Chapter 4

THE NEXT FEWdays were a whirlwind. Somehow, unbelievably, it seemed like we were actually doing this, and almost within hours, Ari was sending over draft contracts with terrifying nondisclosure clauses, and Camille was asking whether we’d prefer to fly out of Gatwick or Heathrow.

The strangest thing was that apart from me, everyone from Ari to Professor Bianchi was acting like this whole thing was perfectly normal. Professor Bianchi didn’t seem to understand that this was any different from your regular last-minute winter break—although I hadn’t exactly tried to spell it out. Ari appeared to think that dropping everything and flying to Indonesia on two weeks’ notice was totally reasonable. And maybe it was, in his line of work.

Nico’s friends messaged with sincere-sounding congratulations that unsuccessfully masked their professional jealousy. Mine made envious comments about free holidays and winter tans.

In fact, the only person who raised any doubts was my mum, who sounded bewildered when I outlined the situation to her over the phone, the weekend before we were due to fly out.

“A reality TV show? But, Lyla love, why? You don’t even watch those programs.”

“It’s for Nico,” I said, knowing as the words left my mouth how lame they sounded. “He really wants it.”

“Is he having some kind of midlife crisis?”

I laughed.

“I’m not sure Nico would thank you for calling him middle-aged, Mum. But no, it’s not that. It’s a career move for him. If they go big, these reality TV shows can be great exposure.”

“But why do you have to go?”

“Because—” I stopped. Because it’s a couple’s TV show, would have been the easy answer, although I wasn’t honestly sure if I was allowed to say even that—everything about the format was supposed to be confidential according to the NDA I’d signed. But it wasn’t really the truth, and it wasn’t what my mum had meant. The fact that the format was couples was why I’d been invited. It wasn’t why I’d said yes.

Why I’d said yes… well, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to probe too deeply on that. Part of it was the knowledge that Nico and I were at a crunch point. Not a midlife crisis exactly, but we couldn’t carry on like this, him banging his fist on a closed door, me increasingly resentful of supporting his dreams when my own were receding further and further. Nico needed a break—and so did I, just in different ways.

“I just think,” my mum said, filling the silence, “that this is the wrong time for all of this. You’re thirty-two, love, you and Nico should be settling down. And I can’t imagine your boss is too pleased.”

“Mum, Nico needs this, and I love him,” I said. “And that’s what you do for people when you love them. You support them.”

“Well, we all need a break from the cold, and I suppose at least it’s a free holiday,” my mum said resignedly, and I laughed.

MY MUM’S REMARKabout the cold came back to me the second the plane touched down in Jakarta. Of course I’d known on paper that February in Indonesia was a completely different climate to February in London, but somehow knowing that fact in theory didn’t make the sauna blast of humid air any less shocking. We’d walked onto the airplane wearing raincoats, boots, and scarves. As I made my way down the steps to the tarmac, the sweat was soaking into my bra before I’d even reached the ground.

I’d made the mistake of trying to start the chikungunya paper on the connecting flight from Dubai, and now I felt almost drunk with tiredness, in contrast to Nico, who’d downed four gin-and-tonics and then slept for six solid hours, despite the cramped economy seat. He looked fresh and positively bouncing with excitement as he wheeled his carry-on to the air-conditioned bus, whereas I felt gray and drained. When I caught sight of my reflection in the bus window, I didn’t look anything like a contestant on a reality TV show. I looked like what I was—a stressed, mildly hung over scientist who was trying to spin straw out of gold and form a publishable paper out of dog-crap results.

Luggage claim and customs were the usual nightmare of wailing babies and grown men pushing and shoving to get to a case that would come around the carousel again in less than five minutes. From the aggression of my fellow travelers, you’d have thought that the bags disappearing behind the plastic curtain were about to get incinerated, rather than popping out unharmed a few feet farther on.

But at last we were through passport control and blinking in the arrival hall, scanning the crowds for a familiar face, or at least a sign with a name we recognized. Camille’s email had promised “meet and greet on arrival,” but as we passed driver after driver, I realized she hadn’t actually said what to look out for. Nico’s actual surname was Rice, Nicholas Rice, in fact. Nico Reese was a stage name. But I couldn’t see anything saying Reese/Santiago, Rice/Santiago, or even Effing Productions.

And then I turned and saw a bored-looking man in a suit, holding up a small whiteboard on which was scrawled NICO LILLA PERFECT COUPLE.

