Page 32 of Seven Rules for a Perfect Marriage

Once we’re all ready, we’re guided on to the bus by Scary Will and Cait, at which point we sit in silence listening to the radio until we pull up in the leaf-strewn car park ofa national park. Waiting for us as we step off the bus is a meaty man dressed in camouflage.

‘Everyone fall in!’ he shouts. We booked him from a website of army types for hire. He might have done something in a war zone once upon a time a long time ago, but for the last two decades he’s been running corporate retreats for financiers.

‘Welcome to North York Moors,’ he booms. ‘I’m Darren but you can call me Daz. Is everyone ready to have some fun?’

Everyone answers quietly in the affirmative. Daz isn’t exactly who I picture when I consider the concept of ‘fun’.

‘I said, is everyone ready to have some fun?’

We make slightly more noise, but not much. It’s not really a fair question because we are technically not here to have fun, we’re here to remember that honesty is the key to good communication in any relationship.

‘We’ve got a really fun challenge for you today,’ Suze says, full of pep. She’s dressed like a PE teacher; she’s even got a clipboard. ‘We’re going to walk over to the river. When we get there, there are going to be lots of lovely supplies for you all to build rafts. You’ll have fifteen minutes of building time, and then we’ll have a competition for who can get across the river on their raft the fastest. We’ll time each of your attempts to get from one point to another, quickest wins. And, just to keep it fun and competitive, there’s a cash prize for the couple who wins – and the couple who comes last doesn’t get a place on the bus home.’

‘The only snag,’ Suze adds, ‘is that you won’t be given quite enough materials for your raft. So, to get more kit, you’re going to need to go to Daz as a couple and tellhim – and each other – some home truths. For every truth you share, you can pick something from his pile of goodies. Got it?’

I was about to start worrying what would happen if Jack and I won (we could hardly take a cash prize from our own event) but I don’t think there’s any risk at all of that happening. Everyone starts talking and we’re on the move. When we get to the river, there are little stations with our names on them, so we all take up position.

‘We should probably go easy,’ I tell Jack. ‘We don’t want to win at our own event.’

‘True. But we also really don’t want to walk home.’

He’s right about that. Especially as his silly leather shoes are already soaked and there’s a tide mark around the bottom of his jeans.

‘Ready? Get set. Go!’ booms Daz, blowing his whistle. Everyone jumps into action. Chloe and Ben leg it straight to Darren and start machine-gun-firing home truths. I hear snatches of ‘not as up for it anymore’ and ‘dented the Tesla’, but I’m trying to focus and sort through what we’ve been given. There are empty plastic barrels and some bits of wood, but nothing to join them together with. I can see Darren guarding a load of rope, duct tape, floaties, pool noodles and all sorts. No chance of doing this without the truth-telling bit, then. God, I wish I’d designed these activities with a loophole.

Across the field I’m surprised to see Verity working enthusiastically, given that her attitude so far has seemed a bit like she doesn’t want to be here. She stops for a moment, looks around, and then drags a reluctant-looking Noah towards Darren. I wonder, way too late, whetherthe cash prize thing might have been quite a bad idea, or at the very least a bit insensitive. Financial strain was a big part of Verity and Noah’s application. It’s not a fun game for them. If they go home knowing they could have had five hundred quid then the entire weekend will be soured for them. I should have thought about this. It’s the exact kind of thing I’d have hated back when I was working at the marketing company, spending my lunch break putting clothes in my basket on Net-a-Porter and then deleting the whole thing miserably because I could barely afford the Tube.

‘Jess?’ Jack shouts, holding up an armful of plastic floats. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

I crouch down and start arranging them into a sort of underside for our raft. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be doing this? You’re the man.’ Ten meters away I can see Ken and Sue laying out their materials and methodically building their raft, like the couple in the instructions that come with IKEA flat-pack.

‘We both know I’m not that sort of man. Can I interest you in a sonnet about the raft? A witty comment about the raft? Maybe a wry observation?’

I laugh and then try to stick a couple of the bits together, but it’s just impossible with the bog-standard Sellotape they’ve provided clearly out of a desire to torment us. ‘I can’t do it,’ I say, practically stamping my foot in frustration.

‘Let’s just go and see Darren,’ Jack says, standing up.

Stuart and Grant seem to have finished their raft. They’re carrying it carefully towards the water and everyone pauses to cheer for them. Chloe and Ben have been workingquickly and aren’t far behind, either, so that only leaves us three other couples. For fuck’s sake! If we end up being the ones to walk home, everyone’s going to think it’s really funny and I’m going to have to pretend to have a sense of humour about it.

‘We can’t go and see Darren,’ I hiss, ‘we’re supposed to be one hundred per cent honest all of the time already. How are we going to have any home truths to spill?’

Jack gives me a ‘Babe, please’ look.

‘I’m serious! Isn’t it going to look bad if we run over there and start talking about all the secrets we’ve been keeping? And wait, hang on, have you actually been keeping secrets?’

‘I’m sure I can come up with something,’ Jack says weakly as he sees Sue and Ken, almost twice our age, carrying their rafts with surprising speed.

‘Fine,’ I say. ‘We can just make something up.’

‘We said we were going to do this properly!’

‘Okay, okay,’ I say, taking him by the hand and dragging him over to Darren who seems to be having way too much fun playing God.

‘Hi,’ I say. ‘We’re Jack and Jessica, we wrote the book that this weekend is based on.’

Darren looks out at the couples throwing themselves around the floor trying to make junk into boats. ‘This is based on a ... book?’

‘Yes,’ I say, determined. ‘It is. And we need to just grab some duct tape and whatever else you’d recommend so that we can join in.’

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