AllFreeNovel
Share Us
THE OTO ROOM turned out to be a little sound-proof booth set up in one of the staff cabins, which were sited in the least glamourous part of the island, where the lush landscaping and palm frond roofs gave way to concrete paving and corrugated iron. It had clearly been used as a temporary sleeping area for the workmen—I could see folding beds stacked against one wall—but now it had been converted into a kind of makeshift interview room, with a wicker chair at one end, draped with embroidered throws and cushions, and opposite a row of chairs for the crew. The contestant end looked glamorous, but it was hot as hell inside the cabin, and I could smell the sweat of the camera crew and the people who’d been interviewed before me. The crew had clearly been stuck inside for hours and were visibly wilting.
Thankfully, when it came to my turn, the interviewer didn’t press me on the pregnant women thing. In fact, there was very little interviewing as such at all. It was mostly a case of reading my own answers straight to camera, and then guessing Nico’s.
One thing that Nico and I hadn’t had a chance to discuss was how to play this and how early I should start trying to flunk the challenges. In the end, after a moment’s quandary, I answered straight down the line, doing my honest best to predict what I thought Nico would have said. Partly, I didn’t know how they were scoring this, and, if we were being marked as a couple, I didn’t want to accidentally sabotage Nico’s position and risk him being sent home early too. Partly, I would have to drop out at some point, and fairly soon, but I didn’t really want to do it on the first night. I’d come all this way and the thought of getting straight back on the boat wasn’t enticing. There was plenty of time to intentionally mess up when we knew how the scoring worked.
It was a relief when we were finally done and I could escape back out into the comparative fresh air, but that didn’t mean the filming was over. Instead, we went back to the Ever After Villa to do some background footage of us chatting—“Talk about your boys, ladies!”—as well as reshoots of each of us writing, wearing appropriately thoughtful or nostalgic expressions on our faces.
The sun was almost setting by the time we were back at the cabana where the men—or boys, as the production team kept referring to them—sat grinning at the far side of the table. They had clearly been drinking as much as we had, and a production assistant hastily swept a stack of empty beer bottles off the table as we sat down.
I was starving and had been hoping for another spread like brunch—I could have murdered one of the plastic brioches by this time—but it seemed that wasn’t to be. Instead, someone distributed more beer and wine—the last thing I felt like at the moment—and Camille stepped up to the head of the table.
“Okay, so this will be another voice-over section, so you can react to what I’m saying—in fact, please do, we want lots of nice reaction shots—but try to keep it nonverbal, okay, because we’ll be dubbing over with the mystery presenter’s voice. Okay?” We all nodded, and Camille pulled out her script and began to read, a broad smile on her face. “So, couples. You’ve spent the afternoon looking deep into your own hearts and trying to guess the secrets of your partner’s. Now it’s time to see how well you did. How well do you really know the person you came here with? Do you know the inner workings of their heart—or is it a closed book to you? Or could it be that your perfect match is on the island… but arrived here with someone else? It’s time to find out.”
She rustled through some sheets and then said, “Okay, so at this point there will be a montage of everyone answering the questions to camera, intercut with their partner guessing the responses. We won’t be showing all of them obviously, just the funniest or most moving or whatever. We haven’t settled on the final lineup, but in the meantime, here’s a rough cut of some of the best.”
She pressed something on a remote control on the desk, and a screen above the bar lit up with what I guessed was the logo for the show, a stylized desert island in the shape of a heart. After a short countdown, Conor’s face appeared. He was sitting on the wicker chair, speaking directly to the camera, and looking thoughtful.
“My perfect night out… I’d have to say… taking Zana somewhere truly stunning, maybe the restaurant at the top of the Eiffel Tower, or a gondola in Venice. We’d drink champagne… I’d feed her her favorite dessert—chocolate-dipped strawberries—and then we’d walk home hand in hand and kiss under the stars. As for hers?” He blushed, his tanned face looking almost embarrassed for a moment. “I— God, I don’t want to sound hopelessly big-headed but… I think she’d say a night at my place. I know that’s not really a night out, but she just loves spending time together.”
The camera cut to Zana, staring into the lens with her huge brown eyes.
“Conor? Oh, I think he’d say… a dinner somewhere sophisticated and exotic—a restaurant in Paris, maybe, or the Maldives. Fine wine, good food. We’d toast each other and then walk home—he loves to walk at night, he loves the stars. As for me…” She looked down at her lap, twisting her fingers. “The truth is, I’m more of a simple stay-at-home type. I’d be happy anywhere Conor was happy, that’s the honest truth.” Then a shy little smile flickered across her face. “Though I wouldn’t say no to a chocolate-dipped strawberry.”
