Chapter 12 #2
We sit in silence for an uncomfortably long period, until – thank the Lord – Dan and Lizzie arrive.
We all hug and they sit down with Lizzie next to Freya and Dan next to me, and launch into a description of the fire juggler they saw on the way here.
Freya and I join in, and I think we both do a pretty good job of seeming on friendly terms and not ruining the evening in any way for Dan and Lizzie.
The conversation ebbs and flows around all sorts of non-contentious topics and, actually, I reflect, as Freya and I engage in a heated discussion of the rival merits of a fireman’s pole from bedroom to kitchen, or a slide instead of stairs in our fantasy ideal house, she can at times be perfectly good company.
‘We need to consider the danger aspects,’ she says very seriously. ‘If you went too fast on a slide you could fly off and hit a wall and break something.’
‘I mean, just don’t put it somewhere where there’s a wall opposite the end of the stairs?’ I point out. ‘And also, obviously fireman’s poles can be dangerous. What if you just let go?’
‘Well, you’d be stupid to let go. But, just in case, I feel like you could pad the aperture and the floor below,’ Freya muses.
Our debate continues with genuinely only minimal sarcasm and irritation on both sides, until Lizzie asks into a gap in the conversation, ‘Have you had any more details about the team-building weekend?’
‘Yes, actually,’ Freya says. ‘I had brunch with Sonja yesterday and she delved deeply into my tastes in absolutely everything – I mean, I was surprised she didn’t get into sexual preferences – because she wants to make sure we really enjoy it.’
‘Did she use the word enjoy?’ I query.
Freya wrinkles her brow, in trying-to-remember mode. ‘I think so. I mean, words to that effect. Like she wants us to get as much as we can out of it. Something like that.’
‘Sounds surprisingly altruistic from what I’ve heard,’ comments Dan. ‘Don’t they just want to hook more viewers? Do they want you to have a lovely time? Is that good TV?’
‘That’s what I thought when she tried to grill me yesterday afternoon.’ I pour more tap water for us all. ‘So I didn’t tell her anything at all.’
‘Well in that case,’ says Freya complacently, ‘we’ll spend a weekend doing the kind of team-building I will enjoy. Fireman’s pole rather than staircase slide.’
‘Or—’ Dan pauses to load cucumber, spring onion and crispy duck onto a pancake ‘—you’ll have the weekend from hell and Jake might or might not, depending on how much his tastes coincide with yours.’
‘Nonsense,’ says Lizzie hastily as Freya’s lips form a horrified-looking ‘o’.
‘Of course they wouldn’t do that. They’ll want you to enjoy the activities so you can focus on the team-building aspect of the weekend.
That’s where the great TV will come from.
From you two leaving the weekend finally holding the same views on absolutely everything. ’
‘I’m not certain that’s true.’ I do if I’m honest feel a little guilty about having brought all of this on both of us, and maybe Freya should prepare herself for a bad weekend.
Freya shakes her head. ‘It is. Of course they wouldn’t ask in a cynical way. I mean, they aren’t actual sadists.’
‘No, but they do want to make great TV,’ Dan says.
‘And it would not make great TV watching me be miserable.’ Freya takes a big sip of her wine.
I raise my eyebrows because, er, I imagine it would make great TV if she got really miserable.
‘Don’t do the raised-eyebrow thing,’ Freya instructs me.
‘Sorry.’ I frown exaggeratedly and she rolls her eyes at me.
Then she says, ‘Anyway, enough about our weekend and Sonja. How’s your week been?’ She looks first at Dan and then at Lizzie.
‘It’s been a good one.’ Lizzie is beaming. ‘A busy one. I’ve been out a lot. Mainly with Dan.’
‘Yeah, it’s been a good one.’ He’s grinning too.
And then they tell us some of the dates they’ve been on together since the alpaca date.
Cinema. Ice skating. Cinema again. I think they mention four different restaurants.
A pub quiz. And they went for a long walk together earlier today.
Am I misremembering or is it not even three weeks since the alpaca date?
