Chapter 3

IT’S ALWAYS DIFFICULTexplaining what you do as a scientist to outsiders—spike proteins and viral entry pathways isn’t everyone’s cup of tea at the best of times, even post-Covid when everyone and their uncle fancied themselves as a virologist. It’s doubly hard when you’re on a Zoom call with a group of producers who keep talking off mic. When Baz called me a “boffin” for the second time, I felt my patience snap.

“We tend to prefer scientist,” I said, a little shortly.

“What’s that?” Baz said, leaning into the camera. “I didn’t catch that, sweetheart?” He had a strong Australian accent, and the screenname at the bottom of his picture read Baz—Effing Productions.

“The boffin thing,” I said. “It’s just… you know, it’s not how I tend to describe myself. I’d say scientist. Or, you know, virologist if you want to get down in the weeds.”

“Ha,” Baz said, grinning widely. He had an extremely ’90s tongue piercing, which was distracting on camera. You could see it when he laughed, and he kept playing with it when other people were talking, clicking it against his teeth. “You’re funny. I like that.”

Funny? Before I could figure out how to explain not just that I wasn’t joking, but that I didn’t even know what the joke was supposed to be, the conversation moved on to questions about mine and Nico’s relationship—how long we’d been together, where we saw ourselves in five years.

“We’ve been together three years,” Nico said, squeezing my hand. I opened my mouth to correct him—we’d met three years ago, but we’d actually been together slightly over two, and even that was pushing it. But then I remembered, I wasn’t at work, and I closed it again. No one was going to quiz us for supporting documentation and calculation methodology.

Nico was still talking and had moved on from first dates to his five-year plan.

“I mean… this is hard to answer without sounding either pathetically humble or delusionally ambitious, but I’m an actor—I want to be acting. I guess, you know, thinking about the career paths of people I admire, I see myself very much in the James McAvoy, Adam Driver kind of mold: indie word of mouth, critical acclaim, moving on to mainstream success, but keeping the artistic integrity. A bit of theater here and there, keeping myself artistically grounded, not letting success change my commitment to my craft…”

In the corner of the screen I saw Ari shift in his seat.

“… what I’m saying is, where’s the Skins for my generation? Where are the edgy, authentic depictions of life in your thirties?”

“Uh… yeah.” Baz had clearly tuned out and was looking at something his assistant was showing him. “And, uh, Leela, sweetheart, what about you?”

“Me?” I was taken aback. I should have seen the question coming but I’d been so preoccupied by Nico’s answer that I’d failed to anticipate being asked the same thing. “Um, it’s Lyla actually,” I said slowly, buying myself time to think. It wasn’t just that Nico’s answer was sort of delusional—did he really think that he was on an Adam Driver career path? I might as well compare myself to Rosalind Franklin. It was also that not one word of his answer had featured me, or indeed any kind of homelife at all. “Five years. I mean, I—”

I stopped. Where did I see myself? In five years I would be thirty-seven. A few weeks ago I might have answered, if not confidently then at least optimistically, heading up a research team on something exciting—dengue, maybe; there was some exciting work on IgA antibodies coming out of the US—with a permanent academic post. I’d have bought a flat somewhere in east London, convenient for my mum to come and stay. Maybe even a little house, if I were prepared to commute. There might be kids on the horizon—if not actual babies, at least the idea of one, in the not-too-distant future.

Now, after the conversation I’d had the other day with Professor Bianchi, I honestly wasn’t sure. It felt like I’d screwed my chances with this project, and I badly needed a few publication credits on my CV—the long gap with no papers was starting to look ominous. And how long would it take me to find another more promising project, get hired, complete the post-doc, write up a couple of papers and get them through the publication hurdles? Three years? That was pushing it. The chikungunya research had been supposed to give me a boost onto the next rung of the ladder. Unfortunately, that rung had just broken.

I realized every face on the screen was looking at me, waiting for my answer. Plus Nico.

Dammit. Nico. Where was Nico in all this exactly? Living in my terraced house in suburbia?

“Five years,” I said again, feeling their eyes on me. “God. I… I don’t totally know. I’m kind of at a crossroads, to be honest. I have to make some decisions.”

“Really.” Baz’s eyes had focused again, and now he looked interested, his voice drawling as he stretched out the two syllables. “Is that so? What kind of decisions, sweetheart?”

Fuck.This was a conversation for me and Nico after a lot of wine, not for a sober Zoom call in the presence of Baz, Ari, and bunch of people I’d never even heard of.

