Chapter 15
15
It’s Wednesday morning and the first show went out last night. I haven’t seen it, because I was flat out serving dinner and helping to clear up when it was on, but the list of unread messages on my phone when I woke up indicate that a good number of people who know me must have watched it. In amongst the good wishes, I’m surprised to see a message from Jock.
I just saw you on Too Busy for Love. Can you confirm rumours that you’re TV’s hottest waitress now?
I grin as I type out a reply. I’m stupidly pleased to hear from him.
I don’t know about that, but it’s interesting work and I’m enjoying it. How come you have time to be watching TV?
I watch the screen for a while but the ticks stay resolutely grey. He must be working.
‘Beatrice, can I borrow you for five minutes as soon as you get some down time?’ Gus asks as I’m carrying the breakfast buffet dishes outside. His face is serious.
‘Sure. Let me just get this stuff out and then I’ll come to the control room. I’ll be with you in a second.’
My promise is slightly derailed by the fact that Flo has absent-mindedly helped herself to the soya milk rather than the regular milk, so I have to take it back into the kitchen and top it up.
‘Come in,’ Gus’s voice calls when I tap on the door. I’m surprised to see that he’s alone; the techies seem to pretty much live in here, so I was expecting to see them hunched over their desks as usual.
‘Have a seat.’ He indicates the chair that Chris usually occupies, while settling himself in Tim’s chair.
‘What’s up?’
‘Tell me about your previous job.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You said in the interview that you were looking for a new challenge, but there’s more to it than that, isn’t there? It’s come to my attention that you left out some fairly pertinent information. Why?’
I sigh. I should have known this was going to catch up with me. Even thousands of miles away, Hotel Dufour is still managing to poison my life.
‘Look, I didn’t know what was going on, I promise. The police investigated and cleared me of everything. When is this ever going to bloody end?’
‘I sympathise. However, it creates a problem for us because someone has recognised you on social media and there’s a bit of a feeding frenzy going on. You know what it’s like when the trolls think they’ve got hold of a juicy titbit.’
‘I don’t. What do you mean by feeding frenzy?’ I pull out my phone and launch X, entering the name of the show in the search box.
‘Are you sure you want to do that?’ Gus asks. ‘Some of it is vicious.’
‘I need to know what people are saying.’ I regret my words almost as soon as the screen loads and I see what he’s talking about. Someone has posted the picture of me and Jock outside the hotel, with a screengrab of me serving dinner last night next to it. The caption underneath reads:
Look where the brothel girl is! If the contestants on Too Busy for Love don’t fancy getting it on with each other, I’m sure she’ll help out.
That’s bad enough, but the comments underneath are ten times worse. I can feel the blood draining from my face as I read. How can people write such disgusting things about someone they’ve never met and know nothing about? There are a number that explicitly detail various depraved acts they would either like to carry out on me, or have me carry out on them. It’s too much and I’m aware that tears are pouring down my face.
‘Are you all right?’ Gus asks gently. ‘Do you want some water or something?’
‘Please.’
‘Stay there. Don’t move and don’t look at your phone any more.’ He gingerly removes my phone from my grasp, placing it on the table before leaving the room. I stare at it while he’s gone; the screen is dark now, but I’m very aware of the torrent of abuse it’s just served up to me. I’m shivering violently when Gus returns a few moments later with a bottle of water, which he hands to me. I just about manage to grip it, but my hands are shaking so much that undoing the lid proves impossible.
‘Give it to me,’ he suggests, gently prising it out of my grip and loosening the top for me, before holding it to my lips. I suck down the cool, soothing liquid greedily.
‘Gently,’ he chides. ‘You’ve had a shock, and there’s a risk it will all come straight back up if you overdo it.’
When the bottle is half empty, he takes it away and screws the lid back on. ‘You can have some more in a minute,’ he tells me. ‘Let’s just see how that settles first, shall we?’
There’s a knock on the door and Rosa appears. As soon as she spots me, her expression changes completely; she rushes over and wraps her arms around me.
‘Beatrice, what on earth is the matter?’ she fusses in rapid Spanish. ‘Are you unwell? Do you want me to get Pedro to take you to the doctor?’
‘I’m not unwell,’ I tell her shakily. ‘I’ve just had some shocking news.’
‘Why don’t I take you to your room for a lie-down. You’re in no fit state to work.’
‘Thank you, Rosa, but I need to talk to Gus. I’ll be OK.’
‘If you need anything, anything at all…’
‘Thank you, Rosa.’
‘I won’t pretend to have understood a word of that,’ Gus observes once Rosa has left the room, ‘but she clearly has a lot of affection for you. How are you feeling now?’
‘A little better, I think.’