I nudged Nico.

“Do you think that’s us?”

“A perfect couple?” A grin spread across Nico’s face. “Hell yeah.” He yanked his case sideways through the flow of irritated people, like someone fording a particularly turbulent river, and said “Here from the TV show? I’m Nico. This is Lyla.”

“Hello, Pak!” The driver broke into a welcoming smile. “Welcome sir, welcome miss. Welcome to Indonesia. May I take your cases?”

THE TRAFFIC INJakarta turned out to be one jam after another, and in spite of the honking horns and stop-start junctions, I fell asleep before we got out of the city. I awoke as we went over a set of speed bumps, jolting my head against Nico’s shoulder, and looked out of the window, wiping the drool off my cheek. The high-rise buildings and concrete sprawl of Jakarta were gone—replaced by a small harbor filled with bobbing yachts. The sun was high in the cloudless sky, and I could feel its heat despite the air-conditioning blowing in my face from the car’s vents.

“Sir, miss, we are here,” the driver said over his shoulder. The display on the dash said it was almost twelve noon. Nico put his arm around my shoulder and squeezed hard.

“Excited?”

Not really, was the honest answer. Exhausted, was the word I’d have chosen, closely followed by hungry, and nervous. But I knew that wasn’t what Nico wanted me to say, so I smiled weakly.

“Yeah. Let the adventure begin.”

There was a woman standing at the quayside with a clipboard, and now Nico unfastened his seat belt, opened the door, and slid out before the driver was able to hurry round to open it for him.

“Hi…” I heard indistinctly through the car door as I scrabbled around for my belongings. “… Nico… so great to meet you…” And then, as the driver opened the door, “Lyla, come and meet Camille!”

Camille—the girl from the Zoom call. So this was happening. It was actually happening. The realization was as shocking as the weather in Jakarta had been. Of course it was happening—it was what I had agreed to, wasn’t it? And yet…

I pasted a frozen smile on my face and waved.

“Just a second!”

I’d lost a shoe at some point in the journey, and I had to fish around in the footwell. When I finally located it, under the seat in front, I straightened up to see Camille standing beside me, holding out her hand.

“Lyla! So great to finally meet you properly!”

“Camille, hi. Uh…” I shifted the shoe into my other hand, and then shook hers, rather awkwardly. I was horribly conscious of my disheveled state, and the fact that I’d been wearing the same clothes for two days and hadn’t thought to reapply deodorant. “Really nice to put a face to a… well, I suppose we met on Zoom, but it’s not the same, is it. Sorry I look such a…” I made a gesture towards my sleep-crumpled face and mussed hair, and Camille waved a hand.

“Oh! God, don’t even. You must have been traveling for days. There’ll be plenty of time to get freshened up before the meeting.”

“Meeting?” Nico was instantly alert.

“You’re the last to arrive! So as soon as you’re ready, we’re going to up-anchor, and then everyone will gather for a big roundtable QA on how this is all going to work. You can meet the other contestants, chat to Baz, ask anything you want… it’s your chance to really settle in and get to know everyone.”

I blinked. I had the disquieting sensation of having stepped onto a roller coaster that was starting before I was fully prepared.

Nico, on the other hand, was clearly already strapped in and ready for the ride.

“We’re the last?” He looked put out, and I could see he was calculating how this might have affected his chances, and imagining the others busily forging alliances, making friends, and agreeing on strategies. “I didn’t know that. How long has everyone else been here?”

“Uh… not too long,” Camille said a little vaguely. “Baz and I have been here just over a week and the other contestants have been turning up on and off since then. Bayer and Angel were on the flight before yours, so they’ve only been here a couple of hours longer than you. I think Conor and Zana were the first to arrive.”

“Great,” Nico said a little snippily, but then I saw him rein himself in and force himself to be charming. “Well, last but not least, eh? I can’t tell you how excited Lyla and I are to be here, aren’t we, Lil?”

“Yeah, so excited,” I managed weakly.

