Nine Perfect Strangers

  She stood up, clutching her back, went to one of the shelves and squatted down to pull out a battered-looking chunky paperback. ‘There you go.’ She handed it to Zoe and sat back down on the couch with a grunt.

  ‘Awesome,’ said Zoe. The book looked terrible.

  It was called Nathaniel’s Kiss and the picture on the front showed a girl with long, curly, fair hair staring wistfully out to sea. At least it didn’t look erotic.

  ‘Anyway, my last book got rejected,’ said Frances. ‘So I might be looking for a new career soon.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Zoe. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Well,’ said Frances, and she shrugged, gave her a half-smile, her palm up, and Zoe knew what she was trying to say. Zoe’s friend Erin thought she wasn’t allowed to complain about her life anymore without first prefacing it, ‘I know this is nothing compared to what you’ve been through,’ with this solemn, wide-eyed look, and Zoe always said, ‘Erin, it’s been three years, you’re allowed to complain about your life!’ And then she nodded along sympathetically while thinking, You’re right, your car needing three new tyres is nothing to complain about.

  ‘I guess I should go back downstairs,’ said Zoe. ‘My parents get paranoid if they can’t pinpoint my location. I think they’d like to put a tracking device on me.’

  Frances sighed. ‘I guess I should too.’ But she didn’t move. She gave Zoe a quizzical look. ‘Do you think we’re all going to be “transformed” by the end of this thing?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Zoe. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Frances. ‘I feel like Masha could do anything. She scares the life out of me.’

  Zoe laughed and then they both startled at the clamorous sound of a gong being struck repetitively and aggressively from somewhere within the house.

  They jumped to their feet and Frances grabbed Zoe’s arm. ‘Oh God, it’s just like boarding school! Do you think we’re in trouble? Or maybe there’s a fire and we’re all evacuating?’

  ‘I think it probably just means the silence is starting again.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. Okay, we’ll go back together. I’ll go first; I’m older, I’m not scared of her.’

  ‘Yes you are!’

  ‘I know, I am, terrified! Quick, let’s go! I’ll see you on the other side of the silence.’

  ‘I’ll read your book.’ Zoe held up the paperback as they left the Lavender Room and headed back downstairs. It was a crazy thing to say, she had no interest in reading a romance book, but whatever, she liked Frances.

  ‘You’re not meant to read in the silence.’

  ‘I’m a rebel,’ said Zoe. She shoved the book under her top and into the waist of her bike pants. ‘I’ll be in an alliance with you.’

  She was just making a weak joke in reference to Frances’s comment earlier about Survivor, but Frances stopped in her tracks and turned around with a radiant smile. ‘Oh, Zoe, I would love to be in alliance with you.’

  And all of a sudden it felt like they were.

  chapter thirteen

  Masha

  Two guests, Zoe Marconi and Frances Welty, had excused themselves from the meditation room and not yet come back. The silence had been broken and one guest, Tony Hogburn, was now demanding his money back and threatening to report Tranquillum House to the Department of Consumer Affairs, blah, blah, blah, Masha had heard it all before, while the remaining guests looked on with curiosity or concern.

  Masha saw poor Yao shoot her an anxious look. He was a worrier. There was no need for stress. She could handle the childlike tantrums of one unhappy, unhealthy man. Solving unexpected problems energised her. It was one of her strengths.

  ‘I am very happy to give you a full refund.’ She fixed Tony with her eyes like a pin through a butterfly. ‘You are free to pack your bags and leave immediately. May I suggest you drive yourself to the nearest village, where you will find a fine pub called the Lion’s Heart? Their menu includes something called a “Mega Monster Burger” with unlimited fries and soft drink. Does that sound delicious?’

  ‘Sure does,’ said Tony truculently.

  And yet he didn’t get to his feet. Oh, my sweetie pie, you need me. You know you need me. You don’t want to be you anymore. Of course you don’t. Who would?

  He tried to wriggle free of her gaze but she wouldn’t let him. ‘I understand that you are not happy that we searched your bags, but the terms and conditions of your wellness contract clearly state that we have the right to search luggage and confiscate all contraband.’

