Chapter 14
JAKE
Well, that was weird.
I think I just forgot that Freya is Freya. The woman who drives me insane. Well, she’s still been driving me insane, but in a very different way.
Anyway. What was I supposed to be doing?
Tasting her risotto. With the teaspoon she just gave me. Got it.
So.
I take a little bit on the teaspoon, wave it around a bit to cool it, and then taste it.
‘Wow. That’s delicious.’ I’m not joking; it’s very, very good. ‘I’d more than happily eat a giant bowl of that.’
‘Thank you.’ Freya looks extremely pretty when someone’s been genuinely nice to her and she’s genuinely pleased. Her smile is – objectively – gorgeous in this moment. Her eyes swivel to the right and I realise that one of the observers is there. ‘We worked brilliantly as a team,’ Freya says.
‘Yeah, we did,’ I agree, because firstly we kind of did, in that she told me what to do (mainly pointless tasks) and I did them, and secondly because you can’t help warming to someone who’s had to do several activities that they genuinely hate and has done them with a very good grace, laughing at themselves the whole way; and I do think it would be a little unfortunate for Freya if she had to do another ice bath.
I look at the observer out of the corner of my eye and see that she’s writing on a piece of paper on a clipboard.
‘I think we played very well to our individual strengths,’ I say for the observer’s benefit.
‘Two minutes to go,’ announces Sonja. ‘Plating up time.’
‘Okay, I genuinely think I can competently ladle risotto onto a plate,’ I tell Freya.
She gives me a look.
I nod. ‘Okay, yeah, no ladling. Just tell me what to do.’
In the end, I hold the large pan that she cooked the risotto in while she very carefully spoons it onto a flat bowl and sprinkles herbs (maybe parsley; I’m really not sure – green, anyway) over the top, and then I watch while she arranges the salad on a plate, and places both the bowl and the plate onto a tray.
‘Why don’t you carry the tray?’ she suggests.
‘Very happy to,’ I say, aiming to sound like the happiest teammate ever.
Looking around at the other participants, I see that the pair that includes the professional chef (Fred and Suzanne) have produced a very cheffy-looking dish. Of the others, I’d say that ours definitely looks the best.
‘Now.’ Sonja looks directly into one of the TV cameras. ‘Our competitors don’t know this but we have three very famous judges to taste our dishes.’ She puts her arm out to the side and three people troop out from a door in the side of the tent.
A hum of chatter begins from around the tent, because, yes, they are famous.
One is a chef who I vaguely recognise and who Freya tells me is a judge on MasterChef: The Professionals.
One is a woman who Freya tells me is one of the regular British Bake Off judges.
And one is a (very well-known apparently) comedian who I do not know.
They all say that they’re incredibly excited to be tasting our food.
They don’t look particularly excited; clearly the production company has paid them well for this and that is the only reason that they’re here.
Freya’s practically hopping on the spot as our (her) food is tasted, as though she can’t bear the anticipation.
The chef judge, who has been appointed spokesperson for the three of them, tells us that, while it’s a little simpler than one or two of the other dishes, it did require some skill and, importantly, it’s been executed and seasoned to perfection and we should be very proud of ourselves.
We also, apparently, plated it up perfectly.
Freya shifts from foot to foot some more as they deliberate about how many marks they’re going to give us and then just beams when we’re told that we have the second highest mark for both skill and presentation and joint highest for taste, with Fred and Suzanne overall winners.
‘And now to teamwork.’ Sonja waves her clipboard at us. ‘As you know, we observed you all closely throughout. There was one team, we noticed, where one of the pair did not cook a single thing. He basically just washed vegetables and tidied and carried things when asked.’
‘Oh fuck,’ Freya breathes. ‘That’s us. We’re in those baths again.’
‘I’m going to give that team their mark last.’ Sonja smiles directly at us. It’s always a little alarming when she does that. We both smile weakly back. I’m feeling genuinely sorry for Freya at this point.
The other teams get quite varying marks for teamwork. Crucially, the ones with the worst food had the best teamwork, and Sonja announces that, once the overall scores are totted up, the ice bath situation entirely depends on our teamwork mark.
‘I refer you to my earlier remarks about this team.’ She smiles directly into the camera again. ‘So, if you remember, this pair displayed very differing skill levels. And, arguably, enthusiasm levels.’
Next to me Freya heaves a big sigh as Sonja smiles at us and looks round the room.