“Well, the feeling is very much mutual,” Camille said warmly, and gave my arm a little squeeze. “Now, this beauty”—she gestured to the largest boat in the harbor, a big gin-palace-style yacht moored right by the quay—“is our ride.” I looked across, taking in the glittering white and chrome, the stacked decks, the hot tub. Over Easy was painted on the hull in flowing letters, and below it in smaller writing Kupang, which I guessed was probably the home port, though I had no idea where Kupang was. A mahogany-and-chrome gangway stretched across the gap to the quay, and as I watched, a white-uniformed man began uncoiling one of the ropes lashing the boat to a bollard, preparing for… I’d been going to say takeoff but I was pretty sure that wasn’t right. In the prow, somehow completing the picture, was a stunningly beautiful woman with long silver hair, leaning over the railings and smoking a cigarette. As I watched, she lifted her chin and blew a perfect smoke ring into the still air. It hung there for a moment, rising into the cloudless sky, and then dispersed.

“Isn’t she gorgeous?” Camille said. For a moment I thought she was talking about the woman smoking, and the remark took me aback. It was true, but it also seemed a little objectifying. Then I realized she was talking about the ship.

“Um… yes, very impressive,” I said, trying to echo her enthusiasm.

“I think they’re pretty much ready to up-anchor, so let’s grab your luggage and get you on board!”

I was just turning to help the driver with our cases when a voice came from behind me.

“Excuse me, miss, may I speak with you?”

I turned, thinking for a moment that the speaker was addressing me, but it was one of the crew members, and he was talking to Camille.

“Of course,” she said politely. “What is it?”

“The captain would like to discuss the weather reports. There is a storm coming in. Two, three days away, so it is possible it will—” He stopped, searching for the word and then finished. “—dissipate before it reaches us. But—”

“Let me stop you,” Camille said with a smile. “This is a conversation for my boss, Mr. Ferrier. Shall I ask him to come up to the bridge?”

They moved off, still speaking earnestly.

Great, I thought, as Nico and I helped the driver heave the cases out of the car boot and onto the quay. A storm. Just what I wanted to hear. I just had to hope we’d be safely off the Over Easy and tucked up on the island before it hit.

“I’VE GOT TObe honest.” Nico was looking around the very cramped cabin we’d been allocated for the boat ride. “This isn’t exactly what I was anticipating.”

As I followed his gaze around the little room, I saw what he meant—rather than a plush double suite, Camille had shown us into a small bunkroom that resembled a cross-channel ferry more than a luxury yacht. It didn’t remotely match what I’d seen of the top deck, which meant, I was fairly sure, that this had to be the staff quarters. There was a tiny salt-misted porthole, practically at the waterline, two narrow beds stacked on top of each other, and so little floor space that we had to edge around our suitcases.

Still, there were beds, and there was also a working shower, which was really all I cared about at this point. And, as a small silver lining, it was highly unlikely they’d be doing any filming in such a cramped space, which meant I was safe for the moment. There was barely room for a third person, let alone a TV camera.

“I guess we won’t have to put up with it for long. Did she say how long we’d be on the sea?”

“No.” Nico was looking thoughtful. “But the implication was definitely that we’d be sleeping here tonight. This island must be more remote than I imagined.”

“Well, look, I need to shower before this bloody meeting.” I rubbed my hands over my face. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted less than to attend an all-hands debrief right now. I wanted to eat my own bodyweight in carbs and then sleep for approximately eleven hours. “I feel absolutely gross. Is that okay?”

“What?” Nico was looking at a folder he’d found on the bed. “Oh yeah, no problem. I’ll jump in after you if there’s time, but I feel fine.”

I was about to respond, when the boat gave a sudden jolt. Nico looked up, his expression alert. I put out my hand, steadying myself against the wall. Seconds later came the shuddering roar of the engine kicking in. It ticked over for a few moments, and then the sound rose to a higher pitch, and we began to move. I felt my stomach pitch uneasily as the boat lifted against a wave and then rolled down. We hadn’t even left the harbor.

“I guess this is us,” Nico said. He grinned, teeth white against his five-o’clock shadow. “No going back now!”

“No going back,” I echoed, but my own smile felt anything but sincere.

In the shower, with the hot water running down my scalp and removing some of the sweat and grime, I felt a little better, but the strange shifting sensation continued, and more than once I had to brace myself as the ship caught an awkward wave. I was just rinsing the foam out of my hair when there was a banging on the door that made me jump.

“Who is it?”

“Nico!” he yelled. “And Camille. They’re ready for us upstairs. Are you done?”

Ugh.

“Almost,” I called back. I wound a towel around myself and looked about for a hair dryer. No bloody hair dryer. Not even the kind that was wired into the wall. And I hadn’t brought one. Great. “You go up, I’ll find you.”

