Nine Perfect Strangers

  Ellen would have told her if there was walking across hot coals. Ellen was a dear friend.

  ‘I’ve never trusted that Ellen,’ Gillian once said, darkly and knowledgeably, but Gillian was always making dark, knowledgeable comments about people, as if everyone had secret mafia connections that only Gillian knew about.

  Frances missed her greatly.

  A wave of exhaustion hit her, not surprising after that long drive. She switched off her bedside lamp and fell instantly sound asleep, flat on her back like a sunbaker.

  *

  A light shone in her face.

  Frances woke with a gasp.

  chapter fifteen

  Lars

  ‘What the actual fuck?’

  Lars sat up, his heart hammering. A figure stood at the end of his bed shining a small torch in his face like a nurse doing hospital rounds.

  He switched on his bedside lamp.

  His ‘wellness consultant’, the delectable Delilah, stood next to his bed holding up the Tranquillum House dressing-gown with one hand. She didn’t speak. She lifted one finger and beckoned, as if he would just obediently and silently follow her instructions.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘It’s the middle of the night and I like my sleep.’

  Delilah said, ‘It’s the starlight meditation. It’s always on the first night. You don’t want to miss it.’

  Lars lay back in bed and shielded his eyes. ‘I do want to miss it.’

  ‘You’ll like it. It’s really beautiful.’

  Lars removed his hand from his eyes. ‘Did you even knock before you came into my room without permission?’

  ‘Naturally I knocked,’ said Delilah. She held up the dressing-gown. ‘Please? I’ll lose my job if you don’t come down for it.’

  ‘You will not.’

  ‘I might. Masha wants all the guests there for it. It only takes half an hour.’

  Lars sighed. He could refuse on principle, but it was such a first-world, privileged principle he couldn’t be bothered. He was awake now anyway.

  He sat up and held out his hand for his dressing-gown. He slept naked. He could have just leapt from the bed in all his glory to make the point that this was what happened when you woke your sleeping guests in the middle of the night, but he was too well-mannered. Delilah averted her eyes as he threw back the sheet, although he didn’t miss the quick downward flick. She was only human.

  ‘Don’t forget the silence,’ she said as she stepped into the corridor.

  ‘How could I forget the beautiful noble silence?’ said Lars.

  She put her finger to her lips.

  *

  It was a clear night, the stars were out in force and a perfect half-moon illuminated the garden with silvery light. The balmy air was a soft caress against his skin after the hot day. It was, he had to admit, all very pleasant.

  Nine yoga mats had been placed in a circle and guests wearing the Tranquillum House dressing-gowns lay with their heads facing the centre of the circle, where their striking leader Masha sat cross-legged on the grass.

  Lars saw there was only one empty mat. He was the last guest to arrive. He wondered if he’d made the most fuss about being dragged from his bed. He never ceased to be amazed by the obedience of people at these places. They allowed themselves to be dipped in mud, wrapped in plastic, starved and deprived, pricked and prodded, all in the name of ‘transformation’.

  Of course, Lars did too, but he was prepared to draw the line when necessary. For example, he drew the line at enemas. Also, he did not want to ever, ever discuss his bowel movements.

  Delilah led Lars to a mat in between the lady who got the giggles when Lars said ‘Gesundheit!’ earlier and the giant lump of a man who had complained about his contraband being confiscated.

  There was something familiar about the big guy with the contraband. It had been hard not to stare at him through dinner. Lars couldn’t shake the irritating feeling that he knew him from somewhere, but he couldn’t work out where.

  Was he one of the husbands? If he was one of the husbands, would he recognise Lars and come after him, like that time he was boarding a plane and a guy in the economy line saw Lars and went nuts? He’d shouted, ‘YOU! You’re the reason I’m flying cattle class!’ Lars had taken extra pleasure in his Perrier-Jouët on that flight (and walked briskly off the plane towards the priority queue at customs). The big guy didn’t look like one of the husbands, but Lars knew he knew him from somewhere.

