‘They’re about three seconds away from falling into bed. You’ve seen the way they look at each other over the breakfast buffet.’ It was the same way I’d be looking at Murray if I thought there was any chance he’d look back at me the same way.
Although…
Just because I liked and respected Julia – had become genuine friends with her, even – it didn’t mean I had to blindly ship them together, no questions asked. Not if he was watching sweat roll down my neck.
Murray was scribbling on the notepad. ‘I like that. They were in different wilderness alliances. Jonno was teamed up with all those tradies; Harriet was in that girl gang. But if—’
‘—if they start hooking up, they could potentially form their own little alliance here in Adjudication Station. Which could have a huge impact on the final vote.’
‘Exactly. It could completely upend the power dynamics.’
‘We’d have to give them a nudge, though.’
I shifted position, crossing my legs under me and turning to face him on the couch. ‘What about something like this? We start tomorrow by doing a couple of casual little interviews with them, no big deal, nothing to see here, and we plant a few seeds. And then…’
Murray wrote as I talked, occasionally jumping in with some of his own suggestions or yes-and-ing mine, grin getting wider and wider.
‘Well?’ I asked, when we were done. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think,’ he said, looking over at me, ‘that you’re a fucking genius.’
Something clicked into place inside me, a key turning in some hidden lock.
For the second time, I decided.
Sorry, Julia. This boy was going to be mine.
‘Murray O’Connell,’ I purred, ‘I love it when you talk dirty to me.’
Pulling the strings was so unbelievably thrilling.
Nothing had ever felt as good as adopting my friendliest, most girl-chatty tone to interview Harriet, to lean in and say, ‘Just between us, because I have to ask: you’ve seen the way that Jonno looks at you, right?’, and to see her turn bright red. To meet Murray later, to watch the playback of his interview with Jonno, to see him say, ‘Be real with me, mate: what’s the deal with you and Harriet?’, and to see Jonno prevaricate in the most obvious, tell-tale ways.
To see their fingers brush at dinner in the bistro. To see them sit beside each other next to the kidney-shaped motel pool. To do a little more nudging, to press a tiny bit harder – and to see Jonno disappear into Harriet’s motel room at night, their shadowy figures embracing through the thin curtains.
‘Got them,’ Murray breathed.
The thrill was so strong that the only thing that kept me from pouncing on him was that he already had his phone out, filming. ‘Thank god we got everyone to sign releases,’ he breathed, leaning in so close to avoid the sound picking up that I could feel his stubble against my ear.
I had never wanted anyone or anything like I wanted him.
We made an announcement the next morning at breakfast. ‘We’re having a dinner party tonight,’ Murray said. ‘We know there’s a lot of disunity right now in the Adjudication Station, and we think it’s best to get it all out in the open. Lily and I are going to leave a box at reception, and you have until two pm to put your anonymous questions in.’
There was a disquieted murmur around the motel bistro. It was exactly the reaction we’d hoped for, and it made my whole body feel alight with excitement.
That afternoon, we reclaimed the box and sat down in my room to go through the questions. Murray laughed as he read the first one. ‘You were right, drama queen.’
He turned the piece of paper around so I could read it.WHAT DISUNITY?????
I laughed too. ‘You’d think people playing a strategy game wouldn’t be so easy to fool.’
We left enough of the real questions in there that we’d have plausible deniability, but added some carefully worded ones of our own. ‘Is it true,’ one of the castaways read out, several questions deep into the dinner party, after everyone was well and truly destabilised, ‘that Jonno has betrayed the tradies’ alliance?’
‘No!’ Jonno exclaimed. ‘I’m tradie strong!’
Surreptitiously, I hit a key on my laptop. The projector screen at the other end of the bistro flickered to life.
It had been a production to get the projector set up. My nicest, sweetest begging hadn’t swayed the motel staff into letting us borrow it. Murray had had to go full bad cop to make it happen – and then getting the fucking thing toworkhad been another story. Who knew it was that difficult to find a HDMI cable?
