Joni, Day 1
Even five-year-old boys with appetites like dredging machines would look at food with sweaty disdain in this kind of heat. Heat that clings to you like bad news.
But Joni couldn’t stop stuffing the sweet pink doughnuts into her magenta-painted mouth. She wasn’t exactly sure why, although she could hazard a few possibilities.
First, Sally Staples, the assistant director, had told them not five minutes before to eat their fill ‘because it’ll be the last meal your soft arses will have for weeks’. From now on, this luxurious cart, groaning with treats, was crew only. The rest of them, Sally had said with a malevolent sneer, would be surviving on whatever they could bake, barter or butcher.
Joni had felt Desmond quiver in the money belt around her waist at the razor-sharp words, and decided then and there that she hated The Stapler.
Second, Joni knew that when she stopped eating this meal the whole thing was going to begin. Not just atmospheric footage of the arrival by boat, including the neat little montage of her throwing up, arse skywards, in noisy, never-ending heaves. Or the interviews that had followed, where she’d tried her hardest to act perky and loveable, even though all she could see was impossibly white sand, impenetrable-looking jungle and ten other competitors who all looked like carnivores.
She couldn’t resist a quick peek at Frankie, who was munching delicately on a tiny sandwich while chatting animatedly to a bronzed Amazon attached to an enormous set of breasts that were at her eye level. Frankie managed to look dignified even while craning her neck upwards to avoid conversing directly with the breasts themselves. Joni noticed that most of the assembled company looked like they would trade places with Frankie in a heartbeat.
It defied belief that even here, in this godforsaken jungle, Frankie looked cool and pressed. Her tan shorts showed off long, golden legs and a gorgeous French pedicure. Where the hell had she got a tan in a London winter? Tanning salon? Bottle?
The whole effect, combined with a crisp, cheeky white tee, made Frankie look years younger than the last time Joni had seen her. And somehow smaller, more vulnerable. Something about the sight made Joni shiver. And, of course, look down at her own attire. Joni tried to remember a time when looking at Frankie’s long, crisp perfection hadn’t made her glance at herself with disdain.
Unable to, she settled in for her usual bout of self-loathing.
Starting with the sandals that, back in Cairns, Frankie had suggested she might want to trade for something more sensible. The glittery frogs adorning the shoes seemed less cute here, in this Lord of the Flies nightmare, amid the croaking and trilling of the real things. And her frilly little green sundress exposed too much neck and shoulder. She could already feel the crackly edges of sunburn.
Joni had barely registered the discomfort before, like an avenging god, Frankie was upon her, brandishing a tube of suncream and rubbing it efficiently into her shoulders. Joni wondered, not for the first time, but for the first time in a long time, whether she and Frankie had some kind of ESP.
Frankie patted her as she worked.
‘Careful, JoJo, you know you burn so easily. Here, keep this.’
She thrust the tube into her hand, but something about the awkward set of her shoulders told Joni that Frankie was embarrassed at the small act of kindness. Or maybe at the use, after all these years, of her special pet name for Joni.
JoJo.
Joni absent-mindedly took the shiny pink doughnut proffered by an elegant brown hand topped with pink cuffs and gorgeous silver links. She casually took in its owner’s spotless shirt, khaki drill pants and designer trainers. His face was kind but soft, his eyes a very appealing shade of puppy-dog brown. Not as beautiful as Nigel, Joni thought, comparing the doughnut offeror with Shitkicker of the Mint-Jelly Eyes. Then she mentally kicked herself.
Why on earth was she even thinking about him?
It had just been one kiss, and a brief hello at the reading.
Okay, okay, she admitted to her persistent, traitorous brain. And the airport. There was also the airport.
Nigel had been at Heathrow to oversee their departure, as per the guidelines of the will. Made sure the sisters were seated together, as required. He had looked startled at her jaunty little travel outfit. The black catsuit overlaid by the red boob tube. But Joni had known too many men not to have noticed that he also registered how the stretchy fabric framed her high breasts, and the way the suit made her endless legs seem even longer, as feline as the suit itself.
‘Stroke me behind the ears and I might just rub myself against you.’
He’d laughed, a deep melody skating somewhere between glee and horror.
And then coughed and shuffled papers as Frankie arrived.
Joni had found herself wanting another taste of those intriguing lips, but had figured it was just her usual nerves before flying. So, she’d contented herself with waggling her fingers at him as she disappeared through Security.
He’d called out to them both, ‘Don’t forget I’ll be popping by. Due diligence, you recall. As required by Ms Tripton.’
Joni had laughed.
The only thing G had been diligent about was Coronation Street.
