Chapter 7

“HO. LEE. SHIT.”

Nico had stepped off the boat onto the white sand, taken off his shoes, and was standing on the beach, scrunching his toes into the silky white grains with a look so blissed out, I wished I had a camera. Unfortunately, every single one of my devices, from my phone to my work laptop, was in Baz’s personal safe on board the Over Easy, so I had to hope that the camera crew currently circling the group was capturing his reaction.

Behind us was the yacht, moored about a hundred yards offshore, the little dinghy we’d actually crossed to the island in, and beyond both were miles and miles of sparkling blue sea, given an eerie iridescence by the sun flickering off the white sand. Ahead of us was Ever After Island—a slip of land only a few miles long, but large enough for what looked like a small forest, filled with what I could already see were palm trees, tall shrubby plants hung with comically large bunches of short stubby bananas, and many more flowers, trees, and plants that I didn’t recognize. I wasn’t sure whether the island would be big enough to support animals—but I could hear the sound of birds filtering through the trees, and high above Nico’s head a butterfly swooped past, its wings seeming too comically large and slow to keep itself aloft. It looked… well, it looked exactly like the photos Baz had sent through. Only better. So much better.

“Wow,” I said. “Just… wow.”

“Tell Nico how you’re feeling, Lyla?” a producer said, stepping towards me, and I saw that a fluffy mic had swung in front of me, just above my head.

“Oh!” I was instantly taken aback, unsure how to react, and glanced at the gaping black hole of the camera lens and then back at the producer. What I was actually feeling was… ruffled. Our arrival in paradise had been somewhat marred by full bag and body searches for communication devices before we were allowed to disembark. I was fairly sure I wasn’t the only person still bristling from the indignity of an intimate pat down and a crew member rummaging through my underwear; the others were just hiding it better than me. “I mean… great. Relieved to be off the boat.”

“Can you tell Nico about that? And don’t look at the lens, honey, if we want you to talk direct to camera we’ll pull you out for an otto.”

“An otto?” I wasn’t sure if I’d heard the word right.

“An O-T-O—a one-to-one interview. But don’t worry about that, honey, just talk to Nico. Pretend I’m not here.” I could tell the producer was becoming a little testy at my failure to understand what was required of me, but it was quite hard to pretend the crew weren’t there with the huge black camera looming in my face, and the boom mic waving overhead. Behind me I could see Bayer and Angel vamping it up for the cameras—Angel squealing and spinning around with her hair fanning out like the petals of a flower, Bayer scooping her up, grinning, and kissing her as she wrapped her long legs around him. Only ten minutes ago Bayer had been tantrumming about having his bags searched; now they looked like something out of a movie. I could see precisely how the scene was going to go down with viewers, the heart-eyes emojis, the tweets about what a cute couple they were. Farther over, Santana and Dan were wandering hand in hand across the wet sand. Dan had his shirt off and his trousers rolled up, Santana’s high heels were trailing from her free hand. They looked like the kind of soft-focus aspirational poster your co-worker would have pinned up in their cubical to help get them through the working day. Maybe with the slogan happiness is… your hand in mine or something equally sappy in a flowing font.

Every single one of them was providing an object lesson in what the camera wanted—and what I was completely failing to provide.

“Um… wow, Nico, isn’t this great?” I said at last.

Nico swung round. He had undone a couple of buttons on his loose white linen shirt, showing his tanned chest, and just the right amount of chest hair—no Burt Reynolds–style chest wig, more Poldark’s scything scene. Whatever he’d been doing in the gym recently was working; I could see his abs through the shirt.

“It’s paradise,” he said seriously, and I could tell that although he was looking at me, he was speaking for the camera. “And the only thing that makes it better is that I’m here with you. You’re all I’ve ever wanted, Lil.” And then he came over, took my face between his hands in a way he had never done before, a way, I realized suddenly, that people did in the movies, and kissed me passionately, full on the lips.