There was a murmur of voices and then Nico called back, “Okay. Apparently it’s two flights up, then head towards the stern. See you there.”

IT TOOK MEten minutes to wrangle my long dark hair into something that looked slightly less like I’d been pulled through a hedge backwards and get into one of the new dresses I’d bought for the trip. As I made my way along the narrow corridor to the stairs Nico had mentioned, it was plain that this was no cross-channel ferry, but a much smaller boat without stabilizers. I held on to the banister with both hands as I began the climb, feeling an answering drop in my stomach every time the boat heaved itself up a wave and slapped down the other side.

At the top of the second flight, I had to take a minute to orientate myself and figure out which way was the front of the boat. Stern, Nico had said. That meant the front, right? No. The back. There was another juddering slap as the boat crested a wave and I felt nausea rise inside me, and took a long, deliberate breath through my nose, looking out of the window at the horizon as I did. The sea was the same bright blue as the sky, just a shade darker, and the sun was beating down with an enthusiasm that felt almost insulting. Look! it seemed to be saying. It’s not even stormy!

Swallowing, I turned and groped my way along the corridor against the direction of the boat, following the faint sound of voices, barely audible above the noise of the waves and the hum of the engine, but growing louder the farther I went. At last, when I was almost at the very back of the boat, I got to a glass door leading onto a sort of patio filled with sun loungers, beanbags, and deck chairs, and shaded by an awning that was rippling in the brisk breeze. The seats were occupied by what I assumed must be the other contestants, all holding a glass in their hand and staring up at a woman in the middle of the circle, who had her back to me and appeared to be speaking.

Before I opened the door, I stood for a moment, taking in the scene, trying to assess the people who would be the competition for the duration of our stay on the island. On paper they probably looked like a fairly diverse crowd—different ages, different ethnicities, different body shapes—the men ranging from slim to stacked, the women from voluptuously curvy to model thin. The main thing that struck me, however, even from the other side of the glass, was that they were all, without exception, extremely good-looking, and most of them were beautifully turned out. Across the room was a woman, a girl really, with hair a lot like mine—long and dark, falling below her shoulder blades—but hers shone with a rich mahogany luster that mine had never achieved even on a good day. I felt another lurch in my stomach, but this one had nothing to do with the movement of the boat.

Then, from the other side of the glass, Nico turned and saw me, and his face lit up.

“Lyla!” I heard him say. “Come on out!”

Taking a deep breath, I pushed the door open and stepped outside.

After the air-conditioned chill of the boat, the heat was like a hug from a sweaty man, even with the brisk breeze, and I felt the perspiration under my arms prickle in response.

“Lyla!” The woman in the middle of the circle turned, and I saw she was Camille. She looked fresh as a daisy and completely unbothered by either the heat or the waves. As I approached, trying to keep my balance on the shifting deck, she picked up a glass from the nearby table and held it out to me. It was pink and fizzy—some kind of cocktail, I assumed, though it seemed a little early for that.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said, taking the glass. Camille shook her head.

“Don’t worry! We’d barely started. We were just raising a toast to… One Perfect Couple!”

“One Perfect Couple!” chorused the group, and there was a little cascade of melodic chings! as people tapped glasses, and the sound of laughter. A tall man with dark, slicked-back hair sitting opposite me threw his head back and downed his glass, the muscles in his throat working.

“Oh mon Dieu, c’est fort,” said the woman sitting next to him, and I realized that I recognized her. She was the smoker I’d seen blowing rings over the prow when we’d first arrived, and now she made a face as she put down her glass. I took a cautious sip of mine. It tasted like prosecco… and something else that was probably aiming for crème de cassis but landing closer to grape juice.

“Right, first things first,” Camille was saying, raising her voice above the chatter that had broken out. “Now Lyla is here, perhaps we could do a little getting-to-know-you exercise? Your name, something about your partner, and something fun about you. I’ll go first—I’m actually single, so I’ll make Baz my work boyfriend!” She laughed. “Um, so I’m Camille, I’m twenty-five, and I’ve been working for Baz for just over six months. Um… something about him is that he’s an insomniac, which can make him a touch hard to work for when you wake up to sixteen emails in your inbox!” She gave another laugh, this one slightly tinkling and forced. “And… um… a fun thing about me… I’m allergic to watermelon.” She smiled around the group as if waiting for a response, and then, when she didn’t get one beyond polite smiles, she said, “Um… okay, Angel, shoot!”

