It’s like the whole world stops for a moment and then resets itself, exactly right, like everything has suddenly fallen into place.
‘I love you too,’ I manage to say through lots of smiles and quite a few happy tears.
I pull out of the kissing that ensues to say, ‘I’m going to address a little elephant in the room. You might have won our challenge.’
Jake does a mock gasp. ‘Freya Cassidy. Romance writer and disbeliever in real-life happy endings. What are you saying?’
‘I might be saying that I would also love this to become something longer term.’
Really, reallygood sex ensues.
And then at one o’clock in the morning Jake leaves my house and gets in an Uber and goes back to his; we’ve decided that we should obviously travel completely separately to the studio tomorrow morning.
It’s going to be weird pretending that there’s no romance, or even friendship, between us, but it’ll only be for one morning; we’ll be fine.
One of the perks of being an author is that I do not have to get up at the crack of dawn if I don’t want to; if I have a lot of work on, I can write in the evenings instead of first thing, or through my lunch. Or both. And I don’t have to catch flights at ungodly hours because I can take my holidays at random – cheap – times. All to say that I basicallyneverget up early.
When you’re appearing on morning television, youdohave to get up early, because they like you to arrive in very good time so you can do various preparations.
So, when my alarm goes off, I do know that I need to leap straight out of bed, or at least within five minutes, but I just… can’t. I’m very, very tired. Okay. I need to. I’ll read the news on my phone quickly. That should wake me up.
I get sucked into an article about European royals with very long names. (That’s the literal premise of the article: long names; why do I read this crap and very specifically only when I’m tired and struggling to get out of bed?) Then I do Wordle and it’s really hard today (and I do possibly nod off in the middle of it and only wake up because I handily mistakenly snoozed my alarm instead of turning it off). I flick through my emails but am too tired to open any of them. Then I rest my eyes for a second and get woken up the second time my alarm snoozes and oh fuck I amlate.
I finally get myself into the shower and am woken up properly by the water, and get ready as fast as I can, but am obviously still late when I arrive at the studio.
I’m shown into a dressing room and Sonja immediately puts her head round the door and says, ‘Morning,’ before making abig show of checking her watch to see if it’s the afternoon yet before laughing uproariously at her own gag.
‘Ha,’ I say, already over this.
‘You being late has been good, actually.’ She comes into the room and closes the door behind her. ‘It’s given me a chance to chat to Jake one on one, get the low-down.’ She winks at me and I have to fight to maintain my smile. What does shemean? Has Jake caved and told her anything?
‘Great,’ I say (croak, actually).
‘Would you like a glass of water?’ asks Sonja, like the caring person she has demonstrated she certainly is not.
‘I have one here, thank you.’
‘Soooo… you and Jake?’ she says.
I raise an eyebrow. I can totally do this. I’ve acted before. I was one of the three witches inMacbethin my Year 8 school play. This is just a bit of acting for a couple of minutes.
‘Me and Jake?’ I repeat in my best guileless tone.
‘Exactly,’ Sonja says.
I frown innocently. ‘You mean us coming on the show today?’
‘What have you been up to since the team-building weekend?’
This time I frown thoughtfully, like I’m trying to recall facts. ‘I’ve beenreallybusy,’ I say. ‘Work. Friends. Family. You know. Busy. As we all are.’
‘And Jake?’
‘I presume he’s been busy too,’ I say.
Sonja shakes her head. ‘Honestly,’ she says. And then she gets up and leaves and I sit and worry until the make-up woman barrels into the room and tells me she’s going to have her work cut out sorting out the bags under my eyes and says could she suggest that I try to get more sleep.
I’m reunited with Jake when I’m deemed okay to go on air, hair and make-up-wise. I really want to ask him what he said to Sonja, but I feel that walls might have ears and daren’t say anything at all to him.