“I just…” I swallowed, trying to stop my gaze from flickering nervously sideways to see how Nico was taking this. “I guess you could say my last project didn’t go so well. I have to decide, I mean, I have to decide if science is still for me. It’s a tough world. Your profile is really everything.”

“Well, that’s where we come in,” Baz said. He was leaning forward. “Let’s be honest, not everyone can win the pot, but you’re all going to come out of this a hell of a lot more high-profile than you went in, if this show is the hit we think it’s going to be.”

I pressed my lips together, forcing a smile that somehow stretched my lips without feeling in the least bit genuine. The kind of profile I would get from One Perfect Couple wasn’t going to matter a toss in the academic world. In fact, possibly the reverse. I couldn’t imagine anyone taking my funding application seriously if they’d seen me frolicking in a bikini on a tropical beach. Fortunately, I didn’t think grant committees were likely to be the core audience for a brand-new streaming channel focusing exclusively on reality TV.

Still, Baz’s mention of “the pot” had given me the chance to pin down some of the more elusive variables still floating around the whole project.

“The pot you mentioned,” I said. “How much is it exactly? And while we’re on the subject, can you talk a bit more about the structure of the show? I’m unclear how this is all going to work.”

“Sure,” said one of the other producers smoothly, leaning in towards the camera. I got the impression that Baz was not much of a details guy. “So, the pot isn’t fixed, but will be determined partly by how everyone does in the tasks—the idea is that you’ll all be contributing to build it up. And then at the end… well, I can’t talk too much about that, but there will be a mechanism for splitting it between the final contestants, or possibly not. It could be taken home by just one person. Those details are still confidential.”

“Okay,” I said, “but assuming everyone hit their targets and got the maximum possible, how much are we talking?”

There was a short, uncomfortable silence. The producer flicked his eyes at Baz, but before either of them could speak, Ari, Nico’s agent, leaned forward and unmuted himself.

“Lyla, I think the thing is, as Baz mentioned, the prize here, at least as far as people like Nico are concerned, really isn’t the money. Whatever the prize pot actually turns out to be, it’s going to be small beans compared to the subsequent professional opportunities the show opens up.”

“Sure,” I said, “but—”

But then I felt Nico squeezing my hand. I looked at him. He was smiling, but there was an unmistakable, let this go behind the smile. I took a breath.

“Okay. I take that point. So, what about the format and so on?”

“It’s elimination,” the unnamed producer said. “Ten contestants at the start, and they’ll get whittled down one by one, each week over nine weeks. There will be some strategic advantage to being in a couple for the tasks, so there’ll be a recoupling opportunity each week, and you might find there’s a few twists and turns to shake things up, but again, the details of that are top secret at this stage. All you need to know is five couples go in, one couple comes out. And it could be you!”

“But—” I started, but Baz was speaking, his microphone overriding mine, and he clearly felt like he was the one who was supposed to be asking the questions, not me.

“So we know about Nico, from Ari here”—he gestured at the place where Ari’s face presumably was on his screen, although confusingly it was the opposite side from mine—“but let’s hear a bit more about you, Leela. Would you call yourself a feminist?”

“A feminist?” I was puzzled. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting on this Zoom call—questions about my relationship with Nico seemed fair game—but this was a surprise. What on earth was Baz trying to find out? “I mean… I guess so. I believe in gender equality. Doesn’t everyone?”

“Define gender equality?”

“I guess… having the same pay for the same work… the same professional opportunities… the same bodily autonomy…” I was more and more mystified.

“And you wouldn’t say you had that already?” Baz was leaning forward towards the camera, frowning, but he didn’t look put off by my responses; if anything they seemed to have encouraged him.

“Well.” I was completely at sea now. “I mean… I’m a scientist. If in doubt, I look at what the data is telling me, and according to the data, no, we definitely aren’t there yet. In my own industry alone, less than a quarter of science professors in the UK are female, even though women make up nearly half the workforce.”

“Citing your sources, I like that,” Baz said with a grin, even though I hadn’t cited any sources at all. Actually, my stats were from an article I’d read in Nature a few years ago, but Baz had no way of knowing that. What on earth was he on about? My jokey remark to Nico about needing a wax and to lose five pounds came back to me, and an image floated into my mind: Baz, turning to his assistant, concerned, We gotta find out if she’s a hairy Mary under that lab coat! I stifled a laugh, and then hastily straightened my face, remembering that we were on camera. Fortunately, Baz was still talking. “And your politics. Would you say they’re left of center… centrist… right…?”

“I guess… center left? Sorry, is this relevant?”