  ‘Seriously? Did anyone read that?’ Tony looked around the room.

  Napoleon raised his hand. His wife, Heather, lifted her eyes to the ceiling.

  ‘It must have been buried in the fine print,’ said Tony. His face had turned mottled red, the colour of uncooked steak.

  ‘Growth can be painful,’ Masha told him, her voice gentle. He was a child. An enormous sulky child. ‘There will be parts of this experience that may be uncomfortable or unpleasant at times. But it’s only ten days! The average person lives around twenty-seven thousand days.’

  Tony’s outburst was actually a serendipitous opportunity to shape all their expectations and mould their future behaviour. She spoke as if only to him, but the message was for them all.

  ‘You are free to leave at any time, Tony. You are not a prisoner! This is a health resort, not a jail!’

  A few people chuckled.

  ‘And you are not a child! You can drink what you want to drink, eat what you want to eat. But there is a reason why you came here, and if you choose to stay, I ask you to commit fully to your journey and to put your trust in me and the other staff at Tranquillum House.’

  ‘Yeah, fine, that’s . . . I mean, I obviously didn’t read the fine print properly.’ Tony scratched hard at the side of his unshaved face and tugged at the fabric of his dreadful hot heavy blue jeans. ‘I just didn’t appreciate my bags being searched.’ The aggression was draining from his voice. Now he sounded embarrassed. His eyes peered out at her from within the prison of his poor, tortured body from which he so desperately needed rescue.

  She’d won. She had him. He would be beautiful when she finished with him. They would all be beautiful.

  ‘Are there any more areas of concern before we resume the silence?’

  Ben raised his hand. Masha observed his wife flash him a look of horror and move slightly away.

  ‘Um, yeah, I have just one question. Are the cars parked undercover?’

  She looked at him for a moment, long enough to help him see the sadness of this deep attachment to his earthly possessions.

  He shifted uncomfortably.

  ‘They are parked undercover, Ben. Please don’t worry, they are perfectly safe.’

  ‘Okay, but, um, where are the cars? I’ve walked around the property and I just can’t see where . . .’ As he spoke he removed his cap and briskly rubbed the top of his head.

  For the briefest of moments, Masha saw another boy wearing a baseball cap walking towards her, so strange and yet so familiar. She felt the love rise within her chest and she crossed her arms so she could secretly pinch the flesh on her arm, hard enough to hurt, until the vision vanished, and all that was left was here and now and the important tasks that lay ahead.

  ‘As I said, Ben, everyone’s cars are perfectly safe.’

  He opened his mouth to speak yet again and his wife hissed something inaudible through her teeth. He closed his mouth.

  ‘So, if everyone is in agreement, I would like to recommence the noble silence and begin our guided meditation. Yao, perhaps you could ring the gong to let our missing guests know we would appreciate their return?’

  Yao struck the gong with a mallet, perhaps a little more forcefully than Masha would have done, and within only a few moments Frances and Zoe had returned, their faces apologetic and gu
ilty.

  It was clear to Masha that they had been chatting, forming a friendship perhaps, which would need to be monitored. The point of the silence was to prevent this. She smiled benignly at them as they returned to their mats. Zoe’s parents sagged with relief.

  ‘Although I will be your guide today,’ she said, ‘meditation is a personal experience. Please release your expectations and open yourself to all possibilities. This is called a guided sitting meditation but that doesn’t mean you must sit! Please find the most natural, relaxed position for you. Some of you may like to sit cross-legged. Some of you may like to sit on a chair with your feet flat on the floor. Some of you may prefer to lie down. There are no hard and fast rules here!’

  She watched as they chose their positions with self-conscious faces. Frances lay flat on her back. Tony went and sat on a chair, as did Napoleon. The rest remained cross-legged on their mats.

  Masha waited until they were all settled. ‘Let your eyes drift closed.’

  She could sense their fluttering spirits: their anxieties, hopes, dreams and fears. She was so good at this. It was a pleasure to excel.

