Our first friend spot was early the next morning. At the crack of dawn, a couple of the camera crew came in and installed the mounted cameras in the corners of the room. Close behind them was a soundie, who strung up some tiny little mics dangling from long strings attached to the ceiling. A clearly sleep-deprived Murray was on her heels, loaded down with a couple of green shopping bags.
‘I thought you weren’t going to hold my hand,’ I said to him, pulling the giant shapeless beige cardigan that he’d handed me around myself.
‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘But this is the first thing we’ve ever shot for this show where we want it to look like there’s zero danger of people falling in love. We’ve got to set it up right. Stand over there for me for a sec.’
I obeyed and spent the next few minutes moving around the room so Murray and the camera crew could check which parts of the Convent were in frame.
‘Dylan’s going on a single date with Jess D today,’ Murray said, when he was satisfied that the cameras were in the right places. ‘I want you to ask him about that. Get him talking about what he likes about her, why he chose her, that kind of thing.’
‘Okay,’ I said. I had no idea who Jess D was, but that sounded achievable enough. If I could pretend the cameras weren’t there.
Murray cast an eye over the couches and started rearranging the cushions, probably for maximum sexlessness. How you could arrange cushions for that purpose was beyond me, but I wasn’t about to question him. ‘I also wanted to talk to you alone, before Dylan gets here,’ he said, throwing a red cushion over onto the far couch and replacing it with a yellow one from one of his green bags. ‘He’s very charismatic and persuasive when he wants to be. Has he railroaded you into this?’
‘No!’ I said, surprised. ‘Absolutely not!’
‘Are you sure?’ Murray said, pausing and looking over at me. ‘Because you don’t have to do this. Not if you don’t want to.’
‘I do want to,’ I said. ‘This is as much for me as it is for him.’
Murray studied me for a long moment.
‘Instagram?’ he said at last.
I bit my lip, somewhere between embarrassed and ashamed.
‘You’re not the type.’
I pulled the horrible cardigan even tighter around myself.
‘We checked all your socials before we cast you. I can pick a wannabe influencer from a mile away. You’re not one.’
I actively tried to disappear into the horrible cardigan.
‘You fall apart when too many people look at you at the same time,’ Murray said. ‘Why would you want to be an influencer? Their whole job is being looked at.’
I bit my lip even harder and tasted blood.
‘Is this what you’re going to be like on camera? Completely non-verbal? Because it’s a million times easier for me if we don’t do this, Cece. I can pack this up in—’
‘I don’t have a choice,’ I blurted out. ‘I lost my job. I don’t have a safety net. I need some kind of income if I’m going to stay afloat. That’s why I panicked when I got eliminated. I need this.’
There was another long pause, during which the horrible cardigan cruelly failed to swallow me as Murray looked right through me.
Then, ‘Good,’ he said.
‘Good?!’ I exclaimed. ‘There’s nothing good about my situation, Murray. Not one single good thing. Do you know what it’s like to have nothing, to have no one, to have nowhere to go?’
‘No, but I’m sure it’s awful,’ he said. ‘That isn’t what I meant, though. I just meant that this makes my life easier.’
‘I’m so glad that my financial precarity makes your life easier.’
He ignored the snarl in my tone. ‘We cast you as a here-for-the-right-reasons type,’ he said. ‘But if you’re just here to become a social media star, I can trust you to do what you’re supposed to and not fuck up the story we’re trying to tell up at the Villa.’
I deflated. ‘Oh.’
‘If you can learn to keep your shit together on camera, Cece,’ Murray said, going back to arranging the cushions, ‘this could be a real opportunity for you. Pass me that.’
I threw him the floral cushion he was pointing to. ‘What do you mean?’