Joni pulled her mind back, to the Island of the Damned, the proffered doughnut, and the man to which it was attached. He may not have been as striking as Nigel, but his eyes were warm and twinkly, a pale shade of golden brown, and they matched his hair almost perfectly. More importantly, he was offering her the last doughnut.
A true gentleman. Frankie would love this guy.
‘What are you in for?’ Joni joked half-heartedly, through a mouthful of saccharine and food colouring.
‘I’m the director.’ His Etonian drawl seemed to stroke her. And then he grinned wryly and turned away to flick the ash expertly from an expensive-looking cigarette into the enormous flower protruding behind them like an over-heated labia.
Joni cursed inwardly and willed herself to morph into Frankie so she could think of something useful to say. She remembered Frankie’s words. Serious talent. He’s not going to be easy to fool. She felt mocked by the lush, exotic surrounds.
Small, white, foreign and inarticulate.
‘Oh.’ She paused. ‘We didn’t meet you at the briefing.’
He waved airily and Joni noticed again his hands, long and brown with pearly, square nails. Like those of a poet. Or a wristwatch model. ‘Oh, you know,’ he sighed mysteriously. ‘I was busy. Planning. And things.’
Joni couldn’t help but wonder what things would be more important than briefing the contestants. ‘So, erh … director, eh? Interesting. What d’you do that she doesn’t, then?’
She pointed uncertainly at The Stapler, engrossed in conversation with a small red-haired woman with WARDROBE AND MAKE-UP written on her stretchy t-shirt. The Stapler was petite and raven-haired, with a Keira Knightley old-school style of beauty. Her hands moved quickly and her body seemed to hop on the spot. The Stapler gestured towards The Breasts standing beside Frankie, and made big, round circles in front of her own chest, in the universal language of ‘Is it possible to make them look even bigger?’ WARDROBE AND MAKE-UP nodded vigorously, and held up a tiny string bikini.
The director offered another airy wave, and then a resigned sigh. ‘This,’ he breathed, opening a clever little flap on his pretty shirt and showing Joni a beautiful silver hipflask, engraved with a unicorn and the letters CAM.
Joni gasped, not at the suggestion that illicit drinking was the man’s real claim to fame, but at the beauty of the thing. She ran one ragged fingernail across the gorgeous lettering, and raised an eyebrow at him in question.
‘Cyril Alessandro Margate. Lex for short.’
She suddenly remembered Frankie’s briefing.
‘Lex Margate. You’re … you do … Shakespeare, and stuff, yeah? Do you mind me asking, why are you …?’
‘Directing proletarian crap?’ The golden eyes crinkled weakly.
‘No …’ Joni began, then paused. ‘I mean … maybe?’
Lex laughed, his musical voice going for a heartiness that came out sounding rather thin. ‘A new direction for the show,’ he boomed, now achieving an almost convincing heartiness. ‘A shift from the vulgar to the artistic.’
Joni’s eyebrows dipped in perplexity. ‘But … it all does seem very … standard. You know, so far. I’m sure you’ve got brilliant ideas … for later on,’ she finished lamely.
But Lex had finished his cigarette and was looking at her intently. Then he pounded her gaily on the shoulder and said, with a swift tap to his nose, ‘Best get back to it.’
And with that, he disappeared. Joni’s shoulder hummed pleasantly where he’d touched her but before she could digest either anything he had said, or the rest of the final pink doughnut, The Stapler was calling them to order. Her nasal northern whine abraded the soft skin of Joni’s inner ear.
‘Okay, fookers,’ she barked. ‘Make your way over to the mosh pit.’ She waved with a perverted leer at what looked like a small swamp to Joni’s left.
Joni hadn’t noticed the sludgy muck until this point, although that was hardly noteworthy. Apart from six pink doughnuts and three packets of crisps, she hadn’t noticed much at all. She had been too busy imagining what a vegetarian could possibly eat in this cave-man paradise and making soft, soothing sounds at the back of her throat so Des wouldn’t freak out at his extended imprisonment in the money belt she had strapped around her middle.
Before she knew what was happening, Frankie was at her side again, guiding her over to the swamp with what might look like tenderness to an untrained eye, but that Joni knew was actually the shiny-hard steel of resolve.
A touch that said: Do not even consider escaping.
Joni yanked her arm free and, almost immediately, heard the honeyed tones of the host behind her. Darryl Driscoe. Super Sleaze. She gazed with horror at the brows splitting his forehead. It was not clear on the TV, but this close it was painfully apparent that the virile brows were, in fact, weaves.
