And maybe it would be anyway.
I really, really like Freya. If there’s any possibility of us starting a relationship, we should probably spend some timetogether actually getting to know each other better away from Sonja and her cameras before we leap into bed together again.
‘Are you free tomorrow afternoon?’ I hear myself asking. ‘Would you like to meet for a walk?’
Freya smiles. ‘That would be nice.’
We chat a little more, and then we go inside. I feel as though we’ve had exactly the same thought about resetting things and getting to know each other better before anything else happens, if it does, because at about midnight Freya tells me that she’s ordered an Uber and will see me tomorrow for our walk; there’s no suggestion of me accompanying her home, which I think is absolutely the right thing.
When we meet on Wimbledon Common the next afternoon for our walk, I’m pretty sure that my face is split into a foolish grin, and I’m pleased to see Freya beaming at me as we approach each other.
‘Hello,’ she says.
‘Hello.’
We begin to walk, side by side, no hand-holding, and we just chat. We chat a lot. We walk from where we met, next to a large pond in a big open expanse of grass, across the Common to where there’s a windmill, with a tea shop. We get tea and cake and talk the whole time. Sometimes it’s serious; most of the time it’s just chat. We smile, we laugh, we listen. When we’ve finished our cake, we wander down to another pond and look at the ducks and moorhens, before continuing our walk.
Our arms brush a lot – we’re definitely walking more closely together than you would with someone who you thought of asjust a friend – and at some point – I’m not even sure how it happens – we begin to hold hands.
It’s a great, great walk.
‘We’ve been so lucky with the weather,’ Freya observes as we complete our big loop of the Common and end up back where we started.
‘Yeah.’ I feel a lot luckier about the company than the weather, though.
We decide to go to a nearby pub for a drink, and then we decide that we’d both like fish and chips. Eventually, it’s last orders and time has apparently flown.
I walk Freya home, and at her front door we kiss.
It’s a long, tender kiss that, certainly on my side, feels full of promise.
It would be so nice to go inside with her, but I feel as though I want to take things slowly, prove to her that she’s right in her realisation that it isn’ther, it’s just that her other relationships were bad; she can totally have a great relationship.
I’m very much hoping she feels the same way, though, because in reality I don’t think my self-control would actually stand up to her inviting me in.
‘I’ve had a nice day,’ Freya says eventually.
‘Me too. I should probably get going. Work tomorrow.’
‘Yeah.’
And then we share another lingering kiss before I say, ‘Goodnight, then.’
‘Goodnight.’
That was Sunday. We meet on Wednesday. And Friday, with friends. And Saturday, with friends. And Sunday, just the two of us.
And then we continue to meet.
We go for walks, to the cinema, out for dinner. We play tennis, we do a pub quiz, we go to Camden Market.
It’s nice. Lovely. Wonderful. Perfect.
Three weeks in, Freya comes to my house for dinner on the Saturday evening, with Dan and Lizzie. We agreed that we owe them and we also agreed that we will cook together, with Freya in charge.
She comes over early afternoon; we’ve agreed that we’re going to do most of the dinner prep then (I have no idea what she’s talking about but I’m sure it will all become clear), then go for a walk, and then finish off the cooking before the others arrive.
Earlier in the week, I suggested reprising our SonjaMasterChefchallenge.
