A calculated one,was the truth. She worried about my wellbeing. She felt guilty about how overworked I was as anIinstead of awe; felt guiltier when she felt like she’d made it worse. Those feelings – those Lily Ong feelings – were thelevers I could wedge in the cracks of the Lily Fireball mask and use to break it, use to find my best friend beneath it so she could tell me why she was really here, why she was really doing this to herself.
‘A serious one,’ I said instead.
That was also the truth.
‘I don’t understand how you can ask me that,’ she said. ‘You of all people should know – should know that—’
‘Should know what?’
‘Should know that I feel things,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to, a lot of the time. Sometimes I wish I could just cut that part of myself out. But I feel things.’
‘You could have fooled me.’
‘Murray—’
‘I’m all hard edges,’ I snarled. ‘I need someone soft, to balance me out.’
She paused for a long moment. ‘You remember.’
‘Of course I fucking remember! You think those words haven’t been seared into my brain for the last six years?!’
She closed her eyes.
‘I know you don’t have a lot of lines, Lily. But I never thought you’d cross that one.’
‘Murray—’
‘Save it.’
I walked over to the door of my trailer. It was calculated, pushing her away like this, a manoeuvre, a stratagem.
It didn’t make the feelings behind it any less real.
‘I’ll consider your suggestions,’ I said. ‘Now get out.’
My first instinct was to not to use Lily’s plan.
The apology to Romeo-Dylan part was, of course, a given. There was no world in which I didn’t spend the better part of an hour sincerely apologising to him for the series of fuck-ups that had led to the Heather debacle; and for the fact that, to ensure the scandal didn’t overwhelm the whole season, we were going to have to make a Very Special Episode.
He accepted the apology, but his jaw was clenched the whole time. Romeo-Dylan had retreated behind his own mask.
The only time the mask fell away was when I commented, with deliberate casualness, how well Cece was going to come out of the whole affair. ‘The Instagram deals she’s going to get will be massive, especially once we slingshot her onto another show,’ I told him. ‘You were right about the friend spots, Dylan. I was wrong. And beyond that – you’ve done exactly what you wanted. You’ve helped her. Immeasurably.’
‘Good,’ Romeo-Dylan said faintly. ‘That’s good.’
I wondered, afterwards, while I was scrubbing through mounted cam footage in the war room, whether I should have brought Cece up at all. Making it clear that he’d set her up for a bright future without him in it was a good way of refocusing him on the story with Juliet-Dylan, but if I became this looming villainous figure in his mind tearing him and his beloved apart it was hardly going to be good for our working relationship.
Maybe I should offer him an out from our agreement. It would be a huge pain for me to recalibrate all my narrative plans – not to mention getting him and Juliet-Dylan out of their contracts – but it might be worth it.
The war room door handle rattled. I’d put a chair under it again. ‘Murray?’
‘Go away, Lily.’
‘You don’t have to talk to me. Not if you don’t want to. I’ll be in and out. But I brought you something to eat.’
God, that sounded good.
‘Eat it yourself,’ I said tersely. ‘I’m busy.’