Angel turned out to be the French woman who had commented on the strength of the cocktails. She was willowy thin with long silver-blond hair that streamed down her back, jutting cheekbones, and dark eyes—something like a blond Zo? Kravitz. She was wearing a kind of billowy silk kaftan that would have been hard for someone less stunning than her to pull off—on me I was fairly sure it would have looked like a sack—but on her it somehow only emphasized her angular collarbones and slender wrists. Now she leaned back in her deck chair and spoke.

“My name is Angel, short for Angelique. I am—shockingly—French, you may not have guessed.” There was a little ripple of laughter from around the circle. “A fact about me, I wanted to be a Formula One racer when I was a little girl.” More laughter, this time a little uncertain, as if no one was quite sure whether she was joking or not. “I have been with my boyfriend, Bayer, for two years, a fun fact about him… he detests wasps.”

There was another round of laughter, this time more confidently. The big dark-haired man sitting beside her spread his hands and raised his eyebrows, making the piercing in his right brow wink in the sunshine.

“What?” He looked Italian maybe, or perhaps Turkish, but his accent was pure Vinnie Jones—the kind of guy you could have met working out in a gym in Hackney any day of the week. I could smell his aftershave from across the circle, and his T-shirt looked to be at least two sizes too small, presumably aimed at making his impressive biceps look even more pumped. But there was a self-deprecating twist to his grin that made me like him. He looked like he would be quick to take offense, but quick to laugh at himself too, if the joke was against him. “Am I wrong? Little bastards never met a pint of beer they didn’t want to fucking drown themselves in. Anyway, I’m Bayer, been with my girl for two years, like she said. I’m twenty-eight. Fact about me, I can bench-press four hundred pounds.” There was no laughter this time, only an impressed murmur from around the listeners, though the stat meant nothing to me. Was four hundred pounds a lot? I guessed it must be from the way he’d trotted it out. “Fact about Angel…” He paused, thinking. “She can get her ankles behind her head in yoga. Ain’t as fun as it sounds, lads, trust me.”

There was more laughter this time, a proper guffaw from some of the men, and Angel shot Bayer a look that was one part you disgust me to two parts ha, ha very funny, but I could sense the affection beneath. They felt like a good couple—like the kind of people who would be sending each other up in public but would have each other’s backs if it came down to it.

We continued slowly around the circle, introducing ourselves, although the names and facts of each couple quickly began to blur into each other. There was Romi, who looked like she was going to fill the “bubbly blonde” casting niche. She did a lot of giggling and hair twirling during her brief intro, and she seemed like an odd match with her boyfriend, Joel. He was skinny and serious-looking with thick, angular glasses, and he forgot to give a fun fact at all—in fact, his introduction was very brief, as if he wanted to get it over with. Romi’s fun fact was that she had 150,000 subscribers on YouTube, which seemed more like a flex than a fun piece of trivia, but I supposed no more than Bayer’s.

Next came Santana, who was a stunning, curvaceous strawberry blonde, something like a redheaded Adele, with the poshest accent I’d ever heard in real life, and cleavage that made me feel better about having my own on display—it was a look that was definitely working for her. Her boyfriend, Dan, had surfer-dude, sun-streaked hair and was cute in a boy-band kind of way. Their fun fact was a joint one; they had matching tattoos of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, which seemed like a weird thing for two adults to admit, but the rest of the circle cooed and smiled appropriately.

The next couple were Conor and Zana. In a roomful of beautiful people, they were easily the standout, as much for the contrast of their good looks—different, but complementary as a couple in a way that Joel and Romi had not been. Neither gave their ages, but Conor looked to be late twenties or early thirties, tall and lean, with a close-shaved head, sharp cheekbones, and startling light-gray eyes, made all the more striking by his deep tan. He had the kind of feral grace that you saw in people who were extremely fit, and supremely in command of their own bodies. I found myself wondering if he was a professional athlete—a climber maybe, which would have fitted with his contained strength and the tan. But when he described himself, he said only that he was “in media,” which could have meant anything. His fun fact was that he’d been born at 6:06 on the sixth of June.

