‘I think it’sgreatthat you’ve finally felt able to admit the truth, and that we helped you do that,’ coos Sonja. ‘I think it’s incredibly brave of you. Because these are private feelings.’
Yes, they are private. I shouldnothave come on national TV with someone as famously probing as Sonja. She’s such a dog with a bone. But you don’t realise initially. She lulls you into a false sense of security, like at first she’s like a cute, cuddly labradoodle chasing a fake bone, and then she morphs into a terrifying Rottweiler trying to eat you.
‘Private feelings of… lying?’ Jake snarks.
‘No,’ says Sonja while I bristle internally. ‘Private feelings of loneliness, which she didn’t want to burden her readers with. But now I think your readers are ready. We’re here to support you, Freya.’
‘Thank you, Sonja.’ I’m quite confused, if I’m honest. I don’t really know how we got to this point. I do know that I’mveryhappily single and need no support whatsoever. But if Sonja wants to play it that I need support, that’s totally fine with me: it’s a lot better than being criticised by Jake in front of the nation.
‘We’re also here to help you.’ Sonja’s pressing her earpiece, nodding and smiling so much that I’m beginning to feel slightly alarmed. What are her producers saying to her that’s making her look so excited? She turns to Jake. ‘Would you say that Freya is the exact opposite of you, Jake?’
‘I, well, yeah, yep.’ Jake does look as though he’s almost squirming – insofar as a large, handsome, overconfident-looking man can look squirmy. I’m guessing that he’s also alarmed about the direction in which Sonja’s taking the conversation.
‘So to clarify—’ Sonja picks up a pen from the coffee table in front of her and points it in our direction ‘—Freya you write romance for a living, but you don’t believe romance is foryou, and Jake you’re a divorced divorce lawyer whodoesbelieve in romance, and you believe there’s a happy romantic ending out there for you?’
We both nod. Me, quite happily, relieved that Sonja doesn’t seem to have anything sinister in mind after all; Jake, not looking so happy (ha, serves him right).
‘Well.’ Sonja presses her ear again and then nods again. ‘Great. Great! It’s been brilliant to meet you both. Thank you so much.’
And suddenly the two of us are being ushered off and back down the corridor, even though it didn’t really feel (to me, anyway) as though we’d properly concluded the interview. But maybe that’s TV for you. Or maybe we got off-topic and took up too much time.
Soraya meets us in the corridor and tells us we were both fantastic, before we’re shown out of the building. I realise as we leave that I didn’t manage to get Sonja’s autograph. I’ll have to email someone and ask.
‘It wasgreatto meet you,’ I tell Jake sarcastically as we part ways.
‘Oh, likewise.’ His sneer is so impressive that I laugh out loud. He’s getting to me a lot less now that we’re done and never going to see each other again. In fact, I’m going to put having met him to good use. He can feature looks-wise as a hero in my next book, and personality-wise as a villain.
‘Bye,’ I say cheerily as I hop into another paid-for-by-the-show cab. It issonice to have the interview – and my brief acquaintance with Jake – done and dusted.
4
JAKE
Following my frustrating appearance on TV, I have a busy day with back-to-back client meetings and calls.
In my last meeting of the afternoon, a new female client tells me that the last straw for her in her marriage was going home after having been to the cinema to watch a romcom with girlfriends (who afterwards all gushed about their own partners). Her husband had forgotten she was out and had locked the front door and nodded off in front of the TV. When she’d finally got inside, she’d looked at him squinting at her, with one sleep-crumpled cheek and his shirt hanging out over his slightly squidgy belly (her words). She’d done the comparison with the hero in the film she’d just watched and her husband had not matched up. She decided then and there to walk.
I wouldso muchlike Freya Cassidy to have heard about this.
Freya would probably have done one of her perfect little smiles (all cute and misleadingly sweet and innocent-looking) and trotted out her symptom-rather-than-cause line again. And, while that is of course a valid point, I really do think that a lot ofpeople, when vulnerable, can be misled into thinking that their relationship is lacking when really they just need to work at it.
People getting their heads filled with fake romantic nonsense is not great.
And it’s mind-blowing that a woman peddling such ridiculous and dangerous fiction doesn’t believe in love herself. Taking the whole do-as-I-say-and-not-as-I-do thing to great heights.
I blink, realising that my client has spoken and I didn’t hear what she said. I amneverdistracted like this.
I apologise profusely and focus very hard on her until the meeting concludes.
I find myself thinking again about Freya Cassidy as I pack some papers together to take home to work on this evening. It’s annoying to be left with the feeling that someone whose work you thoroughly despise has in some way bested you. I shake my head. It doesn’t matter. I’m never going to see her again and I’m never going to agree to appear on morning television again.
By the time I’ve got home from work and parked the e-bike I picked up outside my office, my head is clear, and this morning seems a long way in the past. I’m going to go to the gym, do some more work and then head to the pub for a quick pint with Minuk, a friend who lives round the corner, and my day will end much more enjoyably than it began.
I pull out my phone to text him and, wow. The phone’s alight with many dozens of messages from friends and family. I feel extreme worry for a second or two until I realise that nothing seriously bad has happened to anyone I know.
Whathashappened is that everyone I know has left work and seen that the argument between Freya Cassidy and me has blown up.
There are videos of us arguing. They’re obviously edited for highlights, I see when I watch the first couple, but at the same time they are actually quite representative of what did happen. Wedidthoroughly dislike each other (well, I thoroughly disliked her, or at least her work, and I’m guessing she didn’t love me from the way things panned out) and wedidargue. And apparently millions of people watched us and a lot of them rewatched us and lot of people who did not originally see us now have.