  He wasn’t good with faces. Ray was great with them. Every time they started a new series Lars would sit up on the couch, point at the screen and say, ‘Her! We know her! How do we know her?’ Ray normally had it within seconds: ‘Breaking Bad. The girlfriend. Walt let her die. Now shut up.’ It was a real skill. On the rare occasions that Lars worked it out before Ray he got very excited and demanded high fives.

  Lars lay down on the mat between the big guy and the giggling lady. She reminded Lars of one of Renoir’s women – small-faced and round-eyed with curly hair piled on top of her head; creamy-skinned, plump and bosomy, possibly a little vacuous – but he thought they would probably get on. She looked like a fellow hedonist.

  ‘Namaste,’ said Masha. ‘Thank you for leaving your beds for tonight’s starlight meditation. I am grateful to you for your flexibility, for opening your hearts and minds to new experiences. I am proud of you.’

  She was proud of them. How condescending. She didn’t even know them! They were her clients. They were paying for this. And yet Lars felt a sense of satisfaction in the garden, as if everyone wanted Masha to be proud of them.

  ‘The retreat you are about to undertake combines ancient Eastern healing wisdom and herbal treatments with the latest cutting-edge advances in Western medicine. I want you to know that although I am not a practising Buddhist, I have incorporated certain Buddhist philosophies into our practices here.’

  Yeah, yeah, East meets West, never heard that before, thought Lars.

  ‘This won’t take very long. I’m not going to say much. The stars will do the talking for me. Isn’t it funny how we forget to look up at the stars? We scurry about like ants in our day-to-day lives and look, just look, what’s up above our heads! All your life you look down. It’s time to look up, to see the stars!’

  Lars looked at the sky emblazoned with stars.

  The big guy on his left gave a chesty cough. So did the busty blonde on his right. Jesus. He should be wearing some sort of sanitation mask. If he came back from this thing with a cold, he wouldn’t be happy.

  Masha said, ‘Some of you may have heard of the word koan. A koan is a paradox or puzzle that Zen Buddhists use during meditation to help them on their quest towards enlightenment. The most famous one is this: What is the sound of one hand clapping?’

  Oh Lord. The website had given the impression that this place leaned more towards luxury wellness. Lars had a daily yoga and meditation practice, but he preferred his health retreats to avoid too much embarrassing cultural appropriation.

  ‘While you look at the stars tonight I want you to reflect on two koans. The first one is this: Out of nowhere the mind comes forth.’ Masha paused. ‘And the second: Show me your original face, the one you had before your parents were born.’

  Lars heard the big guy next to him make a wheezy exhalation that caused him to start rolling about coughing.

  ‘Do not struggle to find answers or solutions,’ said Masha. ‘This is not a quiz, my people!’ She chuckled a little.

  The woman really was quite a strange mix of charismatic leader and enthusiastic nerd. One moment a guru, the next the newly appointed CEO of a telecommunications company.

  ‘There is no right or wrong answer. Simply look at the stars and reflect without straining for a solution. Just breathe. That’s all you need to do. Breathe and watch the stars.’

/>   Lars breathed and watched the stars. He did not think of either of the koans. He thought of Ray, and how, early on in their relationship, Ray had convinced him to go camping with him (never again). They had lain together on a beach, holding hands and looking at the stars, and it had been beautiful, but something had built up and up in Lars’s chest until he couldn’t take it anymore and he’d jumped up and run into the ocean, whooping and tearing off his clothes, pretending he was the type of guy who whooped, the type of guy who didn’t think about sharks or the temperature of the ocean in October. He smiled a bit, because he knew he couldn’t get away with that now. Ray knew about his shark phobia.

  Ray had asked if he could join him on this retreat. Lars couldn’t work out his motivation. He’d never wanted to come to one before. Lars did a couple of retreats a year, but Ray always said they sounded hellish. Why did he suddenly want to come along on this one?

