Chapter 4
We’re in a cabin in the woods. The limo dropped us at a business airfield somewhere in the city, then they flew us blindfolded in a chopper, and now I’m in a cabin in the woods with Reverend Ryan, and I’m kind of terrified. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this.
‘Well, this is weird,’ he murmurs, bending slightly to look out of the window. ‘Do you think one of us has to murder the other, and the last one standing is the winner? Because if so, I’m just going to get it over with now and take your head off with that axe out there.’
I decide that despite our circumstances, I don’t feel especially threatened.
‘Or maybe I’ll just plunge a carving knife between your shoulder blades,’ I smile and then shut up again because the TV screen above the fireplace has just flickered into life of its own accord.
Seconds later, Roberto’s over made-up face appears, and I bite down the urge to tell him that the camera has given him a couple of extra chins. Rena and Brad are either side of him, and she starts waving like a mad thing when she sees me. I raise my hand back, slightly less enthusiastic because she’s reclining in a La-Z-Boy drinking a glass of fizz and I’m in a wedding dress in a hut in the middle of nowhere with someone threatening to chop my head off.
‘Welcome to the arena!’ Roberto bellows. ‘Make yourselves comfortable, kids, you’re going to be there for some time! You’ll see that there are cameras in every room except the bathroom because even we draw the line at watching that, right?’ He twinkles at the camera, and I consider peeing on the carpet like a fox just to make a point.
‘What do we need to do?’ Ryan says, joining me in front of the screen.
I don’t like the way Roberto laughs. ‘Wait and see.’
‘Wait for what?’
He doesn’t answer me, just throws me a jaunty wave as the screen blinks off again.
‘Well, that wasn’t creepy, at all,’ I say, plonking my ass down on the sofa. The hooped underskirt of my stupid dress pings up in front of my eyes, and I swear I feel like ripping the thing to shreds as I grapple to hold it down. Why didn’t they let us bring a change of clothes? Because it’s far more hilarious to see me struggle with whatever challenges they’re going to throw at us wearing this ridiculous dress, of course. It’s all right for Ryan, he’s in jeans and T-shirt. Aside from a one-inch paper collar, he’s dressed for action. I, on the other hand, am appropriately dressed only for sitting on a tuffet. I don’t even know what a tuffet is. God, he must be feeling pretty darn confident right now. He has every reason.
‘Coffee?’
He’s in the kitchenette, opening cupboards and running water.
‘Okay,’ I say, ungracious even though I’m parched.
‘Scrap that. There’s no coffee.’ I can see him through the archway; he’s looked into all of the cupboards in the tiny kitchen and is now standing with the fridge door open.
‘There’s milk, wine and beer. Looks like they want us to be entertaining.’
‘I’d be a lot more entertaining if I were wearing sweatpants,’ I grouch.
He leans out of the fridge and looks me over. ‘Trust me, you really wouldn’t.’
My smirk is so heavy with sarcasm that it weighs my face down. ‘I would too. I’m funny. Everyone tells me so.’
The look on his face tells me that he’s finding me pretty funny right now.
‘Are you single?’ he asks, out of the blue.
‘No. I’m gloriously happily married, and this was my beloved wedding dress,’ I snap, because I’ve been single for the last nine months and my clit is bored to death of my own fingers. It’s on the verge of breaking up with me. If it could speak, it’d whine It’s not you, it’s me. I need someone different, someone who knows how to excite me. It’s definitely my neediest body organ. Frankly, I don’t like its attitude lately, it’s lusting after male hands and hot male breath. Does it not know how much my new rabbit cost? My clit is an ungrateful bitch.
‘I’ll take that as a yes.’ Ryan flicks the caps off a couple of beers and hands me one as he drops down on the sofa beside me. We both sit with our feet propped on the rustic coffee table in front of us and take a good, cold slug, even though it can only be about eleven in the morning. I don’t know the time for sure because they’ve confiscated our watches and mobiles, and from what I can see there isn’t a clock anywhere in the cabin. Just another way to keep us on our toes, no doubt.
‘Are you?’ I throw his question back at him. ‘Single, I mean?’
He touches his dog collar. ‘I’m under oath, remember?’
‘I’ll take that as a yes, you’ve so far failed to convince any woman to come near you with a barge pole.’
He laughs and shakes his head. ’You don’t know how lucky you are, getting me to yourself for the weekend. Women would kill to be in your position.’
I look down at my hideous dress and throw in the fact that this is a caffeine free zone, and I highly doubt it. We lapse into silence, probably both contemplating how Twilight Zone this situation actually is.
‘So, tell me about Brad and his wife to be. Why do they deserve to win the wedding?’
I don’t know why I asked that. I don’t want to feel any fondness towards them.
‘They’re good people,’ Ryan shrugs.
I sigh. ‘Isn’t everyone?’
‘Hell, no.’
Maybe not. ‘Rena’s been my best friend for as long as I can remember. She’s got me out of way more scrapes than I have her. I definitely owe her this wedding.’
