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Now, after the conversation I’d had the other day with Professor Bianchi, I honestly wasn’t sure. It felt like I’d screwed my chances with this project, and I badly needed a few publication credits on my CV—the long gap with no papers was starting to look ominous. And how long would it take me to find another more promising project, get hired, complete the post-doc, write up a couple of papers and get them through the publication hurdles? Three years? That was pushing it. The chikungunya research had been supposed to give me a boost onto the next rung of the ladder. Unfortunately, that rung had just broken.
I realized every face on the screen was looking at me, waiting for my answer. Plus Nico.
Dammit. Nico. Where was Nico in all this exactly? Living in my terraced house in suburbia?
“Five years,” I said again, feeling their eyes on me. “God. I… I don’t totally know. I’m kind of at a crossroads, to be honest. I have to make some decisions.”
“Really.” Baz’s eyes had focused again, and now he looked interested, his voice drawling as he stretched out the two syllables. “Is that so? What kind of decisions, sweetheart?”
Fuck. This was a conversation for me and Nico after a lot of wine, not for a sober Zoom call in the presence of Baz, Ari, and bunch of people I’d never even heard of.
“I just…” I swallowed, trying to stop my gaze from flickering nervously sideways to see how Nico was taking this. “I guess you could say my last project didn’t go so well. I have to decide, I mean, I have to decide if science is still for me. It’s a tough world. Your profile is really everything.”
“Well, that’s where we come in,” Baz said. He was leaning forward. “Let’s be honest, not everyone can win the pot, but you’re all going to come out of this a hell of a lot more high-profile than you went in, if this show is the hit we think it’s going to be.”
I pressed my lips together, forcing a smile that somehow stretched my lips without feeling in the least bit genuine. The kind of profile I would get from One Perfect Couple wasn’t going to matter a toss in the academic world. In fact, possibly the reverse. I couldn’t imagine anyone taking my funding application seriously if they’d seen me frolicking in a bikini on a tropical beach. Fortunately, I didn’t think grant committees were likely to be the core audience for a brand-new streaming channel focusing exclusively on reality TV.
Still, Baz’s mention of “the pot” had given me the chance to pin down some of the more elusive variables still floating around the whole project.
“The pot you mentioned,” I said. “How much is it exactly? And while we’re on the subject, can you talk a bit more about the structure of the show? I’m unclear how this is all going to work.”
“Sure,” said one of the other producers smoothly, leaning in towards the camera. I got the impression that Baz was not much of a details guy. “So, the pot isn’t fixed, but will be determined partly by how everyone does in the tasks—the idea is that you’ll all be contributing to build it up. And then at the end… well, I can’t talk too much about that, but there will be a mechanism for splitting it between the final contestants, or possibly not. It could be taken home by just one person. Those details are still confidential.”
“Okay,” I said, “but assuming everyone hit their targets and got the maximum possible, how much are we talking?”
There was a short, uncomfortable silence. The producer flicked his eyes at Baz, but before either of them could speak, Ari, Nico’s agent, leaned forward and unmuted himself.
“Lyla, I think the thing is, as Baz mentioned, the prize here, at least as far as people like Nico are concerned, really isn’t the money. Whatever the prize pot actually turns out to be, it’s going to be small beans compared to the subsequent professional opportunities the show opens up.”
“Sure,” I said, “but—”
But then I felt Nico squeezing my hand. I looked at him. He was smiling, but there was an unmistakable, let this go behind the smile. I took a breath.
“Okay. I take that point. So, what about the format and so on?”
“It’s elimination,” the unnamed producer said. “Ten contestants at the start, and they’ll get whittled down one by one, each week over nine weeks. There will be some strategic advantage to being in a couple for the tasks, so there’ll be a recoupling opportunity each week, and you might find there’s a few twists and turns to shake things up, but again, the details of that are top secret at this stage. All you need to know is five couples go in, one couple comes out. And it could be you!”
“But—” I started, but Baz was speaking, his microphone overriding mine, and he clearly felt like he was the one who was supposed to be asking the questions, not me.
“So we know about Nico, from Ari here”—he gestured at the place where Ari’s face presumably was on his screen, although confusingly it was the opposite side from mine—“but let’s hear a bit more about you, Leela. Would you call yourself a feminist?”
“A feminist?” I was puzzled. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting on this Zoom call—questions about my relationship with Nico seemed fair game—but this was a surprise. What on earth was Baz trying to find out? “I mean… I guess so. I believe in gender equality. Doesn’t everyone?”
“Define gender equality?”
“I guess… having the same pay for the same work… the same professional opportunities… the same bodily autonomy…” I was more and more mystified.
“And you wouldn’t say you had that already?” Baz was leaning forward towards the camera, frowning, but he didn’t look put off by my responses; if anything they seemed to have encouraged him.
“Well.” I was completely at sea now. “I mean… I’m a scientist. If in doubt, I look at what the data is telling me, and according to the data, no, we definitely aren’t there yet. In my own industry alone, less than a quarter of science professors in the UK are female, even though women make up nearly half the workforce.”
“Citing your sources, I like that,” Baz said with a grin, even though I hadn’t cited any sources at all. Actually, my stats were from an article I’d read in Nature a few years ago, but Baz had no way of knowing that. What on earth was he on about? My jokey remark to Nico about needing a wax and to lose five pounds came back to me, and an image floated into my mind: Baz, turning to his assistant, concerned, We gotta find out if she’s a hairy Mary under that lab coat! I stifled a laugh, and then hastily straightened my face, remembering that we were on camera. Fortunately, Baz was still talking. “And your politics. Would you say they’re left of center… centrist… right…?”
“I guess… center left? Sorry, is this relevant?”
“Sorry, sorry, you’re right. I got offtrack,” Baz said with a wave of his hand. “But finding out what makes you tick, what makes you different… sure, that’s important. We don’t want to end up with five identikit couples on the island, we want to get people from right across the spectrum. I suppose that’s what we’re going for with this show—that’s what’s going to sell it to Real TV. We want real couples—real authenticity, you know? None of this Love Island manufactured shite. We want real partnerships, tested to the hilt in the white heat of competition.”
“If you’re looking for authenticity, you’ve come to the right place,” Nico said, putting his arm around me. “Lyla and me have that in spades, and we’re in it to win. Right, Lil?”
