But Jess D started to cry – ‘It’s just so unfair!’ she sobbed, ‘I like him so much and I’ve been trying so hard and it’s justnot working!’ – and I let Mummy Mandie come out of her box again, the fury shoved way, way down.
It wasn’t until the next night that I finally realised.
‘Since none of you are going on a single date this episode, we need to do something else with you,’ Murray told us. ‘So we’re going to have a dinner party.’
‘With Dylan JM?’ Kumiko asked.
‘No.’
‘What, as a punishment? Because we haven’t earned time with him?’ Parisa said, folding her arms. ‘Because none of us won that ridiculous trivia contest?’
‘No,’ Murray said. ‘Because we gave him the day off. He’s been filming every day, and he’s exhausted.’
‘Is he spending that time withher?’ Jess D said. ‘The fainter?’
‘You’ll be happy to know,’ Murray said, ‘that Dylan and Cece agreed on their date last night that it was best he spend the rest of this season focusing on his relationships, not his friendships.’
Lily snorted. Murray raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you have something to add, Lily?’
‘Not at all,’ she replied sunnily. ‘Why would I have something to add?’
He looked at her for a long moment. She looked back, unafraid.
‘So Cece’s not coming back,’ Naya said. ‘She’s not back in the competition.’
‘No, Cece is not coming back into the competition,’ Murray said, dragging his eyes away from Lily. ‘They’re just friends. Can I get on with explaining this dinner party now?’
Production had placed a big box of questions in the centre of the dining table. ‘They’re compatibility questions,’ Murray explained. ‘Designed so we can find out exactly what you’re looking for in a partner, and if that matches up with what the Romeo wants.’
‘Does the person who’s most compatible with him win anything?’ Naya asked.
‘They’ll win the first chat at the Last Chance Party. A private chat, where no one can steal him away.’
Murray could claim all he wanted that this dinner party wasn’t a punishment. It was absolutely going to look like a punishment when they edited the footage. They’d film some talking head with Romeo-Dylan where he said something like, ‘When my friend Cece turned out to know mebetter than my seven remaining Juliets, that really sent me into a tailspin. What if none of the women here are right for me?’
They’d show the dinner party, where we all looked like bad, terrible girlfriends who never listened to their boyfriend when he talked. They’d let the question hang in the air for a while, maybe an episode or two: werenoneof us compatible with Romeo-Dylan? Maybe he’d eliminated the wrong person! Maybe they’d even show some footage of him in the Convent, talking to Cece and the other women he’d let go, trying to work out if he’d made a mistake.
But then it would all turn out fine in the end. He’d go on another date with Dylan, and they’d be perfect together, and he’d say something like, ‘I really feel like youknowme, Dyl,’ and she’d reply, ‘Sorry I didn’t know all that random trivia about you,’ and he’d laugh and say, ‘Knowing random trivia about a person doesn’t mean you know them.’
Then they’d kiss.
I wondered if it was nice, when they kissed, or whether it was an earthquake.
I gritted my teeth and clenched my fists, dimly aware that something was simmering.
They’d laid out placecards on the dinner table where they wanted us to sit. I was between Lily and Parisa, across from Dylan. ‘Are you open to changing the seating arrangements at all?’ I overheard Lily asked Murray.
‘No,’ he said shortly.
‘Shame,’ she said. ‘I could have done a much better job.’
He made a growling noise in the back of his throat.
They’d made us cook the dinner for the party, but they didn’t let us eat it (not a punishment, my arse). ‘Questions first,’ Murray said. ‘Then you can eat.’
‘We’re grown women,’ Parisa said. ‘We can do both.’
‘No one looks good on camera with sauce on their face,’ he said. ‘And no one sounds good talking with their mouth full. Kumiko, you start.’
