Beach Bodies: Part One. Ross Armstrong

me down here anyway. It’s no’ far.’

      Tabs leaves the geography of that claim alone and goes back to her original line of questioning. ‘I actually meant, what are you doing getting currency? They’ll give us everything we need when we touch down in Cape Town.’

      ‘Oh, really?’ he says, looking as delighted as a Labrador shown a ball, and the possibility of generous per diems.

      ‘Yes, did you read the online pack?’

      ‘Oh yeah. Yeah I did.’ No, he didn’t. ‘Anyway, what currency do they take in… Cunha Da—’

      ‘Shh,’ she says, drawing him away from the booth. ‘You know we’re not allowed to tell people which island we’re on this year. It was in the pack?’

      ‘Oh yeah. Course. I won’t do that then.’ Tommy’s eyes drift towards the rubbernecking Currency Lady and back to Tabs.

      ‘There was too much press last time, too much local interest. It ended in tears, which was great, but it also ended in spoilers, and this show is way too big for spoilers. You heard fans found the villa last time, right?’

      ‘Yes.’ He didn’t.

      ‘Well, now they’ve gone supes remomo.’ Tommy frowns. ‘Super remote. It’s an archipelago.’

      Lego? Tommy thinks. Keep quiet.

      ‘It’s the farthest flung British territory, Tristan Da Cunha, the largest of a group of islands in the South Atlantic. There’re penguins in winter, but it’ll be about twenty-eight degrees while we’re there. Some focus groups thought the show was all a bit sanitised, they could tell that stylists came in to do hair, designers lent out clothes and that there were breaks when the cameras were turned off. So it’s all change. They wanted us to feel far from home and out of our depths. This place is volcanic!’

      ‘Well, I’m sure there’ll be a few eruptions,’ he says, eyebrows raised.

      I’m not even sure that counts as an innuendo, Tabs thinks.

      ‘Doesn’t even have an airport,’ she says, grabbing onto his arm. ‘It’s a long boat trip from Cape Town.’

      ‘Of course,’ Tommy says, like he knew all of that and just needed a reminder.

      She takes his arm and they wander through the concourse, two gleaming specimens in a sea of grey and shuffling travellers. He takes her cabin bag, rolling it in front of him, slinging his one onto his toned shoulder. The white glow of the terminal lighting playing off their perfect skin, as these two perfectly cast beings strut their perfect bodies, as if in an advert for their own lives.

      ‘I love airports,’ Tommy muses.

      ‘Oh yeah. Totes love. It’s the independence. It’s totes adulting,’ she says.

      Tommy says, ‘It’s the possibility of everything. Where’s he going? And him? And him?’ The last man Tommy points at has to take evasive action to avoid getting poked in the eye. Dyspraxia. ‘Who’s waiting for him wherever he’s going? And why does he look so good? Like a model.’

      ‘I’ve actually done a bit of modelling—’

      ‘Everyone’s classy in airports. Everything’s cleaner. People are formal, admirable, sexual. Everywhere should be an airport.’

      Tabs leaves a silence to adjust her approach to this new contemplative side of him.

      ‘You’d have loved my grandad. He used to dress up for travel, wore a three-piece suit, every time. Always smelt of some dark scent. So handsome, even at 60.’

      ‘Doesn’t surprise me. Cos most people are only classy in airports, but you, you’re classy everywhere, Tabs,’ he twinkles.

      She blushes.

      Then he checks his Storm watch. ‘Least for the approximately… 131 minutes I’ve known you.’

      Two hours on final audition day. Eleven minutes today.