Chapter 16
16
I wasn’t sure about Dom’s idea, but it turned out to be brilliant. We filmed a segment where I was behind the pool bar and Flo came over to get a drink. She asked if I was OK, and that got the conversation going and gave me the opportunity to explain my role at Hotel Dufour and show her the comments on my phone. Not only did she reassure me, but she called out some of my trolls by name on camera, which I thought was incredibly brave of her. There was an outpouring of love after the episode aired and, although there are still a few people making nasty comments, most of the remarks about me online are now fairly positive. Gus is also pleased, as the ratings and audience numbers soared almost overnight, and have stayed up during the weeks since. Apparently, the viewers loved the fact that we tackled such a corrosive issue head-on.
Jock sent another message asking if I was all right after the show aired, and we ended up having a bit of back and forth, which cheered me up immensely. He told me he’s working at a restaurant in Glasgow called Gregory’s and is really enjoying it. The menu is very much British, which he said is a huge relief after Madame’s French obsession. I did search online for the restaurant but came up blank. When I questioned him about it, he said the owners were old school and didn’t feel an online presence was necessary. After that brief flurry, the messages died down again, which is probably just as well, because talking to him just makes me realise how much I miss him.
The person who has turned out to be a total star is Flo. Dom wasn’t lying when he said she’d had her fair share of trolls; some of the stuff she showed me that they’d said about her was breathtakingly vile. However, her determination not to allow herself to be affected by it has really helped me, and she’s very sweetly accompanied me on every airport run so I’m not on my own. Her compassion has done her no harm, as she showed me a serious bump in the number of people following her online after our chat. She’s also the only one of the original contestants left. Jason was axed in the first replacement, which came as a surprise to nobody as he remained totally self-absorbed and pretty much ignored the other contestants for the entire time he was with us. I think he was just as relieved to leave as we were to see the back of him. I’m not really sure why he applied for the show in the first place. It wasn’t long before the only three left out of the original ten were Flo, Marcus and Deborah.
Marcus and Deborah have been the golden couple since day one, but Marcus managed to depth charge that a couple of nights ago when he had a few too many glasses of wine and foolishly admitted to one of the other men that he and Deborah didn’t fancy each other at all and were faking it to get the prize money. The microphone picked it up, naturally, and that was the end of them. Their place in the limelight has been taken by Flo and Rob. Rob’s a self-employed plumber who arrived in week three, and they’ve been absolutely smitten with each other from the moment they met.
‘Do you think we should go all the way?’ she asks me. We’re sitting at a table in one of the cafés in the arrivals hall, having dumped Marcus and Deborah in the check-in queue. Our final two contestants are on the inbound flight, which the board informs me should be landing in just under an hour.
‘Do you want to?’
‘I don’t not want to, but it feels a bit weird knowing that millions of people will be watching.’
‘They’re not going to see you actually having sex, Flo. Not unless you decide to do it on camera, anyway.’
‘No, but they’ll know that we have. My mum watches the show.’
‘Mm. I get your point.’
‘It’s stupid, isn’t it. I’m a grown woman; I should be free to have sex with whoever I want.’
‘Do you think you’ll take your relationship into the outside world?’
‘I don’t know. Rob would really like to, but I wonder whether it would survive outside this bubble. It’s easy for us in here; he can’t exactly work, unless the sink gets blocked or something, and, apart from a few selfies to keep my followers onside, neither can I. So we’ve got all the time in the world to lie by the pool and chat. But it won’t be like that back home, and I’m not sure he understands how busy I am. I need to be creating high-quality content pretty much every day, otherwise my followers will lose interest and so will the brands. I’ve also got to keep on top of my social media. It sounds like a dream life, but I’m regularly working until midnight. I’m lucky, because being in here keeps my profile high, but I know I’m going to have to hit the ground running when I get home.’
‘Have you talked to him about how you feel?’
‘You’re sounding like Raquel.’ She giggles. ‘I have, but I don’t think he gets it. I’m not sure he sees what I do as work. To him, my life is easy. Couple of selfies with a Starbucks in the morning before taking the rest of the day off or going shopping, that’s what he thinks. What are you going to do after this? Are the TV company whisking you off to another exotic location?’
‘I don’t know. They haven’t said anything. I’d like to think they’re pleased with my work, but I reckon the fact that I wasn’t totally up front about Hotel Dufour has left a slightly bitter taste in their mouths. Who knows?’
‘You seem pretty chilled about it.’
‘I am.’ This isn’t strictly true. Although the pay here is good and I haven’t had any living expenses, so it’s not strictly the end of the world if I don’t get work straight away, the idea of going back to Ludlow fills me with dread. I’ve also never had a fixed-term contract before and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do when it ends. On the one hand, there’s nothing stopping me from getting in touch with the agency to see what they’ve got coming up, but I don’t want to miss out on another contract with Casterbridge Media if they’re planning to offer one. I’ve been trying to find a way to broach the subject with Gus, but the opportunity hasn’t presented itself so far.
‘Who are we picking up?’ Flo asks a few minutes later. ‘Give me the deets.’
‘We’ve got a woman called Abby, who is the director of a construction company based in Leeds, and a guy called James who has his own wine business called The Online Sommelier.’
‘So we’re looking for a woman in a hard hat and a wino.’
‘Let me know when you spot them,’ I reply with a smile.
