Page 33 of Seven Rules for a Perfect Marriage

‘Great,’ says Darren. ‘Spill.’

Jack laughs.

‘You couldn’t just slip us some rope?’ I say, higher pitched than intended.

‘Afraid not.’ Darren smirks.

I take a deep breath. Jack wants me to be honest? Really? He wants me to tell him that I message Clay when I’m worried about work because I know he’ll take me seriously? Or that I’ve been spending hundreds of pounds on pregnancy supplements with no proven medical benefit on a secret credit card? Probably not.

‘I moved your bookmark,’ I bark.

‘What?’

‘In the hotel, after our launch party. You were in the bathroom. I deliberately moved your bookmark so you’d lose your place.’

He laughs. ‘You psycho.’

Darren hands us some rolls of duct tape while giving me a concerned look. There’s a huge shout from the water where Stuart and Grant’s boat has capsized.

‘Thank fuck!’ I shout.

Jack shakes his head. ‘How am I always surprised by how competitive you are?’

‘Honesty, please? Jack? Time is of the essence right now because I don’t want to walk back to the house later.’

‘I can’t think of anything.’

‘Yes, you can, come ON.’

‘I’m trying.’

‘Try harder!’ I shout. ‘Try faster!’

‘I WAS A VIRGIN WHEN WE SLEPT TOGETHER THE FIRST TIME,’ he shouts. There’s a silence across the field. Everyone turns to look at us. Darren bites his lip, then finally hands over the rope we wanted.

‘Good luck,’ he says. ‘And listen, mate, I think it’s nice to wait.’

I start frantically binding the plastic bottles together with the duct tape. ‘You were a VIRGIN?’ I hiss at him.

‘Yes,’ he replies, delicately screwing the lids on to them so they don’t fill with water the moment we’re on the river.

‘And you LIED about having slept with “some girl at school”?’

‘Do we really need to talk about this right now?’ he pleads. ‘And I had done basically everything with her apart from that.’

‘Still!’ I stand up, hands suddenly still. ‘I’m the only person you’ve ever slept with!’

He looks up at me, bright red. ‘Oh, piss off,’ he says, also sort of laughing. I put my hand over his. Look at him. His handsome, beautiful profile.

‘I wish you’d told me,’ I tell him.

‘It’s embarrassing.’

‘It’s not embarrassing. It’s romantic.’ I look at him again. ‘Jack. It’s lovely.’ I reach up, running my hand over the stubble which shadows his jawline. I brush my lips against his. ‘I just wish I’d known.’

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Well, everyone now knows that I was a virgin until I was twenty-two, so if we could crack on and make this thing float so we don’t also lose this game, then that would be a little bit of a help.’

We work together, me directing and Jack listening, offering suggestions intermittently, and eventually we’ve got a sort of raft-looking thing. We drag our attempt down to the water and Suze gets ready to time us. We get into thewater and paddle frantically, splashing each other, the boat (boat in the very loosest sense) rocking madly from side to side. The water looks cold and brown underneath us, my trainers are soaked, but we’re doing it. We cross the finish line made of life buoys and float gently back to the shore. I jump down in relief. Jack attempts to avoid standing in the deep water and whimpers slightly as he looks down at his brogues, soaking and caked in mud.

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