“Sorry, sorry, you’re right. I got offtrack,” Baz said with a wave of his hand. “But finding out what makes you tick, what makes you different… sure, that’s important. We don’t want to end up with five identikit couples on the island, we want to get people from right across the spectrum. I suppose that’s what we’re going for with this show—that’s what’s going to sell it to Real TV. We want real couples—real authenticity, you know? None of this Love Island manufactured shite. We want real partnerships, tested to the hilt in the white heat of competition.”

“If you’re looking for authenticity, you’ve come to the right place,” Nico said, putting his arm around me. “Lyla and me have that in spades, and we’re in it to win. Right, Lil?”

“Right,” I said, stretching my lips again in that fake smile. It felt like the meeting was coming to a conclusion without any of my questions being answered. Nothing had been clarified. There was no real information at all—just smoke and mirrors—and it was completely antithetical to the way I was used to working. Every fiber in me wanted to pin Baz down and get a proper answer from him. But I could feel Nico beside me practically begging me not to fuck this up for him—and I guessed this was probably just how TV worked. Fake it till you make it, wasn’t that what they said about Hollywood? Or was that Silicon Valley? Either way, it was a long way from the world I knew—faking anything at all was the polar opposite of good science.

“Well”—Baz looked across at the colleague sitting next to him and raised one eyebrow, and when she nodded, he turned back to the camera—“I think we can safely say you’ll be joining us on the island in a couple of weeks.”

His words gave me a jolt like an electric shock. First of all, I hadn’t agreed to this yet. This was only supposed to be a chat. Second, a couple of weeks? I shot a panicked look at Ari, and then at Nico, but he was looking excitedly at Baz, who was still speaking.

“My assistant Camille”—he indicated a blond girl sitting far back, almost out of frame, who leaned forward and gave a shy little wave—“will be in touch about booking flights and so on, so keep an eye out for her email. We’ll be flying into Jakarta and then travelling by boat to the actual island, and I assume Ari’s shown you the pictures? It’s my mate’s place—brand-new, you’ll be the first-ever guests to stay there, and words really don’t do it justice.”

“It looks incredible,” Nico said, very sincerely.

“Ari, Camille will send over the contracts and confidentiality agreements today,” Baz said. “Are you happy for her to contact Leela and Nico direct about the flights? We really need to get booking those, and she’ll need their passport numbers and all that bullshit.”

“Sure, sure,” Ari said expansively. “Camille, just drop me a line and I’ll hook you guys up.”

“Great. And in the meantime, Leela, Nico, get picking out your favorite bathers. We’ll see you in paradise!”

“See you in paradise!” Nico shot back, his grin almost wider than his face, and I heard my own voice, like a pale echo repeating the phrase, with a good deal less conviction.

“See you in paradise.”

And then the screen went dark.

There was a moment’s silence. Then Nico turned to look at me, his face alight with enthusiasm.

“Well? What did you think?”

“I think that all went incredibly fast,” I said a little edgily. “It was only supposed to be a chat, but everyone, including Ari, seemed to think it was a done deal.”

“Well, hey.” Nico looked a little flustered. “I mean… nothing’s signed. But are you seriously going to turn this down? I mean, God, this is the real thing! We’re going to be famous—properly famous! Think about what this would mean for my career!”

“I am thinking about that,” I said. “That’s the only reason I was on the call. But didn’t you get a bit of a weird vibe from Baz?”

“From Baz?” Nico was taken aback. “What do you mean? I thought he was great.”

“Really? I thought he came across as a bit of a…” I stopped, struggling to find the word. “I don’t know. A bit of a chancer?”

The truth was, though I wouldn’t have said it to Nico, on the call he’d reminded me of Ari, Nico’s agent, who talked a very impressive talk but who somehow always had an excuse for why the money hadn’t come through, or he hadn’t done some very simple thing that Nico had asked. Nico had signed with him straight out of acting college on the promise of TV, riches, and stardom. Seven years later, Ari had yet to deliver anything more impressive than a few walk-on roles and a minor speaking part in Holby City, all of which I was fairly sure Nico could have got on his own. His much vaunted but never specified “contacts” had never seemed to come through—until now at least.

Because this was the thing: on paper, One Perfect Couple seemed to be the real deal. It was major, it was telly, and it had come about through one of Ari’s contacts. Okay, there was probably no money involved—unless Nico won, which seemed statistically unlikely. But if the format caught on, there was every chance of this raising Nico’s profile considerably and I had to give Ari props for that. There was just something about the whole thing that didn’t seem right.