‘Good. There are some really important things I need you to hear. Are you listening to me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Number one. It’s horrible and disgusting, and the people who wrote it should be ashamed of themselves, but you’re not in any danger. These people are just keyboard warriors, impotently pouring their rage out at anyone and everyone. They’re not coming for you; they never are. If they met you in the street, they’d probably run away. Have you heard me?’
‘Did you see what they wrote?’ I ask him incredulously.
‘I did. But this is the second thing I need you to hear. You are not alone. I guarantee you that pretty much every woman who has even the smallest public profile has had this kind of abuse directed at them. It will be of little comfort to you, but I’ve seen much worse. They’re not targeting you specifically, you just happen to have caught their eye today. They’ll move on.’
‘Of course they’re fucking targeting me,’ I snarl suddenly. ‘They’re not threatening to do those things to you, are they?’
‘No,’ he admits. ‘It’s a mainly misogynistic hate crime. But I know countless women in our industry that it’s happened to, and I can promise you that, although it’s equally upsetting for them, nobody has harmed them.’
Our conversation is interrupted by Dom bursting in. ‘Hold the firing squad,’ he announces. ‘Something extraordinary is happening.’
Firing squad?
‘What is it?’ Gus asks.
‘OK, so live viewing figures for last night’s show were disappointing, as you know. But it seems the Beatrice situation is stoking interest and the online figures are climbing through the roof. She might just be our ticket out of trouble.’
‘Were you going to fire me?’ I ask in disbelief.
‘One at a time. Jeez, let me think.’
‘Oh my God. You were! All that mister nice guy stuff was just an act. You’re unbelievable.’ I start to get to my feet.
‘I wasn’t going to fire you,’ Gus says firmly enough to stop me leaving the room. ‘But I was going to reassign you, I admit.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I was going to take you away from front-line duties and keep you in the background, helping Rosa and translating.’
‘Yeah, about that. I have an idea,’ Dom interjects. ‘What if we didn’t do that? We’re hanging by a thread here. If we don’t pull a rabbit out of this shitty hat soon, HQ is going to shut us down.’
This is also news to me. ‘What do you mean, “shut us down”?’
‘Dom’s right,’ Gus sighs. ‘Not only were the viewing figures poor, but the reviews were terrible. People are saying there’s no chemistry and that it all feels so fake, we’re probably not even in Mallorca. We’ve been given until the end of the week to turn it around, otherwise they’re pulling the plug.’
‘So here’s my idea,’ Dom says enthusiastically. ‘Normally, we’d do exactly what Gus is suggesting. We’d whip you out of the limelight, probably fire you, issue some statement along the lines of “we had no idea but she’s gone now, sorry everyone,” and hope that resolved it. But what if we took all this and used it to our advantage? Give Beatrice more screen time, not less, and give her the opportunity to call out her abusers.’
‘Wouldn’t that just be stoking the fire?’ I ask tentatively. ‘I don’t want this to get any worse.’
‘What were you thinking?’ Gus prompts, ignoring me.
‘Flo,’ Dom replies simply. ‘She’s got loads of experience of being trolled, so she’d be a great person for Beatrice to talk to. We engineer a conversation on camera, where Beatrice talks to Flo about what’s happened, maybe shows her some of the comments, and we make a thing about it. Start a conversation about the damage this stuff does to people.’
‘I’m not sure HQ would like us going off-piste like that,’ Gus tells him.
‘HQ want good viewing figures and reviews. I don’t think they care beyond that.’
‘Even if we shoot it, there’s no guarantee they won’t cut it. It’ll probably be a waste of time.’
‘Then we call them and sell them the idea. We need to do something, and this might be good for both Beatrice and the show. Let’s talk about something that bloody matters for once, rather than our usual “celebrities being absolutely hopeless at ordinary life tasks” bollocks.’
‘Fine. You sell it, and you go under the bus if they hate it. Still want to do it?’
‘Yup. What about you, Beatrice? Are you up for it?’
‘I’m still not entirely sure what the plan is,’ I admit. ‘But if it gives me an opportunity to tell my side of the story, I’m in.’
‘Right,’ Gus declares. ‘We’re doing this. Beatrice, if you need to take a couple of hours away to recover, we’ll cope without you. Remember, even if HQ goes for it and we film it today, it won’t screen until tomorrow night, so don’t expect anything to change immediately. Try not to look at your social media for a while, OK? It won’t do you any good.’
As soon as I’m dismissed, I practically sprint to my annexe, where I rip off all my clothes and stuff them in the dirty clothes bin, before spending as long as I dare under the hottest shower I can bear. I know Gus is right and I’m not unique, but it doesn’t stop me feeling violated. I just hope their plan works.