Shit. Instead of sending them home when they got eliminated, I was going to have to keep all fifteen of them on setfor the entire shoot.
Where the hell was I going to put them? I couldn’t just keep the eliminated contestants in the Juliet Villa alongside the ones still in the game. That would be horribly confusing for the format of the show.
But it wasn’t like I could snap my fingers and magically produce alternative accommodation for them either. Fuck. Shit. Fuck.
Lily’s elbow pressed into mine.
I glanced at her. She raised an eyebrow.Problem?
‘Murray?’ Carrie said in my ear.
‘Brief Z.’ As the host, Z would have to be the one to break it to the cast, and he was a natural salesperson. He might have ideas on how we could frame this as a feature, not a bug. ‘Give me half an hour to get my girls through intros as well, and I’ll come and troubleshoot.’
‘Copy that. I’ll keep monitoring, and I’ll be boots on the ground too once my girls are through intros as well. My limo’s behind yours.’
Keira’s voice came through a second later as the limo slowed to a stop. ‘All set for package number one.’
Lily elbowed me again, more urgent this time.What’s happening? Tell me.
‘We’re here,’ I said. ‘Get ready, Dylan.’
‘I’m ready,’ Juliet-Dylan said. ‘And it’s “women”.’
‘What?’
Three, four, five repeated jabs of Lily’s elbow, right in my ribs.Tell me what’s happening. Tell me what’s happening. Tell me what’s happening!
‘—adult women,’ Juliet-Dylan was saying. ‘We’re all adult women.’
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘Sorry about that. Bad habit.’
Lily was still elbowing me.Murray, tell me what’s happening!
I pushed back, hard.Stop.
‘You good to go?’ I asked Juliet-Dylan.
‘Yes.’
I flicked my radio to the right channel. ‘Open the door.’
The PA outside the limo door obeyed. Juliet-Dylan smiled at Amanda. ‘See you in there, Mandie.’
Nicknames, I noted, in the tiny skerrick of my brain that wasn’t already overflowing. They were already close enough to be using nicknames.
The long skirt of Juliet-Dylan’s sequinned green dress got caught as she slid out of the limo, but Amanda deftly freed it before we had a wardrobe malfunction. The PA slammed the door closed again. ‘Package number one in place,’ Keira said in my earpiece.
That meant that Juliet-Dylan was standing still, admiring the fullMarry Me, Julietsplendour of the set. We tried to capture this moment for all the contestants, but we only left a few of them in the final edit. When we cut it together right, it was Cinderella walking into the ball. Not everyone could be Cinderella.
‘Package number one en route,’ Keira said. ‘I repeat, package number one en route.’
Not quite as long a Cinderella moment as I’d hoped, but we could always put it in slow motion.
‘You should have let it tear,’ Lily said.
I thought she was talking to me at first, but her eyes were fixed on Amanda. ‘What?’ Amanda said, blinking in surprise.
‘Her dress.’ Lily gestured at the limo door.