  Lars thought of Ray’s face when he said he’d rather go alone. There was a micro moment when it looked like Lars had slapped him, but then Ray shrugged, smiled and said that was fine, he was going to eat lasagne every night while Lars was gone and watch nothing but sports on TV.

  Ray’s lifestyle was already squeaky clean and incorporated vegetable juices and smoothies and protein shakes. It wasn’t necessary for him to come along to this. Lars needed his time alone.

  Did he want Lars to feel like shit? Was it somehow related to the text Ray’s sister, Sarah, had sent earlier today: Can you at least think about it?

  She must have sent it without Ray’s knowledge. Lars was sure Ray had accepted that his decision about children was final. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been upfront about his lack of interest in having a family. He had never said otherwise.

  ‘Did I ever say otherwise?’ he’d said to Ray, and he’d come close to raising his voice, which was not something he could countenance. He could not be in a relationship with the crassness and indignity of raised voices. It made him shudder to think of it. Ray knew this.

  ‘You never said otherwise,’ Ray had responded evenly, and he didn’t raise his voice. ‘You never misled me. I’m not saying that. I guess I just hoped you might change your mind.’

  Sarah, all shiny-eyed and sincere, had offered to help them have a baby. Ray’s family were so liberal and lovely and loving. It was fucking annoying.

  Lars had recoiled, literally physically recoiled, at the thought. ‘God no,’ he’d said to Ray and his sister. ‘Just . . . no.’ He’d felt terrified and suffocated by the thought of all the earnest love he’d have to endure if they had a baby. There would be no escaping it. All those family functions! Ray’s mother would never stop crying.

  It was not happening. Never. Out of nowhere the mind comes forth.

  A Zen koan. Give me strength.

  If Ray really wanted to be a father, should Lars let him go be one with someone else? But wasn’t that up to Ray? If Ray couldn’t live without children, then he was free to leave. They weren’t married. The house was in both their names, but they were both financially secure and sufficiently intelligent people to work all that out. Obviously Lars could handle a fair division of property.

  Was it the only way forward? Had their relationship reached an impossible impasse because, either way, one of them had to make an impossible sacrifice? Whose sacrifice was worse?

  But Ray had stopped asking! He’d accepted it. Lars felt that Ray wanted something else from him. What was it? Permission to leave? He didn’t want Ray to leave.

  Something tumbled in the sky. A falling star, for God’s sake. How had Masha managed that? Lars heard everyone exhale with the wonder of it.

  He closed his eyes and all of a sudden it came to him exactly how he knew the big guy on his left and he wished Ray was here so he could tell him, I got it, Ray, I got it!

  chapter sixteen

  Jessica

  The author, Frances Welty, who lay on the yoga mat next to Jessica, was fast asleep. She wasn’t snoring but Jessica could tell she was asleep by the way she breathed. Jessica considered giving her a gentle nudge with her foot. She’d just missed seeing a falling star.

  On reflection, Jessica decided not to bother her. It was the middle of the night. People her age really needed their sleep. If Jessica’s mother had a bad night’s sleep the bags under her eyes made her literally look like something from a horror movie, though she just laughed when Jessica tried to teach her about concealer. It wasn’t necessary to look that bad. It was stupid. If Jessica’s dad left her for his PA, Jessica’s mother would have no-one to blame but herself. Under-eye concealer was invented for a reason.

  Jessica rolled her head and looked at Ben on the other side of her. He was staring up at the stars with a glazed expression, as if he were considering those Zen riddles, when really he was probably just counting down the hours until he could get out of here and back behind the wheel of his precious car.

  He turned his head and winked at her. It made her heart lift, as if her crush had winked at her in the classroom.

  Ben looked back up at the stars and Jessica touched her face with her fingers. She wondered if her skin looked bad without make-up in the moonlight. There had been no time to put on foundation. They were just dragged from their beds. They could have been having sex when that girl came into their bedroom, with just the gentlest knock on their door and without even waiting for them to say, ‘Come in,’ before she marched on in and shone a light in their eyes.