Camille paused the screen and turned back to the group, a big smile on her face.
“I don’t know about you guys, but I’m giving that… ten out of ten! Right?”
There was a wave of assent, rather half-hearted from the other contestants, and some laughter and clapping. Conor put his arm around Zana, squeezing her hard, as Camille hit play again.
We went through all of them. There were some incredibly lucky hits (I scored a bullseye guessing that Nico’s perfect vacation would be Las Vegas, which was a total shot in the dark, and another when I said that his biggest secret was that he used fake tan, I’d guessed correctly that he wouldn’t mind admitting that). There were also some comically bad misses. Angel had said, understandably, that her worst habit was smoking, whereas Bayer had said that it was clipping her toenails in the shower and leaving the shards, which caused her to shoot daggers at him.
I also knew perfectly well what Dan’s biggest secret was, because he’d told me—it was the fact that he had a boyfriend. I could see from the panic in his eyes as he answered that question that he knew Santana would be skirting around it and wasn’t sure how best to handle the uncertainty. In the end he said that his biggest secret was that when he was little he’d wanted to be a cage fighter when he grew up. Santana on the other hand guessed that his biggest secret was that he couldn’t tell the time on a clock with hands. That provoked a gale of laughter—the secret as well as the mismatch between the two—though it was fairly sympathetic. Dan, however, looked like he’d had a sense of humor bypass, and I could understand why.
“What?” Santana mouthed across at the table at him. “I’m sorry!”
“It was one time! I can tell the fucking time!” Dan said irritably, prompting a throat-cutting motion from one of the producers, reminding us about swearing.
But the biggest surprise—to me, at least—was how many things Nico got wrong about me. I wasn’t sure if they were picking out comically bad examples, but I didn’t see them screen a single right answer from him. He said that my childhood crush was Harry Styles, whose career didn’t even launch until I was in my twenties. He said that my biggest secret was that I was afraid of mice—which I’m not and have never been. He said that my perfect night out would be a pub curry and a pint with friends, which, okay, I enjoy a curry as much as the next person but it’s not exactly my dream night out, and I don’t drink pints. It was just bad shot after bad shot. I couldn’t believe this was the person I’d shared nearly two and a half years of my life with. Had he been paying any attention at all? Nico had ended up on the other side of the table from me, between Dan and Bayer, and as the clips unfolded, I tried to catch his eye, see what he was making of it all, but his gaze was fixed the screen, laughing along with the others, as if it was hilarious that he seemed to know nothing about his own girlfriend.
At the end of the reel, Camille clicked off the screen and turned back to the group. The sun was properly setting, fairy lights had winked on around the edges of the cabana, and I could see that everyone was very tired, very hungry, and very drunk. Tempers were, if not fraying, at least wearing a little thin. Dan looked like he was still seething over the telling-the-time thing. Bayer, who had made several stupid mistakes with Angel, including revealing that her biggest secret was that she’d had a boob job, looked sulky. In the camera lights I could see moths and mosquitoes beginning to gather. I swiped as something settled on my arm and was glad I’d remembered to put on repellent beneath my bronzer.
“And now…” Camille said, “the moment of truth. Which couple truly knows each other through and through, and which couple are a hopeless mystery to each other? And finally…” She paused dramatically. “Which couple are really the most compatible on the island?”
There was a long pause. I could hear crickets in the trees, and far off a bird screamed, or maybe a monkey, I wasn’t sure.
“The person who got the highest score on their partner’s answers was…” There was a long pause, Camille dragging the tension out until I could tell everyone around the table wanted to scream. “Lyla!”
There was an audible gasp from around the table, maybe because they’d just watched Nico fuck up response after response. Nico looked positively smug.
“Congratulations, Lyla! You truly know your partner through and through; his heart is an open book to you.”
I had no idea what to do. I could tell the cameras were zooming in on my face and I could only blink and say, “Oh, um, thank you.” And then, almost as an afterthought, “I love you, Nico!”
“Love you too, babe!” he called from the other side of the table and made a heart shape with his hands.
“But!” Camille was still speaking, and the table quickly hushed, hanging on her words. “The person who scored the lowest on their partner’s responses was…” There was another long pause, even longer than the one before. This time Camille really dragged it out. I heard a groan from across the table, and saw Bayer drop his head to the tabletop and bang it on the surface in what looked like real frustration.
“Was…” Camille repeated, and then, finally she put us out of our misery. “Nico.”
