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Just a minute more, I told myself. Just a minute more alone, just me and the horizon.
Well, and the cameras.
02/22—09:37 a.m.
Oh God, please, please, Dieu, why isn’t anyone coming. We have no idea what to do. The boat has gone, they have took our phones, and all we have got is this fucking radio that personne doesn’t know how to work—please, please answer us. People are dying—people are dead. Oh Dieu, we will all be dead soon if someone doesn’t come. Someone has to be monitoring this channel. No, tais-toi, Joel, I will not turn this off. I fucking will not. I don’t give a shit about the battery. What good will the battery make when we are all dead?
CHAPTER 7
“HO. LEE. SHIT.”
Nico had stepped off the boat onto the white sand, taken off his shoes, and was standing on the beach, scrunching his toes into the silky white grains with a look so blissed out, I wished I had a camera. Unfortunately, every single one of my devices, from my phone to my work laptop, was in Baz’s personal safe on board the Over Easy, so I had to hope that the camera crew currently circling the group was capturing his reaction.
Behind us was the yacht, moored about a hundred yards offshore, the little dinghy we’d actually crossed to the island in, and beyond both were miles and miles of sparkling blue sea, given an eerie iridescence by the sun flickering off the white sand. Ahead of us was Ever After Island—a slip of land only a few miles long, but large enough for what looked like a small forest, filled with what I could already see were palm trees, tall shrubby plants hung with comically large bunches of short stubby bananas, and many more flowers, trees, and plants that I didn’t recognize. I wasn’t sure whether the island would be big enough to support animals—but I could hear the sound of birds filtering through the trees, and high above Nico’s head a butterfly swooped past, its wings seeming too comically large and slow to keep itself aloft. It looked… well, it looked exactly like the photos Baz had sent through. Only better. So much better.
“Wow,” I said. “Just… wow.”
“Tell Nico how you’re feeling, Lyla?” a producer said, stepping towards me, and I saw that a fluffy mic had swung in front of me, just above my head.
“Oh!” I was instantly taken aback, unsure how to react, and glanced at the gaping black hole of the camera lens and then back at the producer. What I was actually feeling was… ruffled. Our arrival in paradise had been somewhat marred by full bag and body searches for communication devices before we were allowed to disembark. I was fairly sure I wasn’t the only person still bristling from the indignity of an intimate pat down and a crew member rummaging through my underwear; the others were just hiding it better than me. “I mean… great. Relieved to be off the boat.”
“Can you tell Nico about that? And don’t look at the lens, honey, if we want you to talk direct to camera we’ll pull you out for an otto.”
“An otto?” I wasn’t sure if I’d heard the word right.
“An O-T-O—a one-to-one interview. But don’t worry about that, honey, just talk to Nico. Pretend I’m not here.” I could tell the producer was becoming a little testy at my failure to understand what was required of me, but it was quite hard to pretend the crew weren’t there with the huge black camera looming in my face, and the boom mic waving overhead. Behind me I could see Bayer and Angel vamping it up for the cameras—Angel squealing and spinning around with her hair fanning out like the petals of a flower, Bayer scooping her up, grinning, and kissing her as she wrapped her long legs around him. Only ten minutes ago Bayer had been tantrumming about having his bags searched; now they looked like something out of a movie. I could see precisely how the scene was going to go down with viewers, the heart-eyes emojis, the tweets about what a cute couple they were. Farther over, Santana and Dan were wandering hand in hand across the wet sand. Dan had his shirt off and his trousers rolled up, Santana’s high heels were trailing from her free hand. They looked like the kind of soft-focus aspirational poster your co-worker would have pinned up in their cubical to help get them through the working day. Maybe with the slogan happiness is… your hand in mine or something equally sappy in a flowing font.
Every single one of them was providing an object lesson in what the camera wanted—and what I was completely failing to provide.
“Um… wow, Nico, isn’t this great?” I said at last.
Nico swung round. He had undone a couple of buttons on his loose white linen shirt, showing his tanned chest, and just the right amount of chest hair—no Burt Reynolds–style chest wig, more Poldark’s scything scene. Whatever he’d been doing in the gym recently was working; I could see his abs through the shirt.
“It’s paradise,” he said seriously, and I could tell that although he was looking at me, he was speaking for the camera. “And the only thing that makes it better is that I’m here with you. You’re all I’ve ever wanted, Lil.” And then he came over, took my face between his hands in a way he had never done before, a way, I realized suddenly, that people did in the movies, and kissed me passionately, full on the lips.
For a minute I had no idea what to do. I knew that I was standing stiffly, my lips immobile under Nico’s, but I was also aware that the producer was hovering just behind my shoulder, that the camera was almost certainly zooming closer, and that this pose, with Nico theatrically clasping my head instead of putting his arms around me in his usual affectionate way, was strangely awkward. The whole scene felt completely and utterly fake, and I realized with a sudden shock, that I wasn’t just kissing my boyfriend—I was kissing a professional actor, and he was performing for the camera.
When we broke apart I resisted the urge to blink and wipe my mouth. Instead, mostly to give myself an excuse to walk away from the camera, I took Nico’s hand, shamelessly copying Dan and Santana, pulled off my sandals, and began to walk along the shore, the gentle surf lapping at my ankles. I had been expecting the sea to be a refreshing change from the humidity in the air, but the water was surprisingly warm—almost blood temperature.
“It’s like a bath!” I said to Nico in surprise, and then, “Oh wow, look, a fish!”
“It’s the sea, Lyla,” Nico said with a laugh, but then he saw what I was pointing at—a tiny minnow barely longer than my finger, with stark black and white stripes, darting through the turquoise water. As we watched, fascinated, a little shoal of bright orange fish followed it, shockingly vivid against the blue water.
We watched, mesmerized for a few minutes, and then Nico pointed to a little path leading into the forest.
“Where do you think that leads? Maybe the villas?”
“Let’s find out,” I said, with a smile that I was conscious was as much for the camera crew following a few steps behind as for Nico himself. As we crossed the beach and made our way into the trees, I could see the shape of one… two… no, three low-slung villas, white walls gleaming through the lush greenery.
“Which one do you think is ours?” I said aloud.
“God, I don’t know, they’re all incredible,” Nico said, and then gave a stagey gasp as we rounded a clump of trees and saw in the distance, stretching out across the water, the honeymoon villa I’d seen online—the one on stilts above the turquoise ocean. “Holy fuck! Look at that one!”
“Please don’t swear!” the producer said from behind us in an irritated tone. “We’re aiming for a PG-13 audience. I can’t use the footage if you swear.”
“Oh my days!” Nico said obediently, with just the same amount of awed shock in his voice as the first time round. “Lyla, look at that!”
“That can’t be ours,” I said, not trying to keep the envy out of my voice.
