‘Excuse me?’ Juliet-Dylan exclaimed.
‘You stole the Romeo from me.’ Lily’s tone was infused with an infuriating level of saccharine. ‘If you hadn’t, then what’s-her-face wouldn’t have ended up in the pool.’
‘Cece,’ Amanda interjected. ‘Her name is Cece.’
Lily fixed her with one of her more terrifying gazes. ‘Honey, do I look like I care?’
Juliet-Dylan stepped in front of Amanda – and, oh god, I reallywasgoing to have to keep an eye on the two of them; Romeo-Dylan might not be here to pull a Prince Charming on Cece, but Juliet-Dylan was doing it for Amanda, right in front of my eyes. ‘Mandie, you take Cece to get dried off. I’ll deal with this.’
Lily raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, will you now?’
‘Come on, let’s get you into some new clothes.’ Amanda put her arm around a shivering Cece and led her inside. One of the cameras peeled off and started following them.
I hesitated. All four women were my contestants. They were splitting into two different scenes. I needed to be present for both.
The barest movement of Lily’s hand. Her eyes were still locked on Juliet-Dylan’s, but her fingers flicked.Go. I’ve got this.
Despite everything, my heart leapt.
Her smile, as she looked at Juliet-Dylan, was pure villain. Predatory. Performative. Designed to strike fear into the hearts of everyone around her.
But that little gesture?
That was my partner.
I know it’s not exactly orthodox, and I know it’s a bit of a surprise, but I really am here to help you.
It wasn’t the whole truth. I knew that. And if I just blithely went along with her plan to turn herself into Lily Fireball, I wasn’t just helplessly watching her burn down her life. I’d be handing her the matches.
If I let her help me, though – could I use that, somehow? Would it give me a way to get Lily Ong back?
She flicked her fingers again.Divide and conquer. This is under control.
I thought about it for one more second.
Then I went.
I wasn’t confident I’d made the right call – which probably contributed to me losing my patience about halfway through my ITM with Cece.
She was shaking, a combination of cold and camera-shyness. She hunched into herself on the stool in front of the green screen. When I raised my voice even slightly to her, she flinched and tried to disappear into herself.
I’d been distracted by Lily during Cece’s red-carpet intro to Romeo-Dylan, but I’d paid enough attention to know it hadn’t gone well. She’d babbled nervously and forgotten to tell him her name. She was doing better in the one-on-one interview setting, but that didn’t mean she was doingwell.
It was going to take me a lot of work, if I was going to get her camera-ready, and I didn’t have that kind of time.I already had one person whose hand I was going to need to constantly hold.
So I lured Cece into a trap.
‘Do you think Dylan JM should let Lily Fireball stay in the Villa?’ I asked her.
‘No, I don’t think Dylan JM should let Lily Fireball stay in the Villa,’ Cece replied, shoulders curled forward, fingers under her thighs. ‘Not after that kind of behaviour. I know she didn’t mean for me to end up in the pool, but you can’t go around pushing and shoving people. That’s not right.’
At least she’d managed to speak in full sentences this time.
‘And I don’t like it when women attack other women,’ she added. ‘I know we’re all competing for the same man, but that kind of behaviour is toxic.’
It was such a wide-eyed, earnest answer. Cece was 5’7”, only a few inches shorter than me, but under the lights, bedraggled and wet with a towel around her shoulders and her hair sticking to her face, she looked very small and innocent.
I couldn’t let that tug at my heartstrings, though. I rifled through my mental dossier on her. ‘You study criminology, don’t you, Cece?’
