Best British Short Stories 2019

by Nicholas Royle

  She hit the switch controlling the blinds. They slid silently up and light flooded into her bedroom. She would look amazing, dazzling, filmed from behind, she knew: a blazing angel. Looking out, she found that she was on the first floor. Outside was a well-kept Mediterranean garden with gravel paths weaving between flowerbeds, with a hedge about a hundred metres away, and nothing visible beyond. They must be in a high place, not overlooked. There would be a pool, Iona felt sure. It was a compound. She could see no way in or out. So perhaps this was the back of the house.

  Iona headed out into the stairwell for a bit of an explore. This upper floor of the villa had six rooms leading to a gallery, with stairs running down one side and a skylight above and walls painted white. It was very bright. She knew without looking that the other rooms would be bedrooms, and that this meant there would be six of them in the villa. Three girls and three boys. She couldn’t see any cameras or mikes so whatever they did with them must be very very clever, super-clever, because she was certain she was being watched. Her consciousness was – had to be – double at all times: what she was doing, and what impression she would make by doing it. That was fine by Iona: she was used to it, she knew how it worked. She knew the rules of seeming. In accordance with them, she went and tapped briefly on the door of the room next to hers, waited a few seconds, and nudged the door open. As she’d expected, everything about the room was identical to hers. She didn’t bother checking the other rooms, not yet. There was no shortage of time.

  Downstairs Iona found a hallway that opened out under the gallery and gave direct access to a huge sitting room stuffed with beanbags, a TV room, what must be intended as a boys’ room with game consoles and a pool table, a lovely big kitchen with a breakfast bar and dining table. Another huge room opened straight out to the – she’d been right – huge bright blue-green swimming pool, where there were six sun-loungers laid out under umbrellas on one side, six laid out in the sun on the other side, and a pool house at the far end. It looked like, indeed was, a picture-perfect holiday pool. She went out, dipped a hand in the warm water, walked around, felt the colossal fluffy towels in the pool room.

  All this time Iona was thinking hard. She wouldn’t be on her own for ever. No one would want to watch that. Nobody would pay to watch that! People might be interested in what she did with herself when she was by herself but they wouldn’t be interested for long, so it wouldn’t be more than a day at most. She must think of it as one day at a time. She must look composed, sexy, self-contained; mustn’t look needy and impatient for the others to arrive; must look like someone who can look after herself. While taking care at all times to act natural. What that meant in the short term was that she should make some breakfast. She hadn’t checked that the kitchen was stocked, but it must be – it would make no sense for it not to be.

  She flip-flopped round the edge of the pool, crossed the room that led from the pool, crossed the hallway to the kitchen, pushed the swing door open, and almost died of a heart attack. A dark-haired woman was bending down and looking into the fridge. Iona’s scream made the woman startle and she hopped up and shrieked too, making a dissonant off-beat one-two of female distress. The woman put her hand on her chest and took a breath.

  ‘Jesus! I’m sorry,’ Iona said. ‘You startled me. I thought I was on my own. I’m Iona.’

  ‘Nousche,’ said the woman, who had the trace of an accent – French? Italian? That must be her name: Nousche. She was wearing a light, filmy top and clinging shorts. These looked carefully calculated in a sexy Eurominx style while also being fully deniable, as something she had just flung on in the morning without a second thought. Nousche’s dark hair curled round her face, a very sophisticated bob cut. Iona couldn’t tell why but she had been sure the next person in the villa would be a man. That was just how shows like this worked – girl-boy, girl-boy. Evidently that was wrong. If it was going to be a girl, though, this kind of girl was perfect: dark where Iona was blonde, petite where Iona was tall, classy-foreign where Iona was relatable-native. Maybe it would be all girls, carefully calibrated to be different, like a manufactured pop group. ‘I saw you down by the pool,’ Nousche went on. ‘I was just coming out to say hello but I wanted to see if there was anything to eat first, I’m starving.’

