‘Good news.’ I chop, cook, season as fast as I can, all the while giving Jake occasionally useful and often entertain-the-toddler type tasks to keep him busy, and smiling away for the observers and the cameras.
‘That smells really good.’ Jake’s standing quite close behind me as I taste the dish and then add a little bit more lemon juice. ‘And what Ireallylike about your addition of that lemon juice is thatIjuiced the lemon and it wasnota wasted task.’
I try very hard to ignore the fact that for some bizarre reason I’m enjoying the sense of hislargenessso close to me, and smile when he indicates with his head the washed and not used courgettes and carrots neatly laid out on the side to our right. I asked Jake to slice one courgette with the wide slice bit of the grater and he managed to slice his thumb (and is now sporting a fetching blue plaster), and I didn’t have time to do them myself on top of everything else, so I decided that less is more and binned the extra courgette salad idea.
I turn round and, oops, it turns out that he’s taken a step closer and I’m now very much chest to chest with him.
I take a step to my right, just as he takes a step to his left. And then I try one to my left, just as he tries one to his right. And we are still very close to each other.
‘So.’ Eek, my voice has gone weird. ‘I was just going to get a little bit of pepper.’
‘Of course.’ His voice sounds a bit odd too.
Which is not surprising, because thereissomething very odd about standing this near to someone. It makes you extremely aware of… well… everything about them.
Jake’s chest and shoulders are very wide. But not too wide. Just the right amount of wideness. He’s tall. But not too tall. Just the right amount of height. And when he smiles, it’s just the right amount, so that you want to smile too.
My goodness. Why do I just keep thinkingjust the right amount? Just the right amount forwhat?
‘Can I taste our cooking?’ His lovely deep voice is just the right amount of gravelly. Just the right amount forsomething. That something – right now – might be causing me to feel butterflies in my stomach.
‘Of course.’ We’re still standing facing each other, very close together. I can see the rise and fall of his chest, the beginnings of his beard shadow. ‘So I’m going to step to my right now andtake a teaspoon and give it to you so that you can do the tasting.’ I described it like that to avoid any more of the weird side-stepping at the same time, but I think I might just have soundedveryodd.
‘Great.’ He sounds odd too.
And then we both kind of hover until I take the step to my right while Jake stands there, very strangely still, his arms just kind of hanging by his sides, which is unusual, because Jake is normally very relaxed.
Anyway. Odd. I move over to the counter and the drawer where the cutlery is, take a teaspoon and turn round to hand it to him. He reaches for it at the exact same moment and our hands bang, and that just feelsweird.
We say, ‘Sorry,’ simultaneously and then we laugh simultaneously, and, honestly, I feel as though I’m losing my mind a little. As in, I am just not me in this moment.
I’m not sure who I am instead.
All just very peculiar.
14
JAKE
Well, that was weird.
I think I just forgot that Freya isFreya. 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 workedbrilliantlyas a team,’ Freya says.
‘Yeah, we did,’ I agree, because firstly we kind ofdid, 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’shad 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.
