‘Oh!’ I wiped the cappuccino foam away. ‘Got it?’
‘Yes, but now your lipstick…’
Blood of My Enemieswas a killer shade with a killer name, but it had terrible hold. I fished my black plastic compact out of my bag. ‘Hold this.’
Murray held the compact steady as I fixed my lipstick. He had great hands: not particularly big, but strong and sure. I let my fingers brush over his as I took the compact back, and I opened my mouth to say something even the least attentive boy in the world would pay attention to—
His phone rang. ‘Shit, sorry, Lily,’ Murray said. ‘I’ve got to go. I promised my fiancée I’d take her out to one last dinner before we head out to the island, and I’m late.’
5Murray
‘Am I doing okay?’ Romeo-Dylan asked me. ‘Am I getting it right?’
‘You’re doing fine,’ I reassured him.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely, mate. You’ve got nothing to worry about.’
I was about seventy per cent confident I was telling the truth. Between breaking my brain over Lily and then rushing off to figure out a solution to my new pandemic-restriction-induced Juliet accommodation crisis, I’d heard barely any of his red-carpet introductions. If there had been some kind of huge issue, someone would have told me by now, but I couldn’t exactly speak authoritatively on the subject.
I wasn’t about to tell him that, though. The first thing I’d learned working in reality TV was that ‘truth’ and ‘lie’ were points on a spectrum, not a binary.
The second thing was that this was a broad-strokes medium. True enough was good enough.
And the third thing was that people were much more likely to do what you wanted if they felt like you gave a shit about them – which usually meant making them think you had a) observed and b) approved of every single thing they did.
For once, it was genuinely true. Ididgive a shit about Romeo-Dylan. He was the perfect hero. He had a compelling backstory – the child of a white father and a Sri Lankan mother, he had lived all around the world as a kid before settling here and growing up to win an Olympic gold medal in sailing – and he might be the single most telegenic person I had ever met. He was handsome, sure, but more importantly, he was charming, eloquent, and he exhibited a level of vulnerability that was going to make all the women in the Villa and most of the viewing audience want to look after him.
I just wishedIdidn’t have to look after him quite so much. The trade-off for his excellent qualities was that he needed a hell of a lot of hand-holding. I understood why – being the first ever non-white lead in this franchise came with immense pressure – but the endless reassurance was something I had neither the time nor the disposition for.
‘This interview’s nothing to worry about,’ I told him. ‘It’s exactly the same set-up as the one we did at the hotel. Look at me, not the camera. Remember to answer in full sentences, because the audience isn’t going to hear my questions, just your answers. All good?’
‘Yes,’ Romeo-Dylan sounded a little more confident. ‘All good.’
‘We’re going to run through all the Juliets, and I want you to tell me what your first impressions were.’
‘Okay.’
‘What were your first impressions of Dylan G?’
He smiled. I couldn’t tell for sure whether it was genuine, but it looked genuine, and that was all that mattered. ‘Dylan G is absolutely stunning. She seems like a fascinating woman. I can’t wait to get to know her more.’
‘Would you say you felt an instant spark with her? An immediate connection?’
‘Yes.’
‘Full sentences, mate.’
‘Oh. Right. Sorry.’ He cleared his throat and shifted on the stool in front of the green screen. ‘I felt an instant spark with Dylan G. We had an immediate connection, and I’m excited to explore that. She seems like such a strong woman, and that’s exactly what I’m looking for.’
When Lily and I had done this in-the-moment interview with Brett last year (ITMs, we usually called them), it had taken ninety minutes. Trying to get him to speak in full sentences – let alone say more than one sentence – on any given topic was nearly impossible.
‘I’m so honoured that someone like her would come here,’ Romeo-Dylan added, without any prompting. ‘People talk about sportspeople as heroes all the time. That word was thrown around a lot when I won my gold medal. But people like Dylan G – nurses, doctors, frontline workers, the people holding the line against the pandemic – they’re the real heroes.’
He smiled again, an expression that was part-bashful, part-awed, and that I could use to make him look like Prince fucking Charming. ‘I should be the one fighting for the chance to date Dylan G, not the other way around.’
Truth might be relative, and I might have signed myself up for many hours of frustrating hand-holding, but I’d made the right call casting this man as the Romeo. It was going to be unbelievably easy to turn Dylan Jayasinghe Mellor into the nation’s dream boyfriend.