If she’s watching me back in the studio, I hope she believes me, because I truly mean it. She’s been my constant through more shit than I care to mention. I might hold this weekend over her for the next twenty years, but I won’t mean it and I’ll still be the one who comes out best from the deal.
On that, the TV screen blinks back into life, and Roberto, whose face I’m coming to hate, beams down at us.
‘So touching, I’m almost in tears here!’ he says, clutching his heart. Well, that confirms that they’re listening in to everything we do and say, even when we’re not doing anything game-specific.
‘So… Who’s ready for game one, Something Old?’
Thank God for that. Just get on with it already, will you?
‘I’m all ears,’ I grin, throwing in a cheesy thumbs up for good measure.
‘Ryan, cross to the cabinet in the corner of the room for me,’ Roberto says. ‘Feel underneath, you should find the key to the drawer. I want you to open it, and bring the contents back to Connie on the sofa.’
I watch, interested despite myself as Ryan slides his almost empty beer bottle onto the table and follows Roberto’s instructions, handing me the small wooden drawer as he sits back down.
Inside the drawer are two pagers, one pink, one blue.
‘Pink for the lady,’ Roberto crows.
‘I hate pink. It’s the colour of vom,’ I mumble, picking up the hot pink pager nonetheless.
‘Take good care of them now, they’re the only way you can communicate with your partner back here in Control HQ,’ Roberto tells us, and Rena and Brad put down their champagne glasses to wave their matching devices at us as evidence.
‘Working hard, I see,’ Ryan shouts, and Brad lifts his glass and grins in response.
Rena taps something into her pager, and seconds later mine buzzes in my hand. I look down, and her message is there for me to see.
Is this thing on?
I roll my eyes. She’s shit with technology. If we have to depend on this archaic method of communication, we’ve already lost.
‘You’re going to complete four challenges over the next forty eight hours, each one leading to a glittering prize for your friend if you win.’ He looks over his shoulder at Rena. ‘How much would you love to win a set of vintage diamond wedding rings worth over twenty thousand pounds, Rena?’
I know for a fact that she’d rip the face off a newborn kitten to get her hands on those rings. She nods so hard she’s in danger of giving herself whiplash.
‘Connie, it looks like you better do your best to win round one for your friend here.’ Roberto’s laugh is acid in my ears, his pencilled-on eyebrows waggling. ‘As I said, this round is called Something Old. To win the beautiful vintage rings, you need to follow the clues to find them in the woods.’
‘Fucking hell.’ Ryan sits up so sharp he knocks the drawer clean off my lap. ‘You’ve left twenty grands worth of diamonds out there in the woods? Are you people totally insane?’
Roberto frowns, as if Ryan is being unreasonable.
‘Oh, they’re quite safe,’ he sniffs. ‘You’re going to have to decipher the clues your partner sends you if you’ve any chance of discovering their hiding place. If no one finds them before nightfall, the prize is forfeited.’
‘No,’ Rena moans, as if someone just gave her a Chinese burn. ‘Those rings are mine.’
Brad looks straight down the lens over Roberto’s shoulder. ‘Ryan, you better find them first, man, or Lindsey’s gonna break your balls.’
Ryan opens his mouth to answer, but the screen goes dark and we’re on our own again, both of us staring at the pagers in our hands. The atmosphere between us has shifted subtly, charged with an edge of competition and slightly uncomfortable threat.
‘What do we do now?’ I say, tucking the pink plastic horror into the top of my dress, so I’ll feel it rumble when Rena makes contact.
Ryan clicks his a few times, then shakes his head and shoves it in his jeans pocket.
‘Well, I guess we could go and start randomly searching the woods,’ he says. ‘Or we could have another beer and wait to hear from the others.’
I look at him and go all hot, because this close up I notice that his eyes are a weird silvery shade of grey shot through with shards of green. There's also no missing the fact he’s packing serious biceps to go with his earlier observed serious cockage.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ I say. ‘I’m already at a disadvantage because of this stupid dress, and you’re trying to throw me even more off my game by filling me with beer on an empty stomach. You think I’m a lightweight.’
His lips twitch. ‘That wasn’t what I was thinking.’
I cross my arms over my frothing boobs. ‘It so was.’
Leaning his head back against the sofa, he closes his eyes. What does he think this is, a Saturday afternoon snooze? We’re locked in mortal combat for diamonds here, pal.
‘I was actually thinking that I like your mouth.’
His eyes are still closed. Did I mishear him, or did he just say that he likes my mouth?
‘What?’ I say. ‘You mean my actual mouth on my face, or you like the fact that I’m mouthy and say what I think?’ It would have been wiser to let that question stay inside my head.
He sighs loudly, and then opens his eyes and turns to me. I realise that we’re closer than I anticipated when he opens his mouth to speak.
‘As it goes, I do like the fact that you say what you think. You could probably do with a filter, but it’s kind of refreshing that you don’t seem to have one.’
