Beyond the Lens

by Hannah Ellis

  I’d not believed that, though, until Jessica had announced it. My mind whirred and I attempted to make sense of my memories from the last week. I thought back to the conversations we’d overheard: Jessica shouting that we were boring and that the TV show would never be aired. Had all that been staged?

  I wondered which bits had been shown on TV. Snippets of conversations ran through my head. I’d definitely been scathing about both of my parents, but I couldn’t remember exactly what I’d said. At least Dylan had stopped me from saying too much.

  I suddenly remembered to breathe. My head felt like it might explode.

  “I realise this is a lot to take in,” Jessica continued, while her assistant handed us back our phones. “And I’m sure you’re all looking forward to getting back to your own homes. There are cars waiting outside to take you home.”

  She continued talking about our luggage, the cars we’d been promised, and various other things, but I had switched off. Her words washed over me until she moved and held the door open for us.

  “I look forward to seeing you all at the live show in three weeks.” She smiled at us as we filed out of the room.

  “Can you believe that?” Chrissie asked when we walked back along the corridor.

  There was a spring in Ryan’s step. “We’re gonna be famous!” he said joyfully, from the front of our group. “It’s gonna be amazing!”

  I wasn’t sure what to say about it all, but just moved, dumbfounded, with the rest of them. In the lobby I heard a noise – shouting and cheering – and turned to look at the commotion through the big windows. There was a crowd outside: people with cameras, people holding banners. My eyes landed on a group of girls screaming for Ryan and holding a banner with his name and hearts on it. I felt a hand pull roughly at my elbow, and turned to see Jessica.

  “Come with me,” she said urgently, pulling me back into the corridor.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “I forgot to mention, you caused a bit of a media storm! Apparently someone found out you’re here – it’s all over social media. Follow me. We’ve taken your car around the back.”

  I trailed behind her, glancing back over my shoulder. “What about the rest of them?”

  “They’ll be fine. I’m sorry, Lucy, you weren’t portrayed very well, and I’m afraid the public might not like you very much.”

  I was confused, partly because she didn’t sound sorry and partly because I couldn’t really understand what she was saying. What did I do to make people dislike me?

  She opened a back door and pointed at a shiny black car. “There’s your ride home. If the media attention is too much, or you have any problems, feel free to get in touch and we’ll see if we can help.”

  “Okay,” I said, but the door closed as soon as I stepped outside, and Jessica was gone.

  On the half-hour journey home, my mind whirred. I’d not said goodbye to anyone, and I didn’t even have their phone numbers. We’d laughed at Margaret when we were getting ready to leave the finca and she suggested we write down our contact details for each other. Matt had jokingly asked her if it was 1995. He’d said, “Let’s save the paper and ink and wait until we’ve got our phones back!” Bloody Matt and his great ideas!

  Jessica’s mention of a media storm had left me feeling overwhelmed and confused. We’d been on TV and the show had been popular! What had happened? What had people seen? Why had I come across so badly that I was ushered out of a back door?

  I tried to rationalise everything. I had known at the start what I was letting myself in for. I couldn’t quite figure out how I’d been fooled into thinking that the TV show might not be aired. The rational part of me insisted it wasn’t so bad; I’d still had a great week and made brilliant friends. Okay, some things, which I didn’t think were being filmed, had been filmed, but I hadn’t done anything terrible or irredeemable. Everything would be fine.

  Chapter 24

  “Lucy Mitchell?”

  I smiled at the man who was standing at my front door when I arrived home. I’d been battling my suitcase and had a head full of jumbled thoughts, so I hadn’t seen him until the last minute.

  “I wonder if I could talk to you for a few minutes? I’m with Now magazine and we’d love to do an article on you …”

  Slightly stunned, I noticed for the first time the other people hanging around my front door. This seemed to be an invitation for them to all speak at once.