I’ve never, ever, in the nearly fifteen years that I’ve known him, seen Dan be this joined at the hip with anyone.
I can’t really work out whether I think it’s far too much too soon or they’ve both just met their soulmate and it’s truly lovely and all their friends and family should start expecting wedding invitations.
The conversation doesn’t divide in half again; we talk as a four during the remainder of our dinner, until Dan does a cheek-splittingly wide yawn, and Lizzie says, ‘Yeah, we should get going. We haven’t had that much sleep this week.’
Freya mock-covers her ears with her hands. ‘Eeuuw, no, too much information.’
Lizzie and Dan both chuckle in an incredibly smug-couple way, which is bizarrely just sweet and not at all annoying or cringey, and I blink. I have never seen Dan like this before.
As we all get our coats on, I’m standing just behind Freya and Lizzie and inadvertently overhear Freya say, ‘I’ve never seen you like this before with anyone.’
Lizzie replies, ‘I know,’ and then they hug each other.
Wow.
On my way home, I am so tempted to message Freya to say: Tell me now that you still don’t believe in love for everyone. But I don’t. Apart from anything else, Dan’s great, and Lizzie seems lovely and perfect for him, and I superstitiously feel like I don’t want to jinx anything for them.
I have to say: if this works out for Dan and Lizzie, that will go some way – a long way – to making the rest of the torture worth it.
Dan just seems so happy. And, selfishly thinking about myself, I’m now finding Freya bearable in small doses, so it wouldn’t be a terrible loss on a personal level if I have to see her sometimes in group situations.
And if I’m right about Sonja’s not entirely benevolent intentions, I imagine I might derive a certain amount of amusement from seeing Freya at the team-building weekend.
‘You are kidding me,’ Freya says for at least the fifth time three weeks later.
We arrived in Devon last night for our team-building weekend.
We – the participants – were all put up in separate hotels overnight (very reality-TV-like; I do have the sensation that Freya and I have strayed into a strange world where we have become a reality show through essentially no fault of our own).
We were brought here at 8 a.m. this morning and have met our hosts, and are now standing in our shared quarters.
Quarters is the right word, because our first bonding activity is going to be an army assault course and we’re staying in ex-army barracks.
Freya and I are sharing a two-bedroom apartment. We have our own en-suite shower rooms with a shared sitting room.
I’ve been on a lot of team-building events, and none of them have involved bonding as a team of two.
I was very much not envisaging this and I would be looking forward to the weekend even less than I already was, if it weren’t for the fact that Freya is so incredibly pissed off it’s just very funny.
She points at me. ‘This is your fault.’
‘Are we back on the same argument? That I started it during the TV interview?’
‘You did start it then and we both know that, but no, I’m not referring to that.
I’m referring to the fact that I played ball with Sonja and answered her questions, and you refused to divulge anything, so this entire weekend is based around what I don’t like.
If you’d told her things you don’t like it would have been split.
’ She waves the card on which our weekend schedule is printed out.
‘There could not be a weekend I would dislike more.’
I just look at her and smile. I’m enjoying this more and more.
She glares at me. ‘Oh my goodness. Stop smiling. Stop looking happy.’
I laugh out loud.
She walks over to the window and looks out at our view of muddy farmland.
‘I cannot believe Sonja,’ she says.
‘I feel like you’re gearing up to admitting I was right.’
‘You were right about this one very specific thing. Not about anything else. And you were probably only right about this because your mind is as devious as Sonja’s. If it weren’t, it wouldn’t have occurred to you that she would do this.’
I laugh again.
‘Oh my goodness. You’re so annoying.’ She narrows her eyes. ‘Are you going to enjoy this?’
‘I think I am,’ I admit. ‘I do like an assault course.’
‘I’m so pleased,’ she says.
‘I’m really sorry to have to mention it—’ I am incredibly un-sorry ‘—but I think we should get changed now or we’ll be late for the start. And we’re going to be filmed.’
Freya makes a sound like a very small and high-pitched bomb exploding and disappears into her bedroom with what I can only describe as a flounce.
