He clearly feels the same way, because he greets me with a handshake and is now asking, ‘How have you been?’
‘Great, thanks,’ I say. ‘You?’
‘Yeah, good, thanks.’
And then we sit at opposite ends of our sofa not looking at each other, while Sonja announces us, and then we’re ushered on set by Soraya.
Sonja asks how we’ve been and we do small talk very briefly before she says, ‘So let’s have a recap.’ And she summarises our previous appearance and shows yet another video of us edited to include the most argumentative bits of our dispute. Yay. Then she summarises the challenge and where we got to, with some video footage. Then she talks through the team-building weekend. I’m beginning to relax; it really does seem as though we’re here almost just as extras: what’s actually happening is that Sonja’s showing videos of us doing stuff and she’s basically doing a voiceover.
It’s actually quite interesting seeing the footage of the weekend. It was well over twenty-four hours of activities, and we were busy most of the time, so by the time they’ve finished showing it all and we’ve all agreed that we basically both lost the love challenge, it should be time for us all to smile and say yes the team-building weekend did work reasonably well and we’ve agreed to differ, shake hands and leave and get on with our Sonja-free lives.
During the extended footage, I’m pleased to say that I look less ridiculous than I thought I might, even during the non-abseiling debacle and the ice bath.
It’s all fine.
I’m just thinking that I really shouldn’t have wasted time dreading this, when Sonja turns to us both, and says, ‘How did you two getonthat weekend? How did the team-buildinggo?’
She looks at me first. I’m suddenly goose-bumpy scared, because we’ve already covered this, and she’s looking at me with gimlet eyes now. What if she knows something? No. She doesn’t. And if she does, it doesn’t really matter. There’s no need to be scared. We just need to stick to our story.
I say, ‘Actually not too bad. As you saw, Jake did very kindly help me on the assault course, which was really thoughtful. We basically ended up agreeing to differ and aren’t arguing any more.’
‘Jake?’ Sonja asks.
‘Yep, everything Freya said,’ he confirms.
‘Nothing else?’ she asks.
We both shake our heads.
My goose-bump feeling of dread is growing. It’s just occurred to me that viewers might not take kindly to us having lied to them about nothing having happened between us. And Sonja’s smiling the way she did when she told me what activities we’d be doing during the team-building weekend, kind of slyly, like she has it in for us. I’m beginning to feel very queasy.
‘Interesting,’ Sonja says. ‘Have a look at this.’ She points at the screen where all the footage has been shown and a video begins to play.
And oh no. Oh no, no, no.
It’s night-time. The camera pans in on a window where two people… oh fuck. Oh fuck, fuck, fuck.
It’s unmistakably me and Jake. Kissing, hands everywhere, ripping each other’s clothes off…
They have, naturally, edited the footage – in a PG, pre-watershed kind of way – to make it look like we immediately got naked rather than having the lovely long kiss I remember us beginning with.
‘Interesting,’ says Sonja. She must have been trying to get me to tell her about this when she – clearly – pretended that Jake had told her something.
‘Ha, yes, the ultimate in team-building. Yeah. We had a cheeky one-night stand. Not something you want to tell anyone, which is why we… didn’t,’ says Jake. ‘Whoops. Should obviously have closed the curtains.’
I’m very impressed by the way he’s risen to the occasion. I nod a lot, judging it better not to say anything at this point.
And, actually, it isn’tthatbad. Just a bit embarrassing. It doesn’tmatterthat Sonja and the nation know now that we had sex that weekend. Really, who cares? It means nothing to us that they know. If we stay together forever and, yep, I was completely wrong about relationships, because I do love Jake very much and I really hope that wedohave a happily-ever-after together, then at some point everyone will know. They can laugh with us about how we got together.
Except… Sonja is shaking her head sorrowfully, and that is terrifying.
‘I’m not sure you’ve been straight with me.’ She points at the screen and we all turn to look at it.
And there we see a montage of us in our real lives. Some of the footage is a bit grainy, but it’s unmistakably us. Together. Holding hands in the park, kissing, arms wrapped round each other in a cinema foyer. And a delightful shot of me naked on Jake’s sofa the first time we had sex again, with pixellated boobs.
‘That’s completely unacceptable.’ Jake’s using his hard lawyer voice all of a sudden. ‘How did you get that footage? We clearly did not consent to any of that being taken.’
‘We did a social media request and our lovely viewers were only too happy to help. And once we realised how big a story this was, the paparazzi wanted to get involved.’