  ‘Me too!’ Iona said, though it wasn’t strictly true: she’d been too hyped and energised by the strangeness of it all to think about food. But it would make the wrong impression if she seemed like the kind of girl who was too up herself, too interested in being skinny, to admit she needed to eat. The calculations she was making about first impressions were all changed by the arrival of the second girl. She wasn’t creating an image of how she behaved when she was on her own, but giving a sense of what she was like to interact with. Very different. Now it was time for Operation Nice. Well, that was no problem. Iona knew how to do nice.

  ‘What is there?’ she said, bouncing over towards the cooking area. She noticed that the acoustics of the kitchen, indeed of the whole villa, were hard and flat – no soft surfaces, nothing to absorb noise.

  ‘Everything,’ Nousche said, opening the fridge wider. Something about the way she flung the door open – or pretended to fling the door open, because you can’t really fling a fridge door open, not without breaking it – made Iona see that she had a feel for drama; Nousche was one to watch. Good to know. Iona, playing along, peered into the fridge. It was indeed very well stocked, which was a good sign because it meant the others were coming and were probably coming pretty soon.

  ‘I could make us a frittata?’ Nousche said. Damn, thought Iona. So Euroskank gets to be the practical caring helpful one, while also avoiding carbs.

  ‘Super!’ said Iona. ‘You know what, while you do, I’ll just check the other rooms, because if you’re here and I didn’t realise, maybe some other people are here too, you know, and we can ask them down?’ This would serve the dual purpose of making her look caring and thoughtful too, while also getting her out of Nousche’s blast area for a bit so she could formulate a plan. It was always easy for an observer to pick up on overt bitchiness, snark, eye-rolling, and you didn’t need to counter it, because the cameras and mikes countered it for you. But this was much more subtle. Nobody would have seen anything yet. They wouldn’t know what was happening.

  ‘Unless they need a lie-in?’ said Nousche, counter-thoughtfulling. Oh, OK bitch, so this is going to be war.

  ‘Well, I’m sure your frittatas are delicious, it would be a pity if anyone missed them!’

  Nousche did a weird thing closing her eyes and raising one shoulder. It seemed to mean something along the lines of: oh all right then, if you insist on flattering me so, please by all means go ahead. Iona went back to the main staircase and started heading up. Part of her wanted to change clothes, to signal to herself that the game was different; but that made no sense. In fact it would just look a bit mad: girl meets other girl in villa, changes outfit. No, Lululemon had got her into this, and Lululemon would have to get her out. She got to the top of the stairs and went past the door she had already checked to the one after it – and just as she was reaching for the handle, it opened from the inside and a man stepped out. Iona didn’t give a full scream as she had when startled by Nousche, but she did emit a squeak. The man had curly red hair, lots of it, and was of medium height and compactly built, a fact it was simple for Iona to verify because he was naked from the waist up. A gym bunny, it was easy to see. He was carrying a towel in his left hand, and now flung it across his shoulder to cover himself partly, like an impromptu toga.

  ‘Whoa,’ he said. Semi-posh accent, a bit like Iona’s own. ‘I thought I was alone. Harry.’ He held out his hand.

  ‘Iona,’ said Iona. ‘I thought the same thing. But you’re the third. And maybe there are more, I haven’t checked. Nousche is downstairs, making omelettes. No, frittatas.’ This was, Iona thought, so much better. While Harry wasn’t her type – nothing personal, she could see h
e was attractive, just not for her – there was no denying that this was much more like it. Balance and order had been restored to the cosmos. It would surely be half boys and half girls now, anything else would make no sense. On this terrain, she was sure she could prevail.

  ‘What’s a frittata?’ said Harry.

  ‘It’s an omelette that’s gone wrong on purpose.’

  ‘Cool,’ said Harry. ‘I mean, I’m allergic to eggs, but still, you know, cool.’

  In that moment, Iona felt that she loved him very much.

  Harry gestured back towards his room. ‘I’ll just, you know, clothes,’ he said.