For a minute I had no idea what to do. I knew that I was standing stiffly, my lips immobile under Nico’s, but I was also aware that the producer was hovering just behind my shoulder, that the camera was almost certainly zooming closer, and that this pose, with Nico theatrically clasping my head instead of putting his arms around me in his usual affectionate way, was strangely awkward. The whole scene felt completely and utterly fake, and I realized with a sudden shock, that I wasn’t just kissing my boyfriend—I was kissing a professional actor, and he was performing for the camera.

When we broke apart I resisted the urge to blink and wipe my mouth. Instead, mostly to give myself an excuse to walk away from the camera, I took Nico’s hand, shamelessly copying Dan and Santana, pulled off my sandals, and began to walk along the shore, the gentle surf lapping at my ankles. I had been expecting the sea to be a refreshing change from the humidity in the air, but the water was surprisingly warm—almost blood temperature.

“It’s like a bath!” I said to Nico in surprise, and then, “Oh wow, look, a fish!”

“It’s the sea, Lyla,” Nico said with a laugh, but then he saw what I was pointing at—a tiny minnow barely longer than my finger, with stark black and white stripes, darting through the turquoise water. As we watched, fascinated, a little shoal of bright orange fish followed it, shockingly vivid against the blue water.

We watched, mesmerized for a few minutes, and then Nico pointed to a little path leading into the forest.

“Where do you think that leads? Maybe the villas?”

“Let’s find out,” I said, with a smile that I was conscious was as much for the camera crew following a few steps behind as for Nico himself. As we crossed the beach and made our way into the trees, I could see the shape of one… two… no, three low-slung villas, white walls gleaming through the lush greenery.

“Which one do you think is ours?” I said aloud.

“God, I don’t know, they’re all incredible,” Nico said, and then gave a stagey gasp as we rounded a clump of trees and saw in the distance, stretching out across the water, the honeymoon villa I’d seen online—the one on stilts above the turquoise ocean. “Holy fuck! Look at that one!”

“Please don’t swear!” the producer said from behind us in an irritated tone. “We’re aiming for a PG-13 audience. I can’t use the footage if you swear.”

“Oh my days!” Nico said obediently, with just the same amount of awed shock in his voice as the first time round. “Lyla, look at that!”

“That can’t be ours,” I said, not trying to keep the envy out of my voice.

I let Nico’s hand drop and went up to the first little villa we were passing, nestled in a clearing between palm trees like a little jungle oasis. On the door was tacked a piece of paper.

Santana and Dan, the note said. Welcome to Forest Retreat.

“This is Dan and Santana’s,” I called over my shoulder to Nico. “Let’s find ours!”

He nodded, grabbed my hand, and we ran down the little pebbled path between the trees, the camera man loping in our wake. As I pushed aside the flowers and palm fronds blocking our path, I wondered how he managed to keep the footage steady—wouldn’t it be jolting all over the place? But I didn’t have time to wonder for long, because Nico had spotted another villa, this one at the top of a little outcrop above the sea.

He was first to it, peering at the note.

“?‘Bayer and Angel,’?” he read aloud. “?‘Welcome to Ocean Bluff.’ Okay, this isn’t ours. Keep hunting, Lyla!”

I grinned and nodded. I was getting into this now, almost forgetting the camera crew behind me and the producer jogging in their wake. I followed Nico along the shore towards another villa, this one practically on the beach itself.

“?‘Conor and Zana,’?” I read out. “?‘Welcome to Paradise Cove.’?”

We were almost at the honeymoon villa now, and I stepped onto the jetty that joined it to the mainland, feeling the planks shift a little beneath my feet as the waves slapped at the wooden struts. It couldn’t, it couldn’t be ours, could it?

But as I drew closer, I could see that it wasn’t. I couldn’t quite read the note on the door, but it was of a different format to the letters pinned on the other villas, shorter, with no address at the top. Sure enough, when I stepped off the jetty and onto the veranda, I could see the pinned card didn’t have anyone’s name on it. Ever After Villa, it read. Nothing else. It must be some kind of reward villa. Maybe you got to have dinner here if you aced one of the challenges. Or perhaps it was where Baz was staying.