This is by far and away the most enjoyment I’ve had to date in her presence.
I’m halfway through the first chapter of John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps when Freya finally emerges from her room dressed in army fatigues.
They made us give up our phones when we arrived, telling us that we needed to focus on each other, not the outside world, which is why I am, for the second time since I met Freya, reading a new-to-me author, having chosen it from the small selection available on the shelf in the corner of the room.
I’m not a big reader in general, so this is a novelty.
I’m enjoying The Thirty-Nine Steps, but if I’m honest, I actually enjoyed Freya’s books more. I got into them more quickly; it’s something about the way she writes.
‘John Buchan,’ she says. ‘Hmm.’
I don’t like her Hmm, or the look on her face. I sense that she’s about to make some very good point that I’m going to struggle to refute.
‘Richard Hannay. He’s a great hero,’ she continues.
‘Those manly, all-action men, who always save the day. Don’t we all want one of those in our lives?
Wouldn’t those of us who are married to a man want someone like that to rescue us from any given situation?
Is he realistic, though, as in can we really expect that from a real-life person?
’ She steps forward and whisks the book out of my hands.
‘I’m sorry but I don’t think you should be reading that.
I think it should be banned. I think it might give people ideas and lead to divorce. ’
‘It’s different,’ I say.
‘Why?’
‘Because it isn’t specifically a romance.’
‘Oh,’ she says, with great sarcasm. ‘Oh. I’m so sorry. I hadn’t realised. I’m obviously wrong in my assumption that people lust after James Bond and Jason Bourne and all those other famous film action heroes.’
I stare at her.
Oh. My. God.
I’m having an epiphany. Oh, fuck. I think I’m going to have to apologise. To one of the most annoying women I’ve ever met. The most annoying woman, actually.
She’s so bloody right. I’m an idiot. I’ve landed us in this entire challenge on a really stupid premise.
‘Erm, oh fuck,’ I say.
‘Do you mean what I think you mean?’
‘Yes. I’m sorry. I was an idiot.’ I think my vision has been extremely clouded by my divorce and my wife citing Freya’s heroes.
‘Have you perhaps now understood that you were being ridiculous?’
‘Erm. Yes.’ I wrinkle my face. ‘Sorry again?’
‘Sorry? Because of your dickheadedness we’re about to do an army assault course that you are going to enjoy and I am going to hate, having also suffered a succession of ridiculous dates, and you’re sorry?’
‘Yep,’ I confirm.
‘You owe me so fucking big it’s beyond belief.’
I nod. ‘Yeah.’
She shakes her head and does some more flouncing as she leaves the room ahead of me.
If I’m honest, it’s a strangely alluring flounce.
Those army fatigues suit her bizarrely well, and the way her hair swooshes manically around her head as she tosses it is actually very cute. And, what, what am I thinking?
She mutters something, and I lean forward to hear better.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘I said: Stupid fucking dickhead.’
‘Fair enough.’
Twenty minutes later, we’ve been fully briefed by Sonja, who is host-presenting the weekend.
The salient points are that we very much have to do this as a pair.
And we’re up against a clock and against the other couples who are here.
The other couples all paid a tenner to enter an apparently very popular competition to join the weekend.
Bizarre what people will do in the name of getting a near-freebie.
I’m not sure how many people would otherwise sign up in pairs to a weekend comprising an assault course, a getting-to-know reptiles session, followed by a fondue dinner, and then a treetop rope walk tomorrow.
Although, saying that, I’ll be quite happy with all those things.
The team who come last have to do ice baths.
‘I am not fucking doing an ice bath,’ Freya says. ‘We are fucking beating the others. And if that means you have to carry me, then you’re carrying me.’ This weekend is making her very sweary.
‘Noted,’ I say. Good job she isn’t very big. Good job for me that I quite like an ice bath, so I don’t really care whether we win or lose.
‘Ready?’ roars the man who briefed us.
We all nod, some more happily than others. And we’re off.