Darryl had become famous after the season three wrap party, for a scandal involving the runners-up (the Librarian Sisters Addicted to Erotica), an electric eel and a camera. By the time the amateur video of the event had achieved fifty million YouTube hits, the ongoing renewal of his contract was guaranteed.
But he was the least of their problems.
‘Ah, the first cracks appear in the fragile truce between the Feuding Heiresses. How will they cope with this first challenge?’
Joni spun on her heel, ready to let loose a stream of the colourful invective she had learned on army bases as a child. But as she turned, she found they were being followed by a mobile crew. They were at the edge of the swamp, and the contestants were lining up behind fancy placards around its fetid brown edge, awaiting instructions.
Frankie grasped Joni’s elbow again, differently this time. The lightest of presses on the soft inner skin of her elbow, and Joni remembered all the times her big sister had protected and backed her. Her cool avenging angel. Her fearless Frankie.
Like the time with that boy, Kirby Jones.
And anyone else who’d ever been mean to her.
She’d even tried to save Joni from herself, at least in the beginning.
Of course Frankie had found her.
She’d always been there to witness Joni’s most spectacular falls from grace.
Joni had never meant to steal it. Not really. Just borrow it to help her get through. But Frankie had a way of calling things as they were.
‘I know what you’re doing.’
Joni had looked up from G’s trinket box, and caught sight of her own flaming cheeks, outlined dramatically by the theatrical lights that bordered G’s dresser mirror.
‘No you don’t.’ Joni was trying for defiant.
‘Yes. I. Do. Joni, it’s me.’
Even now, Joni remembered how Frankie’s face had looked framed by G’s crazy mirror; like a broken angel, her face wet with tears, as she’d put her arms around Joni’s shoulders and pressed her face close to her sister’s blazing cheeks. ‘I can help you. Remember? I arranged for you … that place … they can help you with the crack and the rest of it …’
‘I. Hate. It. There.’ It was Joni’s turn to bite out the words. ‘They remind me of Dad. But worse. I never felt so bad as I do when they try to help me. They don’t even try to hide what they think of me.’
Frankie had held her more tightly. ‘Don’t take it, JoJo. Not from G. How can you? There are some things … Some things are hard to go back from. Please.’
Frankie rarely said please. And it almost worked.
But then Joni imagined going back to her flat. Thought about what she would need to get through the night. And she slipped G’s diamond ring into her bag.
‘I’ll have it back by Monday.’
Even though Frankie had looked at her with heartbreak in her eyes, Joni had never imagined for a moment that her sister would tell G.
Of course, Frankie hadn’t needed to tell G anything. As Joni had hugged the old woman goodbye, she’d seen in G’s eyes that she knew. And she’d known in that moment that even her sister couldn’t save her from herself.
From her own weakness. From never being good enough. Not for her dad. Not for anyone.
Just like now. As Joni turned to get her first full-frontal view of the Swamp From Hell, her stomach turned to water. It was brown, putrid-smelling and littered with dark carcasses that could have been rotting logs, or crocodiles.
Joni turned towards Frankie, seeking some more of that reassurance but, as she met her eyes, she saw Frankie catch Darryl’s gaze, and watched her sister’s eyes harden. Frankie reached for Joni’s chin and held it.
‘Don’t muck this up,’ Frankie hissed loudly enough for Darryl to hear.
Fuck, Joni thought, she’s courting ratings already.
Frankie had told her at least a hundred times on the plane to Australia: Remember, it’s the boring ones who get voted off. Our schtick will be our mutual animosity. People won’t be able to resist tuning in to see what we say and do to each other. We need to make it believable.
Joni remembered what she had said to her sister in return.
Gee, however will we manage that, Sister Dearest?
Darryl was speaking animatedly into the camera, but Joni’s stomach was already queasy from wondering what manner of evil would shortly be perpetrated on, in or around this hideous swamp.
Frankie touched her chin again and Joni forced herself not to flinch but to meet her eyes. ‘Sorry, Joni, but you know the score. Now, listen. Whatever they tell us to do, talk to me before you move a muscle, okay?’
Joni was about to tell Frankie she’d rather have a chat with No-Neck right now than listen to anything her money-hungry, scheming bitch of a sister might say.
But before she could speak, The Stapler’s voice floated down to them from on high. Joni threw back her neck and saw the woman perched on a platform; some kind of camera strut. She turned her attention back to her fellow contestants. Until now, she had studiously avoided properly seeing the rest of the group. Her father called it classic avoidance syndrome. She thought of it as: going to her happy place.
