‘It’s not just that.’ Her fists clench on the blanket, knuckles whitening. I can see her getting frustrated with herself as she fails to find the words.
‘Tell me,’ I urge.
She looks up at the sky, blinking tears. ‘I’ve been overstimulated for days and I’m very close to—’ She stops again, takes a breath. ‘You can’t repeat this,’ she begs.
‘I won’t. You know I’m good at keeping secrets, after all.’
She laughs at that, a huffy sad kind of noise. ‘Yeah. You are.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘I’m autistic and you caught me in a shutdown. Or maybe a meltdown, I can’t tell yet. It’s just bad.’
So many questions jump into my throat, but I swallow them down. This is not the time to make her explain. ‘What would be helpful for me to do when you feel like this?’
‘The water helped.’ She heaves suddenly and I think she’s about to vomit, but it passes without any expulsions. ‘Sorry, my nervous system gets a bit confused during, or after or… I’m not sure it’s technically done.’
She sips at the water again, a few round drops landing on the blanket as her hands and lips shake.
‘When I’m overstimulated it’s like… every sense is too much,’ she whispers, her voice muffled and low like she’s talking through cotton wool. ‘Even talking hurts.’
I recognise the pain on her face. I know that look. The low ache in my belly is a sign that my own personal pain is right on track, but hopefully will do me the solid of skipping the honeymoon.
‘Do you need quiet?’ It’s not really quiet out here in the true sense of the word, because there’s cicadas and the lapping of the sea, but it’s all the kind of sound you might put on to fall asleep. Certainly nicer than the sound of skin slapping together. ‘No chatting?’ I clarify.
She nods, and we sit in silence for a long, long time. It would almost be companionable if there wasn’t everything going on between us, truce aside.
I hope, for Carys’s sake, no one is filming right now, or that, if they are, the loud cicadas will cover our whispering. Does she realise that might have been on tape? They’ll have a field day if they are filming – one secret lesbian and a secret autistic in one fell swoop.
Thing is, I strongly suspect that she’s been hiding this from not just the cast, but production. Not to be big headed, but she told me pretty much everything including her inside leg seam, which I’ve also explored thoroughly, so I suspect that if Rebor someone on the team knew, Carys would have confided in me earlier.
Would they have let her on if they’d known? Is that why she’s gone undercover? No reality television show is perfect on duty of care because half the drama comes from them ignoring those responsibilities, but UK shows have been pretty tight on mental health in the last few years at least. Neurodivergence isn’t the same as mental health, but the extra duty of care involved means they probably view it the same.
I know there have been some testimonies from autistic reality show contestants who’ve talked about the specific struggles they’ve had with the structure, namely the purposeful lack of sleep or sensory downtime, the constant requirement to socialise, all the change.
I don’t know enough about autism to say it definitely puts some of her behaviour in perspective, but if I was slowly being driven mad by being on a reality TV show, I might act a little unhinged too.
It’s not like I don’t care about her, because I do. I just also happen to think she’s acted like a tit of late. But I don’t want her to hurt. In fact, I want to wrap my arms around her, tell her it’s okay, that she’s safe.
How embarrassing that I still like her, even when she’s a total bitch to me.
Over time, her posture relaxes. She goes from firm as a well-baked biscuit to something looser, not yet relaxed but close to it. Her breathing evens out too.
‘Thanks,’ she says eventually, signalling the end of our silent meditation. ‘I feel like I can hear myself think again.’
‘Sorry to ask another question, but what else do you need?’
‘Sleep. But it’s so much. It’s so much in there,’ she moans, and my heart breaks a little for her.
I think back to her sleep kit that was always on her pillowin our shared bedroom. ‘Do you have your ear plugs? Your sleep mask?’
She shakes her head. ‘They’re in my case somewhere but I couldn’t see it and then I got stressed out and… Well. Now we’re here.’
‘Okay, I can find some for you.’
‘It’s not just the sound,’ she sighs.
God, I can imagine. Several of the men have particularly potent feet, and then there’s all the perfume and hairspray. Plus, the unfamiliar beds and sharing suddenly with Patrick, a man she’s functionally just met.
I’m so busy thinking about the hellscape of the bedroom that when she groans and flings the blanket off her suddenly, I startle. ‘What’s happening?’
‘The tag,’ she gasps.
