Frances
The bell rang for the first ‘guided sitting meditation’ and Frances opened the door of her room at the same time as Ben and Jessica next door. Nobody said anything, which Frances found almost unendurable, and they all avoided eye contact as they walked down the corridor towards the stairs.
Ben wore the same clothes as earlier, while Jessica had changed into skin-tight yoga gear, revealing a figure so magnificent Frances wanted to compliment her on her efforts. It took a lot of commitment and silicone to look that good, and yet the poor kid didn’t sashay as she deserved; rather she scurried, her shoulders hunched as though she were somewhere out of bounds and trying to escape notice.
Ben, on the other hand, had the stiff, stoic walk of a man being taken off to prison for a crime to which he’d pled guilty. Frances wanted to take them both out to a bar and listen to their life stories while they all ate peanuts and drank sangria.
Why was she even thinking about sangria, for heaven’s sake? She hadn’t drunk sangria in years. It was like her brain kept tossing out random suggestions for every type of food or drink she was going to be denied for the next ten days.
Just ahead of them on the stairs was the chatty giant Napoleon, together with his family. The mother was Heather. Heather Like Leather. The daughter was Not-showy Zoe. Well done, Frances, you’re a genius. Although what was the point of her excellent name-remembering skills? She wasn’t at a cocktail party. She wasn’t even allowed to look at them.
Napoleon walked in a very odd way, head bowed like a monk, each leg lifted and dropped with agonising slowness, as though he were pretending to be a space-walker. Frances was nonplussed for a moment and then remembered the instructions about mindful walking during the silence. She slowed her pace and saw Jessica flick Ben on the arm to tell him to do the same.
All six of them walked down the stairs in mindful heel-to-toe slow motion, and Frances tried not to notice the absurdity of it. If she started laughing she would become hysterical. She was already quite light-headed from hunger. It had been hours since she licked the KitKat wrapper.
Everyone yielded to Napoleon as the most enthusiastically mindful walker and they all followed him mindfully through the house and then down the stairs to the cool and dark yoga and meditation studio.
Frances took her place on one of the blue mats towards the back of the room and attempted to imitate the posture of the two wellness consultants who sat in the front corners of the room, like exam supervisors, except that their legs were folded like origami, their hands resting on their knees, thumbs and fingers touching, irritating half-smiles on their smooth, tranquil faces.
She noted once again the big television screen and wondered if desperate guests ever crept down in their pyjamas and tried to get a late-night TV fix, although there didn’t seem to be a remote anywhere.
As she tried to make herself comfortable she registered a slight but noticeable improvement in her back after her massage. The pain was still there, but it was like one of multiple bolts had been fractionally loosened.
She sniffed. She understood from her long-ago course that meditation was mostly about breathing correctly, and right now she couldn’t breathe. People would think of her as the aggravating sniffling lady at the back of the room, and when she inevitably fell asleep she’d suddenly jerk awake after doing one of those loud, snorty snores.
Why hadn’t she gone on a cruise?
She sighed, and looked around the room for guests she hadn’t yet met. To the right of her was a man of about her own age, with a pallid, unhappy face. He sat stolidly on his mat with his legs stuck straight out in front of him, cradling his big, solid belly on his lap as if it were a baby that had been handed to him without his consent. Frances smiled kindly at him. It was nice to see someone here who truly needed a health resort.
His eyes met hers.
Wait. No. Please, no. Her stomach lurched. It was the man who had stopped on the side of the road and witnessed her screaming and banging on her horn like a lunatic. It was the man with whom she had freely discussed her menopausal symptoms. The serial killer on vacation.
She had not cared what the serial killer thought of her because she was never going to see him again. She had never considered that he might also be checking into Tranquillum House, because he was driving in the opposite direction, away from Tranquillum House, deliberately misleading her.
This was fine. This was highly embarrassing, but fine. She smiled again, her mouth pulled down in a self-deprecating way to show that she was mildly mortified that she was going to spend the next ten days with him after he’d witnessed her roadside meltdown, but she was a grown-up, he was a grown-up, what the heck.
He sneered at her. He absolutely, most definitely, sneered at her. And then he looked away. Fast.
Frances loathed him. He had been so arrogant on the side of the road, telling her he couldn’t let her drive. Was he the police? No. (She felt like they were generally better groomed.) Of course, she would absolutely give the serial killer the chance to redeem himself, first impressions could be wrong, she’d read Pride and Prejudice, but she rather hoped he would continue to be loathsome for the next ten days. It was invigorating. Probably speeded up the metabolism.
Two more guests came into the room and Frances gave them her full attention. She would befriend them the moment she was allowed to speak. She was excellent at making friends. She felt quite sure that the serial killer was not excellent at making friends and she would therefore win.
