Page 60 of A Game of Lies

Of course it was going to be Miles who was murdered. Who else would it be? Who else has thrown a grenade into seven ordinary lives? Who else has manipulated viewers into believing they had a role to play, when all the time the script was half written?

Ffion has watched six episodes ofExposure, but she might as well have watched none for all she’s learned. Six days of twenty-four-hour footage, slashed and manipulated and shrunk into six fifty-minute episodes, presenting the story Miles chose to tell. Nothing in those episodes tells Ffion what the contestants think of Miles, or of the situation he’s put them in. The truth is somewhere on the cutting room floor.

Three of the contestants are still locked in camp, but four are out, and all four have reasons to hate Miles for what he’s done to their lives.

Miles was a puppeteer.

Was it one of his puppets who snapped the string?

TWENTY-TWO

RYAN | DAY ONE OFEXPOSURE

In the weeks leading up to his appearance onExposure, Ryan has been feeling increasingly nauseous. Yesterday, when he arrived at Carreg Plas and was issued with his rucksack of branded clothing ahead of the first day of filming, he’d felt almost faint with fear. He desperately regretted his application to the show, which had been a reckless attempt to reinforce his manliness to Jessica. She had taken to leaving magazines featuring effeminate men about the house, so Ryan knew she was becoming suspicious. Taunting him.

Are you tough enough to survive two weeks in the mountains of Snowdonia?The advert had popped up betweenGoggleboxandJimmy Carr, a bright orange banner flashed across the screen.Can you handle the Exposure?

‘I could do that,’ Ryan had said wildly.

Jessica had chuckled. ‘I’d love to see you try.’ She’d squeezed his thigh affectionately, but it was too late. Now Ryan had to prove it. He could handle the ‘Exposure’, couldn’t he? He could do wild camping, rock-climbing, abseiling. He could light fires and catch fish; tie barrels together to make a raft. He could be the real man Jessica wanted him to be.

When the email arrived –Congratulations! Get ready forExposure!– Ryan had vomited. He’d contemplated ignoring the email, but just that morning Jessica had said,Did you see, they’ve got a same-sex couple onStrictlyagain?Ryan had always thought Jess was pretty liberal, but lately she’d started pointing out every transgender or gay man she saw, as though their very presence was an offence. He had replied to the email from Young Productions with an enthusiasticYes!and spent the next eight weeks sick with anxiety.

As Ryan and his fellow contestants have breakfast on the first day ofExposure, Ryan’s nerves begin to dissipate. The others aren’t all beefcakes with shaved heads and biceps the size of France. They aren’t brimming with confidence, boasting skills in fire-starting and water filtration systems. He looks around the breakfast table in the farmhouse kitchen and decides his competition all looks pretty normal. Maybe he can do this after all. He spears another sausage and dips it in ketchup.

Maybe he even stands a chance of winning a hundred grand.

As the other contestants get to know each other, Ryan loses himself in a daydream in which he’s standing at the summit of Pen y Ddraig mountain with an enormous cheque, Jessica looking on with newfound respect.

Later, when the seven contestants are making their way up the mountain to camp, Ryan smiles at Ceri, the postwoman who is walking next to him. ‘Stunning, isn’t it?’ Above them, the mountain peak is lost in a haze of morning sun, and when Ryan looks down he sees the whole valley stretching out before them. He was too preoccupied to notice the lake when he arrived last night, but now it takes his breath away.

‘It’s alright.’ Ceri sees his expression and laughs. ‘This is my back yard.’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘I grew up here, didn’t I?’ She winks. ‘Unfair advantage, right?’

Ryan catches his foot in a rabbit hole. He lurches forward, landing on his knees, and feeling a fool.

Ceri hauls him upright. ‘They’re a bloody nightmare, them rabbits. I came up here the other day and went arse over tit.’ She shows him, exaggerating her stupidity then bursting into laughter. ‘Proper clumsy, I am.’

Ryan’s eyes shine. He’s never been part of a gang before. He’s never even tried, because he won’t fit in, so what’s the point? But all sevenExposurecontestants have something in common: they applied to be on the show. Ryan slips his arm through the elbow Ceri proffers.

Sometimes, Ryan fantasises about telling Jessica he likes wearing women’s clothes. He isn’t gay, or transgender, and he’s very happy being married, so it wouldn’t change anything … not in his fantasy, anyway. Just that, in the evening, Ryan might put on a skirt, or cigarette pants with a three-inch heel. Maybe they’d go out together on a Friday night, in silk dresses that swish about their shins.

That’s the dream.

The reality, of course, is that it would change everything.

A few years ago, Ryan had left the gym without his sports bag, in the bottom of which was a pair of lace knickers. If the gym rang, he’d say they were Jess’s, he decided, except then Jess had texted to say she was at Pilates, and sent a picture of his bag.Is this yours?

Ryan has no clear recollection of what happened in the next ninety minutes, but by the time Jessica got home – having not even unzipped the bag – he had punched a hole in the kitchen wall and smashed an entire set of plates. The strain of not being able to explain to her why he’d had some kind of breakdown had exacerbated the breakdown itself, and Ryan had found himself spiralling. Jessica had stood by him until he got better but, although she never mentions it, he knows she thinks about it all the time.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ she’d said, when Ryan was filling out the application form forExposure. ‘Are you sure you’re

…’ She’d paused, choosing her words carefully. ‘Are you okay to do it, I mean?’

‘I’m fine,’ Ryan had said. And he was. It had been a long time since the world had spun away from him.

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