I don’t know who fits Flo’s stereotypes less well. I knew Abby wouldn’t be wearing a hard hat, obviously, but I was expecting someone who looked like they worked in construction, so the petite woman with long chestnut hair and wide hazel eyes who approaches us catches me by surprise. James must be well over six foot as he towers over the rest of us. He’s obviously a man who takes pride in his appearance, as he’s immaculately turned out.
‘I wondered if you were the other contestant when I saw you at the boarding gate,’ Abby says to him as we head out of the airport complex onto the dual carriageway.
‘I had you clocked pretty much straight away,’ he replies. I catch Flo’s eye and we both smile. They’re like chalk and cheese to listen to. Where Abby’s accent is clearly northern, James has the kind of posh-boy drawl that makes you think of private jets, yachts and horse racing.
‘What gave me away?’ Abby asks.
‘Simple. Mallorca is a holiday destination, so a young woman travelling alone stuck out among the families and couples.’
‘Very good, Detective. I could have been a local returning home, though. Did you think of that?’
‘I did, but I ruled it out almost straight away.’
‘Why?’
‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t give off a Hispanic vibe. What do you do, by the way?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I was just wondering how someone like you could be too busy for love. I would have thought you would have men queueing round the block.’
‘Flatterer. I’m in construction. I spend most of my time either stuck in an office or dressed in safety gear on site, and that’s not a look that most men are going to queue up for.’
‘Sounds intriguing.’
Abby laughs. ‘It really isn’t. What about you, what do you do?’
‘I’m in the wine trade.’
‘What, like an off-licence?’
‘Not exactly. My customers are not the kind of people who would buy wine from the off-licence. They’re connoisseurs who expect the very best and are prepared to pay handsomely for it. My job is to find exceptional wines for them.’
‘When you say “pay handsomely”…’
‘I’ll give you an example. One of my clients asked me to track down a case of 1998 Chateau Petrus for him last week. It wasn’t a hard wine to find, but it is at the upper end, price wise. Do you know much about wine?’
‘I know I like a good Shiraz, but I don’t normally spend more than a tenner on a bottle of wine. How much is Petrus?’
‘Four and a half thousand pounds a bottle for the 1998.’
‘Fuck me.’
‘That’s not the best bit. My client bought six for a dinner party he was hosting. He described it to me as “nothing outlandish, just a few close friends coming round for the evening”. It’s a different world, but it makes life interesting. What sort of construction do you do?’
‘Residential.’
Although I did find James’s wine story moderately interesting, construction totally isn’t my thing so I tune them out and chat to Flo until Abby suddenly leans forward. ‘Beatrice, did you know you’re famous back home?’
‘Really?’ I try to keep my voice neutral.
‘Yeah. I’ve been watching the show and following it on social media, obviously, and you’ve got a lot of fans, particularly among the female viewers. You and Flo are like the poster girls of the anti-misogyny revolution.’ I glance across at Flo, who beams at me.
‘The woman you worked for, what was her name?’ Abby continues after a moment.
‘I knew her as Madame Dufour, but I think her real name is Eileen Strickland.’
‘That’s the one. She just got sent to prison, did you see?’
‘No. We can get UK news at the villa, but I haven’t been following it.’
‘There’s bound to be something online. Have a look.’
As soon as we get to the villa, Flo dashes off to find Rob while Gus talks Abby and James through the arrivals process, so I take the opportunity to check the internet. It takes a little while as it’s buried in the minor news and the article is short, but I read it with interest.
Eileen Strickland, the owner of the notorious brothel Hotel Dufour, was today sentenced to 14 years imprisonment at the central criminal court after being found guilty under section 33 of the Sexual Offences Act for keeping a brothel, section 53 of the same act for controlling prostitution for gain, and sections 2 and 3 of the Modern Slavery Act for trafficking and sexual exploitation. Her daughter, Maria Strickland, was also sentenced to 7 years for controlling prostitution for gain. In his summing up, Richard Stevens KC described them as ‘depraved individuals who remorselessly preyed on vulnerable young women with the sole intention of lining their own pockets,’ adding, ‘society will be much improved without you in it.’
I’m assuming Jock hasn’t seen it either as I’m sure he would have told me, so I screenshot it and send it to him. He must be working as he doesn’t reply, so I go to help Rosa with the dinner. As I’m carrying the trays out to the date-night tables, I notice that Abby and James are sitting opposite each other at the main table, deep in conversation. I can’t help smiling as I contemplate the physical differences between them. If they become a couple, she’s either going to have to saw his legs off at the knees or get a stool, otherwise kissing is going to be very challenging. Flo and Rob are also having a heart to heart and, by the eager look on his face, I’m surmising that Flo has decided to take things to the next level, even if her mum is watching.
The only problem with these budding romances happening all around me is that they throw my own situation into sharp relief, and that inevitably turns my mind back to Jock. When I check my phone just before going to bed, I can see that he’s replied to my message.
They obviously caught Maria in the act then. Good.
I haven’t told Jock that I contacted DI Winter and shared what Maria had told us. As I climb into bed and turn off the light, I try to work out whether I should. In the end, I decide to leave it; it’s not important and, nice as it is to hear from him, I need to focus on the fact that my contract is coming to an end soon and start to make a plan about what to do next. It’s difficult though, and I find myself trying to picture him in his new role. Does he miss me the same way as I miss him, or does he see me purely as a friend who shared a bizarre week in London with him?