I glanced at him, belatedly realising that he must have been asking me questions in a bid to get me to say something interesting – or incriminating – for the ever-rolling cameras. ‘Sorry. Could you repeat that?’

He scrunched up his face in irritation before carefully smoothing his features. He was going to have to work on his acting skills if he wanted to get me to believe anything that came out of his mouth.

Dropping his voice to a whisper so the others couldn’t hear him, he leaned towards me conspiratorially, although he still managed to keep away from the camera lens. ‘Don’t tell anyone you heard it from me,’ he said, ‘but one of the other teams has decided that you’re their strongest competition. To stop you from winning, they’re going to try to bring you down, probably during the obstacle course. They want to make sure you’re voted out first.’

Yeah, yeah. I pushed back my hair. ‘Barry, I know you want to see me do more spells but you saw what happened yesterday. I have to be careful not to overdo it.’ It sounded like the perfect excuse for not trying very hard. I’d hallucinate every day of the week if it meant I didn’t have to put in too much effort.

‘The medics have cleared you. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t good to go,’ he sniffed. ‘And it would be so shameful if you were booted out first. Just think what all those Order witches who are watching would say.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Barry, honey. I know what you’re doing and it’s not going to work. This would be a whole lot easier if you’d just tell the truth when you spoke to me. I can sniff out a lie at a hundred paces. ‘

Instantly he seemed interested. ‘Because of magic?’

‘No. Because most people aren’t very good liars.’ I sighed. ‘I know you want to make good television because it makes you look better. But you have to know I’m not going to beat the others. You can fabricate as many stories as you like about what you’ve overheard but it’s not going to make a difference. If this relationship is ever going to work, we need to reach a mutual understanding.’

Barry’s eyes shifted as he weighed up my words. ‘Fine,’ he said eventually. ‘You want the truth, you’ll get it. You were brought in to replace the contestant who we had lined to be the bitch.’

‘So I heard.’

‘We don’t have anyone else who’s nasty enough to draw the viewers’ anger. We need someone to be an object of hatred.’

Finally he was being honest. I gave him an approving nod, followed by a frown. ‘If I’m horrible, or if I do something during this challenge to piss off the others, then I’ll definitely be voted out first.’ While in theory that wouldn’t be a bad thing, I wouldn’t get anywhere with my investigations if I were forced to leave the set.