‘… yes?’ she replied, clearly surprised. ‘I study criminology.’
‘Would you say that’s because you have a strong sense of justice?’
‘Well, there are a lot of reasons. Justice is part of it, but—’
‘Cece,’ I interrupted, ‘wouldn’t you say that you have a strong sense of justice?’
She looked at me, confused.
I raised my eyebrows.
Realisation washed over her face. ‘Yes. I have a strong sense of justice.’
‘What would you say to Lily if she were here right now?’
Cece sat up straighter, drawing her shoulders back. ‘If Lily were here right now, I would tell her that she doesn’t know who she just messed with.’
Poor kid.
I waved at the camera to stop rolling. ‘Excellent,’ I told Cece. ‘Now let’s workshop how this is going to go down.’
It went exactly how I intended.
I hyped Cece up. Fed her lines. Got her in the zone.
Then I got wardrobe and hair and makeup to fuss around her for much longer than necessary. Gave it time for her adrenaline to wear off, so by the time we shot the scene, she was completely off-balance again.
She tried her best. I’d give her that.
But Lily ate her for breakfast. ‘Oh, honey,’ she said coolly, when a shaking Cece told her she didn’t know who she was messing with. ‘I don’t care.’
It was an incredible economy of words. An astonishing constellation of facial expressions: the curled corner of her lips, the raised eyebrow, the amused glint in her eyes. It took a second and a half to give us the perfect grab: the one that told us Lily Fireball was a monster.
She was extraordinarily good at this, in a way that usually would have delighted me, but I had to look away. There was a dull throbbing at the base of my skull.
Lily Fireball was going to be so fucking famous.
At least I’d made sure the primary fight in the premiere was Lily vs Cece and not Lily vs Juliet-Dylan, I told myself, trying to refocus myself on what I could actually control. That worked better for my overarching season plans. And getting Cece cut would save me a lot of nursemaiding.
The First Night Party ended immediately afterwards. Suzette had called it, not me, and I clung to my annoyance over that to avoid feeling anything else. ‘You can’t make these kinds of calls without consulting me,’ I growled at her. ‘I just needed fifteen fucking minutes, Suzette!’
‘You know the timetable. We’re running out of night.’
She wasn’t wrong. It was four in the morning, so it was still dark, but Necklace Ceremonies took forever to shoot. I instructed Tim (Tom?) to make sure the blackout curtains were properly shut in case we got any stray sunlight.
I’d wanted those fifteen minutes to shoot a scene between Romeo-Dylan and Cece. As Prince Charming, it didn’t seem in-character for himnotto spend any time with her, after the night she’d had. I wanted him to let her down easy, in the kindest, most gentlemanly way.You’ve had such a rough night, Cece,I was going to coax him into saying.I can see that this isn’t the right environment for you, and I don’t want to cause you any pain.
It would be perfect show-don’t-tell characterisation, demonstrating exactly who our main players were in only a few moments of television. Romeo-Dylan was the ultimate dream boyfriend who put the needs of others ahead of his own. Lily Fireball was a monster who ate the weak (the Cece types), setting up those who could withstand her (the Juliet-Dylan types) as strong – which would in turn play into theromance plot, because that archetypal ‘strong woman’ was who Romeo-Dylan was looking for.
It was the kind of story logic I’d usually whiteboard out, to explain how it all fit together. Automatically, I looked around for Lily, and found her standing off to the side, out of the way of the crew, reapplying her lipstick in the mirror of her compact.
She caught me looking, and winked.
My head ached. My heart ached. My whole body ached.
Why did she have to do this to me? Of all the ways for her to come back into my life, why did it have to be like this?
I made myself look away. Maybe the conversation between Romeo-Dylan and Cece would work better after he dumped her anyway. If Cece started crying and begging for a chance to stay before she was formally cut, it’d be harder for us to hold the Prince Charming line.