  “Sorry.” I squeezed through them with my suitcase, putting my head down when someone raised a camera. “Excuse me. I just need to get inside.” My hand shook as I fought to get the key in the lock, finally bursting through the door and pushing it firmly shut behind me.

  I shouted a quick hello to Melissa, but the place was quiet and I stood in the living room, trying to digest all that had just happened. It was exhausting attempting to make sense of everything. There were reporters at my door. It felt like I was trapped in some weird dream; this couldn’t actually be real. This couldn’t really be my life.

  I thought of Adam and my new friends, who had all disappeared as abruptly as they’d appeared in my life. After spending the last week surrounded by people, the silence was unsettling and I paced the living room, not quite sure what to do with myself.

  I picked up the home phone and punched in my dad’s home number, suddenly desperate to speak to my stepmum, Kerry.

  “It’s me,” I said when I heard her voice.

  “Oh, hon! You’re home.” She sounded relieved. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I think so. I just got back and my head is spinning.”

  “How was it?”

  “It was good.” Then I got choked up and couldn’t stop the tears. “It was really good.”

  “Everything will be okay,” she soothed. “Don’t worry.”

  “I had a great time,” I told her, laughter mixing with my tears. “I’m so glad you told me to go. I didn’t know it was actually going to be on TV, but it doesn’t matter; it was the best week of my life.”

  “That’s great,” she said, sounding as though she was humouring me. “And don’t worry about Matt. You’ll soon forget about him.”

  “What?” I said. “Matt?”

  “Yeah,” she said slowly. “I was worried that the whole situation would have upset you …”

  “What situation?” I felt like my memory was playing a trick on me. I tried to think of what she might have seen that she could be talking about. She must mean Adam. I’d see him again though, somehow. It would all be okay.

  “You’re home!” Melissa’s voice interrupted us, and I turned to find her standing behind me.

  “I’ll call you back,” I told Kerry and hung up.

  “Hi!” I flung my arms around Melissa. I was relieved to have company. It felt as though I hadn’t seen her for months, not just a week.

  “Hi,” she said flatly, pulling away. “How are you?”

  “Fine. Yeah, I’m good.”

  “I saw you on TV,” she informed me. “And you’re all over the papers. I’ve had reporters at the door for days …”

  “Sorry,” I replied automatically, slightly taken aback by her coldness.

  “I bet you wished you’d listened to me now, don’t you?” she asked. “Didn’t I say it was a stupid thing to do?”

  “I’m glad I went,” I told her. “I had an amazing time.”

  She gave me a condescending look. “They made you look stupid. Don’t you care that it’s all been shown on TV for everyone to see? You made a fool of yourself over a man with the whole country watching. I don’t think you’ll ever be able to show your face in public again. Aren’t you embarrassed?”

  My heart started to race as visions of Adam flicked into my mind. What had I done that was so embarrassing? Surely there hadn’t been cameras in that little cupboard. That was why Jessica had been trying to get Adam on the walkie-talkie; she knew we were out of shot. And even if it had been filmed, it wasn’t really that bad.

  Th
e phone rang and I answered it to hear my mum’s voice.

  “I hope you’re not going to blame me for all this,” she asked. “I had no idea what would happen. Sometimes things don’t turn out quite how we’d like them to but, honestly, this will all blow over before you know it. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. Matt was leading you on – and eventually everyone will see that. Don’t you worry.”

  “Okay,” I replied. “I’ll have to call you back.” I hung up the phone. Immediately the doorbell went and I moved like a zombie to answer it.

  “Delivery of a Peugeot to a Miss Lucy Mitchell?”

  “That’s me,” I told him, as reporters shouted at me over his shoulder.

  “I’ll need to see some ID – and there’s some paperwork.”

  I invited him in, closing the door on the wolves. When the paperwork was taken care of, I thanked him, and he handed me a key. Following him out of the door, I hurried past the reporters and climbed into my brand-new car.

  Chapter 25

  “Did you record it?” I asked Kerry when she opened the door to me.

