Trying – White Lies

By: Gladys Luna

Nikki (Esther Smith) arrives to Spain and since she has befriended a group of women attending to a bachelorette party there, they allow her to stay at their hotel for free. She is even invited to hang out with them, but the woman is determined to achieve the goal that had brought her there –  to find her daughter’s birth mother. In the meantime, Jason (Rafe Spall) attempts to distract Princess (Scarlett Rayner) from giving too much thought to the current situation and manages to convince her to get out of bed and join the world. And also to study for her finals. Soon after he discovers that the teenager hasn’t done most of her homework she is supposed to and decides to call for backup in order to help her. When he confronts her about the reason why she has been so reckless with her studies, Princess tells him that is only because he hasn’t been strict with her.

Nikki is disappointed when she gets to the address where she expects to find Kat, but realizes that there is a restaurant instead. Feeling the defeat washing over her, the woman takes a seat at one of the tables looking for a way to explain this to her daughter when she spots a waitress nearby that looks like to the woman in the picture that Princess gave her. The waitress approaches her and, in an attempt to get more information about her, Nikki starts making conversation lying about her own identity. That is how she realizes that the woman standing before her is actually Kat (Charlotte Riley).

Back at the house Jason gathers what he calls the “emergency course work committee” formed by Tyler (Cooper Turner), Victor (Phil Davis), John (Roderick Smith) and Jilly (Marian McLoughlin) and assign a subject to each one of them that they should accomplish before the day is done. Once everyone knows what to do, they scatter in different rooms in order to properly focus on their own task. Meanwhile, in Spain we see that Nikki has been eating croquettes compulsively for a while trying to find the best way to talk to Kat. The waitress asks her about the reason she is there and Nikki lies once again saying that she is attending to a friend’s bachelorette party but they had a fight because no one wanted to go snorkeling with her so she ended up on her own. Later on, Nikki leaves the place without succeeding in telling the truth to Kat and calls Jason to get him up to date about what happened. Suddenly, Kat calls her from afar and runs towards her saying that she has forgotten her sunglasses. She then takes the chance to invite Nikki to a beach nearby where she can go snorkeling.

Jason makes rounds to check on everyone’s progress on their tasks. When he goes to his father, the man confesses that he has been recently seeing someone he met at a charity shop and that since then he spends most of his time at her place fixing things for her which makes Jason happy for him. Next on the list to check on is John, who has been assigned the subject of art and is very determined to create the best painting there is. Jilly, on the other side, has been assigned to review of a book that she has only seen the movie of so she will work on it based on that. Princess and Tyler are managing well so far so it seems that things are actually working very well at the house. On the other hand, Nikki has bought a snorkel and is waiting for Kat to pick her up. Right at that moment the woman shows up in a Vespa and asks her to ride with her. Still trying to keep the lie alive, Nikki tries to snorkel for a bit while Kat watches her from the shore laughing at the woman’s foolish attempts to swim. Once she gets bored, Nikki gets out of the water and Kat invites her to her place for a drink. Somewhere along the night Kat looks for her phone and Nikki reminds her that she had put her on her purse so when the woman goes to search for it, she finds her picture in there and confronts Nikki about it.

Back at the house it appears that things have gone down the hill faster that Jason expected. Vic is no longer focused on his task, John has run out of inspiration, Jill is somewhat lost in her writing and Princess and Tyler have had a disagreement and now they have decided to do everything from scratch. So, when seeing that this is all out of control now, Jason makes the decision to call Karen (Sian Brooke) to help him. As soon as the woman arrives she starts reviewing everyone’s work step by step, makes the proper corrections and puts them back to work.

Nikki finally confesses the truth to Kat but the waitress is upset at her for lying. She shows her the list of questions that Princess had written for her and tells her that maybe all the teenager wants from her is to hear that she is sorry for abandoning her, but Kat says that she is not. When realizing that she is going nowhere with Kat, Nikki starts getting upset at her for not even asking about the teenagers’ well-being and she says that she should be grateful that she has taken good care of her children. At hearing this Kat explains that she was not in the right mindset to take care of them and that she was sure they will be better-off without her. Then, she tells Nikki that she is ready to answer all of her questions and asks her to come back tomorrow for it.

The next day Nikki texts Kat and they agree to meet at the waitress’ house. When she arrives there, she notices a lot of police vehicles outside the house and when she asks what happened she is notified that it appears that someone had broken into the house so they are trying to figure out who it was  – something that makes her realizes that Kat had lied to her. She goes immediately in search of her to the restaurant, but when asking the chef (Pablo Scola) about her he says that her room has been emptied and she has gone without saying a word. Karen reviews everyone’s assignments again and finally they all get them right. Nikki calls Jason to tell him about what happened and decides to lie to Princess about what Kat did. He puts her on the phone and her mother explains that she couldn’t find her birth mother at the address she gave her. The teenager is evidently sad to hear the news, so when everyone sees her they all share a group hug. And since Nikki is far and cannot hug them as it is, she hugs the chef instead. Finally, after a long day, Nikki gets on the plane back to London. Vic goes back fixing things for his friend (Nicola Wright) and she keeps breaking them just so he can come back every time. Jason picks up the paintings that John has left in the room and realizes that most of them are of Jilly barely naked and covered in flowers. Finally, Princess takes everything that reminds her of Kat and puts it in a box.