  Interviewers would one day ask, ‘Were you nervous when you first introduced the new protocol?’ Masha would answer, ‘Not at all. We’d done our research. We knew from the beginning it would be a success.’ It might be better to admit to a little nervousness. People in this country admired humility. The biggest compliment you could give a successful woman was to describe her as ‘humble’.

  She looked at her nine guests, all of whom now had their eyes obediently closed as they awaited her instructions. Their destinies were in her hands. She was going to change them not just temporarily, but forever.

  ‘We will begin.’

  chapter fourteen

  Frances

  It was the end of her first day at Tranquillum House and Frances lay in bed, wilfully reading while she drank her ‘evening smoothie’. No-one could be expected to give up wine and books at the same time.

  None of the four novels she’d packed to get her through the next ten days had been confiscated, unlike her wine and chocolate – presumably because books weren’t on the ‘contraband list’ (she would never have come here if so) – but a small slip of paper had been placed inside the front cover of each of them: A gentle reminder that we recommend no reading during the noble silence.

  What an absolute joke. She didn’t know how to go to sleep without reading. It wasn’t possible.

  The book she was reading now was a debut novel that had received rave reviews. There was a lot of ‘buzz’ about it. It was described as ‘powerful, muscular’ and it was written by a man Frances had met at a party last year. The man had been pleasant, shy and bespectacled (not especially muscular), so Frances was trying to forgive him for his lavish descriptions of beautiful corpses. How many more beautiful young women had to die before they could get on with the job of tracking down their murderer? Frances made little ‘tch’ sounds of disgust.

  Now the craggy detective was drunk on single-malt whisky in a smoke-hazed bar and a long-legged girl half his age was whispering into his ear, without inverted commas (this being powerful, literary fiction): I want to fuck you so bad.

  Frances, who had reached her limit, threw the book across the room. In your dreams, buddy!

  She lay back with her hands clasped across her chest, and reminded herself that her own debut novel featured a piano-playing, poetry-reciting firefighter. It was cute that the bespectacled author imagined twenty-something girls ever whispered ‘I want to fuck you so bad’ into the ears of fifty-something men. She would give the author a consoling little pat on the shoulder next time she saw him at a festival.

  Anyway, what did she know? Maybe twenty-something girls did that all the time. She would ask Zoe.

  She certainly would not ask Zoe.

  She reached for her phone on the bedside table to check the news and the weather for tomorrow.

  No phone.

  Of course. Well. Fine.

  The bed was a luxurious one: a good mattress, the sheets crisp with a high thread count. Her back hurt, but maybe a little less thanks to Jan’s giant hands.

  She attempted to quieten her ‘monkey brain’, as per the rules.

  In fact, her mind felt stuffed with new faces and new experiences: the long drive here; screaming on the side of the road; the serial killer on vacation (it was that damned book’s fault for making her think of serial killers); Ben and Jessica in that car; Yao unexpectedly filling a test tube with her blood; Masha and her near-death experience; chatty Napoleon and his intense wife; lovely young Zoe with her multiple piercings and long, smooth, brown legs, sitting in the Lavender Room telling Frances about her dead brother. That’s why Zoe’s mother had looked so sad on the stairs. She probably wasn’t intense at all. Just sad. The tall, dark and handsome man who’d cried, ‘Gesundheit!’ and the flustered lady with Frances’s glasses.

  A lot for one day. Stimulating and distracting. She hadn’t had time for any more existential crises, so that was something. She hadn’t even thought much about Paul Drabble, apart from when she was telling Jan and Zoe about what had happened. She’d be over her internet scam by the time she left. Over the review. Over everything.

  And thin! She’d be so thin! Her stomach rumbled. She was starving. Dinner tonight had been possibly the most excruciating meal of her life.

  When she took her place at the long dining room table, she picked up a small card propped in front of her plate:

  At Tranquillum House we recommend MINDFUL EATING. Please take small bites of your food. After each mouthful, place your cutlery back on the table, close your eyes and chew for at least fourteen seconds, slowly and pleasurably.