  “Yes, but …”

  “I need to see it,” I told her, wiping tears from my cheeks.

  “Okay. We can watch it together. It’s not so bad.” She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed me tightly before I pulled away and moved into the living room to park myself in front of the TV.

  I braced myself for the seven hours of viewing ahead of me.

  The first hour was painless; it showed Chelsea and the cameras running around the streets, desperately trying to convince people to do the show, and ended with the seven of us arriving at the finca with wide eyes. But in the second episode, things started to get confusing.

  My stomach turned all fluttery while I watched myself chatting easily to Adam. I smiled at the memory, waiting impatiently for Adam to appear on the screen. But when the cameras panned round, it was Matt looking back at me.

  “That didn’t happen!” I told Kerry, shaking my head in confusion. “Matt wasn’t there!” The scene changed from me apparently looking lovingly into Matt’s eyes to me lying in bed, giggling, as I confided in Chrissie how lovely I thought Matt was and how much I liked him. “It’s all been edited!” I said in disbelief. “I didn’t say that about Matt!”

  Kerry looked at me sympathetically and I felt the anger rising in me.

  “Is Adam in this at all?”

  She shook her head. “Who’s Adam?”

  The whole show had been edited and cut until it was unrecognisable to me. None of the cameramen made an appearance; it was as though they weren’t there at all. Entire conversations had been fabricated, and I struggled to understand what I was seeing. One scene showed Chrissie and me from behind as we chatted about Matt. None of that conversation had happened. Part of me was impressed at the editing team; they must have cut our individual words from other conversations to make us say whatever they wanted. It soon became clear that I was supposed to be head over heels for Matt. My emotions were all over the place: anger rolled through me and my confusion was overwhelming.

  I watched, bewildered, as the tree-climbing afternoon came on screen. In this version it was Matt who swooped in and pulled me up when I fell. My hero, Matt, his fear of heights magically eradicated. There was no sign of Adam.

  I was a few hours in when my dad arrived home with my little brothers. I hugged Max and Jacob and played with them for a while, as they demanded. At five, at least they were oblivious to my humiliation. They jumped on me and wrestled me before I untangled myself from them and joined Dad and Kerry in the kitchen. Dad gave me a perfunctory hug and asked how I was. Even at the weekend, when he wasn’t in a suit and tie, he still had a stuffy air about him, and his rapidly greying hair made him look every one of his fifty-two years.

  “They’ve cut and edited the show so much,” I told him. “It’s not what happened at all. They’ve made me into a laughing stock, haven’t they? I should’ve known it would end badly.”

  “Well, if you put yourself in these situations, you leave yourself open to this sort of thing,” he told me. “Just learn your lesson and move on.”

  “Stuart,” Kerry hissed at him.

  “What?” He genuinely didn’t know what he’d said wrong.

  “Can’t you be a little bit sympathetic?” Kerry shook her head at him.

  “I am sympathetic!” he said, his face softening slightly. “Why don’t you show me the contract you signed, and we’ll see if there’s anything we can do? Maybe you could sue them and you can tell the real story.”

  “I looked through it. They can show any footage in any way they choose. There’s about twelve pages of small print in the contract. They knew what they were doing and they covered themselves well.”

  “Well, it just goes to show that you should never sign anything without first reading every word …”

  “Stuart!” Kerry slapped his arm.

  “Well, I’m right, aren’t I?”

  I couldn’t help but smile at him. Everything was always black and white with my dad.

  “Is it okay if I finish watching in the spare room?” The boys had taken over the living room.

  “Of course you can,” Kerry told me. “And it’s your room.” She’d always insisted that I had my own room in their house. I appreciated the gesture, but I’d never stayed with them more than the odd night and it was definitely just a spare room.

  “I’m sorry if you think I’m insensitive,” Dad told me under Kerry’s cold stare. “And I’m sorry that things didn’t work out how you wanted, but this will all blow over quickly. It will all be forgotten about before you know it.”

  “I hope so,” I replied.

