‘It’s late,’ I said. ‘Go home.’
Romeo-Dylan went.
I went too. ‘That was fucked, what happened today, Murray,’ Frida said, as I helped her unload equipment from the golf cart. ‘Do you need to talk about it?’
‘Thanks, but no,’ I said. ‘I just want to get some sleep.’
Craft services was closed, so I dug around in my kitchenette cupboard and ate three muesli bars in quick succession, each in two bites, not registering the flavour. I knocked back a shot of Fucking Greg’s whiskey. I took a couple of ibuprofen, even though I knew the throbbing in my head wasn’t something they could fix.
I hiked back over to the Villa and let myself into the war room.
I found the footage from the mounted cameras, the B-roll I’d been putting off scrubbing through for two weeks now. I scrolled through hours and hours of it on 8x speed until I found what I was looking for.
Heather and Lily, alone in the kitchen.
Heather opening her mouth.
That slight tightening in Lily’s shoulders. ‘What was that you said, Heather? I don’t think I understood what you meant.’
Heather explaining.
One side of Lily’s mouth quirking. ‘What an interesting opinion.’
That glint in her eye.
I’d missed it. All the signs had been there – all the evidence I needed – and I’d missed it, until it was too late.
I’d fucked up. Inadvertently or not, I’d violated my agreement with Romeo-Dylan. I’d put him and Naya and every person of colour in the cast in harm’s way. Including Lily.
She was perfectly capable of defending herself. I’d known that long before today.
She wouldn’t have had to, though, if I hadn’t fucked up in the first place.
I had to fix this. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it, but I had to find a way to fix this.
I got up. I made myself two cups of coffee.
And I got to work.
15LilySix years ago
The morning after the night before, Murray and I met at the Villa to film pickup ITMs. We talked in great detail about our strategy for getting the best soundbites out of the eight women who had so dramatically ditched Denton – and not at all about what happened in the laundry. I had to resist the urge to swing by my parents’ place before work so I could bring Murray some of my mother’s Viet coffee as an apology. He had clear lines around when I did and did not owe him things, and I didn’t think a ‘Sorry I fucked you and then freaked out’ peace offering would be accepted particularly… well, peacefully.
Instead, we did our jobs. We interviewed the eight Juliets, used the various tools in our toolbelts to nudge them into giving us the gloating, gleeful grabs over Denton’s elimination that we needed, and Did Not Talk About It.
‘Will you wait for me before you go into the building, once we get back?’ Murray asked, as we walked to our respective cars to head back to the office.
Oh god. He was going to make me sit down and talk about it. ‘If you want.’
The dread must have shown in my voice. ‘I don’t want you facing Tony on your own.’ He gestured at my phone, where fourteen missed call notifications showed on the screen. ‘We both know who he’s going to blame, and I’m not going to let him.’
‘He’s not wrong,’ I said. ‘It was my idea.’
‘Then maybe I want some of the credit.’ Murray opened the driver’s side door of his car. ‘Wait for me, Lily.’
I usually rolled my eyes and told him not to when he used the daddy voice on me, but I didn’t say anything.
I waited. We walked into the network building together. I swiped in. Murray held the office door open for me.
