‘Naya’s an uppity bitch,’ Heather answered. ‘It’s disgustingthat someone like her talks the way she does to someone like me.’
Saurav made a noise in the back of his throat.
I looked over. He shook his head.Don’t look at me.
‘She’s always trying to bully me,’ Heather replied, throwing her blonde hair over her shoulder.
I had a sudden vivid memory of the group home Ayo and I had lived in together with our nemesis Fiona. Ayo had been working cash-in-hand as a waitress for a dodgy restaurant, and Fiona had stolen a chunk of her money. Ayo had demanded that she give it back, and Fiona had gone crying to the foster mother that Ayo was a bully.
The foster mother had taken one look at the crying white girl and one look at the angry Black girl, and Ayo was in trouble for weeks.
‘It’s like she thinks she’s on my level,’ Heather said, ‘but she’s not.’
What was it Murray had told me I was supposed to be doing up here? Watching the Juliets and gathering evidence of what they were really like when Dylan wasn’t around?
‘Saurav,’ I said, ‘I know I’m not supposed to talk to you, but… is Heather like this all the time?’
He nodded.
I bit my lip, thinking. ‘If I get up and walk out of here, can you follow me?’
‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘If you’re doing a runner, though, I’d appreciate it if you’d run slow. I’ve got a bad knee.’
‘I’m not doing a runner,’ I said. ‘I do need to talk to Dylan, though.’
‘Can I make a suggestion?’
‘Of course.’
‘How about we set it up for the viewers?’ Saurav said. ‘Give them a little context, rather than just you bolting out of here?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know the kind of thing. “Oh my God, Dylan has to know about this, right now!”’ he said in a high girly voice. ‘We can’t use any of this footage with me talking in it, so let’s give production something they can use.’
I looked at the camera over his shoulder and swallowed.
But I could do it. Of course I could do it. For Dylan.
‘Oh my God,’ I said, looking at Heather toss her hair over her shoulder again on the monitor. ‘I’ve got to give Dylan a heads-up about this right away. Friends don’t let friends date people like Heather.’
Night had well and truly fallen by the time a PA dropped me off in front of the Convent in a golf cart. I’d managed to get through telling Dylan about Heather without completely crumbling in front of the cameras, but then Murray had made me wait around for hours while they filmed a snap Necklace Ceremony. ‘You think you’re getting out of this without doing an interview?’ he said, when I protested. ‘Nice try, Cece.’
That had taken another painfully slow hour. ‘Good job today,’ Murray said when we wrapped up. ‘I thought that was going to take longer. You’re getting better at this.’
I was too scared to ask if that meant I’d done enough to get onto another show in the Romeo and Juliet universe. If he’dlooked at me, said, ‘Hmm, no, we need more out of you before we can make that call,’ I knew I’d use it as an excuse not to rip the Band-Aid off with Dylan.
I paused on the Convent verandah for a moment and let my forehead thunk into the post.
I was going to do it. Next time I saw Dylan, I was going to do it. No more torturing myself with a fantasy I could never have.
‘Cece?’
I turned. Rani was illuminated in the doorway. ‘Could you come in here, please?’ she asked.
Oh God. Not once in my life had anything good ever happened after someone uttered the phrase ‘Could you come in here, please?’.
I dug my fingernails into my palm and followed her inside.