Maybe it was Conor’s air of complete confidence, but his girlfriend, Zana, looked much younger and much less self-possessed, barely out of uni I would have said, though that could have been partly down to her size. She was small, barely five foot, and almost ethereally slender, with a heart-shaped face, huge Bambi-like dark eyes fringed with sooty lashes, and long, shimmering chestnut hair that cascaded like waves over her shoulders—hair that I’d noticed and envied through the door. She spoke very quietly, and didn’t give a fun fact about herself, and when she sat down, I got the impression that she was relieved to be out of the limelight.

It was then that I realized that everyone else had spoken—and Nico and I were up.

Nico stood up, holding my hand, and smiled around the circle.

“Hey guys, I’m Nico. I’m twenty-eight, and I’m an actor from East London. Lyla and I have been together almost three years”—again, I bit back the urge to correct him, but let it pass—“and our fun fact, and I guess it’s a joint one like Dan and Santana—is that it’s our third anniversary this week.”

I did a double take, and then realized he was right. Well, if you counted our anniversary as the day we’d got off in my friend’s bathroom. It was the second week of February—almost Valentine’s Day. Three years. Three years. Even if I quibbled Nico’s definition of “together,” it sounded like a lot.

There were wolf whistles from around the group, and someone made a crack about it being time for Nico to propose maybe? I was so distracted that I stammered my way through my introduction, saying something about working in science, and then sat down, loosening my sweaty hand from Nico’s as soon as I reasonably could and wiping it surreptitiously on the skirt of my red dress. I am Lyla and I have no idea what I’m doing here, was what I had really wanted to say, but it was the one thing I couldn’t admit. Fake it until you make it, I heard again inside my head. But I wasn’t a faker. I was a scientist—the absolute opposite of a faker—someone whose prime duty was to the truth. Could I really do this? Could I bullshit my way through the next two weeks? I took a gulp of my drink. It was disgustingly warm, and this time the sweetness made me shudder.

“That was so much fun!” Camille was saying. She had stood up and now she moved to the center of the circle, clapping enthusiastically as the others joined in. “I know it probably seemed a bit whirlwind, but trust me, there will be lots of opportunities to get to know each other on the island. And we have a whole evening on the boat for you to mingle. Now, before you all scatter to chat, there’s one more bit of business we need to get through—and I’m sorry about this—but we have to take your phones. And your smart watches, laptops… basically any communication devices. So if you could, um, set your out of offices and so on and then, well, pop them in here.” She gestured towards a box sitting beneath the table that had held the welcome drinks.

There was a long, shocked silence. Then Angel spoke, her voice stony.

“I am sorry, what did you say?”

“It was mentioned on the contract,” Camille said apologetically. “But, um… yes, I can appreciate we maybe should have made that a little clearer in the initial talks. Sorry, it is completely standard practice on reality TV, I assure you.”

Looking round the seating area, it seemed that I wasn’t the only person who hadn’t been aware of the rule. Santana was looking taken aback, and Dan had his arms folded in a very mulish way. It was Bayer who raised his voice over Camille’s apologies.

“It’s a fucking cheek is what it is. That’s a brand-new Apple watch, that is. It’s got all my biometric data on it. How am I gonna monitor my sleep patterns?”

“I know, I know, I’m really sorry,” Camille said again. “I really am, I thought your agents had passed all this on—but honestly, it is standard. We can’t have people communicating outside of the group, and obviously we don’t want any leaks.”

“But we all have signed an accord de confidentialité!” broke in Angel. Her accent was getting stronger with the upset. “That is what I do not understand. If you don’t trust us to say not who is won, what good will taking our phones gonna do?”

“It’s not about trust,” Camille said, looking a little desperate. “And I can assure you the devices will be totally safe. Baz is putting them in his personal safe—”

“It was on the contracts you signed,” broke in a deep voice, and turning, I saw that Baz had come around the corner of the deck and was standing, arms folded, just behind Camille. “And anyone who doesn’t like it can fuck off and I’ll sue you for breach of contract. Capiche?”

At his words, I felt a little shiver of outrage run through me. This was the first time I’d seen Baz since the Zoom call, when he’d been all sweetheart and super. The first time I’d ever met him in person, in fact. Now we were all safely signed up to his project, it was jarring how quickly he’d jumped from bonhomie to threats.

I could tell I wasn’t the only person having these thoughts. There was a mutinous silence in the room. I could see the other couples looking at each other, signaling varying degrees of irritation and alarm. Even Camille seemed to have sensed the change in mood. She was looking extremely tense. I put my hand up, and then, when Baz didn’t say anything, I coughed.

