Page 67 of Is She Really Going Out with Him?
“ ‘Encourage’ isn’t an outright ban, though, is it?” Will says, stretching out his hamstrings. He really is incredibly tall. I can’t imagine what it must be like to take up so much space.
“We’ve been invited to write about the place, we need to embrace the retreat’s ethos.” I don’t know how I’ve found myself the champion of this plan. A one-hour journey is taking us two and a half.
“I have better things I could be doing with my time,” Will says, checking his watch again.
“And I don’t?” I shoot back tetchily. I’m already indebted to Dan for switching another weekend with the kids, and given the confusing vibe between Will and me, I could do without having to spend a whole weekend alone with him, especially on a romantic getaway. My life already feels like one long fake date.
“If only you were wearing that delightful costume from lastweekend. I’m sure a horse-drawn carriage would have rescued us by now.”
“Ha ha,” I say, ignoring him and turning back to my phone.
“How are you going to cope without your phone for forty-eight hours?” Will asks, watching me tapping away. He walks up beside me and looks over my shoulder. “Why are you on a dating site? Isn’t that against the rules?”
“It’s for someone else, I’m playing matchmaker,” I tell him.
Will’s eyes grow playful. “I’ll bet you don’t last the full forty-eight hours.”
“You want to bet? What are you, twelve?”
“Because twelve-year-olds are such notorious gamblers,” Will says, raising his eyes to the sky. “First to fold has to…” He pauses.
“Has to what?” I ask, keen to see what ridiculous suggestion he’s going to come up with.
“Has to cede the chair once and for all.” He holds my gaze and I can’t help smiling now. He reaches out a hand to shake mine, but I swipe it away, not in the mood for his childish games.
“I like that chair,” I say.
“It’s my chair.”
“Technically it’sBath Living’s chair,” I tell him, then shake my head. “Fine. Whoever checks their phone first relinquishes the good chair.”
Will starts doing a ridiculous victory dance just as the bus arrives. On the bus, I go back to creating Michael’s dating profile, and Will gives me a knowing look.
“It doesn’t start until we get there,” I clarify.
When we finally reach the retreat, the sun is low in the sky, and the gravel track leading off the main road is bathed in beautiful orange sunlight. The location is as stunning as the website promised. Rolling green hills striped with hedgerows, and no sound except the distant hum of the road and chirping of birdlife.
Will is walking in an odd way, hopping around the track. I look down and see he’s wearing smart leather shoes and is trying to avoid the mud.
“Ah, poor little town mouse didn’t bring his wellies?” I say, feeling smug about my own scruffy pair of trainers, but as I say it, I trip and land my foot right in a deep patch of mud. It splatters all the way up my leg, and I let out an involuntary groan.
“Oh no, did you get muddy, country mouse?” Will says, leaping over a patch of mud to get past me.
We reach a gate and a sign that says “Reconnect Retreats. Off-grid since 2024.” On the other side of the gate, a Land Rover is parked in the mud, and when she sees us, a woman jumps out. She’s perky and young, with wild brown curls beneath a tweed flat cap. She is Outdoors Barbie in Hunter wellies and a faded Barbour jacket, ready to don a plastic shotgun and shoot some plastic grouse.
“You must be Anna and Will, from theTimes,” she says, and I can’t help relishing how good that sounds. “You managed the bus, then?”
“Just about,” I say, reaching out to shake her perfectly manicured hand.
“I’m Verity, Reconnect PR,” she says, her voice high and light like a tinkling fairy’s.
“Great to meet you, Verity,” says Will, giving her his most dazzling smile as he leans in to shake her hand. Her eyes widen in delight as she takes Will in.Yes, yes, he’s hot, we all see it.
As Verity guides us through the woods, she explains a little about the retreat’s founding principles. Her jeans are so tight and her bum so perky in them, I’m finding it hard to look at anything else as she walks ahead of us. Did Ieverhave a bum like that?
“Our founder, Malin, met her partner, Brad, when they both bought tickets to a scam festival that didn’t exist,” Verity tells us. “They found themselves on a remote Caribbean island, left tofend for themselves with no phone-charging facilities and hardly any resources. Maybe it was destiny, but Malin swears that it was not having their phones that caused love to blossom. They were totally present. The principle of Reconnect Retreats is to give couples the space to put the focus back on each other. Whether it’s a first date or a relationship check-in, two days here will feel like a month out in the real world.”
“How could you scientifically test that?” I ask. “Is that a peer-reviewed statistic? What if you find yourself on a bad date? Isn’t that torture, being stuck on a monthlong bad date?”
