‘Sure thing. Okay. Good chat. See you later.’ Mimi is unsure of how to handle this information overload and bolts off back towards the bar full of mocktails and I am left alone. I look swiftly around and down at my phone. Nothing from Cam.
I’ve never felt more like a teacher than I have since slip-sliding through the doors of this villa, but it feels nice. After I’ve brushed my teeth and wiped off all the dried juice from my face, I’m just heading back from a vigorous shower when I bump slap bang into Amber.
‘Thank God. You have to help me.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘It’s Mimi.’
‘What about Mimi?’
‘Come see for yourself.’
I quickly throw on the Love on the Island fluffy dressing gown. Amber takes my hand and drags me down a brightly lit corridor into the main bedroom. I’d forgotten how huge it is. It’s more of a light aircraft hangar than a bedroom. There are double beds as far as the eye can see. There are suggestive pieces of fruit-themed art hanging over each one. Aubergines and so on. Amber raises her arm and points down the room. Mimi is bouncing from bed to bed like a five-year-old. She’s squealing nonsense, and high-fiving people who are lying in bed trying to rest.
‘We’re so sick of her. It was bad enough that we were up through the night. Then we were forced to wake up and ‘do’ breakfast even though most of us had only just had supper, and now we’ve just done back-to-back filming of two challenges that have basically put most of us in a sugar coma. We’re just so disoriented, we have no idea of whether we’re coming or going.’
Amber looks exhausted. They all look exhausted.
I watch Mimi leap on top of Carlton to twerk in his face. Then she moves onto Binky and does the same. Now, she’s demanding they all hug and twiddle fingers with her. She’s reaching out her arms as though she’s Madonna on stage reaching down to touch fingertips with her fans. Mimi has the look of a spooked horse. I recognise a mammoth sugar rush when I see one. I hope I’m not around when she crashes.
‘It’s like watching a sexually incontinent puppy. But Amber, what do you want me to do about it?’
She looks at me as though it’s obvious. ‘You’re the teacher. You tell her to stop it. She’ll listen to you.’
‘No, she won’t. I’m not that sort of teacher.’
‘What sort of teacher are you?’
The wimpy sort who is fine with children but when it comes to authority figures, does what she is told, even though she knows she is being taken advantage of. That sort.
‘Please,’ pleads Amber. ‘Say something. She has been like this for over an hour. She’s so desperate for Carlton or Giovanni or someone to find her likeable. I feel kinda sorry for her.’
She’s right. Mimi will end up having a catastrophic breakdown if she carries on like this. It’s just like after lunchtime when parents pack the lunch boxes full of breakfast bars, bags of sweets, chocolate bars and a token piece of fruit because they’ve forgotten to make anything healthy for them to eat. It makes them high as kites. Plus, it’s as though she’s forgotten our entire conversation from earlier about self-worth.
‘MIMI,’ I bellow down the room.
Everyone looks up with startled expressions.
‘COME HERE!’ I boom at her, amazed that she stops bouncing, climbs off the bed and walks gingerly up to me. ‘Can I have a word?’ I say in a low threatening tone. It works like a charm on my deranged psychopaths in Year Three. ‘Outside, please.’
She nods meekly as I step aside to allow her through first. I can see everyone else breathing a sigh of relief.
Amber mouths, ‘Thank you’ and skips back to join the others.
We walk across the garden to the All The Feels secluded area, and sit down. ‘What’s going on? Are you okay?’ I say, switching to my nice soft teacher voice.
I take one look at her crumpled face and instinctively throw my arms around her. She bursts into tears and starts wailing into my shoulder.
‘I’m… I’m… I’m…’
Insane? A fresh stream of tears prevents me from finding out. I rub her back gently and make soothing noises.
‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘It’ll all be okay.’
Mimi straightens, trying to wipe her face with her arm. The tears keep flowing, taking her make-up with them. In that moment, she reminds me of me. I cast my mind back to Lois comforting me night after night in the aftermath of our precious mother passing away.
‘Hey, don’t cry,’ I say to her. ‘I know we’re all here to find love, but you know what is much better than that?’