“Can I ask a question?”

“Sure.” Baz folded his arms. “Fire away, Lola.”

“Lyla,” I said firmly. I had let him get my name wrong too many times on the Zoom call. “I’ve got a laptop in my bag. I need it to do work. Can I keep that, assuming it’s not connected to the internet?”

“Sorry, no can do,” Baz said dismissively.

“I’m in the same boat,” Joel said, rather anxiously. “I mean, maybe if you don’t give us the internet password—”

Baz cut him off.

“I said, no can do. And FYI, and this goes for everyone, there will be luggage and personal searches, so don’t even think about trying to smuggle anything onto the island.”

A little hum of indignation ran around the room. The relaxed, celebratory mood had completely dissipated.

“I’ll need to call my mum,” Nico said. He had crossed his arms, and I could feel his tenseness in his biceps, pressed against mine. “And my agent. I can’t just go off-grid.”

“Oh, of course, totally,” Camille said. “And there’s, like, a whole procedure with contacts and stuff. We have a dedicated number for families to check in with, and of course if anything crucial were to happen at home, we could pass that on.”

“How do we know you’ll tell us?” said Bayer, a little sulkily. “You could just sit on the information.”

He had a point—and my respect for him went up a notch at his willingness to raise it.

“Um—I mean—” Camille looked a little desperate, and she cast an imploring look at Baz, who broke in brusquely.

“You don’t. All you have is my guarantee that if it’s something important, we’ll tell you. And if that’s not good enough for you, you can go home.”

There was another silence. I could feel a strong undercurrent of resentment running around the room, but also something else—a sense of capitulation. Because the truth was, and we all knew it, everyone was here because they wanted to be, needed to be, or because their partner did. Every single one of these couples had someone who was hoping to make it big off the back of this opportunity, and no one could afford to turn down that chance.

“Well, I guess that settles that, then,” Baz said, and he folded his arms.

Then Conor stood up. Standing, I realized he was even taller than I’d thought. He had a good six inches on Baz, and in the muted light filtering through the awning, his pale gray eyes looked almost uncanny.

“Your word is good enough for me, Baz,” he said. “I left my phone in my room, but I’ll get it to you as soon as possible, and so will Zana.”

And then he smiled.

For a moment Baz didn’t say anything. Thanks, would have been the natural response, but he didn’t say it. He simply stood there, staring Conor down, unblinking. I looked from one man to the other, trying to figure out what the energy crackling between them meant. I’ve never been a body language kind of person—I prefer data, figures, cold hard facts. But now I wished I had Nico’s gift for reading between the lines, because there was something going on here, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was. Baz should have been grateful to Conor for backing him up—but he didn’t look it. He was looking at Conor almost as if he disliked him. Was he pissed off at Conor for acting like Baz needed his support to get the group on his side? Or was there some other undercurrent—something that I was missing?

Conor, meanwhile, was acting… not quite conciliatory, but there was a touch of magnanimity in his voice, as if he was making it clear that he didn’t have to comply but was choosing to.

What was going on here? Did these two know each other?

It was Baz who looked away first—down at his phone as if to underscore the fact that he at least didn’t have to give up his tech.

“Good,” he said, his voice almost a growl. “I’m glad that’s clear. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a fuck of a lot to get sorted before we make land. I’m sorry I can’t stick around, but you’re in good hands with Camille.”

Camille bobbed her head nervously, and Baz yanked open the door back inside and disappeared.

“Well, that was fucking weird,” Dan said in a low voice. No one else seemed to react, but I glanced at him and our eyes met, united in our discomforted bewilderment. What the fuck just happened?

Camille cleared her throat.

“Well, anyway. As Baz said, glad that’s cleared up, and so sorry if that wasn’t made clear from the outset. I do assure you it’s totally standard for reality TV. We want you communicating with each other, not head down over your phones! But, um… well, I’ll let you finish your drinks, and then maybe everyone would like to grab their phones and turn them in, and I’ll give out the latest version of the information pack—it’s got lots of useful info on the other contestants, the rules, the welfare team… loads of good stuff. And if you’ve got any questions, I’ll be in the breakout zone on the third deck.”

There was absolute silence, then Conor began to walk towards the exit. Zana followed him without a word.

And with that, it was clear that the meeting was over.