The first was a woman, whom Frances guessed to be in her mid- to late-thirties, wearing an oversized, brand-new-looking white t-shirt that hung almost to her knees over black leggings, the standard outfit for an average-sized woman who starts a new exercise program and thinks her perfectly normal body should be hidden. Her thick black woolly hair was tied back in a long braid with glinting grey strands and she wore red-rimmed cat’s-eye glasses: statement glasses favoured by those who want to appear quirky and intellectual. (Frances had a pair.) The woman had a flustered look about her, as if she’d only just made her bus and she had lots of other places to be today, and might need to leave early.
The flustered lady was followed by an astonishingly handsome man with high cheekbones and flashing eyes, who paused at the front of the room, as if he were a movie star walking out onto the set of a chat show to rapturous applause. He was perfectly stubbled, perfectly proportioned and deeply, deservedly, in love with himself.
Frances wanted to laugh out loud at the sight of him. He was too good-looking even to be the tall, dark and handsome hero in one of her books. The only way it would work would be if she put him in a wheelchair. He’d look great in a wheelchair. Honestly, she could probably get away with removing both his legs and he could still play the lead.
He sat himself down on a yoga mat in the easy manner of someone with a daily yoga ‘practice’.
The tendons of Frances’s neck began to ache from the strain of trying to hold her body so she didn’t see the serial killer in her peripheral vision. She rolled her shoulders. Sometimes she exhausted herself.
She turned her head and looked directly at him.
He sat slumped, poking his finger into a hole near the hem of his t-shirt.
She sighed, looked away. He wasn’t even worth loathing.
Now what?
Now . . . nothing. They were all just sitting here. Waiting. What were they meant to be doing?
The desire to interact was an irresistible itch.
Jessica, who sat directly in front of Frances, cleared her throat as if she were about to speak.
Someone else coughed discreetly at the back of the room.
Frances threw in a cough too. Her cough sounded quite bad, actually. She probably had a chest infection. Would they have antibiotics here? Or would they try to cure her with natural supplements? In which case she’d get sicker and sicker and eventually die.
All this coughing and clearing of throats reminded her of being in church. When had she last been in a church? It must have been for a wedding. Some of her friends’ children were starting to get married. Girls who wore fuck-me boots in the eighties were now wearing mother-of-the-bride outfits with pretty bolero jackets to conceal their upper arms.
At least at a wedding you could quietly chat to the other guests while you waited for the bride. Compliment your friend on her pretty bolero jacket. This was more like a funeral, although even funerals weren’t this silent as people murmured their soft condolences. She was paying to be here and it was worse than a funeral.
She looked dolefully around the room. There were no nice stained-glass windows to enjoy like in a church. There were no windows or natural light at all. It was almost dungeon-like. She was in a dungeon on an isolated property with a group of strangers, at least one of whom was a serial killer. She shivered violently. The air-conditioning was on too high. She thought of the inscription Yao had showed her from the convict stonemasons and wondered if the place might be haunted by their tortured spirits. She’d set a couple of her books in haunted houses. It was helpful for when you wanted your characters to leap into each other’s arms.
Napoleon sneezed. A high-pitched shriek of a sneeze, like a dog’s yelp.
‘Gesundheit!’ cried the handsome man.
Frances gasped. He’d broken the noble silence already!
The handsome man clapped his hand to his mouth. His eyes danced. A wave of laughter ballooned in her chest. Oh God, it was like trying not to laugh in class. She saw the handsome man’s shoulders shake. He chuckled. She giggled. In a moment she’d be crying with laughter and someone would order her to leave the room ‘until she could control herself’.
‘Namaste. Good afternoon.’
The atmosphere changed instantly as a figure strode into the room, altering the particles of air around her, drawing every eye, bringing the coughs and sneezes and throat-clearing to an instant halt.
The laugher trapped in Frances’s chest vanished. The handsome man went still.
‘A very warm welcome to Tranquillum House. My name is Masha.’
Masha was an extraordinary-looking woman. A supermodel. An Olympic athlete. At least six feet tall, with corpse-white skin and green eyes so striking and huge they were almost alien-like.
In fact, Masha did seem like a different species, a superior species, to every other person in the room, even the handsome man. Her voice was low and deep for a woman, with an attractive accent that made certain syllables shift sideways. Namaste became nemaste. The cadence of her speech rolled back and forth between broad Australian and what Frances picked as exotic Russian. Indeed, the woman could easily be a Russian spy. A Russian assassin. Like all the staff, she wore white, except on her it looked less like a uniform and more like a choice: the perfect choice, the only choice.
The muscles on her arms and legs were sculpted in clean, sleek lines. Her hair was bleached platinum and cut so short she’d be able to shake her head, dog-like, when she got out of the shower and be ready to face the day.
