Chapter 11 #2
I put his embroidery into my tote and slide my arms into my coat. ‘I’m genuinely going to enjoy having this memento of what has turned out to be a way more enjoyable evening than I was expecting.’
‘Are you saying that you take pleasure in the failures of others?’
I shake my head. ‘There was no failure, Jake. Just an unusual representation of what you were seeing.’
‘Modern embroidery if you will?’ he suggests.
‘Exactly. And I will cherish your modern embroidery because laughter is good for the soul.’
Jake pulls his own jacket on and begins to stand.
‘Jake.’ Petra has practically sprinted across the room. ‘Are you leaving?’
‘Work tomorrow,’ he says.
‘What job do you do?’ she purrs. There’s really no need for her to place her hand on his arm, but she does so anyway. And not his forearm, but his bicep, which is, frankly, very unprofessional and verging on sexual harassment.
‘Lawyer.’
‘Lawyer. I love lawyers.’
‘Great.’
I’m in danger of laughing again, because the way Jake’s backing away from her is very funny.
He lifts his jacket to look at a watch that is not in fact on his wrist, and then pulls his phone out of his pocket. ‘My taxi’s right outside,’ he says. ‘Goodnight. Freya? You coming?’
‘Er, yes. Thank you so much, Petra.’
‘Where’s the taxi?’ I ask when we get outside.
‘No taxi,’ he says. ‘Just thought it wise to escape.’
‘Oh my goodness. Have you, perhaps, learnt from Petra that you will never find love? Have I won?’
‘No. I’ve learnt from Petra that I don’t believe I will find love with her.’
‘That’s reminded me that we should do our video,’ I say. ‘Shall we show the nation our finished results?’
‘I actually think we should. I mean, not yours. Yours is just a bog-standard very impressively good piece of embroidery art for your first time. Mine, though, could be of genuine public service if it makes other people laugh as much as it made us laugh.’
‘Maybe you had to be there, though?’ I take it out of my bag and we both look at it and start laughing again. ‘Yeah, no, definite genuine public service.’
Jake takes his phone and angles it at us from above and we take it in turns to describe the evening – neither of us mentioning Petra – and then Jake shows my embroidery and says that he was impressed by my natural talent, and then he does jazz hands and then I show his embroidery and say that I was impressed too.
‘Impressed by my natural talent?’ he checks.
‘Absolutely,’ I say, and he stops the video.
And then we say goodnight to each other as friendlily as we ever have and get in separate Ubers and take our embroidery mementos home.
It has quickly become a way of life waiting for Sonja’s unpredictably timed bombshells following each Tuesday date.
Will she insist that we go back to setting each other up on blind dates, single or double-dating, the two of us doing activities together, or will we be sent on our weekend as our next activity, and when will that be?
What I do not expect is for a lot of my friends to text me on Thursday morning while I’m still thinking about getting out of bed, to ask if I’ve seen Jake’s newspaper interview in which he massively disses romance and links it to the rising divorce rate.
Obviously the article references me, because the whole reason they chose to write the piece on Jake in the first place was his ‘hot lawyer’ look on TV with me.
What?
I google quickly and read it. And, honestly, I want to kill him. What a weasel. Either he laughed away during embroidery with me knowing that he’d done this interview, or he did it after the embroidery. Either way, so two-faced.
I begin to type out a message telling him what an arse he is, and then stop. I’m going to try really hard to be mature about this. I’m going to ignore it. Or at least not text for a few hours. Or not until I’ve had my shower anyway.
Or… No. I can’t wait.
I pick up my phone and send a text saying You weasel, before stomping off to the bathroom for my shower.
Yep, I’ve been a na?ve idiot. I was not expecting that.
I further do not expect Lizzie to message me a couple of hours later asking perfunctorily how the embroidery went and going straight on to say that yesterday was her and Dan’s two-week anniversary and right now she’s on the Tube to work from his place, very late for work – she’s never late for anything, especially her high-powered City job – and she already keeps a toothbrush there and she thinks she’s in love and she really wants to invite me and Jake over for dinner with her and Dan this weekend.
I stare at my phone, imagining Lizzie marrying Dan, and me having to be friends with Jake forever.
I do not want to do that. Every so often he’s pleasant – like he was about his embroidery – and you get lulled into a false sense of security, and then off he goes again being an arse.
But Lizzie is a very good friend and she’s had a lot of bad luck and if Dan is a nice person (although can he be, when he’s a good friend of Jake’s?) I should be very pleased for her.
But. Jake. I loathe him.
I settle on replying:
Did you see the newspaper article about him?
Lizzie replies:
Yep, nothing new there. Can you do Saturday evening by any chance? If not, let’s go Sunday? For dinner.
What? What does she mean nothing new there? Yes it’s new. We were being nice to each other and he’s just reiterated his anti-romance-novel stance but in writing. In a national tabloid.
Very, very annoyingly, I don’t think I can say no to her dinner suggestion.
Fortunately, I have an evening with girlfriends arranged on Saturday, trying out the new Lebanese restaurant that’s opened down the road from my house, so I’m not lying when I say I can only do Sunday.
There’s no way I’d waste a Saturday on Jake by choice.
I’ve barely finished typing a reluctant Sunday would be great, when Sonja messages to ask me if I can meet her one on one asap.
Two days later, I’m in a café near my house waiting for Sonja to have brunch with her. It’s Saturday late morning and Sonja lives on the other side of London but was happy to come my way, she said, so she must really want to speak to me.
I’m wondering whether she’ll vanish straight after saying whatever she needs to say, but going by her order of smashed avo with chilli oil on toast plus turmeric tea she’s planning to stay for a while.