  ‘Absolutely!’ Iona said.

  So they had breakfast together. Iona ate just enough of Nousche’s frittata to show she was a good sport but left just enough to show that it wasn’t particularly good. Nousche did an I’m-French, I-eat-everything-and-never-put-on-an-ounce thing. Iona (caring, practical Iona) made Harry a bacon sandwich. They chatted about this and that, but mainly about when the others would arrive and who they would be and what they would be like. It went unstated that they would be attractive young people, because, well, it was obvious that that was the whole point. They talked a bit about what they did before. Harry was a model. Nousche was a ‘gallerist’, whatever that was. Iona thought about asking her but her instinct was that the query might not come out right – might sound like an attack, which was problematic, because of course that’s exactly what it was. So she would save that for later when the lie of the land was more clear. Iona told them she was an actress, because if she said she was an actress slash model slash influencer (‘classic triple threat’, according to her agent) that would make two models out of three and would thereby hand Nousche an advantage.

  Just as they were finishing breakfast, Eli walked into the room. Iona had screamed when she saw Nousche and squeaked when she saw Harry, but honestly, when she saw Eli, she almost fainted. He was so far past handsome it was like they needed some other whole vocabulary for it. He had long black hair which was at risk of being cut by his cheekbones, dark brown eyes, and was wearing a white linen shirt which did an exceptionally bad job of hiding just how ripped he was. Best of all, he carried himself as if he wasn’t aware of any of this – just, you know, moving through his day, nothing to see here, it’s normal for girls to cross their legs and become unable to speak, I’m sure that was what it was like before I came in. Iona wasn’t sure how they got through the introductions and all that: all she could hear was the blood in her head. Crucially, she could tell he preferred her to Nousche. Nothing specific, she could just tell. Ha!

  Eli was a photographer. Not a fashion photographer, the other sort. You know, warzones. Of course he was.

  After breakfast they went for a swim and to hang out by the pool for a while. Iona was a very good swimmer – a very elegant swimmer – and had been looking forward to this being a point of difference, but it annoyingly turned out that Nousche was a star swimmer too. Still, Iona knew she was on strong ground with the impression she made in a bikini. She did a few laps, then got out and dried off in the sun on a lounger next to Harry. He was lying on his front to tan his back, but when she lay down he turned over and flipped his Ray-bans down over his eyes.

  ‘Dude, gonna be honest, I could get used to this,’ he said.

  It was too bright to open her eyes and too warm, in the direct sun, to think or speak clearly, so Iona made an affirmative grunty noise. The problem of how to fill the day, this first day, had been solved by the new arrivals, each coming as a pleasant surprise, unexpected to her and no doubt to the viewers too. Or maybe the viewers already knew? No – no point thinking about that too much. The trick for dealing with the viewers would be to have them in the back of your mind but not the front of it. If you were constantly trying to second-guess them, to see what they were seeing and finesse or manipulate it, you would go mad. And also you would be obvious about it and that would spoil the whole thing. You can’t be seen thinking about how you seem – fatal. Still, it was tempting to wonder if they knew what was coming, who would be next through the pool-patio room, who would be next to do the self-conscious walk, the self-conscious wave, to reach up and flick their long black hair out of their dark brown eyes, to pull off their white linen top and . . .

  A tall black man came out from the house and stood in the doorway by the pool squinting over at them with his hand held up to shield his eyes from the sun. He was wearing a grey T-shirt and black sweatpants and he too was super-ripped, even more so than Eli and Harry, which Iona wouldn’t have thought was possible, but this guy was something else, it was like his muscles had muscles. Also he seriously knew how to make an entrance. He did a slow look around and then walked over towards them. Nousche stopped swimming, came to the side of the pool and draped her arms over it, the skank. He went towards her, crouched down on his haunches, held out his hand and said:

  ‘Liam.’

