‘Not just me. Alotof people are enjoying watching you. Everyone wants you to get together with Freya.’
‘Yeah, no. I do believe in romance. But definitely not with her.’ And not now. I don’t feel like I’m ready following my divorce, plus I’m just so busy with work and family. Maybe in a year or two.
We enjoy the rest of our trip round the park and it’s with reluctance, as always, that I say goodbye to my family when it’s time for me to leave.
It is also with reluctance that I set off for my dinner with Dan, Lizzie and Freya.
We’re meeting at a Thai restaurant in Covent Garden. I’m usually pretty punctual for things but decide to arrive a little late so there’s no danger of me arriving at the same time as Freya.
I arrive at exactly the same time as her.
Which is fine, actually; I can’t remember why I thought it would be bad to arrive at the same time. We exchange hellos – neutral on my side and blatantly frosty on Freya’s – and then go inside. We werealwaysgoing to have to say hello. Dan and Lizzie will already be here so there will be no one-on-one time for me and Freya. And if therewereone-on-one time it would be fine obviously. I really don’t know why I minded.
I’ll explain about the newspaper article when we have a moment, and Freya will presumably defrost a little. And, frankly, if she doesn’t, it really doesn’t matter. Soon we’ll never have to see each other again.
Oh, okay, it looks as though we’re going to have that moment right now, because Dan and Lizzie have not yet arrived, even though Dan is usually one of the most punctual people I know.
We sit opposite each other, Freya with her back to the wall facing out into the room, and me with my back to the room.
Freya smiles at the server who’s shown us to our seats and then immediately focuses on her menu.
‘Your weasel message,’ I begin.
‘Mmhmm.’ Freya doesn’t look up from her menu.
‘Yeah, I presume that was due to the newspaper article.’ I pause but Freya doesn’t say anything. ‘So I just wanted to clear that up.’
She finally looks up at me, tilts her head to one side, raises one eyebrow, and says, ‘Fascinating.’
‘I did the interview literally the day after we were on TV, and reiterated exactly what I’d said to you in person, nothing more. They didn’t publish the interview then; they waited to see what would happen with our challenge, and when they saw that theweekly updates and montages are really popular with viewers, they decided to run the article. Without telling me. So I didn’t realise it would be out this week. And I didn’t realise they would spin it quite so nastily.’ I suddenly do actually want to make her believe that I wasn’t being gratuitously mean.
‘Because no tabloid ever has spun anything nastily before?’
‘Yeah, maybe that was naïve. In my defence, I don’t think I really cared because I was furious with you at that point.’
Freya replaces her raised-eyebrow look with a frown. ‘Are you no longer furious?’
‘Apparently not quite so much.’
‘Hmm. Iama bit furious still. I don’t like people attempting to trash my career for no good reason whatsoever.’
‘On the upside—’ I feel as though I’m somewhat grasping at straws ‘—according to Sonja you areverypopular with the viewing public.’ Out of curiosity, I really want to ask her if her sales have improved off the back of this publicity but she doesn’t have the air of a woman who’d be keen to discuss that kind of detail with me right now.
‘Delighted to hear that.’ Freya looks the exact opposite of delighted. The frown is only intensifying. ‘So back to your explanation of what happened with the newspaper article. Your apparent need to describe in great detail how it arose screams guilty conscience.’
Our hostilities are placed on hold for a moment while a server places a basket of prawn crackers in front of us and we both thank him profusely.
Once he’s out of earshot, I say, choosing my words carefully, ‘I do wish, with hindsight, that I had kept my thoughts to myself.’
Freya studies me for a long moment, before saying, ‘And that would be because you yourself aren’t enjoying the challenge?’ She takes a cracker.
‘I… Yes.’
‘Not because you care about the impact on me or feel guilty about that?’
‘I obviously don’t want to negatively affect your career.’ I realise that is true.
‘Well, let’s hope it hasn’t.’ She takes quite a vicious bite of the cracker.
