Even imaginary Jac could make tears spring to my eyes.
I wiped them away. Crying wasn’t useful. Jac had said that once – more to herself than to me; she’d been trying to pull herself together after her grandpa had died – but I’d been in the room.
She’d been wrong then, but she was right now. Crying over heragainwouldn’t do anything but get me sucked right back down into the quicksand.
You shouldn’t be here.
I sighed and leaned back against the hedge. The twigs dug painfully into my back, but I let them. It was easier to feel something as uncomplicated as ‘ouch’ than it was to feel everything else.
The Jac in my mind might be cruel, but she was also right. I was in no fit state to be here.
‘You shouldn’t be here!’
Wait. Those words didn’t come from imaginary Jac.
That was… Murray?
I took a few steps towards his voice and peered around the corner. ‘Why not?’ Lily demanded.
She was standing behind him, in her dark purple dress from earlier, hands on hips, as he tried to string some fairy lights up a trellis. They were in a clearing in the maze – the centre, maybe? – and there was a couch set up, covered in velvet cushions in deep jewel tones. There was a low coffee table in front of it with a green shopping bag sitting on top, a bottle of champagne poking out of it.
‘Because I’m busy!’ Murray said, trying to loop the fairy lights around the top of the trellis and failing. ‘The Dylans are going to be here soon, and I’ve got about an hour and a half’s worth of set dressing to do.’
‘I didn’t know this kind of menial labour was part of your job.’
‘It isn’t,’ he growled. ‘But the network’s cut our crew numbers to absolute shit this season. We’ve all got to help out. Which is why I don’t have time to talk to—don’t touch that!’
Lily was taking things out of the green shopping bag. ‘If you need help, then I’ll help,’ she said, her voice calm and even.
‘You don’t know what you’re doing.’
‘Murray, you know better than anyone that I can assemble a cheeseboard.’
Murray made a noise in the back of his throat.
‘Don’t try that with me,’ Lily said. ‘I’m not scared of you.What kind of cheeseboard do you want? Simple and clean, or a real cheese extravaganza?’
There was a long pause before Murray answered. ‘Extravaganza,’ he said. ‘Dylan G’s a frontrunner. We want this one-on-one to have a real cornucopia feel. Abundance. Overflow.’
He took a few steps in my direction, towards another one of his green bags. I slipped away, frightened he would see me. Unlike Lily, Iwasscared of him.
I headed back through the maze towards the Villa, walking fast to beat the darkness, trailing my hand against the hedge again.
What the hell was Lily’s deal? Did she and Murray already know each other? They must, right, if he was letting her assemble a cheese platter for a date and casually telling her that Dylan was a frontrunner?
Frontrunner.
I stopped for a second, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. This was not news to me. Anyone with eyes could see Dylan was a frontrunner for Romeo-Dylan’s heart.
There was a big difference between knowing something yourself and hearing someone else say it, though.
Ugh. This really was some classic Mandie nonsense. Here I was, taking my first newborn deer-style steps back to normalcy after Jac, and now I was going to lose my perfect rebound man and my hopeless crushto each other.
Dylan was just coming out of the Villa as I got back. ‘Hey,’ she said brightly, her hem swishing around her heels. ‘How was your walk?’
But Carrie had appeared beside her, and I didn’t have a chance to answer. ‘No time for talk,’ Carrie said. ‘We’ve got to get you to your one-on-one time. Dylan JM has an early start tomorrow, so we can’t keep him up too late.’
‘Catch you later, Mandie,’ Dylan said to me, and then she and Carrie were gone.