  Nousche held out her hand in an unbelievably pretentious way, wrist up, palm drooping down, like she was the fucking queen or something. She said her name. Liam did a squinty smile and – this too was unbelievable and was all Nousche’s fault – briefly bowed his head down and kissed her hand. Iona felt she might throw up in her mouth. Liam straightened up, not without a lingering flirty smoulder towards Nousche, and came over to Iona. Get up, don’t get up? But if Nousche had done an I’m-a-duchess number the thing to do was go the other way. Iona hopped up off her lounger and walked towards Liam to introduce herself. Harry, nice manners, got up too. Harry was closer to Liam than she was so they greeted each other first, Liam offering a fist bump and a ‘hey man’ that couldn’t be more precisely calibrated to be Harry’s shtick. This new guy was a very quick reader of people. He came over to Iona and said hello and then, genius move for people-pleasing people-person, I’m super-pretty-but-I’m-so-friendly-you-almost-forget-except-not-really Iona, came in for a quick unsexy people-person’s hug.

  ‘Well, this is weird,’ Liam said. They all agreed it was weird. ‘Is everybody here?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Iona. ‘Six bedrooms. Five of us so far. Three boys. So I’m guessing another girl? But I don’t know any more than you do.’

  ‘I doubt that’s often true,’ said Liam, giving her a private smile. Iona knew enough about players to know how it works: you flatter the clever ones for being pretty and the pretty ones for being clever. And yet she still felt a complimented glow. Would it be so bad if it stayed at five in the villa, three boys and two girls? Would that be so very wrong?

  ‘I wonder when it’ll start,’ said Harry. ‘You know, tasks, whatever it is.’ He flexed his shoulders, thinking about tasks.

  ‘Me too,’ Iona said. ‘What did you do, what do you do, out there?’ she asked Liam, trying to guess: athlete? Not another actor, he was the wrong kind of vain.

  ‘Money,’ said Liam, with a smile. ‘I do money stuff.’ That meant banking or finance or something, and don’t bother your pretty little etc. Nousche had kept swimming, but she must have realised she was being left out of the chat, so she got out of the pool, wrapped a towel around her head and came over.

  ‘We’re just talking about when it will all start,’ said Iona, being the friendly one, because she could, in the patterns that she could sense developing, sense that that would work for her. ‘You know—’

  But Nousche knew what she meant. She was nodding vigorously.

  ‘Tout à fait,’ she said. ‘I was wondering—’ and then she was interrupted by a loud female voice coming from the pool patio.

  ‘Wahey!’ it said. ‘Room for a small one?’ A tall strong-looking girl in a black tracksuit and baseball cap came bouncing, no other word for it, out of the villa and crossed to the pool. Iona instantly thought: here comes the noisy one, the extrovert, the catalyst. The new arrival came over to where they were standing and said:

  ‘Oi oi! I’m Lara but everyone calls me Laz.’ They introdu
ced themselves in turn and, in turn, Lara/Laz came in for a full hug and double-cheek kiss, including with the still pretty damp Nousche, whose expression was that of a person having second thoughts.

  ‘Cor, you’re soaking!’ said Laz. ‘Mind you, I am too now. I should tell you, I’m mainly straight, but I’d be lying if I said I don’t sometimes like a bit of both!’

  All the men suddenly looked interested. Nousche looked as if she might be about to burst into tears. Iona said: ‘Shall we go inside and have a cup of tea?’

  They spent the afternoon wondering when the tasks would start, what they would be like, when the evictions would begin. The format is always that some time will pass before the first evictions, at least a week, maybe more. It might be two weeks or could even be as long as a month. Of course they would be watched and listened to, monitored and judged and assessed, all the time. It was the nature of these things that some of the tasks would be humiliating, physically or psychologically. Break the six down a bit, get a sense of what they’re really like. Or – to put it as an opportunity rather than a problem – give them a chance to show a bit of grace under pressure. Just as a hint about the nature of the process, the huge library of DVDs, which looked so promising at first glance, consisted exclusively of box sets from reality TV shows. It was the British Library of reality TV. Talk about a strong hint of what was to come.