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“Um… no. I’m not. I mean, I’m not really into that kind of—” I stopped. That kind of woo was what I’d been going to say, but it struck me that the word might come over a little needlessly offensive. “K-kind of thing,” I finished instead.
Angel rolled her eyes a little but said, as if talking to someone very stupid, “Pisces women are typically highly spiritual. They make excellent romantic partners because they are very intuitive, very in touch to their partner’s emotional needs.”
Another huh. I hoped I was a good girlfriend, but spiritual and intuitive weren’t honestly words I would have chosen to describe myself. Perhaps Angel could see the blankness in my face, because she added, “However, they can also be very analytic.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “Thanks.” And then, more to be polite than anything else, “What’s your star sign?”
“I am a Virgo.” She pronounced the word with a rolling rrr that made me smile, and she raised one eyebrow. “Are you laughing at me?”
“No! I’m sorry, not at all. I just— I loved your pronunciation of Virgo.”
“Oh God, yeah,” Romi chimed in, chewing the end of her pencil. “Your accent is so lush.”
“Thank you,” Angel said. She looked a little mollified as she threw her hair back over one shoulder, preening a little as she did, and then took another sip of champagne.
I am both intuitive and analytical, I wrote in the box, and then carried on.
“Childhood crush,” was next. That was a tough one. I hadn’t honestly had any childhood crushes, not the kind I thought they meant anyway. I’d never been the kind of kid to moon over Justin Timberlake or Ricky Martin. Of course, there had been boys at school that I’d liked. I’d had a huge crush on my neighbor, a boy two years older than me called Oliver Dixon, for one long painful summer that had had me mowing the lawn more times in one month than I’d done in my life since. But I definitely hadn’t mentioned his name to Nico, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to advertise my teenage yearnings on national TV if we were forced to read out our answers. His parents still lived next door to mine.
In the end I thought about the number of times I’d watched Point Break as an impressionable teen and wrote down Keanu Reeves. He looked vaguely similar to Nico, and I still would, even though he was a silver fox these days.
“Ideal night in?” was the next question. I wrote down Paneer cheera curry with lemon rice, a big glass of red, and a really good drama series. Then, thinking that sounded a bit me-me-me, I added, and someone to snuggle up with to watch it. Although in all honesty, Nico wasn’t really the best telly-watching companion since he had a pathological inability to pay attention for more than five minutes, so I spent more time explaining the plot than watching myself.
“Ideal night out?” came next, and that took a bit of thought. Nico was the social one in our relationship. He was out three or four nights every week. I often had to work late or start early, ruled by the demands of cell lines and when I could book time on the various machines I needed to process samples. And to be honest, I wasn’t that social at the best of times. In truth, my ideal night out was something pretty close to my ideal night in—a good meal somewhere not too shouty, with someone who could hold an interesting conversation. But that made me sound so middle-aged I thought I might get kicked off the program.
In the end, though, I couldn’t think of anything that sounded better. An evening at the theater sounded hopelessly wanky. A night out clubbing was just… well, it was untrue. I hadn’t been to a club since I was about twenty-five. Camping, board gaming, pub crawls… none of that was me. And I assumed the whole point of these answers was to test them on Nico. There was no way he’d say I liked any of those things. In the end I wrote down the truth and just tried to make it sound as romantic as possible: A delicious meal in the company of someone I really care about, long chats between courses, something interesting to discuss. Maybe we share a pudding, then a taxi home and curl up in bed. Cliché, but the alternative was a flat lie, and I didn’t think that would help anyone, least of all Nico.
The next one, however, made me do a double take. Biggest secret.
My first reaction was to think that I didn’t have any secrets—certainly not from Nico. My life was so boring there wasn’t much to conceal. But then, completely unbidden, a thought popped into my head, one I most definitely hadn’t admitted to Nico, and maybe hadn’t even admitted to myself until that moment: I can’t see myself with Nico in five years’ time.
Fuck. Was that true?
As I turned the discovery over in my mind, I realized that it had been gnawing at the edges of my subconscious ever since Baz had asked the question and forced me to face up to something that, until recently, I hadn’t dwelled on much: the future. Now, I tried to imagine us living in suburbia, Nico knuckling down to a nine-to-five to pay for a mortgage, maybe even nursery fees… and I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I could see me there, all too easily. It was what I really wanted. But Nico? There was no way I could make him fit in that picture.
The realization made me feel a little sick, but there was nothing I could do about it now. It was a question for me and Nico to thresh out when we got home—and it definitely wasn’t something I could admit on the form. Which meant I needed something else. What?
I didn’t really want to come here. I only said yes because it made Nico happy.
I blinked. Where had this sudden, inconvenient attack of self-analysis come from?
Beside me, Angel and Romi were scribbling away, Santana was actually giggling as she filled out one of the fields. Only Zana looked as paralyzed as I felt, staring out at the water with panicked dark eyes.
I forced my gaze away from her, back down at the form. What could I put? What on earth would pass muster as my biggest secret, yet was something I was prepared to have read out on national television, hell, maybe international television if Baz got his way? I racked my brain. Gross habits? Nothing Nico didn’t know about. Illegal addictions? Didn’t have any. Childhood idiocies? Maaaybe that could work…
Until I was twelve, I thought pregnancy was a disease you caught from being around pregnant women, I wrote at last.
It was slightly pathetic as far as “biggest secrets” went, but I certainly wasn’t giving them any of my actual secrets. They were secret for a reason. Still, it felt like it needed something else, something a little more embarrassing to justify the header.
Sometimes, I still hold my breath when I pass pregnant women on the street, I added, and then immediately regretted it. It was actually true—although only in a kind of silly, reflexive way, the way as an adult you might avoid the cracks in the pavement like you did as a child, but not because you seriously thought anything might happen. But it was a bit too near the knuckle, given my first thought. The truth was, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I was beginning to want a baby—but not with Nico. And that was a problem. But there was no rubber on the pencil, so I couldn’t erase the second sentence. I’d just have to hope they didn’t press me on it.
Sighing, I moved on.
The rest of the questions were less tricky. Favorite film (The Godfather), pet hate (people who stand on the left of the escalator on the Underground), thing I dislike most about myself (the way I judge people), significant ex (my uni boyfriend Jon who broke my heart), and a bunch of others that didn’t give me more than a few minutes’ pause, though I did run aground on the last one: Which male contestant other than your boyfriend, would you want to be stuck on a desert island with? After a few moments of pondering, I put down Joel, mainly because I felt like Nico would find him the least threatening option.
When I finally set down the form and picked up my glass, Angel, Romi, and Santana were chatting and laughing, and only Zana was still holding her pencil, with that same look of paralyzed anxiety on her face.
“Which one are you stuck on?” I asked at last, feeling sorry for her, and she jumped and looked around. I noticed one of the crew had refilled her glass, and it struck me that they were probably trying to get us, if not drunk, at least sufficiently uninhibited to reveal stuff we wouldn’t normally be prepared to say on camera.
