At the Tiki bar, she slides her fingers into her back pocket before it dawns on her. It’s empty. And it will be for a while. She drops her head onto her folded arms on the counter and wonders how long it will take to stop automatically reaching for her phone. Her security blanket. Her window to the world. To Jamie. What would she be looking at now? She’d be zooming in on his recent pictures, trying to find any kind of evidence to suggest this was coming. Maybe there’d be something in his eyes.
How can I ever trust a man again? Will I ever even meet a man to distrust again?
She and Jamie built a life together, and now that he’s smashed it to pieces she has to rebuild it from scratch. On her own. Exhausted, she takes a deep breath through her nose and exhales for five.
BANG!
The silence is broken by the slam of a door and heels clicking loudly across the floor. She sits still and tries to stare through the glass door as shouting erupts from the living room.
Amy gets up from her seat and tiptoes across the garden and back into the kitchen, where she stops in the dining room doorway and approaches the sofa.
A tall, powerful-looking woman is shouting at the TV screen with her arms folded tightly across her chest. She’s wearing a skintight red dress with gold heels and has an enormous beehive of braids coiled on her head, adding half a metre to her height. Her neck, ears and wrists are dripping in beads. She oozes glamour.
‘Oh, get fucked!
‘Fuck off!
‘What the fuck do you know, @essexboy2000? Fuck all, that’s what.’
She turns around and towers over Amy. Unfolding her lithe arms, she takes Amy’s hand in long, slim fingers as she grins with brilliant white teeth shining through bright red lipstick.
‘All right, love? I’m Jackie! What the fuck have we done?’
Six
All six contestants are sitting awkwardly on or around the sofa, struggling to speak through sobbing or spitting venom. They’ve just finished picking at a salad delivery, which was discreetly dropped off in the fridge earlier.
What are you supposed to say to a stranger who’s just had the plug pulled on their whole future? Amy had chosen an inappropriate ‘Lovely to meet you’ with Jackie, an unconvincing back pat and a ‘Well, it could be worse’ with Hattie, a chef from Southampton, and an awkward ‘So, how would you spend a million pounds?’ with Kathy, a quiet fifty-two-year-old mum from Bristol.
‘On myself!’ she chuckled, shifting in her seat to lean across the coffee table. ‘My kids are busy living their own lives in London now. If I shared it with them, I wouldn’t see the little shits for the rest of the year. Bless. I love them really.’ She smiled before glancing at the camera, her eyes glistening in the light.
For the fifth and sixth contestants, Amy resolved to give a knowing nod that simply and silently said ‘I feel your pain’.
‘How many people do you think are watching us?’ whispers Hattie, who’s clearly feeling insecure about being on screen, constantly trying to sit where the camera can’t see her and hiding her tummy with folded arms.
Jackie continues, ‘No one’s going to watch this show, it’s a bunch of sexist wank. I give it a week before it’s cancelled and we’re out of here.’
Whir. Beep.
The cameras turn on Jackie.
‘Exactly. Who the fook would wanna watch our motley crew of miserable outcasts?’ says Lauren, a DJ from Newcastle with a bleached-blonde pixie cut and a nose piercing. ‘A reality show about funerals would be more upliftin’.’
‘I don’t know, Lauren,’ begins Kathy, staring blankly into the distance. ‘People love seeing other people fall. It makes them feel better about their own lives.’
The housemates have made a policy to avoid looking at the comments feed in front of them, which is proving impossible for most of them. Over the last hour, it has become clear that the public are taking a sick pleasure in being cruel, and the continuous string of emotional outbursts are exhausting. But for some housemates, the temptation is too much. Just a few moments ago, Amy’s heart almost burst when she asked Gemma what she did for work.
‘None of your fucking business, mate.’
‘Sorry, I was just trying to make conversation,’ replied a red-faced Amy.
‘Sorry, babes, I wasn’t talking to you, I was talking to this creep asking me how often I work out. Fuck, I wish I had my phone. I’d properly give him a piece of my mind.’
The comment does make sense. Gemma looks like she’s made of pure muscle. She also seems to love the spotlight, and has reapplied her lip gloss in front of the glass doors at least ten times since they arrived an hour ago.
The screen suddenly switches to a countdown clock, starting from five.
4 … 3 …
Amy feels sick.
2 … 1
‘Here we go,’ says Lauren.
The TV goes blank momentarily before Adam Andrews’ giant face appears, his eyes the size of side plates they’re so big on the screen.
‘All right, girls?’ He winks.
A bass-heavy dance track starts blasting and the cameras quickly pan out to the studio audience, who are going wild and throwing their hands up in the air like they’ve joined a religious cult.
‘Ugh, I hate it when men call us girls,’ mutters Amy. ‘It’s so gross.’
‘It’s better than what my ex Dylan used to call me,’ Hattie replies quietly with a straight face. ‘Hattie the Hippo.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ve been Piglet for the last two years.’
‘Hippo was actually a compliment compared to what the boys used to call me at school. I’ll give you a clue – it begins with F and rhymes with Hattie.’
Amy leans over and gives her a side hug.
The camera focuses on a group of four young men wearing matching white fedoras, tuxedo jackets and tangerine skin. When they see they’re in the spotlight, each one unbuttons his jacket to reveal a word printed across his oily six-pack.
GEMMA – IS – A – FITTY!
They pump their arms and thrust their hips in time to the track.
‘Where do they find these people?’ mutters Jackie.
‘OH MY GOD!’ screams Gemma, leaping out of her chair. ‘Those are the lads from my gym!’
Gemma breaks out into exactly the same dance routine, her glossy pink filler-plumped lips pursed in duck-face mode.
‘Sick!’
She jumps back onto the sofa, looking around at the other housemates, smiling sweetly, with her chewing gum lodged in her veneers.
‘OK, calm down everybody,’ Adam laughs as he addresses the audience at the front of the stage and they start to simmer down. ‘Wow, you lot are loving this, aren’t you? Well, there’s even more to love coming up right now, because it’s time to meet the stars of the show. ARE … YOU … READY?’
The audience scream a collective ‘YES!’ followed by a chorus of woo-hoos.
‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ says Hattie, whose hands have started to shake uncontrollably. ‘What have I done?’
Lauren takes one of them and clasps it in her lap.
‘I’ll take that as a yes then, shall I?’ Adam looks out, his Tangoed face basking in the glow of the adulation. ‘Well then, let’s go!’