Directly across the swamp from Joni stood two women, one of them the owner of the breasts with whom Frankie had been conversing over lunch. With their golden-blonde hair and warrior princess bodies, the two women looked identical, except that Joni knew from Frankie’s incessant briefings that they were friends, not sisters.
And there was something else. While the breasts of note were large and perfectly proportioned, the other girl sported small, high breasts. Not so small, really. Bigger than Joni’s. Breasts that would be fine anyplace. But which beside her friend’s appeared almost pitiful. Joni squinted across the swamp to read their placard.
Sorority Sisters. Saving Up for Surgery.
She stifled a giggle – it seemed inappropriate in the tense, swampside atmosphere, with the sulfury smell burning her nostrils – and mentally nicknamed the girls the Boobs.
Her curiosity piqued, Joni started to sweep the scene further. To her left, a couple stood wrapped in each other’s arms. They looked to be in their mid twenties, and had the caramel skin and perfect features of South American supermodels. She stretched her neck around to see their placard. Horny Honeymooners.
‘Righty-fookin’-O then,’ The Stapler barked. Joni craned her neck to look hopefully for Lex. No sign. ‘Let’s get this show on the road. Now, the first task today involves you bunch of freaks fighting it out for tools to help you make your shelters tonight. Remember, this isn’t a challenge. Think of it as a warm-up. The real challenge will be building your shelters once you get the shit.’
She emitted a maniacal cackle, a caricature of a pirate’s, and pointed at the sky.
‘And, by the look of them thar clouds, we better get a move on, or you’re going to be wet little fookers, that’s for sure.’
She laughed again before pulling herself together.
‘Now, Darryl the Deviant over there will voice-over this to make it seem all fancy for the punters, but essentially this is what you’re doing. I have here –’
She brandished what looked to be four weatherproof bags, like saddlebags one might see in old westerns. For keeping guns and chewing tobacco.
‘– four bags. Now, as you know, there are six couples. In each bag are various utensils for preparing shelter. Rope, hammer, saw. And so on.’
She snorted as though bored.
‘One bag has the good tools. The other three have a couple of useful things only. I am going to drop the bags into this swamp and you are going to get them. It will be very hard to make a shelter without them. The rules are –’
She paused for effect and Joni got the distinct impression she was enjoying this. ‘There are no rules. I’m going to count to twenty, drop these things and then you can go at each other. The bag is yours once you drop it on one of those mats marked “safe”. Good luck, losers.’
Joni looked at Frankie, who began to whisper hurriedly in her ear.
It reminded Joni of when they were little and used to share secrets in bed at night, quietly, so their father wouldn’t come in and yell at them to get to sleep. Frankie still whispered the same way, her hand cupped around Joni’s ear, putting her mouth so close to it that Joni could feel her wet, intense little tongue. Between Frankie’s saliva and The Stapler’s hoarse counting splitting the air, it was hard to focus.
But if Frankie knew about anything, it was how to win.
So Joni made damn sure she was listening.
No matter how pissed off she was with her sister.
‘Right, we’ll focus on a bag each. Try to pick ones that land near the edge, even if they’re further away. You know I’m not a strong swimmer –’
Understatement of the century.
‘So, you go for any that land further away. If you get the bag, do not let anyone take it from you. No matter what.’
With that, The Stapler’s tinny whine reached ‘Twinty!!!’ and the world was a blur. Four parcels hit the knee-high muck with satisfying plops, and twelve bodies entered the fray as Darryl began to narrate the event. Joni headed for a parcel that had fallen to her left, about twenty yards away and maybe six or eight feet in.
She couldn’t see which parcel Frankie had locked on to but she was conscious of her sister heading in the other direction, with a look of pure fear on her face.
The parcel was so close, Joni had felt sure it would take hardly any time to get to it, but she hadn’t reckoned on the fierce suck of the muck into which it had been flung. Even running on the edge of the swamp was perilous, and Joni lost her footing twice in her first few steps. She was worried about the Horny Honeymooners, but they must have been distracted by their mutual adoration, because they weren’t focusing and seemed to be heading out into the muck together.
Gracefully, but inefficiently.
After falling into the rancid mud twice more, Joni began to feel sure the parcel had to be somewhere nearby. She groped underneath the surface for it, running her hands around the soft, swampy bottom.
As she searched, her body moved deeper and deeper into the slime, and she became more and more worried about drowning Des in the process. His little legs were kicking frantically and she was sure he was getting wet. She couldn’t remember how ferrets coped with water. She hitched the money belt up to under her breasts and wished she’d done more research before bringing him to a bloody island.
Just as her hands closed on slimy canvas, she heard the slippery tones of Darryl the Dickhead announce her find to the assembled company.
