Chapter 36
ONE YEAR LATER
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man looking so terrified – and I’ve seen a man rolling around on the sand in agony while he watches women argue over which one of them is going to pee on him.
‘Relax,’ I tell him with a smile.
‘It’s my first time,’ he says, his voice wobbling. ‘Doing anything like… this.’
‘I was terrified, when I did it for the first time,’ I reassure him. ‘But you would be amazed how quickly you get used to it.’
‘Yeah, yeah…’ he says, each of his words coming out when he exhales. ‘It’s just speed dating, right? I’ve done that before.’
‘How did it go?’ I ask curiously.
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ he manages to joke.
I laugh. That’s fair enough.
I still have mixed feelings about speed dating.
There’s something so weird about it, it’s like an odd form of human interaction, like, if this were a nature documentary, we’d all just be standing by, watching the hyenas picking off and eating the baby antelope, letting it happen, because it’s just a fact of life, one that we’re here to observe, not intervene in.
But people aren’t like animals – not entirely, at least – sometimes we need a little intervention, and push to go for what we want, and a helping hand to get it.
‘Do you think you’ll be giving him a tick?’ a voice says from behind me.
‘I don’t think I’ll be giving anyone a tick ever again,’ I reply, turning round to face him.
Lockie takes me in his arms and peppers my lips with kisses.
‘So you don’t fancy sitting down and doing a few rounds, seeing if you can find someone better?’ he jokes playfully.
‘Do you?’ I reply.
‘I’m not going to find better,’ he says with a smile. ‘But… I am going to help this lot find love.’
‘You’re not going to script it for them, like old times?’ I tease.
‘We’re on-air in less than a minute, so I’m going to leave that one hanging in the air,’ he replies.
Soon enough, someone behind the camera signals that we’re live in three, two, one…
‘Hello, and welcome back to Heartbreak Hotel,’ I say to the camera.
‘We’ve got a new batch of guests checking in – but who do we think they’ll be checking out?’ Lockie replies.
‘And, later in the show, we’ve got celebrity guests – and our reality TV camp mates, Ozzy, Honey, Tony and Camilla on the panel – talking about all things love, war and survival. They’ll be giving us their thoughts on all the action in the hotel today.’
‘There’s going to be action?’ Lockie jokes. ‘I didn’t think it was that kind of show.’
I give him a playful shove.
Our on-screen banter is just as good as it is off. In fact, TV News magazine described us as having ‘the best on-screen chemistry since Breaking Bad’ and Stylife magazine wants to write a profile on us as ‘the hottest new couple on TV’.
It’s hard to believe that a year ago, pretty much to the day, I was lying on a beach convinced I was going to die, surrounded by coconuts and people I didn’t think I liked.
Now I’m in a luxury hotel, in Sicily, co-hosting a reality TV dating show that Lockie and I came up with together.
Heartbreak Hotel, a show where people can come and find love.
People who are sick of dating apps, who always seem to meet the wrong person, or who can’t seem to meet anyone at all.
And when I say people, I mean people, real people.
Everyone said that Lockie and I were the best part of our short-lived season of Welcome to Singledom, because we were real, we were doing our best and – turns out – we were falling in love.
So our show is open to anyone, no matter what their age is or how straight their teeth are or if they know what ‘no cap’ means.
No tricks, no scripting, no embarrassing challenges, no public votes.
Just a gorgeous hotel, good food, better wine, and time for people to get to know one another.
The only intervention comes from trained psychologists and matchmaking experts, who make recommendations on who might do well to spend time with whom, to see if anything develops.
We’ve only been on-air for a couple of weeks and, honestly, it’s already making captivating viewing.
We’ve even had our first kiss – between Helen, eighty-two, and Jonas, seventy-eight.
As the show goes on, Lockie’s doing his usual rounds, chatting to contestants, turning on that easy charm of his. The producers love him. The guests love him. The hotel staff love him… I love him too.
When we cut for a break, Lockie and I head into the shadows, where the crew lurks, to grab a drink.
‘You know Lucia, who manages the hotel?’ Lockie says. ‘She says we’re the perfect couple.’
‘Aw, that’s nice,’ I reply. ‘Of course, she doesn’t know that you snore.’
‘She doesn’t know because I don’t,’ he replies.
‘How would you know, if you’re sleeping?’ I tease.
‘I’ve slept with other people – Ozzy would’ve told me,’ he jokes.
‘He did actually snore,’ I reply, the memory dragging my brain back to the island for a moment.
It’s strange because, like with anything, the only things I can really remember now are the good parts. Any time you’re going through a tough time, always focus on the glimmers of good, because when you’re on the other side of it, they are the parts worth remembering.
Did I want to take part in Welcome to Singledom?
No. Did I want to be stranded on the island, in full-on survival mode, fighting to get by?
Absolutely fucking not. But was it a journey I needed to go on?
It really was. I’d been carrying around so much excess baggage, and it turns out I didn’t need any of it.
So I left it on the island and made space in my life for Lockie.
Plus, becoming an accidental TV star, it opens doors.
I knew it was the right thing to do, quitting Welcome to Singledom, but I was terrified.
The ￡100k helped, I knew it would buy us time, but I had no idea what I was going to do next.
Then the offers started flooding in, but they only wanted me and Lockie – luckily, we only wanted each other too.
I still can’t believe Simon wanted us all to stay there, and that he livestreamed the whole thing.
I later found out that he at least reached out to our families, and let them know that we were safe, and willingly participating, and with everything going wrong, and us becoming main characters, he made a whole thing of the two of us being production members who were trying their hand at being contestants.
I suppose we were in that we’d signed contracts to say we were taking part, and that ‘anything goes’, but it’s hard to think I would have chosen to stay if we hadn’t been stranded.
‘Do you ever think about it?’ I ask. ‘Other than desperately clinging to the memory of sharing a bed with a hunk like Ozzy?’
Lockie laughs.
‘The island?’ he replies.
I nod.
‘I do but, I don’t know, it feels like another life, or a movie I watched,’ he explains. ‘But I thank Mother Nature for that storm every day, because without it, I don’t know – I was going to say we wouldn’t be where we are now but I like to think we would have found our way together somehow.’
‘Either way, I’m glad someone or something, somewhere, scripted us a happy ending,’ I say.
‘Me too,’ he replies, pausing to kiss me. ‘But I think this might be just the beginning.’
I glance around at the busy set of the show that we built together and smile. It really does feel like the start of something great.
I spent all those years thinking love was something I found for other people – fake TV love – and that I didn’t want any part of it. It took being stranded on an island, in danger, with a man I thought I hated, to realise that I wasn’t only safe, but I was head over heels in love too.
The truth is that Lockie did save me – not from the island, because that was definitely a team effort – but from myself. He showed me what to let go of and what to pick up and hold tight.
It’s funny, isn’t it, that the public clocked that Lockie and I were in love before we did? But I’d like to think that even without the prize money, we would have caught on as soon as we spoke. I know we would have.
We got there eventually – to our happy TV show ending – but Lockie is right, as far as real life goes, this is just the beginning.