Chapter 10 #2
Jake, Freya, thank you for your videos. This challenge is obviously a rolling process, informed by our rolling data.
The real-time data shows that our viewers love your dynamic – the two of you together – and want to see more of you.
The data also shows that no-one thinks either of you can win this challenge.
But we don’t want to end this now. So we’re sending you on an experience – just the two of you, no dates required – on Tuesday, to create some more of that TV gold, and then you’re going on your bonding weekend asap, where we’ll take a lot of footage.
Poll attached to see which weekends you can do.
And details on your Tuesday evening date to follow.
Thank fuck for that is all I can say. Obviously I could do without a one-on-one experience with Freya, and I don’t like Sonja’s use of the word date, and I imagine Freya feels the same way, but at least this will be the last Tuesday.
The team-building thing was always going to happen, and – as Freya pointed out – we can easily each do our own thing that weekend.
And then it will all be over, thank fuck.
I’m thanking my fucks less when Sonja messages us on Monday.
So we wracked our brains to think of the best evening out for two people who blatantly thoroughly disliked each other when they met lollll.
We came up with an embroidery class. With a twist!
You’ll be drawing portraits of each other and then sewing them.
While drinking champagne! What could be more fun?
What? The woman’s a lunatic. I mean, what? That sounds like utter torture. I can’t draw and I can’t sew and I have no particular desire to learn to do either.
A message comes through from Freya:
Hahahahaha
And then another one:
I cannot imagine anyone less likely than you to enjoy that. Correct me if I’m wrong.
She isn’t wrong.
Twenty-four hours later, Freya and I are in an upstairs room in a pub just outside a train station in Wandsworth, with glasses of champagne in front of us, pencils and canvases at the ready.
‘Right.’ Petra, the very jolly woman leading our class beams at us all. ‘Everyone has their drinks, I see. Perfect. Since this is an extra-long session we’re going to have two breaks. You might want to order food in the first one to eat during the second one.’
Freya and I both smile politely. The other ten people in the class (nine women and one man) all say how great/ amazing/ wonderful that sounds. They’re basically full of positive hyperbole about every single thing Petra says.
I, by contrast, am very unhappy about what’s coming up in the next hour.
We’re going to begin by learning some basics of drawing faces – which, to be fair, will be very interesting, I imagine – and then each of us is going to draw our partner’s face on paper, before transferring that as well as we can to our embroidery canvases.
Before we draw our partner, each of us must study their face in great detail.
I’m not looking forward to that bit. I don’t think I’d particularly enjoy doing that with anyone, but it’s got to be a truly special torture mutually staring hard at each other’s faces for an extended period when you really don’t like each other but have been forced into a stupid series of activities together.
‘Jake and Freya? Ready?’ Petra calls. Clearly, we haven’t sounded enthusiastic enough.
‘I can’t wait.’ Freya does an incredibly false smile. I’m pretty sure I know what her genuine ones are like because I think she enjoyed the karaoke evening as much as the rest of us, and she was smiling a lot then (not in my direction, obviously).
Her real smiles produce that (objectively very cute) dimple and reach her eyes. This one does neither.
‘I also can’t wait.’ I smile too; I don’t want to upset anyone.
Petra’s a good teacher. I was not a natural at art at school, and I am not a natural now, but I’m enjoying learning how to draw a face way more than I ever enjoyed school art lessons.
She has some really interesting tips for us, and at one point it genuinely crosses my mind that if I’m ever at a huge loss as to how to spend my days, attending art classes wouldn’t be the worst thing I could do.
As predicted, things are not so good once we move on to the phase where we’re studying each other’s faces.
At the risk of sounding like a toddler, I just don’t want to look at all the details of Freya’s face.
We have a checklist. Apparently we would certainly not have a checklist if we weren’t total novices, but we do, which does kind of make it better, in that we don’t just have to sit with our eyes roaming across each other’s faces aimlessly.
I realise as I go through it that there’s something interesting about Freya’s face: she is – objectively – beautiful, but none of her individual features are particularly remarkable.
Well, her eyes are an objectively lovely brown, very deep and chocolatey, which is a nice contrast with her dark-blonde hair.
And her mouth is beautifully wide and full, and there’s something objectively very attractive about the way she constantly looks as though she’s about to smile or laugh.
Other than when she’s sneering at me, obviously.
As I continue down the checklist looking at all the constituent parts of her face I try to work out what it is that does make her so beautiful.
She has very symmetrical features – maybe that’s it.
And her face is round but not too round.
I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s just the unique way it all goes together.
She’s beginning to laugh now, and – to my annoyance, because this frequently happens to me when she laughs, even though I am often very irritated by the reason that she’s laughing – my own mouth is widening in response.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘It’s just… This is so ridiculous. I mean, Sonja. The producers. Oh, you two really didn’t seem to hit it off, so we’re going to force you to stare at each other for several minutes and complete checklists about each other’s faces. It’s insane. Why did we agree to this? Why are we here?’
I nod. ‘For once, you make a very good point.’
She looks at me for a long moment. I’m pretty sure I know what’s coming.
And, yes, she says, ‘I feel like this is the last time I’m going to say this, but this is all your bloody fault.’
‘Moot point,’ I say, really just for the sake of it. ‘You wrote the books. If you hadn’t written them I would not have said it.’
‘Oh please.’ She looks like she’s saying it just for the sake of it too.