As Frances’s eyes ran over Masha’s exquisitely toned body and compared it to her own, she sank into herself. She was Jabba the Hutt, all pillowy bosom and hips and soft oozing flesh.
Stop it, she told herself. It wasn’t like her to indulge in self-loathing.
Yet it would be disingenuous to deny the aesthetic pleasure of Masha’s body. Frances had never bought into ‘everyone is beautiful’, a platitude only women had to be sold, as men could be beautiful or not without feeling as though they weren’t really men. This woman, like the handsome man, had a dramatic, almost shocking physical presence. Frances had to talk or write or flirt or joke or in some way act before she could make an impact on people around her, otherwise, as she knew from experience, she could stand at a counter in a shop and be ignored forever. No-one could ignore Masha. All she had to do for attention was exist.
For a long, agonising moment Masha surveyed the room, turning her head in a slow arc that took in their cross-legged, silent subservience.
There’s something demeaning about this, thought Frances. We’re sitting at her feet like kindergarten kids. We’re silent, she speaks. Also, the rule was no eye contact, and yet Masha appeared to be inviting it. She set the rules so she could break them. I’m paying for this, thought Frances. You work for me, lady.
Masha met Frances’s gaze with warmth and humour. It was as if she and Frances were old friends, and she knew exactly what Frances was thinking and found her adorable for it.
At long last, she spoke again. ‘I thank you for your willingness to take part in the noble silence.’ I thenk you.
She paused.
‘I understand that some of you may find this period of silence particularly challenging. I understand, too, that the silence was unexpected. Some of you may be experiencing feelings of frustration and anger right now. You may be thinking: But I didn’t sign up for this! I understand, and to you I say this: Those of you who find the silence the most challenging will also find it the most rewarding.’
Mmm, thought Frances. We’ll see about that.
‘Right now you’re at the foot of a mountain,’ Masha continued, ‘and the summit seems impossibly far away, but I am here to help you reach that summit. In ten days, you will not be the person you are now. Let me be clear on this, because it’s important.’
She paused again. She looked slowly around the room, as if she were satirising a politician. The drama of her delivery was so deliberately hyperbolic it wasn’t even funny. It should have been funny, yet it wasn’t.
Masha repeated, ‘In ten days, you will not be the person you are now.’
No-one moved.
Frances felt hope rise in the room like a delicate mist. Oh, to be transformed, to be someone else, to be someone better.
‘You will leave Tranquillum House feeling happier, healthier, lighter, freer,’ said Masha.
Each word felt like a benediction. Happier. Healthier. Lighter. Freer.
‘On the last day of your stay with us, you will come to me and you will say this: Masha, you were right! I am not the same person I was. I am healed. I am free of all the negative habits and chemicals and toxins and thoughts that were holding me back. My body and mind are clear. I am changed in ways I could never have imagined.’
What a load of crap, thought Frances, while simultaneously thinking, Please let it be true.
She imagined driving home in ten days: pain-free, energised, her head cold cured, her back as flexible as an elastic band, the hurt and humiliation of her romance scam long gone, washed clean! She would walk tall, stand tall. She would be ready for whatever happened with the new book. The review would have faded to nothing.
(She could actually feel the review right now, like a sharp-edged corn chip stuck in her throat, making it hard to breathe and swallow.)
She might even – and here she felt a burst of childlike anticipation, as if for Christmas Day – be able to zip that amazing Zimmermann dress all the way up again, the one that used to guarantee her compliments (often from other people’s husbands, which was always so pleasing).
Perhaps her transformed self would go home and write a thriller or an old-fashioned murder mystery featuring a cast of colourful characters with secrets and a delightfully improbable villain. It might be fun to murder someone with a candlestick or a cup of poisoned tea. She could set it at a health resort! The murder weapon could be one of those stretchy green elastic bands she’d seen in the gym. Or she could make it more of a historical health resort where everyone wafted about looking pale and interesting as they recovered from tuberculosis. She could surely throw in a romantic subplot. Who didn’t like a romantic subplot?
‘There will be surprises on this journey,’ said Masha. ‘Each morning at dawn you will receive your daily schedule, but there will be unexpected detours and plans that change. I know this will be difficult for some of you who hold your lives with tight fists.’
She held up her fists to demonstrate her point and smiled. It was a stunning smile: warm and radiant and sensual. Frances found herself smiling back and looked around the room to see if everyone else was similarly affected. Yes, indeed. Even the serial killer smiled at Masha, although it seemed as if his lips had been forced up only temporarily without his consent, and the moment he got control back he was once again slack-jawed and sullen, pulling at a piece of thread on the fraying edge of his t-shirt.
‘Imagine you are a leaf in a stream,’ said Masha. ‘Relax and enjoy the journey. The stream will carry you this way and that, but it will carry you forward to where you need to go.’