‘However,’ Sonja continues, ‘what we all thought was great was the way Freya and Jake did work together. Freya – while clearly desperate not to do another ice bath – did her best to take the time to involve Jake so he wouldn’t feel sidelined.
And Jake – who in his day job is a senior lawyer who we don’t believe gets asked to wash courgettes very often – did all that was asked of him with a good grace.
And where it was possible to work together, during the plating up for example, they did so very well.
It was a triumph in terms of a lesson in teamwork. Full marks.’
‘Oh my goodness,’ squeals Freya. ‘No ice bath.’
‘And,’ says Sonja, ‘you’ll be baking dessert for us all after discussions with our judges.’
‘Oh my goodness, thank you, thank you, thank you.’ Freya’s squealing even more, and I’m laughing because it’s cute how excited she is.
‘We’ll discuss the dessert-baking now for fifteen minutes, before the ice baths and then the reptile show, after which Jake and Freya will bake and everyone else will go to the sauna.’
‘Hooray,’ whispers Freya. ‘I hate saunas.’
‘I quite like them,’ I say.
‘Of course you do.’
I smile at her, because she seems extremely happy about the baking, and you’d have to be incredibly mean-spirited not to be pleased for her that she’s got such a treat after her suboptimal morning.
‘Just so you know,’ I murmur in her ear as people mill around us before we go off to have our discussion with the judges, ‘that was terrible teamwork and I was totally sidelined.’
‘You absolutely were,’ she agrees. She shoots a grin at me and I feel as though it hits me right in the chest.
We all had to make enough food for six people so that each of us can have a little of each plate for our lunch. We aren’t allowed to leave our partner for long, though; there are six tables for two, spaced far apart, set up for us all, and we’re all told to sit down at our own tables in our pairs.
We also aren’t allowed to choose our own food; we’re each given a plate piled high with a small portion of each of the dishes created during the task.
This weekend is such a peculiar experience that it doesn’t even seem odd any more to be sitting alone with Freya, or to dissect the events of the day with her.
‘How are you going to taste them?’ I ask. ‘I think I’m going to take a mouthful of each to see which one I like best. On the assumption that the judges’ taste buds speak for all of us, I’m going to start with the one that got the lowest marks.’
‘Very good plan,’ Freya approves.
Six mouthfuls later, I say, ‘Yours is really good. Way better than all the others except the chef’s one, and in my opinion better than that one too.’
‘It was ours, not just mine,’ Freya says. ‘And, also, thank you. I’ll take that compliment.’ She grins at me and I smile too.
And then we both eat little bits of the four less-good dishes to show willing, and all of our portions of Freya’s risotto and Suzanne’s deconstructed paella.
‘I’m looking forward to seeing what you bake this afternoon,’ I tell Freya as we finish eating.
‘What we bake.’
‘Of course. You’ll be incredibly grateful to have my expertise, actually. I really know my stuff. I once helped my grandmother bake a cherry cake.’
Freya laughs, and, honestly, it’s weirdly as though we don’t really dislike each other that much any more.
The conversation with the judges about desserts has me floundering and Freya buzzing.
I try to listen but zone out quite quickly because it’s a whole vocab that means absolutely nothing to me.
I’m really annoyed with myself for not having been listening when Freya makes the comedian (I’ve forgotten his name again; he’s very famous to the YouTube generation) throw his head back and roar with laughter, and the other two judges snigger, hard, one of them snorting something very unappealing out of his nose as he does so.
‘I’ve got so many ideas,’ Freya tells me as we make our way with the other pairs over to the ice bath hut.
‘How do you have ideas for your books?’ I ask, suddenly curious.
‘I don’t know really. They just come to me. How do you have ideas about anything?’
‘Yeah, I don’t know.’ I’m not sure that I do have ideas in the way that Freya does. When she was discussing the potential desserts we could make it was like light bulbs kept going off inside her head. I’m not sure I’m a particularly light-bulby person. Well, I’m not. Definitely.
‘I think maybe once you start writing, or baking professionally, or whatever it might be, you have more and more ideas, because you get into the way of it and things just pop up in your mind because you’re always thinking about that kind of stuff.
I imagine. Probably the same with art too,’ she says.
I nod, genuinely interested.
We don’t have time for more conversation, because it’s time to watch Jerome and Anita, one of the other pairs (the word ‘couple’ keeps popping into my head in relation to this task, and I keep pushing it away because it’s so particularly inappropriate in regard to me and Freya), do their ice baths.