaker race.’ Ken and Sue applaud good-naturedly while Verity and Noah look a bit bashful. Chloe and Ben do quite an aggressive high five, clearly in perfect unison with their competitive spirit.
There’s a surprising amount of excitement as the two teams get ready, standing by their rafts, primed to push them in. Daz is standing with his lace-ups almost ankle deep in water, like an Antony Gormley made of meat. He puts the whistle to his lips.
‘When I say three, you can get in the water, and the first to reach the red life buoy is the winner. One, two, three, GO.’
Both couples give their rafts a shove into the water and start paddling madly. We’re all cheering. Verity’s face is twisted in effort; she’s paddling harder than any of the rest of them.
‘Faster,’ she screams at Noah.
‘God, she’s really going for it.’ Sue turns to me. ‘Good on her.’
Chloe and Ben reach the buoy slightly ahead and an enormous cheer goes up. They all make their way back to the shore and Chloe and Ben high-five each other, delighted.
‘Congratulations!’ Suze says, holding their hands up to celebrate their victory. ‘This is for you.’ She hands them a cheque which they rip open.
‘Five hundred quid!’ Ben says, delighted. ‘Woah!’
‘That’s a weekend in Paris,’ Chloe says, beaming. ‘A mini-break.’
They hug. I look over at Verity who is staring at the ground. It looks like there might be tears in her eyes but that could just be the cold air. I can feel her burning, and I get it. That’s not money that should have gone on a mini-break. It would have made her life better. Not so long ago I’d have felt the exact same.
‘And now we come to the losers of the task.’ Suze smiles. ‘Any guesses?’
There’s a silence and it seems like everyone is looking at us. ‘Surely not us?’ I ask, aghast.
Suze laughs. ‘By almost two minutes slower than everyone else, Jack and Jessica came last.’
Everyone thinks this is very funny. I try to swallow my pride. There’s quite a big part of me which wants to go and ask Suze if I can see her numbers, but luckily my desire not to seem like a total psycho stops me.
Jack nudges me in the ribs. ‘Let’s not have a Twister moment.’ I half pout, half laugh at the memory of the time I tried to play sexy Twister with him in our first flat and ended up shouting at him for not bringing his best game.
I push his hair, damp with sweat and water, away from his forehead. ‘Fine.’ I smile.
‘The good news,’ Suze continues, ‘is that while this task was about getting you to embrace honesty, we weren’t totally honest with you. We never intended to make the losers walk home.’
Everyone claps, and we make our soggy way back to the coach, ready for long baths and dry clothes. Sitting next to each other on the coach, I smile at Jack. He smiles back, one hand on my thigh.
‘I can’t believe we lost,’ I say.
‘I’d rather lose with you than win with anyone else.’ He grins.
‘What a line.’ I roll my eyes and then rest my head on his tweed shoulder. Ironically, given how spectacularly we lost, this morning has ended up feeling like a win.