Was that a compliment? It felt like one, wrapped up somewhere inside a dig.
‘But no,’ he says, and for a brief second he cups my chin and wipes his thumb across my mouth. ‘I meant I like your actual lips on your actual face.’ He stares right into my eyes, and then resumes his head back, eyes closed position as if it didn’t actually happen.
Jesus. Fucking. God. That was the sexiest thing anyone’s ever done to me. My clitoris is trying to climb out of my knickers to get at him. I’m debating what to say in response when our pagers go off.
Grabbing mine, I read Rena’s message.
He’s flirting with you! Get in there, he’s fit as fuck! Find the rings first though!
I sigh. This is like being an unwilling contestant on Big Brother. Ryan clicks his pager, and then looks up at the camera in the corner of the room and gives Brad the finger. I guess his message was along the same lines as mine then.
‘A clue might be more helpful right about now,’ I say loudly, and tap my fingernail on the pager. I can’t just sit here waiting; there must be something I can do to ready myself. Jumping up, I have a poke around the cabin. It’s basically a one-room gig with a kitchenette off one side and a bathroom at the back, the only space with a lockable door. There’s a brass double bed in one corner of the cabin covered with a quilt and patchwork blanket, and from what it would seem, there isn’t any heating. Fabulous. I open and close the cupboards and drawers in the hope of coming across something more sensible to change into, but there’s nothing.
I look out of the window at the grey day and the dense trees all around. I’m not going to stand a chance out there in this dress, it’s going to snag on every branch and bush going. There’s nothing for it. I head into the kitchen and pull the scissors from the knife block.
Momentary fear flickers across Ryan’s face, and for a moment I stand there and stare at him, zombie-like as I slowly raise the scissors and take a step towards him. That should psych him out.
‘Mind if I grab another beer before you kill me?’
I drop my arms unceremoniously as he walks past me, laughing. ‘Piss off.’
Turning away from him, I look down at my dress. I think I’ll start with the sleeves.
‘What are you doing?’ He perches on the coffee table, watching me.
‘Alterations,’ I mumble, inserting the blades under my arm and starting to hack. God, this is harder than I imagined, there’s so much material, and I can’t quite manage the scissors that far around the back of me. I have one arm curved over my head and the other wrapped around myself like a trainee contortionist when I feel the sharp blades nick into my skin.
‘Shit,’ I squeak, trying to keep a lid on the fact that I might have sliced an artery and am about to die. God, Rena will hate me if I do.
Ryan gets up and takes the scissors from me. ‘It’s not a fair fight if you amputate one of your limbs. Here, let me help you.’
I can’t really argue. I’m bleeding from somewhere close to my armpit.
‘What were you trying to do?’ he asks, studying my shoulder.
‘Cut these stupid, useless sleeves off, for a start.’ I pluck viciously at the ballooned silk; I figure that the dress can operate perfectly well with just a bodice.
He steps closer. ‘Keep still.’
I jump a tiny bit when he reaches out and gets a hold on the superfluous material, pulling it taut to make cutting easier.
‘Here?’ he looks at me before he makes a cut, and I nod as if I have any clue.
He’s careful; I watch his face as he concentrates, his teeth sunk slightly into his bottom lip, a tiny frown on his brow. I’ll admit it; it’s pretty sexy. I stand perfectly still, aware of his body heat as he moves around me, taking his time. When the sleeve finally falls away, I look down and see that he hasn’t made too bad a job.
‘Maybe you should give up the day job and apply to Armani,’ I say, turning around. ‘Do the other one?’
He obliges, his fingers light and surer this time, brushing my skin every now and then as he works, making me tingle until he triumphantly throws the redundant sleeve to the floor.
‘I’m free,’ I say, windmilling my arms just because I can. That, it turns out, was a mistake. Clearly, there was something vital about the sleeves to the structure of the dress because as I swing around my boob pops up over the top edge of my bodice. It’s not even bothered to stay inside my strapless bra. It’s out there, full, and quivering and open to the elements, and worse, to Ryan’s wide, taken-by-surprise eyes.
‘Oh shit,’ he whisper-groans, biting his bottom lip again with a totally different look of concentration on his face, and I dash for the safety of the bathroom to make myself decent. Thank fuck it’s not live TV, although no doubt it’s all recorded for the camera.
I don’t know if I can salvage this. I twist and look over my shoulder in the mirror, and see that a few of the hook and eye fastenings have come open. Maybe if I can just… no, it’s no good. I can’t.
‘Ryan, could you come in here for a sec, please?’
Nothing.
‘Ryan!’ I yell louder. Jeez, he knows I’m in sartorial crisis here, would it kill him to help me out? After a couple of fruitless minutes twisting the bodice to try and grab at the flapping material, I give up and walk out into the main living room, clamping my arm across my boobs to hold the dress up.
‘Ryan?’ I say, uncertain now because he isn’t here. The room is empty, and that’s when I spot my pager flashing furiously on the floor amongst the hacked off sleeves.