  “I’m going to make us a cuppa and come and join you,” Kerry told me. “Stuart, you’ll have to get the boys some dinner.”

  “Okay,” he agreed, giving her a quick kiss.

  I was so glad we had Kerry; she made my dad so much more bearable and had always been a good friend to me. She was naturally pretty with bouncy blonde curls, which seemed to match her light and happy personality. At forty-four, she was eight years younger than Dad, and had always seemed so much cooler than him. I’d been delighted when she got pregnant with the boys through IVF, after a long time of trying. The boys were non-identical: Max had Kerry’s blond curls, while Jacob’s blond hair was dead straight.

  The house was always full of fun with the boys in it, and Kerry had given up her career in physiotherapy to be a full-time mum until the boys started school. She worked part-time now and always cooked a hearty meal for the four of them to eat together in the evening. I tried not to compare the twins’ childhood to mine too much, but sitting down for a family meal every evening seemed fairly idyllic.

  I settled down on the bed in the spare room and prepared to torture myself some more. It was tempting to walk away and not put myself through the heartache of watching it, but I needed to see for myself what everyone else had seen. Kerry followed me in with tea and a box of tissues.

  “That bad?” I asked her.

  “Just in case.” She smiled at me.

  As the show went on, a love triangle appeared to develop between Matt, Chrissie and me. It was full of me grinning at Matt with big puppy-dog eyes and then him and Chrissie clearly getting cosy behind my back. It made me look like a lovesick teenager, oblivious to everything going on around me. They’d even cut a scene where Dylan was gently telling me to be careful. It looked like he was worried about Matt hurting me. In reality, he’d been warning me about the cameras and telling me to watch what I said about my family.

  “I’d actually been saying what terrible parents I have!” I told Kerry. “So at least they didn’t show that.” She laughed sympathetically and patted my leg.

  I was made to look more and more like a creepy stalker, and it was increasingly uncomfortable to watch. The night I fell asleep on Adam morphed into a shot of Matt fast asleep, with me creeping up to get cosy and snuggling into him while he was blissfully unaware. />
  I started to laugh hysterically at that point. It was all so ridiculous. I wasn’t sure how they had managed to cut it so it really did look like I was with Matt. I rewound it and watched it again. Adam’s camera must have been somewhere nearby, but it was nowhere to be seen and his belt with his walkie-talkie had mysteriously vanished. I even wondered if it was Matt, not Adam.

  “Wait!” I moved closer to the TV and pressed rewind, then pause. There was a brief close-up of me asleep on Adam/Matt’s shoulder before the camera cut to me moving into him and resting my head on his chest. The camera zoomed in so that the shot was mostly of me – but just for a moment, at the edge of the screen, I caught Adam’s arm moving around my shoulder and his hand stroking my hair.

  “He stroked my hair,” I told Kerry.

  She stared at me as though I had lost the plot.

  “Not Matt,” I explained. “Adam. That’s Adam stroking my hair!” I smiled as I thought of him, and for a split second I forgot all about the TV show and just remembered Adam. When I’d found out about the hidden cameras I’d felt like he’d betrayed me and was so angry with him. Suddenly, I didn’t care at all; I just wanted to see him again.

  “I think you should stop watching this,” Kerry suggested kindly. “You’re going to drive yourself crazy.”

  “That might be enough for one day,” I accepted. “How does it end? Give me the highlights …”

  “You catch Chrissie and Matt kissing and go a bit crazy; you cut up her T-shirt and push her in the pool, then pour a bottle of Coke over Matt.”

  “It’s all very clever. I’ll give them that.” I hid my head in my hands and Kerry patted me affectionately on the back.

  “Your dad’s right. You could tell your side of the story. Get on one of those morning TV shows …”

  “They’ve made me look crazy, though, so anything I say will be disregarded as ramblings. People believe what they want to believe, don’t they? Besides, I’m not allowed to discuss it publicly for three weeks. It’s in the contract.”