  They hadn’t been having sex. Ben had been asleep and Jessica had been lying next to him in the darkness, unable to sleep, missing her phone so badly it felt like she’d had something amputated. When she couldn’t sleep at home she simply picked up her phone and scrolled through Instagram and Pinterest until she got tired.

  She looked at her scarlet toenails in the moonlight. If she had her phone with her right now she would have photographed her feet, together with Ben’s feet, and tagged it #starlightmeditation #healthretreat #learningaboutkoans #wejustsawafallingstar #whatisthesoundofonehandclapping.

  That last hashtag would have made her look quite intellectual and spiritual, she thought, which was good, because you had to be careful not to come across as superficial on your socials.

  She couldn’t shake the feeling that if she didn’t record this moment on her phone then it wasn’t really happening, it didn’t count, it wasn’t real life. She knew that was irrational but she couldn’t help it. She literally felt twitchy without her phone. Obviously she was addicted to it. Still, better than being addicted to heroin, though these days no-one was sure about Ben’s sister’s most recent drug of choice. She liked to ‘mix it up’.

  Jessica sometimes wondered if all their problems led back to Ben’s sister. She was always there, a big black cloud in their blue sky. Because, apart from Lucy, honestly, what did they have to worry about? Nothing. They should have been as happy as it was possible to be. Where had they gone wrong?

  Jessica had been so careful, right from day one. What was that stupid thing her mother said? ‘Oh, Jessica, darling – this sort of thing can ruin people.’

  She said that, all frowny-faced, on what should have been the most spectacular day of Jessica’s life. The day that split her life in two.

  It was two years ago now. A Monday evening.

  Jessica had come home from work in a hurry because she was going to try to make the 6.30 pm spin class. She rushed into the tiny kitchen with its ugly laminate benchtops to fill her water bottle and there was Ben sitting on the floor, his back up against the dishwasher, his legs splayed, phone held limply in his hand. His face was dead white, his eyes glassy. She got down on the floor next to him, her heart pounding, barely breathing, hardly able to speak. The uppermost thought in her mind was, ‘Who? Who?’ Her first thought was Lucy, of course. Ben’s sister flirted with death on a daily basis. But something told her it wasn’t Lucy. He seemed too shocked, and Lucy’s death was n
ever going to come as a surprise.

  He said, ‘Do you remember how Mum sent us that card?’

  Jessica’s heart contracted because she thought it must have been his mother who had died, and she loved Ben’s mum.

  ‘How?’ she said. ‘How did it happen?’ How was it possible that Donna had died? She played tennis twice a week. She was healthier and fitter than Jessica. It was probably the stress over Lucy.

  ‘You remember the card she sent?’ Ben repeated obliviously. ‘Because we were so upset about the robbery?’

  Poor Ben. He was obviously mad with grief and for some reason he was clutching on to this memory.

  ‘I remember the card,’ she said gently.

  It came in the mail. It had a cute puppy on the front with a speech bubble coming out of his mouth, saying, ‘Sorry to hear you’re feeling low,’ and a lottery ticket inside. Donna’s message said, You two deserve some good luck.

  Ben said, ‘The ticket won.’

  Jessica said, ‘What’s happened to your mum?’

  ‘Nothing. Mum is fine,’ said Ben. ‘I haven’t told her yet.’

  ‘You haven’t told her what?’ Jessica’s brain couldn’t seem to keep up with the words she was hearing and she was suddenly angry. ‘Ben. Has anybody died or not?’

  Ben smiled. ‘Nobody has died.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Everybody is in perfect health.’

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Well, good.’ As the adrenaline left her body she was suddenly exhausted. She didn’t think she could do her spin class now.

  ‘The ticket won. The ticket that Mum gave us after the robbery. That was the lottery office. We won the first division prize. We just won twenty-two million dollars.’