“A chancer?” Nico looked at me like I was mad. “In what way?”

“Well…” I scrabbled to try to remember one of the warning bells that had gone off during the call. Effing Productions. Calling me Leela. I didn’t think Nico would care about any of those and I certainly couldn’t say that he reminded me of Ari. “Okay… for example, what do you think Baz meant about selling it to Real TV?”

“What do you mean?”

“When he was talking about us being an authentic couple, he said, that’s what’s going to sell it to Real TV. But I thought they’d already sold it? Ari made it sound like it was a done deal. Their flagship show and all that.”

Nico waved a hand.

“You’re reading too much into it. It’s just a figure of speech. He probably meant that’s what Real will like about you and me.”

“I guess. I just… I don’t know. I was surprised no one from Real was on the call.”

“They’re busy people, Lyla. I mean, let’s be clear, they’re setting up a whole new TV network! It’s not surprising they don’t have time for meetings about flight times.”

“Ugh.” I stood up and walked to the window, staring out over the grimy rooftops. There was a dead pigeon lying in the gutter opposite and I turned away. “I just… I want to be supportive, Nico, I really do, but I just wish they’d answered a few more of my questions.”

“Look.” Nico came over to me and put his arms around me. He pressed my cheek against his chest, and I could feel how much he’d been working out, presumably with the prospect of One Perfect Couple in mind. “Look, Lyla, this isn’t your comfort zone, I get that. TV’s weird. It’s not science-y types dotting every i and crossing every t—there’s a lot of shifting parameters and building the plane on the fly. But it’s not as seat-of-your-pants as it seems from the outside; there is a process to protect everyone involved. There’s contracts and legalese and all the stuff that’s Ari’s job to worry about. That’s what I pay him for—he’s got years of experience and lawyers coming out the wazoo. He’s not going to let us get caught up in anything that’s not kosher.”

But you don’t actually pay him, I thought. You don’t make any money, and a percentage of nothing is nothing. I couldn’t say the words though. I wasn’t that cruel.

“So… are we really doing this?” I asked instead. The question was more to myself than to Nico. But it was Nico who answered, looking down at me, his face incredulous.

“Hell yes we’re doing this. Are you kidding? You don’t turn an opportunity like this down.”

I nodded. I was feeling slightly sick—but Nico was right. This was the crunch point of his career. If One Perfect Couple was the hit Nico hoped, it could change the whole direction of his life—and maybe mine. And just because my own career felt like it was heading for the rocks, it didn’t mean I could deny Nico his chance.

“Lyla?” Nico said now, tipping my face up to look at him. “Lyla? Please tell me you are up for this?”

“Yes,” I said weakly. “Yes, I’m up for this.” And then, in an attempt to convince myself, “I am really up for this.” And then, as the reality of what we were proposing sank in, “Fuck, I’ll need to buy a bikini. I don’t suppose my Speedo one-piece is going to cut it.”

“A bikini?” Nico raised one eyebrow. “I think you mean bikinis, plural. In fact, you probably need a whole new wardrobe. Get yourself down to HM with my credit card.”

“What about you?” I said, ignoring the fact that Nico’s credit card was so maxed out I’d be lucky to get a single pair of socks. “What does the fantasy first boyfriend wear on the beach? A crisp white T-shirt?”

Nico smirked.

“Maybe. But I’m not planning on wearing a top for much of the filming.” He lifted up the hem of his shirt and pointed at his washboard stomach. “These abs didn’t come cheap, you know.”

“Of course,” I said. Somehow, now that it was a done deal, now that I had actually said the words, yes, I am up for this, my nerves were fading a little. Nico was right. Ari wouldn’t let us sign up for anything dodgy. And I needed to get away, we both did. “You owe it to all those hours in the gym. And your thirteen-year-old fan base, of course.”

“Well, exactly,” Nico said. He slid his arms down my back to my bum, squeezing my arse with both hands. “We can’t all be girl-next-door fuckable, you know.”

“Girl-next-door fuckable,” I growled, nettled all over again by the stupidity of the term. “I’ll give you girl-next-door fuckable.”

“Oh, I’ve already got girl-next-door fuckable,” Nico said, smirking. “She’s right here, waiting to be fucked.” He hoisted me up, his strong arms underneath my butt, and I wrapped my legs around his waist, laughing down at him.

“Is that so? That’s quite the set of assumptions right there, mister.”

“Well, there’s only one way to test this hypothesis, Dr. Santiago,” Nico said, grinning up at me as he walked me backwards to the bedroom door. “And I think I’ve got just enough time before the gym.”