‘Anyway, I believe you’re a reporter at the Daily Echo ?’
I take a sip of my drink and nod, and then look to see what his reaction is. Some people, believe it or not, don’t like journalists.
‘The reason I ask is that I’ve been in the Daily Echo myself a couple of times,’ he goes on.
‘You’re not a convicted criminal, are you?’ I ask.
‘No, no,’ he laughs. ‘At least, they’ve not caught me yet.’
‘So why have we featured you?’
‘I work for a charity called Future for Africa,’ he explains. ‘We create sustainable projects in the third world–helping farmers to help themselves–as well as running some refugee camps. Your paper did a fantastic feature about us just over a year ago. It was a double-page spread. We were really struggling at the time and I can’t tell you how much it helped. We just couldn’t have bought the publicity.’
I don’t know why, but this surprises me. The closest Valentina’s ever been to going out with someone with a social conscience before is when she tried to seduce a trainee vicar she met in second year at university.
And as the two of us start talking, by the intimate glow of a single tea light and with the disco feeling like it’s miles away, I discover a lot that surprises me about Jack.
His background, for a start. Despite his now high-flying job and hard-to-place accent, he went to a comprehensive where the average GCSE grade would only get you a job asking, ‘Would you like fries with that?’ a hundred times a day.
He was the first person in his family to go to university, and that university happened to be Oxford, where he got a First in History. He travelled all over the world in a gap year, before finally landing a job with the charity at which he has now risen to the rank of chief executive.
These days, he loves kids but loves African kids the most and says he wants to adopt at some point in his life. He is a lapsed vegetarian (the smell of bacon after a night out saw the end of it) who reads about two books a week–everything from Dickens to Lee Child.
The only thing he watches on TV is old episodes of Frasier , and instead he listens to so much radio that he’sembarrassed to say he knows exactly what is happening in The Archers in any given week. He is obsessed with sport, and he loves spicy food (especially Thai), expensive red wine and tortilla chips.
Oh yes, and he’s recovering from a broken heart.
Chapter 20
The details about Jack’s break-up are relatively thin. It happened recently. They’d been together a while. There’s no chance of them getting back together.
I sit and nod, taking it all in, looking as if I empathise thoroughly, as if I know exactly what he’s going through. But, obviously, nothing could be further from the truth. I haven’t got the foggiest what he’s going through, since the closest I’ve ever been to having a ‘serious’ relationship is with the woman who has highlighted my hair for the last five years.
The fact is, this is a subject to which I have virtually nothing to contribute. At least, not without admitting to my appalling track record in the romance stakes–and I’m not about to do that in a hurry.
Why not? Well, I just don’t want him to know that I’m about as good at relationships as I am at intergalactic travel.
Anyway, I shouldn’t give the impression that the conversation has only been about him. Far from it. I have found myself telling him about everything–from the dad I can’t remember, to my pursuit of a great journalistic career, and the fact that I’d only had time to shave one leg before we walked down the aisle. (I don’t know why I let that one slip. I regretted it immediately.)
‘What’s it like, being at a wedding where you hardly know anyone?’ I ask him.
‘I’ve enjoyed it. You soon get to know people. There’s you, for a start,’ he says, and I can’t help noticing that my heart is pounding faster again. ‘And Pete and I have become friends
I take a sip of my drink and nod, and then look to see what his reaction is. Some people, believe it or not, don’t like journalists.
‘The reason I ask is that I’ve been in the Daily Echo myself a couple of times,’ he goes on.
‘You’re not a convicted criminal, are you?’ I ask.
‘No, no,’ he laughs. ‘At least, they’ve not caught me yet.’
‘So why have we featured you?’
‘I work for a charity called Future for Africa,’ he explains. ‘We create sustainable projects in the third world–helping farmers to help themselves–as well as running some refugee camps. Your paper did a fantastic feature about us just over a year ago. It was a double-page spread. We were really struggling at the time and I can’t tell you how much it helped. We just couldn’t have bought the publicity.’
I don’t know why, but this surprises me. The closest Valentina’s ever been to going out with someone with a social conscience before is when she tried to seduce a trainee vicar she met in second year at university.
And as the two of us start talking, by the intimate glow of a single tea light and with the disco feeling like it’s miles away, I discover a lot that surprises me about Jack.
His background, for a start. Despite his now high-flying job and hard-to-place accent, he went to a comprehensive where the average GCSE grade would only get you a job asking, ‘Would you like fries with that?’ a hundred times a day.
He was the first person in his family to go to university, and that university happened to be Oxford, where he got a First in History. He travelled all over the world in a gap year, before finally landing a job with the charity at which he has now risen to the rank of chief executive.
These days, he loves kids but loves African kids the most and says he wants to adopt at some point in his life. He is a lapsed vegetarian (the smell of bacon after a night out saw the end of it) who reads about two books a week–everything from Dickens to Lee Child.
The only thing he watches on TV is old episodes of Frasier , and instead he listens to so much radio that he’sembarrassed to say he knows exactly what is happening in The Archers in any given week. He is obsessed with sport, and he loves spicy food (especially Thai), expensive red wine and tortilla chips.
Oh yes, and he’s recovering from a broken heart.
Chapter 20
The details about Jack’s break-up are relatively thin. It happened recently. They’d been together a while. There’s no chance of them getting back together.
I sit and nod, taking it all in, looking as if I empathise thoroughly, as if I know exactly what he’s going through. But, obviously, nothing could be further from the truth. I haven’t got the foggiest what he’s going through, since the closest I’ve ever been to having a ‘serious’ relationship is with the woman who has highlighted my hair for the last five years.
The fact is, this is a subject to which I have virtually nothing to contribute. At least, not without admitting to my appalling track record in the romance stakes–and I’m not about to do that in a hurry.
Why not? Well, I just don’t want him to know that I’m about as good at relationships as I am at intergalactic travel.
Anyway, I shouldn’t give the impression that the conversation has only been about him. Far from it. I have found myself telling him about everything–from the dad I can’t remember, to my pursuit of a great journalistic career, and the fact that I’d only had time to shave one leg before we walked down the aisle. (I don’t know why I let that one slip. I regretted it immediately.)
‘What’s it like, being at a wedding where you hardly know anyone?’ I ask him.
‘I’ve enjoyed it. You soon get to know people. There’s you, for a start,’ he says, and I can’t help noticing that my heart is pounding faster again. ‘And Pete and I have become friends
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