The producer was hovering as I retraced my steps back to the beach to break the news to Nico that no, we weren’t staying in the over-water villa, but thinking of Baz had made me wonder something else.

“Where are the crew staying?”

“On the boat,” the producer said. “Most of them anyway. When the resort is finished there’ll be a full staff accommodation block on the eastern side of the island, but unfortunately that hasn’t been built yet. There’s only a few temporary amenity huts put up by the construction company.”

“So there won’t be any crew here in the evenings?” I asked, a little doubtfully.

The producer shook her head.

“No. There’s a radio in case of emergencies, and we’ll have a couple of staff members staying in the amenity huts, just in case. But we just don’t have the facilities to house the majority of the crew. Most of the out-of-hours filming’s going to be done by remote.”

“Remote?”

The producer frowned.

“Didn’t your agent explain all this? The villas are all fitted out with cameras. Not in the bathrooms, obviously, so if you want to change or anything, you go in there—though don’t worry, we won’t be showing any nudity regardless. Like I said, Baz is aiming for a PG-13 rating, though if everyone keeps swearing, that might be wishful thinking.” She rolled her eyes. “But otherwise… assume you’re being filmed twenty-four seven.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“It was all in the contract, honey,” the producer said. She looked a little defensive.

I turned to look at Nico.

“Did you know about this? Cameras in all the rooms?”

“Lil,” Nico said. He had that voice on, the calm down, Lyla, don’t be so uptight voice that’s guaranteed to make me lose my shit. “Have you ever seen a reality TV show? This is how they work. They want unguarded moments.”

“Unguarded moments? Is that the new term for people shagging?”

The camera man took a step forward, swung the lens towards me. I gritted my teeth, resisting the urge to tell him to fuck off. At least if I did, they wouldn’t be able to use the footage. Unless they bleeped it, of course. And then how would it be edited? Probably me reading the note saying that the water villa wasn’t for us, then cut to me throwing a hissy fit at Nico. Did you know about this? Then, And you can fuck off as well to the camera man.

Week one: Lyla is promoted from boffin to diva bitch.

I remembered Conor’s words on the boat—every show needs a villain. With a temper tantrum like that, I’d be putting myself forward for the role fair and square. The question was, did I mind? In some ways it might work out better for Nico—when I was eliminated, he’d look a lot more sympathetic pairing up with other people if I’d been edited into a complete cow.

But Conor’s words kept coming back to me—every show needs a villain. And I didn’t watch much reality TV, but I did know one thing: the villains were hardly ever eliminated, at least not until the final showdown. They needed that grit in the oyster to make the show interesting. I had no idea how the challenges were going to work, but one thing I was absolutely certain of—they could be rigged. And if I made myself too interesting, they were never going to let me go.

I forced myself to smile sweetly.

“You’re right. I was being naive. Of course they’ll want to get as much footage as they can. Come on. Let’s find our villa.”

And then I turned and stomped off up the beach, trying not to let the anger show in the set of my spine too clearly.

I HAD CALMED down a little by the time we found our villa—just a little bit back from the beach and surrounded by a cluster of palm trees. Nico and Lyla, welcome to Palm Tree Rest read the note on the door. There was no ocean view, just a sliver of sea between the trunks, but personally, I was happy to have the extra shade—though maybe not the extra mosquitoes, I thought, as one buzzed past my nose and I flapped at it reflexively.

In all the haste of disembarking, I’d forgotten to put on any deet, and now I wondered what mosquitoes carried here. Probably not malaria, if this island had the same risk profile as Indonesia, but possibly dengue. I hadn’t managed to get a good look at the mosquito that had buzzed past my face, but the fact that it was out in the day meant it was most likely Aedes Aegypti, the kind that carries dengue and chikungunya, not Anopheles, which is responsible for malaria.

