‘Come here!’ I boom at her, amazed that she stops bouncing, climbs off the bed and walks gingerly up to me. ‘Can I have a word?’ I say in a low, threatening tone. It works like a charm on my deranged psychopaths in Year Three. ‘Outside, please.’
She nods meekly as I step aside to allow her through first. I can see everyone else breathing a sigh of relief.
Amber mouths ‘Thank you’ and skips back to join the others.
We walk across the garden to the All The Feels secluded area and sit down. ‘What’s going on? Are you okay?’ I say, switching to my nice soft teacher voice.
I take one look at her crumpled face and instinctively throw my arms around her. She bursts into tears and starts wailing into my shoulder.
‘I’m… I’m… I’m…’
Insane? A fresh stream of tears prevents me from finding out. I rub her back gently and make soothing noises.
‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘It’ll all be okay.’
Mimi straightens, trying to wipe her face with her arm. The tears keep flowing, taking her make-up with them. In that moment, she reminds me of me. I cast my mind back to Lois comforting me night after night in the aftermath of our precious mother passing away.
‘Hey, don’t cry,’ I say to her. ‘I know we’re all here to find love, but you know what is much better than that?’
Mimi sniffs and shakes her head. ‘No. I don’t know.’
‘You are surrounded by badass women who care about you. No matter what happens with the guys, we have each other, right?’
Mimi is looking at me as though I have two heads.
Lois’s goodbye words come flooding back to me. ‘We have each other’s backs. Life is all about friendship and family, is what I’m saying. My sister told me to come in here and forget about the pressure to be popular, just be yourself and have fun getting to know people.’
Then Mimi lunges at me, scooping me into a hug. She is squeezing the life out of me and all I can see is a camera lens, hidden in a plant pot, reflecting the sun.
‘So, no more bottling things up. You have friends here,’ I say, keen to end the conversation. ‘Friends who will listen and help.’
Mimi sniffs up the last of her tears. ‘I’m just so terrified of being rejected.’
There goes the voice of our generation.
I hold her at arm’s length and look her straight in the eye. ‘Why? I mean, I know it’s unpleasant. I have been rejected so many times from jobs, from guys, from social media. I have likenofollowers but, Mimi, that’s just life. What makes it feel so terrifying for you?’
She stops to think. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘Look, the way I see it is that every rejection is a lesson learned. I tell my class to look at it as an experiment to be a better person. We can’t all get into the football team. We can’t all be Head Girl. We can’t all go through life winning all the time. That would be weird.’
The camera lens is still winking at me, making me conscious that all of this is potentially broadcastable.
‘Erm, life is full of surprises. We just need to embrace it and be as resilient as we can. If you never try something new, you’ll never know what might happen. And at the end of the day. You. Are. Worth. It.’
I sound like a shameful rip-off of Chris Martin if he was doing a TikTok hair commercial.
Mimi agrees. ‘Libby, you are so right. No more trying to be someone I’m not. It’s not a popularity contest. I am enough. No more trying to get their attention.’
It’s precious moments like these that make teaching so worthwhile. Then her phone trills, making us both jump.
‘I got a text!’ she screams at the top of her lungs. She leaps up, waving her arms in the air, and runs off round the garden, bellowing for everyone to join in. I see her running into the villa screaming, ‘I got a text! I got a text! We won the challenge! We won it, Carlton!’
Well, at least I tried.
Everyone pours out of the villa with their hands over their ears. Mimi clearly did not listen to a bloody word I said. She’s still waving her arms in the air even as we all stand around waiting for her to stop screaming. Thankfully she runs out of steam, and breathlessly tells us that her prize is a round of mocktails for everyone tonight.
It’s immensely underwhelming. I flop down on a giant beanbag. I must go and get ready for this evening. My hair is still wet and hanging down my shoulders. It will dry naturally if I’m not careful. And I have no make-up on yet.