‘Are you ready?’ the crew guy asked.
I took one last look around the bedroom that had once been ours.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m ready.’
I had to wait in a caravan for several hours before they took me down to the Convent. ‘We don’t have the crew to film you arriving there,’ the PA explained to me, ‘they’re all filming Dylan G’s date,’ then he vanished before I could ask any more questions.
I wasn’t sure whose caravan he’d brought me to, but it was clearly well lived in. The covers on the narrow bed were tangled. A backpack sat next to it, lumpy with clothes. Three novels were scattered near the head of the bed. Romance novels, I saw when I picked them up. They must be using them for ideas.
A long red ribbon marked the place in one of them. I opened it up. Romance was the last thing I wanted to be reading about right now, but it was either that or stare at the wall, regretting making the right choice.
I’m not a fast reader, but I’d made it through about a third of the book by the time Murray came to get me. ‘Come on, Amanda,’ he said gruffly.
I set the book down and turned off the little lamp next to the bed. ‘I didn’t know the crew slept in caravans.’
‘Where else do you think we sleep?’
He climbed into the golf cart and gestured for me to get in the other side. I hesitated.
‘For fuck’s sake, what is it now?’
‘Does Dylan know?’
‘That you’re gone? Yes.’
‘What did she say?’
He didn’t reply.
‘Murray, please tell me,’ I said. ‘What did she say?’
He sighed. ‘It’s better that you don’t know what she said. Trust me.’
‘Trust you?’ I exclaimed. ‘After today?’
‘Amanda,’ he said, his voice surprisingly gentle, ‘if your ex-girlfriend had said yes, I would never have let you go into that scene unprepared. I told you I wouldn’t out you, and I meant it.’
‘Oh, yeah, sure, you were going to put my ex-girlfriend on national TV and youweren’tgoing to out me.’
‘I would have talked to you about it first. If you really didn’t want to come out, I wouldn’t have made you.’
‘Why should I believe you?’
‘Believe what you want,’ he said, his voice shifting back to its usual gruffness. ‘Get in the golf cart. Some of us want to sleep tonight.’
There was more I wanted to say.It’s not even the fact you were going to out me,I wanted to snarl,it’s that you would have made me talk to her.
But even if there was a way to express that – to make him understand the bone-freezing terror I’d felt at the thought of having to see Jac – there was no point. He wouldn’t care.
After the relative emptiness of the Juliet Villa, the Convent felt like a noisy pub. I pasted on a big smile as I said hi to everyone, hugged them all, accepted the drinks they thrust into my hands. ‘Oh my God, tell us everything,’ Jess D said. ‘What was the Dream Date like? What’s the situation? Give us the whole story.’
Everything was bright and loud. The rooms were much smaller than the ones at the Villa, and it felt like the walls were closing in on me.
‘Oh, Amanda, don’t cry!’ Parisa said, wrapping her arms around me. ‘He’s not worth it.’
‘I’m okay,’ I said, wiping the tears (again? would Ieverstop crying?) off my face. ‘It’s for the best, honestly.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ Naya said.
