‘Easy,’ I said, stamping firmly on the voice in my brain that was unhelpfully chantingLily would understand. ‘We’re going to use Cece.’
Carrie blinked. ‘Cece?’
‘This is going to be a surveillance date,’ I said. ‘You know how we’d normally get a sibling or a friend to secretly watch the Juliets and then sit down with the Romeo to discuss who they like and who they don’t? We’ll use Cece instead.’
‘But she can barely string a sentence together,’ Carrie said.
‘She’s improved a lot. You haven’t seen her friend spots with Dylan JM.’
‘Because you won’t let anyone else watch the dailies,’ Suzette muttered.
I ignored her, scribbling Cece’s name on the board and then an arrow, connecting her to my messy mind-map. ‘We usually try and keep all the plotlines relatively separate. But let’s lean on the fact that this season is unusual. Let’s do some really interesting storytelling. Let’s use this friendship as a narrative lever rather than just as a tool for exposition and as Dylan JM’s security blanket. Let’s—’
‘Murray, slow down!’ Suzette said.
‘It makes sense!’
‘But it’s so fucking complicated! You know that GIF of the conspiracy theory guy fromIt’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia? That’s you.’
‘All right, fine. What’s your alternative?’
‘Here’s a pitch,’ Carrie said. ‘I like what you’re saying about Dylan G and Lily, and how we can lean into that to make Dylan G seem like a hero. But what if we switch out Amanda for someone else? Naya, maybe?’
I shook my head. ‘It’s got to be Amanda. She’s the only one who will trigger that mama bear protective thing in Dylan G. Besides, Naya and Heather hate each other. I want to keep them together. That could be good secondary drama.’
Carrie blinked. ‘Since when do Naya and Heather hate each other?’
‘You haven’t noticed?’ I kept my tone deliberately casual.
‘Here’s what I’ve noticed,’ Suzette said. ‘You’re wearing the same clothes as yesterday.’
‘Your point?’
‘My point is that you’re not sleeping, you’re barely eating, and you’re coming up with plans that need a serial killer board to explain.’
‘I’m doing my job.’
‘You’re doing everyone’s job!’ she said. ‘I know you don’t want to talk about Lily, and – you know what? Fine. Feel your feelings on your own time. They’re none of my business. But this isn’t about your feelings, Murray. It’s about the show. We’ve still got four weeks of the shoot to go. You’ve got to let us help you.’
I finished the cold dregs of my coffee. ‘You can help me by getting this group date set up. This way.’ I stabbed at thewhiteboard with my marker. ‘I’m going to the Convent to get Cece.’
Suzette was right about one thing. I wasn’t sleeping. Even when I managed to slip away to my trailer at night, my mind wouldn’t turn off. I was lucky to catch anything more than a few hours of uneasy dozing.
But this wasn’t my first rodeo with insomnia, and I’d been trying to use it to my advantage. If my brain wouldn’t let me sleep, I’d use the extra time to work.
I set Cece up with Saurav in the monitor room to observe, then went down to run point on the group date. The little smirk that crossed Lily’s face when Z announced the composition of the three teams was so enraging it made my teeth hurt.
I hated that I’d listened to her. Hated that I’d done exactly what she told me in that carefully uncrumpled note, tucked behind the photo-strip of me and Julia.Put Naya and Heather together on the next group date. They hate each other. You’ll get drama. L. x
But I just didn’t have it in me, when it came down to it. It wasn’t in me not to trust the dramatic instincts of Lily Ong.
Even when I shouldn’t.
I realised what she’d done about thirty seconds after I sat down to film an ITM with Heather.
I was running on autopilot. I’d already decided what the A-plot of the group date was going to be: unsurprisingly, I’d been right about the hero/damsel/villain dynamic that putting Juliet-Dylan, Amanda and Lily together would trigger. They’d drawn the bulk of my focus during the shoot,but Lily had (also unsurprisingly) been right too. I could have been fifty kilometres away and still heard Naya and Heather screaming at each other.
‘Talk to me about how today went,’ I said to Heather, hoping for a few grabs about the fight that I could use for a B-plot.
