I shake my head, definitively. ‘No. I cannot believe that she did. As I’ve said before, my view is that thinking you love a fictional character more than you love your partner is a symptom not a cause.’
‘Maybe. And I think we’ve strayed a long way from my point, which was actually that even though I have had a disastrous marriage, I still believe that there’s a happy ending out there for me.’
‘Okay. Well. Maybe it’s about optimism,’ I say. ‘Or realism. I don’t know.’
‘You’re saying I’m optimistic and you’re realistic?’
I shrug. ‘Maybe.’
‘Realistic or pessimistic?’
I glare at him.
‘Sorry,’ he says.
‘Apology accepted,’ I say coldly.
‘Reallysorry?’ he wheedles.
‘Fine. Apologyreallyaccepted.’
‘Good?’
I nod, rolling my eyes.
‘Do you fancy fish and chips before we each go home?’ he asks. ‘Not to change the subject hugely. But I’m hungry and we still need to bitch about Sonja.’
Sonja called me today, and I’m guessing she called Jake too.
Iwouldobviously like to eat fish and chips with him. I love being with him and I’m not going to be with him much from now on and I’d like to spend a bit more time with him. And I would really like to get us back on good, friendly terms before we go our separate ways rather than finishing with a conversation like the one we’ve just had, which did not feel totally amicable at the end. And, yes, we do need to bitch.
‘Sounds good,’ I decide.
And so we order the fish and chips and Jake moves the conversation on to cooking, which is a lovely, easy thing to talk about, and then he says, ‘So, Sonja.’
‘Yes. Cannot stand the woman.’
‘Same. She told you that they’re going to continue with the weekly montages, but longer ones, using footage from the weekend, and then in a few weeks’ time we’ll be required to go back on the show for a final hour-long live interview?’
‘Yep,’ I say. ‘Torture.’
‘Agreed. And I don’t think there’s really anything we can do other than go along with it and then be ecstatic to walk away. I think she basically holds all the cards.’
‘At least we now know that she’s properly evil and we should be very wary.’
Jake nods. ‘Yeah. I wasmadto state my thoughts when we went on the first time. I would like to reiterate, for the record, that firstly I know I shouldn’t have said that stuff and secondly I do now realise I was wrong. About your books. They’re great and of course they don’t generally break up marriages.’
‘Love the way you put the “generally” in there,’ I can’t resist pointing out.
‘Yeah, there’s only so far I can go in admitting I’m wrong.’
I smile at him and say, in my best patronising tone, ‘Well, it’s good that you realise that.’
‘I’m going to ignore the patronisation and agree. It’s also good—’ He stops himself from finishing his sentence and I assume that he was going to say something about the weekend or us having got to know each other and then thought better of it given our conversation earlier. ‘Would you like another glass of wine?’
‘That’s really kind but I think I’m good with water.’ I’m a complete lightweight alcohol-wise and I do not want to give in to the immense temptation I’m feeling right now to tell him I was being ridiculous and invite him home with me so we can have more amazing sex. If he declined the offer that would be mortifying. And if he accepted that would be very bad. So water it is.
I don’t want to leave things on the optimism-pessimism slight dispute, so I ask about the weekend in Dublin Jake said he had planned, and from there we begin to chat. It’s a little awkward, but I think we’re both working at it, aware that we are going to have to meet again from time to time (maybe quiteregularly if Lizzie and Dan stay together), and we want it to be as easy an experience as possible.
