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’sgreat. Also not averyfaithful 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,reallygood. 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 nostrilsaregigantic. I look around the room, and, wow, everyone else is agenius.
‘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 thenreallylaughing. 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 youdidn’tlaugh.’
‘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.’
‘Notanyone.’ 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 whethereitherof 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?
11
FREYA
I spend a good five minutes choosing my meal – I go for fish and chips in the end – because it’swaybetter deliberating over a pub menu than it is having my head full of Jake. For a moment there, I borderline liked him. And then he turned back into the total shit that he is, telling me that my books causehorrificdivorces. But then he looked as though he was actually, possibly, slightly taking on board my points. And then he was marginally nicer than his usual self when I asked about Dan and Lizzie, before making it very clear that he didn’t want to talk to me during the break.
Thank heavens there’ll be other people there on the team-building weekend.
I do the ‘during the date’ video that Sonja asked for, describing what we’ve been doing so far, and then go back upstairs.