Napoleon nodded thoughtfully.
Frances studied the still, straight backs of Ben and Jessica in front of her, somehow vulnerable in their slim youthfulness, which didn’t make sense because they probably didn’t say ‘oof’ each time they stood up from a chair.
Ben turned towards Jessica and opened his mouth as if he were about to break the silence, but he didn’t. Jessica moved her hand and the light bounced off an enormous diamond on her finger. Good Lord. How many carats was that thing?
‘Before we begin our first guided meditation, I have a story to share,’ said Masha. ‘Ten years ago, I died.’
Well, that was unexpected. Frances sat a little straighter.
Masha’s face became oddly jovial. ‘If you don’t believe me, ask Yao!’
Frances looked across at Yao, who seemed to be trying not to smile.
‘I went into cardiac arrest and I was clinically dead.’ Masha’s green eyes shone with crazy joy, as if she were describing the best day of her life.
Frances frowned. Wait, why did you mention Yao? Was he there? Keep your narrative on track, Masha.
‘They call my experience a “near-death experience”,’ said Masha. ‘But I feel that is the wrong terminology because I wasn’t just near death, I was dead. I experienced death, a privilege for which I am eternally grateful. My experience, my so-called “near-death experience”, was ultimately life-changing.’
There were no coughs, no movement in the room. Were people rigid with embarrassment or still with awe?
Here comes the tunnel of light, thought Frances. Hadn’t they proved there was a scientific reason for that phenomenon? Yet even as she scoffed, she felt a tingle of goosebumps.
‘That day, ten years ago, I temporarily left my body,’ said Masha. She said this with casual conviction, as if she didn’t expect to be doubted.
Her eyes swept the room. ‘There may be doubters among you. You may be thinking, Did she really die? Let me tell you, Yao was one of the paramedics who took care of me that day.’
She nodded at Yao, who nodded back.
‘Yao can confirm that my heart did indeed stop. We later developed a friendship and a mutual interest in wellness.’
Yao nodded even more vigorously. Did Frances imagine it, or did the other wellness consultant roll her eyes at that? Professional jealousy? What was her name again? Delilah.
What happened to Delilah after she cut off Samson’s hair? Frances longed to Google it. How was she going to cope for ten days without instant answers to idle questions?
Masha continued to speak. ‘I wish I could tell you much more about my near-death experience, but it is so hard to find the right words, and I’ll tell you why – it is simply beyond human comprehension. I don’t have the vocabulary for it.’
At least give it a shot. Frances scratched irritably at her forearm, which she understood from a clickbait article to be a symptom of Alzheimer’s, although she couldn’t be one hundred per cent sure because she couldn’t goddamn Google it.
‘I can tell you this,’ said Masha. ‘There is another reality that sits alongside the physical reality. I now know that death is not to be feared.’
Although still best avoided, thought Frances. The more earnest people got, the more flippant she became. It was a flaw.
‘Death is simply a matter of leaving behind our earthly bodies.’ Masha moved her own earthly body with unearthly grace. She seemed to be demonstrating how one shrugged off a body. ‘It is a natural progression, like walking into another room, like leaving the womb.’
She stopped. There was movement at the back of the studio.
Frances turned and saw the youngest person there, Zoe, stand from her cross-legged position in one fluid movement.
‘Sorry,’ she said in a low mumble.
Frances noticed Zoe’s ears were studded with a multitude of earrings in unusual spots Frances didn’t even know it was possible to pierce. Her face was pale. She was so exquisite and heartbreaking, just because she was young, or maybe just because Frances was old.
‘Excuse me.’
Both her parents looked up at her in alarm, their hands outstretched as if to grab her. Zoe shook her head violently at them.
‘Bathrooms are just over there,’ said Masha.
‘I just need a little . . . air,’ said Zoe.
Heather got to her feet. ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘Mum, no, I’m fine,’ said Zoe. ‘Please, just let me . . .’ She indicated the door.
Everyone watched to see who would prevail.
‘I’m sure she is fine,’ said Masha decisively. ‘Come back when you are ready, Zoe. You are tired after your long journey, that’s all.’
Heather surrendered with obvious reluctance and sat back down.
Everyone watched Zoe leave.
The room felt unsettled now, as if Zoe’s departure had put things out of balance. Masha breathed in deeply through her nostrils and out through her mouth.
Someone spoke.
‘Listen, now this, ah . . . noble silence . . . has been broken, could I ask a question?’
It was the serial killer. He spoke belligerently, just like a serial killer, his mouth barely open, so that his words came out in pellets. He was clearly very upset.
Frances saw Masha’s eyes widen ever so slightly at this infraction. ‘If you feel it’s important right now.’
He jutted his chin. ‘Did someone go through our bags?’