“It’s not…” I sighed, as she tutted gently.
“I was going to ask.” She lowered the cup. Folded her hands gently around it. Familiar gestures, ones I’d seen so many times before. Yet this time it felt wrong. Like I shouldn’t be here, and I didn’t want to and why was I not just…
“Gerald. He really was in love with Anne, and he just let her go. What a big mistake.”
“Did he?” I blinked nervously. “Gerald? You mean Jorge?”
“Two episodes in, and he just let her go.”
“Mrs Patel,” I said sternly. “You know this. Shows like this, it’s all scripted.”
“It’s very well done. Realistic. I felt so bad for him when she rejected him like that. Just left their room and went to sleep on the sofa.”
“That’s not what happened…” I stopped. “She what?”
“Then Chloe-Catherine tried it on with that Wren woman right in front of poor Ben. He was so hurt when she rejected him. Such a nice boy.”
I spat something out, then tried to swallow down my half-arsed guttural attempts at words. “There’s been two episodes out?”
“Two. The third one is rumoured to drop tonight if you believe the RealityUK account. That GossipSpeaks account is good too; she seems toknow her stuff. Rose-and-Thorn is my favourite. Full of advance snippets and behind-the-scenes stuff. The first eviction is tonight. I assume there will be some hearts broken when people are sent home.”
“I wasn’t sent home.”
Here I was, defending myself from…what exactly? “I wasn’t sent home,” I repeated sternly. “I left. I walked out, Amara, because that…” My arm now in the air, waving aggressively. “That bloody idiotic production couldn’t have put two more mismatched people together if they’d tried. Did they get some three-year-olds to just pick cards off a table or what? It’s all scripted. It’s not real. Nothing in there is real.”
“That’s TV for you. But you knew that going in, didn’t you?” She spoke softly. Calm to my now ragged breaths.
“Yes. No. Well…”
“You knew. Because this is how these things work. And still?”
“Still…what?”
“Oh, Peter.” She smiled, patting my hand. “Now. Gerald. Tell me. When he proposed that he and Diane could perhaps become a thing, and Diane rejected him. Anne was right there in the room, wasn’t she? It was genius, really. Those reactions were priceless.”
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
What the hell?
“And…Thom. He’s my favourite. Very charming young man, but he’s been playing games from the start. Then Priti. Bless that child, so naive about everything.”
“Priti…” I started, then stopped. No. What? “Look. I don’t know. I have no idea, and I really…I really don’t want to talk about this. Not right now. Is that okay?”
“Of course,” she said gently, once again lifting her cup. A quiet sip. “I just want to let you know that you can. That I’m here. And that your grass needs cutting.”
The grass?
“The grass,” she repeated. “It’s too long. We need to keep up appearances around here. Mr Patel popped over the fence and picked off the worst of the weeds at the weekend, but your camellia bush needs trimming for winter. We don’t want a repeat performance from last year.”
“I’m sorry about the fence.”
Surreal. But then again. Normal.
“We got it repaired. No worries.”
I nodded, wishing for her to just…leave. Leave me to sit here and stew in this whole…mess I’d created.
“When are you going back?”