I’ve had a healthy week food-wise and they have really nice pancakes with berries and maple syrup in here, so I’ve ordered that, as well as a hot chocolate, which I’ll be working off this afternoon on a long walk with my friend Charlotte.
‘You should drink turmeric tea.’ Sonja takes a sip of hers and screws up her face. ‘God, that’s disgusting. Incredibly health-giving, though.’
‘I’ll add turmeric to the next curry I cook,’ I promise.
‘Hmm.’ Sonja takes another sip and shudders before waving at the server.
‘Could we get some sparkling water, please? And an espresso.’ She pushes her teacup away from her.
‘One-night stand last night. Got no sleep. Feeling like shit. Can’t deal with no sleep due to menopause but at least I haven’t lost my libido. ’
I blink. That’s a lot of information from someone I do not know at all.
‘I feel like we’re friends,’ she tells me. ‘I like you.’
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘Likewise.’ I do like her despite her punchiness but I will not, in reality, be telling Sonja anything personal about myself.
‘I love your nail varnish,’ Sonja says. ‘Every time I’ve seen you your nails are looking amazing.’
‘Thank you. I do them myself,’ I tell her. ‘I’ve got one of those gel dryers. Yours look fab too.’
Sonja looks at her own very well-manicured fingers, tipped with translucent varnish. ‘I think I should try some bolder colours. You’re inspiring me.’ She turns her attention back to me. ‘Your hair’s looking gorgeous as well. It has so much body.’
‘Thank you. You have amazing hair. Gorgeous colour.’ I find it really hard to just thank someone for a compliment without giving them one back, but this is getting ridiculous.
‘Thank you.’ Sonja pats her hair and takes a large slurp of the espresso that has just been placed next to her. ‘That’s better. Sooooo…’
I smile at her, not certain I want to hear what’s coming next.
She shifts a little towards me on our corner banquette. ‘Jake. Gorgeous, no?’
‘I mean, yes, if that’s your type?’
‘Is he your type is the question?’
I stare at her. Was she not paying any attention at all when we met? ‘No? He definitely isn’t?’
‘I thought there was a lot of tension between you. Sexual tension.’
What? First Petra, now Sonja. So bizarre.
I shake my head. ‘Definitely not.’
Sonja tilts her head to one side and looks into the distance as though she’s forgotten I’m there. ‘He is very, very attractive. I mean, if there’s genuinely nothing between you…’ She arches an eyebrow.
What? Does this happen to Jake all the time?
‘You are incredibly welcome to go ahead,’ I say.
Sonja smiles. (It’s quite scary, actually.) ‘Thank you. First, though, I think you and Jake need to explore what might be between you.’
I frown and wait. I don’t feel as though I want to give Sonja any kind of ammunition, and I’m not even sure what that ammunition would be for, so I’m not going to be venturing any new thoughts whatsoever.
‘So as I said we’re not going to do any more of the dates,’ she continues, ‘but because viewers have responded so incredibly well to the two of you together – arguably as a couple – we’re going to send you as soon as possible on your weekend away, accompanied by cameras, and we’ll then continue for a few weeks with the montages, longer ones than we’ve been doing so far, before having you back on to explain how you both feel at the end of the challenge. ’
I smile while I consider for a second what she’s just said.
I think it’s good, actually. We were always going to end up on the team-building weekend together – clearly neither of us can win the challenge – and this way it’s just going to be sooner, which is a good thing, because then it won’t be hanging over us.
‘Great,’ I say.
‘Wonderful.’ Sonja looks up at the approaching server and gives her a big smile, before consenting to have a selfie.
‘Occupational hazard,’ she says when they’ve finished.
‘Now. What are your preferences for what types of bonding weekend you go on? What types of activities do you like and not like?’
‘Um.’ That’s a tricky one to answer off the top of my head. There’s no type of bonding weekend I want to go on.
‘Okay. Let’s begin with what you don’t like. Do you have any phobias?’
‘Just heights. And snakes.’ I hate that word. ‘And being stampeded by a herd of cows, obviously. And cheese fondue. I really, really can’t stand it. All that stringiness.’
‘You have quite a lot of phobias.’ Sonja sounds impressed.
‘Well, yes and no. They really don’t impact on my life at all.
I don’t have an extreme fear of heights, more just your usual, the kind that quite a lot of people have.
The… reptile one and the cow one and, actually, the cheese fondue one, are stronger, but living in London it’s really easy to avoid reptiles, herds of cows and Alpine après-ski food. ’
Sonja laughs. ‘I’m glad for you that they aren’t too much of an issue. What kind of activities do you like? Nights out, daytime hobbies? Or things you hate?’
‘Um. I’m pretty easy recently.’
Sonja persists until she has discovered that when it comes to physical activity I hate running but like tennis and the sport I would least like to play is rugby because of all the mud. She then moves on to evening activities, best and worst holidays, favourite and least favourite clothes.
‘Maybe,’ I say eventually for the umpteenth time. I really do not enjoy being interrogated and she is thorough. It’s horrible, actually. Like I’m being interviewed for MI6 or something.
‘Well, that was delicious,’ she says abruptly, when she’s finally dragged my all-time favourite and most hated drinks out of me, and signals for the bill, and within under two minutes we’re outside the restaurant (even though I hadn’t actually finished eating) and she’s mwah-mwahing me goodbye and saying she’ll be in touch about a weekend that I’ll love.
Hmm. It might be lots of activities that I enjoy, but it’s still going to involve Jake.