Chapter Eighteen Dolly #2
‘It feels like weeks in here. And we’ve only been here for a few hours.’
‘It’s confusing,’ I agree. ‘Err, sorry it means you didn’t get space from me for very long.’
‘Or anyone else,’ she adds, shuddering as she glances at the house. When she looks back at me, she appears just about as thrilled. She bites down on her lower lip. ‘We’re still not friends.’
‘Fine.’ Seems a bit rich, but then she didn’t ask me to come out here. I’m the sap of a knight who keeps willingly rushing to her aid.
I decide to give her a pass, temporarily, because of whatever the hell is going on with her right now.
People say stupid things when they’re hurt or sick.
That’s what Mum and I do when she’s being a snappy little shit.
Let it wash over me in the moment; we talk about it later.
Who knows if it’s the healthiest dynamic, but it means we don’t leave anything festering and we talk it out when the pain has passed.
I know that when my endometriosis is bad, I’m pretty inhuman.
As if it’s heard me thinking about it, just then my uterus gives a sharp twinge. Not now, dickhead. I’m busy.
‘Call this a temporary truce then?’ I offer. ‘I’d feel awful if I let you freeze to death out here.’
‘Why? That’d improve your odds.’ The little curl of a smile is infuriating.
‘I don’t think I’d get a great edit out of it, do you?’
This seems acceptable to her. ‘Fine. You can stay.’
‘Look, do you want to talk about whatever is going on?’
My asking resurrects the upset. Her knees bounce under the blanket, and while her eyes aren’t wild, they look scared. What the hell has happened?
‘Did something happen with Patrick, Carys? You can tell me.’
She stops and starts a few more times before seeming to deflate before my eyes. ‘It’s just so loud.’
Huh? ‘Loud?’ I repeat, just to be sure that’s what she said.
‘In the bedroom,’ she sniffs, rubbing at her eyes.
‘Patrick?’
‘No, no,’ she stutters. ‘This has nothing to do with him. It’s just the noise. It’s constant.’
Okay, I’m not really following what she’s saying, but then my mum gets ratty about noise and light when she’s feeling really shit. I think of Bridget in the bed next to me snogging Jackson’s head off.
‘From my bed, I’ve got the joy of surround-sound make-out sessions,’ I say, trying to lighten the tone. ‘I swear I can hear us losing cash with every slurp.’
‘It’s not just that.’ Her fists clench on the blanket, knuckles whitening. I can see her getting frustrated with herself as she fails to find the words.
‘Tell me,’ I urge.
She looks up at the sky, blinking tears. ‘I’ve been overstimulated for days and I’m very close to—’ She stops again, takes a breath. ‘You can’t repeat this,’ she begs.
‘I won’t. You know I’m good at keeping secrets, after all.’
She laughs at that, a huffy sad kind of noise. ‘Yeah. You are.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘I’m autistic and you caught me in a shutdown. Or maybe a meltdown, I can’t tell yet. It’s just bad.’
So many questions jump into my throat, but I swallow them down. This is not the time to make her explain. ‘What would be helpful for me to do when you feel like this?’
‘The water helped.’ She heaves suddenly and I think she’s about to vomit, but it passes without any expulsions. ‘Sorry, my nervous system gets a bit confused during, or after or… I’m not sure it’s technically done.’
She sips at the water again, a few round drops landing on the blanket as her hands and lips shake.
‘When I’m overstimulated it’s like… every sense is too much,’ she whispers, her voice muffled and low like she’s talking through cotton wool. ‘Even talking hurts.’
I recognise the pain on her face. I know that look. The low ache in my belly is a sign that my own personal pain is right on track, but hopefully will do me the solid of skipping the honeymoon.
‘Do you need quiet?’ It’s not really quiet out here in the true sense of the word, because there’s cicadas and the lapping of the sea, but it’s all the kind of sound you might put on to fall asleep. Certainly nicer than the sound of skin slapping together. ‘No chatting?’ I clarify.
She nods, and we sit in silence for a long, long time. It would almost be companionable if there wasn’t everything going on between us, truce aside.
I hope, for Carys’s sake, no one is filming right now, or that, if they are, the loud cicadas will cover our whispering. Does she realise that might have been on tape? They’ll have a field day if they are filming – one secret lesbian and a secret autistic in one fell swoop.
Thing is, I strongly suspect that she’s been hiding this from not just the cast, but production.
Not to be big headed, but she told me pretty much everything including her inside leg seam, which I’ve also explored thoroughly, so I suspect that if Reb or someone on the team knew, Carys would have confided in me earlier.
Would they have let her on if they’d known?