Part of me was intrigued. Although I’d spent years studying mosquito-borne illnesses, I’d never actually had dengue, or chikungunya. Perhaps now was my chance. And the first time you got dengue, it wasn’t usually much of an issue. It was reinfection with a different serotype that was the big risk factor for hemorrhagic fever. But on the other hand… I made a mental note to get the deet out of my luggage as soon as we were allowed and to remind Nico to do the same.

While I was pondering mosquitoes, Nico had opened the door into the villa and begun exploring.

“Ho— I mean wow, Lyla, come and have a look!” I heard from inside, and now I followed him over the threshold, making sure to brush the sand off my bare feet on the hessian entrance mat.

Inside was a square room, just one, but more than big enough for two people—all white walls and dark shining wood, with a huge four-poster bed at the center, hung with nets that rippled in the breeze. Through an open doorway I could see a bathroom almost as big as the bedroom, complete with double sink, giant stone bath, and a rainforest shower the size of our kitchen at home.

It was clearly all brand-spanking-new—the overriding smell was of wood oil and fresh paint, in spite of the stiff breeze coming through the open windows, and I could see some of the windows still had suction cup marks on them, where the construction workers had maneuvered them into place. Still, we weren’t the first guests. As I stared upwards, where the raftered ceiling soared to a point, I saw a tiny gecko run for the shadows with a flick of its tail, and I smiled. Not everyone would welcome a little lizard friend in their room, but I was happy for him to deal with the mosquitoes.

“This is beautiful,” I said sincerely to Nico, and he grabbed me by the waist and swung me around, whispering I love you into my hair. I never liked it when Nico did his twirling-around act—it made me feel off-balance, and kind of like he was flexing the undeniable fact that he was bigger and stronger than me, and could pick me up if he wanted, no matter how much I didn’t want him to. But this time I pressed my face into his neck and let him, knowing it was his way of trying to make up for our simmering nonargument on the beach.

When he set me down, I stood for a moment, regaining my balance with one hand on the bedpost—and there it was; a little white box in the corner of the room, with a single unblinking dark eye, overlooking every inch of the place, and most particularly the bed. I felt the smile fade from my face, but the truth was, Nico was right. This was the reality of reality TV. I had signed up for this, even if I hadn’t fully understood what I was letting myself in for at the time.

“Knock knock!” came a voice from the door, and I swung round to see Camille standing there, smiling and holding a big bunch of tropical flowers. She held them out, and for a moment I hesitated.

“Are those… for me?”

Camille nodded.

“A little welcome gift for our Perfect Couple stars! Can I just—” She stopped for a moment, her hand pressed to the earpiece wedged into her ear, nodding. “Blast… it looks like there’s a problem with this one as well. One second.”

She pulled a chair over to the corner of the room where the camera was situated and climbed onto it, peering up into the black empty lens, wiggling something at the rear of the camera.

“Is that better?” she said into her mic. Nico and I couldn’t hear the answer, but apparently it wasn’t what she’d wanted, as her face fell. “Well, there’s nothing we can do now, we’ll have to get the spares when we do the helicopter run tonight. Or do you think it’s a software issue?”

There was a pause, the person on the other end of the earpiece evidently talking.

“Yes, so that’s Forest Retreat.” Camille was ticking them off on her fingers, though the other person couldn’t see the action. “Palm Tree Rest, Island Dream, and the west cabana camera.” Another pause. “No, that one’s okay; I used the spare to replace it and it seemed to be fine when I left.” Another pause. “I’ve not checked there yet, I’m still at Palm Tree. I’ll go there next, but do you want me to bring this camera back to the boat, or leave it up?”

More speech we couldn’t hear, but apparently the answer was leave it up, because Camille climbed down without removing the camera, her expression annoyed.

“There’s a problem with the sound in some of the villas, unfortunately, so we might have to send someone over to do filming in person tonight. It’ll depend how it goes with the task this evening. The cameras are filming okay, but the mics aren’t picking up any speech. We’ll get it fixed tomorrow, but in the meantime, please try not to say anything too interesting!”

