AllFreeNovel
Share Us
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 REMARK about 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 IN Jakarta 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 Q&A 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.