‘Good God, in some kind of unexpected coup, Joni seems to have found something. She –’
Joni didn’t register the rest of Darryl’s speech, because she became acutely aware of the eyes of nearby competitors turning upon her like laser beams. She suddenly understood how it must feel to be hunted. She brought the parcel up towards her chest and hugged it to her, scanning the swamp’s rim for the ‘safe’ circles that were dotted around its edge. The nearest was about twenty yards away.
But two contestants were coming towards her. And, from their purposeful tandem path, they appeared to be a team.
There were two possible routes towards the nearest ‘safe’ circle. One was circuitous, and took her dangerously close to the two people gaining on her. The other involved swimming under the muck, beneath a huge fallen tree half-submerged in it. Just as logic was telling her there was no way she could make it under the tunnel the tree had created without drowning Des, she heard Frankie scream:
‘Go under the bloody tree! It’ll slow them down!’
She felt Des’s tiny body clench in fear, as if he knew what she was contemplating. She couldn’t do it, and pushed back for the longer way round. As she saw the contestants coming towards her, she knew she was done for.
The guy looked like he was made of nails.
He had the hard, clever body of someone who worked all day in some very physical job. This was not a body achieved in a pricey gym. It was brown, toned and spare. He moved through the molasses-like muck effortlessly, like a shark. Sharp blue eyes shone out of his nut-brown face. The woman was equally, but differently, terrifying. She was fully made up – including false fingernails and eyelashes – and wore a tiny bikini with a koala emblazoned on each breast.
She was screaming in the most strident Australian accent Joni had ever heard.
‘Get her, Nick. Get the farkin’ thing and fark her up.’
Terrified, Joni changed course, taking her away from the Wall of Nick, but closer to the shrieking harpy. Dithering, she thrashed around while they closed on her, watching helplessly as they circled. In her confusion, she focused on the placard behind the mat from which her predators had come.
It read: Outback Exes. Fighting for the Farm.
The harpy reached her first and, with embarrassingly little effort, wrenched the bag from her grip. Joni heard Frankie yelp from the other side of the swamp, and then watched in misery as her sister shook her head and struck out again for her own target. Joni was too far away to do anything but watch in helpless fascination as her sister made, with single-minded strides, for a place in the water.
Time stretched on agonisingly. Joni lost track of what was happening, but it seemed that two bags had been retrieved as well as the one that had been stolen from her. The Boobs were leaping victoriously and two thirtysomething men were singing some kind of Irish victory song and waving a placard in the air that read: Potato Farmer Poets.
Joni wondered if she’d sustained a blow to the head during the struggle for the bag and shook it as she refocused on her sister, mesmerised watching Frankie close on her target. A few other contestants continued to thresh ineffectively around in the muck and, with a peculiar mixture of disgust and pride, Joni knew her sister was going to get the final bag. Frankie reached down, without any inelegant groping, retrieved the bag and clasped it to her sodden chest.
Then Joni heard a bloodcurdling scream. It ripped through the air like paper tearing, followed by a small Japanese man who appeared to run across the top of the swamp water towards Frankie. As Joni tried to make sense of where he had come from, her eyes landed on the last placard, positioned close to a younger Japanese man who was scrabbling aimlessly in the muck. It read: Game Show Samurais.
Joni saw Frankie put the hustle on. She scurried to the edge of the swamp, nearest to the thick jungle, but was crash-tackled at the bank by the kamikaze Jesus. The two rolled like wrestlers into the undergrowth.
Joni emitted a piercing shriek; part terror, part fury. The thought of her sister in that dark labyrinth, wrestling some madman, struck at her core.
Fucking warm-up, my arse.
She began to strike out across the swamp, oblivious to her own discomfort, the impossibility of the task, and the peril to Des. Her sister was tough, sure, but she was no match for some crazy Japanese guy who appeared to be able to walk on water.
Or so she had thought.
Because, as Joni waded through the muck, screaming and crying huge shuddery sobs, wondering what that man was doing to her sister in the dark of the forest, Frankie walked out. Wet, black with mud, her shirt ripped.
But holding high two things.
Her head. And the tool bag.
Just as she reached the nearest ‘safe’ circle and deposited the bag on it with a dainty thunk, her assailant emerged from the jungle, bleeding profusely from the shoulder and shaking his head like a dog with fleas.
While Joni tried to understand exactly what had just occurred, she became aware of a sound. A low, slow, solitary clapping from behind her. And she turned to see Nick, one half of the Outback Exes, applauding slowly and looking at Frankie with naked appreciation.