Redrawing our pictures onto the embroidery canvas is slightly boring. I don’tloveart, and we’ve already drawn each other once. Iam, though, looking forward to seeing what Jake does with my nostrils.
We all (including Jake and me) work in more or less silence until Petra thinks we should all have finished.
‘Great work, Jake,’ she says enthusiastically –soenthusiastically that either she isbesottedwith him or it isnotgreat – as she walks around looking at everyone’s work. She finishes looking and then claps. ‘Time for the mini reveal before the big one later on when the embroidery is finished. Show your partners!’
‘You first,’ Jake says.
Mine’s fine. It does pretty much look like a real person. It doesn’t look like Jake, but it’s slightly more like him than my first one was. I’m not amazing at art, although I did enjoy it at school, but it’s actually really easy to look like you’ve attempted to sketch Jake without having made that much effort, because he’ssoclassically ruggedly handsome that you just have to aim for a very classically good-looking man with dark hair and youwilllook like you’ve tried to draw him.
‘Not bad.’ He looks down at his own and then up again, and his lips twitch, which makes me worry that I’m very rudely going to want to laugh again. ‘Are you ready?’
I nod. I. Must. Not. Laugh. He’s often annoying, sometimesincrediblyso, but no-one should ever be laughed at for a slight lack of artistic ability.
He turns it round, and I almost gasp out loud. It’s… well, way more like a… well… I don’t know what. Not really an animal. Maybe an alien.Ora first-draft Picasso maybe. At best.
I fight an emerging snigger, and when I’m sure that I’m going to be polite and definitely not laugh, I say, ‘The nostrils are a great size.’
Jake looks me right in the eye and laughs out loud.
I fight some more, and manage again not to laugh. I do have to look down at my lap, though, and hold my lips clamped really tightly together.
‘Well done,’ he murmurs across the table. ‘Excellent no-laughing.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, withstillnot even a tremor of laughter in my voice. I amgood.
‘Time to begin the embroidery,’ Petra says. She’s an incredibly enthusiastic woman, which is of course great, because we are here to learn, and no-one likes an unenthusiastic teacher.
We both waste valuable embroidering time trying over and over again to thread our needles, so we both have absolutely no idea what we’re supposed to be doing stitch-wise when we do eventually have them threaded, and Petra has to come over to give us an individual lesson on how to do cross-stitching.
‘I find this quite often with couples,’ she says. ‘The drawing each other’s faces is so intense when you’re with someone you love that you’re so wrapped up in each other for the rest of the evening you keep missing things.’
‘Not a couple,’ Jake says very firmly. ‘Just two single people who are all thumbs when it comes to needle-threading.’
‘Really.’ Petra stands back and looks at us both. ‘Well… there you go. I must be wrong. I sensed a lot of passion between you. Tension.’
‘Ha,’ I say. ‘No. We’re just…’ We aren’t friends. ‘Colleagues.’
Petra looks at us in turn again and then says, ‘Interesting. Do keep me updated.’ She looksagain. ‘I feel as though I recognise you both. Are you famous?’
‘Nope.’ Jake shakes his head.
I shake mine too. Then I worry that she’ll see us on the show and feel misled.
‘It’s just that we ended up on TV together onWake Up Britain, and, long story short, ended up doing a series of… evenings out… together,’ I say. ‘This is one of those.’
‘Oh. Maybe that explains everything.’ She peers very intently at Jake and then me, and then says, ‘I’d still like an update on how everything pans out between you.’
‘We can give you that update right now,’ Jake tells her. ‘We’re just temporary colleagues, as Freya said, and then we probably won’t see each other again.’
Petra frowns.
‘He’s right. But not in a bad way,’ I lie. ‘Just… we’re both busy people, you know.’
‘Yeah, no, I actually see something between you,’ she says. ‘Anyway. Time to sew.’
We all kind of hover there, as you do at the end of a slightly off conversation, and then Jake breaks the awkward silence.
‘I’mreallysorry to ask.’ He presents Petra with a gleaming smile. ‘But could you possibly just give me a quick recap on how to do that stitch again?’