‘If the possibly fictitious clients of yours hadn’t married the wrong people and then pretended that my books were the catalysts for their inevitable separations, you wouldn’t have had your rant at me on national television and we wouldn’t be in this position. ’
‘Not fictitious. I had to say it.’
Freya glares at me. ‘And again, and I hope for the last time, I am not going to stop writing my books because they are not in fact dangerous; they make people happy.’
‘I…’ I don’t finish my sentence because I’m remembering that I did in fact very much enjoy her books and if I had to analyse my emotional state after reading them I would have to apply the description feel-good to them.
I did not, however, feel good after my ex-wife compared me unfavourably to the hero in one of Freya’s books.
Having read several, I don’t know which hero she was comparing me to. Maybe all of them.
Freya smiles at me, and I don’t like that smile. It’s far too smug. Complacent.
‘Would you say,’ she asks, ‘that on an average basis, as in a for-the-greater-good basis, if a book made one hundred people happy, and one person sad, it would overall be a good thing?’
‘That’s a stupid question,’ I point out. ‘You have to define the sadness. How bad is it? You wouldn’t want someone you care about to do an activity with a five per cent mortality rate, would you, no matter how much the ones who survive enjoy it.’
‘That’s different,’ she splutters.
I shake my head. ‘If for every one hundred people who read a book ninety-nine come away happy and the hundredth goes through an utterly horrific divorce as a result of it, and the divorce is so horrific that overall the average is net misery, should we not ban that book?’
‘You cannot ban all romances. That’s beyond ridiculous.’
I frown. That is ridiculous; she’s right.
A smile begins to spread slowly but widely across Freya’s face, and in checklist mode, I’m forced to acknowledge that she does have very good teeth. Even better because they aren’t exactly perfect; her front two bottom teeth cross just a tiny amount, and it’s… cute; that’s the word.
‘You think I’m right, don’t you?’ she asks.
Really, really maturely, I decline to answer and decide to roll my eyes instead.
‘Toddler,’ she says, very conversationally. And then she laughs. A lot. And I find myself laughing too.
Yeah, odd.
‘Have we all finished our checklists?’ asks Petra. ‘Time to draw. Paper first.’
I actually quite enjoy the drawing. The result isn’t amazing, but surely no-one’s will be.
‘Now show your partners,’ Petra commands.
‘No way.’ I’m genuinely astonished by Freya’s picture.
I have to be honest. ‘That’s really good and really bad.
It doesn’t look like me in the slightest. But it really does look like a person.
Like really like a person. It’s amazing.
’ It’s really, really good. Except not, given that it was supposed to be me.
‘Now yours?’ She’s trying to peer over the top of my easel.
I take the drawing off and show her.
She takes her hands and covers her face with them.
I’m a little alarmed. Yes, she’s inherently really annoying, but, no, that does not mean I should be drawing pictures of her that upset her.
‘Are you okay?’ I ask.
She nods, and then I see her shoulders shaking.
After a few moments, she takes her hands away from her face, and says, ‘It’s great. Also not a very faithful likeness, but this is clearly difficult.’
‘I’ve never seen you being so polite before.’
‘Not polite, just truthful.’ She’s put her hands over her face again. Then she takes them down. ‘I’m sorry. It’s very good. Really. I mean, really good. Honestly. Truthfully. It’s just… there’s just something a tiny bit funny about the very unusually large nostrils you’ve given me.’
I look again at my picture. Yeah, it’s terrible, and the nostrils are gigantic. I look around the room, and, wow, everyone else is a genius.
‘They’re all so good,’ I say.
Freya is also looking around the room, and pressing her lips together very hard.
Annoyingly, I almost like her when she’s clearly trying very hard to be nice to me.
I look back at my huge-nostrilled person and I find myself laughing, and then really laughing. Freya joins me, looking like it’s a big relief to be able to laugh openly.
‘Sorry,’ she says when we’re both calm again.
‘If I’m honest, you’d be weird if you didn’t laugh.’
‘On a different subject,’ she says, ‘has Dan said anything about Lizzie?’
‘You can’t ask me to betray my friend’s confidence,’ I say, pleased for things to get back to normal, i.e. minor mutual hostility.
‘That is true,’ she concedes. ‘I can’t. What I meant was do you think Dan’s intentions are good?
I care a lot about Lizzie, and she’s a little vulnerable at the moment, and I asked her to go on the date, so I feel responsible.
I wouldn’t have asked her to go if I’d thought for a moment that she would actually fall for… ’ She leaves it hanging and I laugh.
‘You thought her date was me,’ I say, ‘and you couldn’t imagine anyone falling for me.’
‘Not anyone.’ She exaggeratedly bats her eyelids at me, and I can’t decide whether it’s cute or annoying.
‘Just Lizzie. Anyway, back to my question, which I do not think is unreasonable. I know I asked you this before but now it looks as though things could be getting serious. Is Dan going to treat Lizzie well? Is he going to stick around?’
‘It’s been two weeks. Who knows whether either of them is going to stick around. But, yes, he will treat her well.’
‘Good.’
‘Time for a break,’ Petra says. ‘Go and order your food from the bar, stretch your legs, take a toilet break if you need one. See you back here in fifteen.’
I look at Freya, whose face I now know extremely well, in a very strange way, and decide that this has all been very odd, and that I would now benefit from a little break from her rather than a further fifteen-minute one on one.
‘I have some work emails to go through,’ I say. ‘I’ll catch you back here at the end of the break.’
‘Great.’ She’s immediately on her feet and heading off in the direction of the stairs.
I frown as I watch her go. Is she… slightly… likeable?