Is that why she’s gone undercover? No reality television show is perfect on duty of care because half the drama comes from them ignoring those responsibilities, but UK shows have been pretty tight on mental health in the last few years at least. Neurodivergence isn’t the same as mental health, but the extra duty of care involved means they probably view it the same.
I know there have been some testimonies from autistic reality show contestants who’ve talked about the specific struggles they’ve had with the structure, namely the purposeful lack of sleep or sensory downtime, the constant requirement to socialise, all the change.
I don’t know enough about autism to say it definitely puts some of her behaviour in perspective, but if I was slowly being driven mad by being on a reality TV show, I might act a little unhinged too.
It’s not like I don’t care about her, because I do. I just also happen to think she’s acted like a tit of late. But I don’t want her to hurt. In fact, I want to wrap my arms around her, tell her it’s okay, that she’s safe.
How embarrassing that I still like her, even when she’s a total bitch to me.
Over time, her posture relaxes. She goes from firm as a well-baked biscuit to something looser, not yet relaxed but close to it. Her breathing evens out too.
‘Thanks,’ she says eventually, signalling the end of our silent meditation. ‘I feel like I can hear myself think again.’
‘Sorry to ask another question, but what else do you need?’
‘Sleep. But it’s so much. It’s so much in there,’ she moans, and my heart breaks a little for her.
I think back to her sleep kit that was always on her pillow in our shared bedroom. ‘Do you have your ear plugs? Your sleep mask?’
She shakes her head. ‘They’re in my case somewhere but I couldn’t see it and then I got stressed out and… Well. Now we’re here.’
‘Okay, I can find some for you.’
‘It’s not just the sound,’ she sighs.
God, I can imagine. Several of the men have particularly potent feet, and then there’s all the perfume and hairspray. Plus, the unfamiliar beds and sharing suddenly with Patrick, a man she’s functionally just met.
I’m so busy thinking about the hellscape of the bedroom that when she groans and flings the blanket off her suddenly, I startle. ‘What’s happening?’
‘The tag,’ she gasps.
‘The tag?’
‘In the back of the top. It’s just… so loud.’ Carys points at the middle of her back with skewiff arms.
I peer round, careful not to touch her, and see a very square-looking tag sewn into the back that is sticking out at an odd angle. I reach around to the back of my own vest top. The tag is stiff and itchy and kind of gross to the touch now I’m prodding at it.
These fucking pyjamas.
‘I’ll get it out. Hang on.’
I risk going back into the bedroom, and find what I need immediately. I’m a meticulous packing cube user, so a fresh pair of ear plugs, my spare sleep mask and my manicure kit are all in the same handy bag.
Warren sleepily opens an eye as I take it from the bedside table. ‘All okay?’ he mumbles.
I nod. ‘I’ll tell you in the morning,’ I whisper, and his eyes close again.
As I walk back to Carys’s spot, I catch her humming on the breeze. It’s a familiar song, I grew up watching all her films with Mum.
‘Marilyn Monroe, huh?’ I say as I sit down beside Carys.
‘Some Like It Hot is my favourite film,’ she says.
‘I thought perhaps you just had a thing for blondes,’ I say glibly.
It’s probably not the time to make jokes about our prior entanglement when she’s so overloaded. Me and my big gob are always stepping in it.
But to my relief, she snorts. ‘Maybe.’
No more barbs, Dolly. This should be a banter-free zone, for many reasons. Namely because you love banter.
‘Okay, I have all the supplies. Are you ready for me to cut this tag out?’
‘Should I take my top off?’
Before I can shut my stupid mouth I say, ‘I won’t stop you.’
‘That’s how we got into this mess in the first place,’ she replies with a sigh. ‘Are you going to cut this thing off me or just wave those nail clippers at me?’
‘Turn round, will you?’ I wedge myself at an angle behind her so I can see her back better. ‘I can do it without you getting naked. You’re an engaged woman now, after all. You’ve got to be demure and mindful and chaste.’
‘These pyjamas aside.’
I laugh and I can’t help it, because I’d forgotten how funny she can be when she’s not giving me daggers.
I try not to pay attention to the long lines of her neck, the sprinkle of freckles across her bare shoulders. When she moves her cinnamon hair out of the way, there’s the ghost of a mark, just now visible. A reminder of my last visit to this particular position.
God, is this what the next few years of my life are going to be like while I’m in heterosexual mode? So desperate for anything that I’m turned on by the sight of a woman’s bare shoulders?
I gently fold out the seam at the back of the top, the material catching just under her shoulder blades.
This close, I can smell the sugar of her perfume. I’ve missed it.