“We can guarantee that,” Nico said with a laugh. “Don’t forget, Lyla’s a scientist, so unless you’re into viruses… Joke,” he added, poking me in the ribs as I made a mock offended face. Camille’s rather tense expression broke into a reluctant smile.

“I’m sure you’re both very interesting, Nico. Now, we’ll give you a few minutes to freshen up, and then we’d love to see you in the cabana for some brunch.”

“Where’s that?” Nico asked, and Camille pointed out the back of the villa, the opposite direction to the beach.

“Just over there, through the trees. It’s a kind of communal area where the boys and girls eat and hang out and so on.”

Boys and girls? It seemed a strangely twee term for a group with an average age pushing thirty, but before I could ask, Nico spoke.

“Great, I’m starving.”

Camille smiled back.

“Good. But be warned—there’ll be some games to play too. See you there!”

Nico and I waited, as her shape disappeared between the trees, and then he turned to me.

“So? I mean—this is everything we were promised, isn’t it?”

I nodded. It was true; the island really had lived up to the pictures Baz had sent, I couldn’t deny it.

“Yes, you’re right. It’s just as beautiful as the photos. I just—”

Nico rolled his eyes.

“You just what? For God’s sake, Lyla. We’re in literal paradise. Are you never satisfied?”

“I am satisfied,” I protested. “It’s just—it’s not finished. Doesn’t that bother you? You can literally still smell the paint, and half the facilities aren’t even built yet.”

“So? I can’t imagine Baz would have got this place for free once it was up and running and taking millionaire guests every week. And we’re the first people who get to enjoy it—isn’t that something to celebrate?”

“It’s not the paint, Nico, it’s more the fact that we’re acting as guinea pigs for this place. If there are any issues with the infrastructure, we’re going to be the ones finding out. What happens if the generator gives out? Or the desalination plant breaks down?”

“Desally what?” Nico looked blank.

“The water, Nico! They have to get it from somewhere. They’re hardly going to be piping it thousands of miles from the mainland, so they must be desalinating seawater—reverse osmosis, I’d guess, which is a pretty technical process. I mean, they can’t even get the cameras working properly.” I gestured at the box on the wall. “What if something that actually matters goes—”

“Then I imagine they’ll call in an engineer from the mainland,” Nico broke in impatiently. “This is what telly’s like, Lyla. You’re the scientist, so I’m not going to argue with you about reverse whatever it was, but this is my professional area and I’m telling you, this is totally normal. You don’t get it because you only see the front of everything when you watch a show—you don’t see the unfinished woodwork behind set and the costumes held together with glue and staples. We’re backstage at the theater, honey—this is what it looks like.”

“Don’t call me honey,” I snapped.

“It’s a term of endearment,” Nico retorted, but I knew it wasn’t, not really. When Nico was feeling affectionate, he called me Lil and told me he loved me. Honey was reserved for something else—the moments when he felt I was putting him down and he wanted to hit back.

For a long moment we stood, glaring at each other, and then Nico’s face softened.

“Look,” he said, moving across to me and putting his hands on my shoulders. “Lil, I get it. This is weird for you, being in my world. But this is my world, so could you please just trust me that I know what I’m talking about? Because I do know TV, and I’m telling you, this is a hell of a lot more fancy than most of the sets I’ve been on, and I think we’re pretty lucky to be here. But more to the point, we are here. And like it or not, there’s no going back. So you might as well stop fussing about the details and enjoy the ride, because there’s nothing else you can do.”

His words were meant to be reassuring. And as he put his arms around me and hugged me close, I knew he wanted me to say that they were—that I was just stressed about my own work and taking it out on him.

But the truth was, I felt the exact opposite of reassured. Because he was right—everything he’d said was completely correct: we were here. And there was no going back. And there was nothing either of us could do about it.