Look at him. Playing the hero, carrying Jules’s sister out of the water. Just fucking look at him. He’s always been so good at getting people to see exactly what he wants them to see.
I know Will better than other people, maybe better than anyone in the world. I’ll bet I know him a lot better than Jules does, or probably ever will. With her he’s put on the mask, put up the screen. But I have kept his secrets for him, because they are both of ours to keep.
I always knew he was a ruthless fucker. I’ve known it since school, when he stole those exam papers. But I thought I was safe from that side of his character. I’m his best friend.
That’s what I thought until about half an hour ago, anyway.
‘It was such a shame,’ Piers said, ‘when we heard you didn’t want to do it. I mean, Will goes down an absolute storm with the ladies, of course. He’s made for TV. But he can be a bit too … smooth. And between you and me, I don’t think male viewers like him all that much. The consumer research we’ve done has suggested they find him a bit – well, I think the expression one participant used was: “a bit of an arse”. Some viewers, the men, especially, are turned off by a host who they see as a bit too good-looking. You’d have balanced all that.’
‘Hang on, mate,’ I said. ‘Why did you think I didn’t want to do it?’
Piers looked a bit put out at first – I don’t think he’s the sort of bloke who likes to be cut off in full flow when he’s talking about demographics. Then he frowned, registering what I’d said.
‘Why did we think—’ He stopped, shook his head. ‘Well, you never turned up at the meeting, that’s why.’
I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. ‘What meeting?’ ‘The meeting we had to discuss how everything would progress. Will
turned up with his agent and said unfortunately you and he had had a long discussion, and you’d decided it wasn’t for you after all. That you weren’t “a TV sort of bloke”.’
All the stuff I’ve been saying to everyone these past four years. Except I never said it to Will. Not then, anyway. Not before some sort of important meeting. ‘I never heard of any meeting,’ I said. ‘I got an email saying you didn’t want me.’
It seemed to take a while for the penny to drop. Then Piers’ mouth opened and closed gormlessly, silently, like a fish: bloop bloop bloop. Finally he said, ‘That’s impossible.’
‘Nope,’ I told him. ‘No, it isn’t. And I can tell you that for certain – because I never heard about a meeting.’
‘But we emailed—’
‘Yeah. You never had my email though, did you? It all went through Will, and his agent. They sorted everything like that.’
‘Well,’ Piers said. I think he’d just worked out that he’d opened up a massive can of worms. ‘Well,’ he went on, like he might as well say it all now. ‘He definitely told us that you weren’t interested. That you’d had this whole period of soul searching and told him you’d decided against it. And it was such a shame, because you and Will, as we’d always planned … the rough and the smooth. Now, that could be TV dynamite.’
There was no point in saying any more to Piers about it. He already looked like he wished he could teleport to anywhere else. We’re on a small island, mate, I nearly told him. Nowhere to go. I wasn’t surprised he felt like that, though. I could see him glancing over my shoulder, searching for someone to save him.
But my beef wasn’t with him. It was with the bloke I thought was my best friend.
Speak of the devil. Will had started striding towards us, grinning at us both, looking so fucking handsome with not a hair out of place, despite the wind. ‘What are you two over here gossiping about?’ he asked. He was close enough that I could see the beads of sweat on his forehead.
See, Will is the sort of bloke who hardly ever sweats. Even on the rugby pitch, I barely saw him break much of one. But he was sweating now.
Too late, mate, I thought. Too fucking late.
I think I get it. He was too clever to cut me off at the beginning. The idea for Survive the Night was mine and we both knew it. If he’d done that, I could have spilled the beans, told everyone about what had happened when we were kids. I didn’t have nearly so much to lose as him. So he brought me in, made me feel a part of it, and then he made it look like it was down to someone else that I was chucked out. Not his fault at all. Sorry about that, mate. Such a shame. Would have loved working with you.
I remember how much I liked doing the screen test. I felt natural, talking about all that stuff, stuff I knew. I felt like I had something to say – something people would listen to. If they’d asked me to recite my times tables, or talk about politics, I would have been fucked. But climbing and abseiling and all that: I taught those skills at the retreat. I didn’t even think about the camera, after the first bit.
The most fucking offensive thing about it is how simple it all must have felt to Will. Stupid Johnno … so easy to pull the wool over his eyes. Now I understand why he’s been so hard to get hold of recently. Why I’ve felt like he’s pushed me away. Why I practically had to beg to be his best man. When he agreed he must have thought of it as a consolation prize, a sticking plaster. But being best man doesn’t pay the bills. It’s not a big enough sticking plaster. He’s used me, the whole time, ever since school. I’ve been there to do his dirty work for him. But he didn’t want to share the spotlight with me, oh no. When it came to it he threw me under the bus.
I swallow my whisky in one long gulp. That double-crossing motherfucker. I’ll have to find a way to get my own back.
