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It was clear they were going to be some time, so rather than hover over them, I picked up a copy of the one of the information brochures lying on the table and took it around the corner of the deck to a shady lounge chair, with the aim of trying to fix the names and descriptions of the other contestants more firmly in my memory.
The first couple listed was Conor (31) and Zana (22), and the age gap made me do a double take. Was it weird that a thirty-one-year-old was dating a twenty-two-year-old? Not that much weirder than my four-year age gap with Nico, I guessed. Conor (whose bio said he was a “YouTuber and NFT trader”) was grinning in his headshot, his cheeks crinkled in a wide, infectious smile that had me smiling back, almost in spite of myself. Zana, on the other hand, stared seriously out from under narrow, straight brows and described herself as a part-time model, which wasn’t hard to believe. She didn’t say what she did with the other part of her time.
Then there was the couple who had spoken first at the round circle—Bayer (28) and Angel (28). Bayer described himself as “a fitness instructor from North London,” Angel as a “Pilates coach and influencer—not necessarily in that order,” whatever that meant. Maybe she influenced people to do Pilates.
The next couple listed was Dan (25) and Santana (25). Dan’s picture showed him laughing and topless, flexing for the camera in a way that looked a tiny bit narcissistic for my taste. His bio described him as a “swimsuit model.” Santana was finger-combing her strawberry blonde hair, and her bio said that that she was a “champagne socialite.” Another term that left me at sea. Was socialite a typo for socialist? Or was it her idea of a joke? Perhaps it was a fancy way of saying she was unemployed—though she didn’t look it. In person she’d had the glowing, glossy look of someone with a lot of money.
Then there was Joel (33, “a teacher from south London,” and the only contestant older than me) and Romi (31, “beauty influencer”). Their headshots reinforced the impression I’d had at the meeting of an oddly mismatched couple. Joel grinned shyly at the camera through thick blocky glasses that gave him an endearingly geeky look. He was handsome, in a kind of nerdcore way, but he looked like he’d be totally at home in one of the labs I worked in—a sharp contrast to Romi, who was made up to the nines with thick foundation, platinum hair, and lashes I was sure couldn’t possibly be real. I tried to imagine her pipetting a tray of samples and failed—there was no way you’d be able to fit a pair of nitrile gloves over those nails, for a start.
Finally, I got to me and Nico. Nico (28, “actor and presenter”) and Lyla (32, “doctor”).
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” I said aloud.
“Sorry… did I…?”
I looked up. Joel had come around the corner of the deck and was standing, looking a little anxious, at the foot of my lounger.
“Sorry, sorry, not you. I was just—I was reading the information pack and they’ve got my job wrong. I’m not a doctor—I mean, I am a doctor, I suppose, but not in the medical sense—I’m a PhD. I work on viruses. I bloody hope no one’s going to expect me to do a tracheotomy while we’re here.”
Joel laughed.
“Join the club. They’ve got me down as a teacher—I’m actually a lecturer in journalism at St. Clements. I already told them once, when they sent the pack around the first time, but clearly they didn’t bother correcting it.”
“A lecturer?” I sat up and pushed my sunglasses up my nose. “No way! I thought I recognized a fellow academic. How do you find St. Clements?”
“Honestly? Bloody shit. I don’t know about science, but my side it’s all zero hours contracts and no job security. I imagine research is probably a bit better?”
I snorted.
“I wish. Well, I mean to be fair, it’s not zero hours, but it’s all short-term contracts so you’re always budgeting from one twenty-four-month post-doc to another.”
“Tell me about it,” Joel said ruefully. Then he laughed, and for a moment we just sat there, or rather I sat and he stood, grinning at each other like idiots, savoring this weird moment of camaraderie in the middle of the Indian Ocean. It was Joel who broke the moment. “So… what brings a virologist on a reality TV show? Hoping to invest your prize money in cutting-edge Covid research?”
I laughed.
“I’m nothing as fashionable as Covid. I’m working on chikungunya at the moment.” When Joel looked politely blank, I added, “It’s a mosquito-borne disease, a bit like malaria, but not quite as deadly. There’s no cure and no treatment. It’s classed as a neglected tropical disease by the WHO, which basically means there’s also no funding. Anyway, as you can probably guess, I’m here for my boyfriend. He’s the one with the hopes of breaking out. It’s a weird format, isn’t it—I get the impression that’s how a fair number of us ended up here, dragged along by our more extroverted half.”
“Guilty,” Joel said, placing a hand on his chest and smiling again. He really had the most endearing smile. It crinkled his eyes at the corners and changed his rather solemn expression completely. “As you may have guessed, I was not the one who applied to go on this show. Romi—that’s my girlfriend—she’s the one with the dreams of the big time. If I’m honest though…” He paused, and then stopped.
“What?”
“Well… look, I’m conscious this probably sounds a bit snobbish, and I don’t mean it to be, but I watch a lot of these shows with Romi—she’s kind of a reality TV addict, Real TV’s ideal subscriber—and there’s a real type. They’re all influencers and YouTubers and so on. They’re only on it to make it big. I think it’s what made shows like Traitors so compelling, because it was the kind of people you’d never get on Love Island or Selling Sunset. Just normal, regular people. And I think at the end of the day, that’s what people want. Yes, they want the Real Housewives and the X Factors, but they also want normal people being normal—a bit like how Big Brother was when it first started, before people realized it could be a passport to fame. I think that’s why they’ve gone with this format. It’s quite canny actually.”
“Huh.” It was the first time I’d heard anyone offer a good explanation for what had seemed to me, ever since Nico explained it, a very strange setup—and Joel’s theory made sense. It also explained why Baz had been so excited about my authenticity. It was code for exactly what Joel was talking about—the fact that I was a million miles from your usual reality TV contestant. “You could be right.”
“And I guess there’s something pretty compelling about watching real couples being torn apart in front of your eyes,” Joel said, and now he wasn’t smiling anymore. He looked, if anything, a little resigned.
“How do you mean?”
“Well, shows like The Bachelor and Love Island, yes, they’re all hooking up, but it’s mostly strategic, they’ve only known each other for a few days. There’s no real emotional connection there. Whereas this show, if they succeed in breaking one of the couples up… yes, it’s going to be a lot harder to do that, but if they manage, it’s going to be car crash TV. A real long-term relationship ripping apart on-screen.”
“God.” A shiver ran through me now, realizing he was right. “Do you really think that’s what they’re going for?”
Joel shrugged.
“Honestly? I have no idea. But I don’t imagine they’d be upset if it happens. And for the entertainers, the stakes are pretty high. If someone starts to feel their partner’s weighing them down—” He stopped, raised one eyebrow. I felt a sickness that had nothing to do with the motion of the waves.
“Nico and I have a pact,” I said slowly. “I can’t take more than two weeks off work. I’m going to try to flunk one of the first few tasks, get eliminated. He’s going to try to make a strategic alliance with one of the other singletons. But we agreed it—I can’t see him really betraying me.”