  Oh God, she thought. We’re going to be here forever.

  She put down the card and looked up to share a ‘can you believe this?’ glance with someone. The only ones prepared to meet her eyes were the astonishingly handsome man, who possibly winked at her, and Zoe, who definitely grinned, and responded with a look that said, ‘I know. I can’t believe it either.’

  Masha wasn’t in the dining room, but her presence was felt, like that of a managing director or schoolteacher who could turn up at any moment. Yao and Delilah were there but they didn’t sit down to eat with the guests. Instead they stood at the side of the room, at either side of a large candelabrum on an ornate sideboard. The lighting in the room was muted and the candelabrum had three lit candles.

  They sat in silence for at least ten . . . endless . . . minutes before the meals came out, delivered by a briskly smiling grey-haired lady in a chef’s hat. She didn’t say a word but nevertheless exuded goodwill. It felt so rude not to thank her. Frances tried to convey warm gratitude with a nod of her head.

  Every person at the table received a different meal. Both Heather and Zoe, who sat next to Frances, received delicious-looking steaks together with baked potatoes. Frances’s meal was a quinoa salad. It was excellent, but in Frances’s world she’d call that a ‘side’, and by the time she’d masticated each mouthful for fourteen seconds it had lost all flavour.

  Napoleon, who sat opposite Frances, received some sort of lentil dish. He leaned forward towards the bowl and waved the rising steam towards his nose, enjoying the scent. It was clear the poor man was desperate to chat. Frances would bet that in normal circumstances he would have been discussing the history of the lentil.

  The serial killer studied his giant bowl of green salad mournfully before picking up his cutlery and stabbing three cherry tomatoes onto his fork with an air of tragic resignation.

  The flustered lady with the quirky glasses received fish, to her apparent delight.

  The astonishingly handsome man was assigned chicken and vegetables, which he appeared to find mildly amusing.

  Ben received a vegetable curry and finished his meal well before the rest of the table.

&nb
sp; Jessica was given a really delicious-looking stir-fry, which was the wrong dish for the poor girl. She spent ages laboriously twirling the long noodles around her fork and then dabbing worriedly at her face with her napkin for splashes of food.

  Nobody broke the silence or made eye contact. When Napoleon sneezed again, nobody responded in any way. How quickly people adapted to strange rules and regulations!

  Heather ate less than half her steak before putting down her knife and fork with a little puff of irritation. Frances had to restrain herself from leaping on it like a wolf.

  Throughout the meal, Yao and Delilah stood silent and unmoving. They were like footmen, except you couldn’t snap your fingers and tell them to let Cook know that my lady could do with a larger portion of quinoa, and perhaps a medium-rare sirloin.

  The sound of strangers chewing and clinking and scraping their cutlery just about did Frances’s head in. Hadn’t she once read there was an actual disorder where people suffered real psychological distress at the sound of others eating? There was a name for it. Frances probably had that disorder and had never been diagnosed because you were meant to talk while you dined. Something else to remember to Google once she got her phone back.

  Eventually they were done, and they all pulled back their chairs and returned to their rooms. You couldn’t even say, ‘Goodnight! Sleep well!’

  Now, as Frances drank the last of her smoothie, she thought about the number of silent insufficient meals ahead of her and considered leaving in the morning.

  ‘No-one leaves early, Frances,’ Yao had said today. Well, Frances could be the first. Set a new precedent.

  She thought of her massage therapist’s whispered warning just before the silence began: Don’t do anything you’re not comfortable with. What did she mean by that? Frances would certainly not do anything she didn’t feel comfortable with.

  She recalled what Ellen had said when she suggested this place. ‘Their approach is really quite unconventional.’ Ellen was her friend. She wouldn’t send her somewhere dangerous . . . would she? Just to lose three kilos? You’d want to lose a lot more than three kilos if they were doing something dangerous. What could it be? Walking across burning coals for enlightenment? Frances would absolutely not do that. She didn’t even like walking across hot sand at the beach.