Frances
‘When did the pain start?’
Frances lay naked on a massage table, a soft white towel draped over her back.
‘Everything off and then under this towel,’ the massage therapist had barked when Frances arrived at the spa. She was a large woman with a grey buzz cut and the intimidating manner of a prison guard or a hockey coach, not quite the soft-voiced, gentle masseuse Frances had been anticipating. Frances hadn’t quite caught her name but she’d been too distracted following instructions to ask her to repeat it.
‘About three weeks ago,’ said Frances.
The therapist placed warm hands on her back which seemed to be the size of ping-pong bats. Was that possible? Frances lifted her head to see them but the therapist pressed against Frances’s shoulder blades so her head fell forward again.
‘Did anything in particular set it off?’
‘Not anything physical,’ said Frances. ‘But I did have kind of an emotional shock. I was in this relationship –’
‘So no physical injury of any sort,’ said the therapist tersely. Clearly she hadn’t got the Tranquillum House memo about speaking in a slow hypnotic voice. In fact, she was the opposite: it was like she wanted to get any speaking over and done with as quickly as possible.
‘No,’ said Frances. ‘But I feel like it was definitely connected. I had a shock, you see, because this man I was dating, well, he disappeared and – I remember this very clearly – I was actually phoning the police when I felt this kind of sensation, like I’d been slammed –’
‘It’s probably better if you don’t talk,’ said the therapist.
‘Oh. Is it?’ said Frances. I was about to tell you a very interesting story, scary lady. She’d told the story a few times now, and she felt that she told it quite well. She was improving it with each telling.
Also, she didn’t have long before she had to stop talking for five days, and she wasn’t sure how she was going to cope with so much silence. She’d only just avoided that terrifying abyss of despair in the car. Silence might tip her over again.
The therapist pressed her giant thumbs on either side of Frances’s spine.
‘Ow!’
‘Focus on your breathing.’
Frances breathed in the citrus-scented essential oils and thought about Paul. How it began. How it ended.
Paul Drabble was an American civil engineer she met online. A friend of a friend of a friend. A friendship that turned into something more. Over a six-month period, he sent her flowers and gift baskets and handwritten notes. They talked for hours on the phone. He’d Facetimed with her and said he’d read three of her books and loved them, and he talked expertly about the characters and even quoted his favourite excerpts, and they were all excerpts that made Frances feel secretly proud. (Sometimes people quoted their favourite lines to her and Frances thought, Really? I thought that wasn’t my best. And then she felt weirdly annoyed with them.)
He sent her photos of his son, Ari. Frances, who’d never wanted children of her own, fell hard for Ari. He was tall for his age. He loved basketball and wanted to play it professionally. She was going to be Ari’s stepmother. She’d read the book Raising Boys in preparation and had a number of brief but pleasurable chats with Ari on the phone. He didn’t say much, understandably – he was a twelve-year-old boy, after all – but sometimes she made him laugh when they Skyped, and he had a dry little chuckle that melted her heart. Ari’s mother – Paul’s wife – had died of cancer when Ari was in preschool. So sad, so poignant, so . . . ‘convenient?’ suggested one of Frances’s friends, and Frances had slapped her wrist.
Frances was planning to move from Sydney to Santa Barbara. She had her flights booked. They would need to get married to secure her green card, but she wasn’t going to rush into things. If and when it happened, she planned to wear amethyst. Appropriate for a third wedding. Paul had sent her photos of the room in his house that he’d already set up as her writing room. There were empty bookshelves waiting for her books.
When that terrible phone call came in the middle of the night, Paul so distraught he could barely get the words out, crying as he told her that Ari had been in a terrible car accident and there was a problem with the health insurance company and that Ari needed immediate surgery, Frances didn’t hesitate. She sent him money. A vast amount of money.
‘Sorry, how much?’ said the young detective who carefully wrote down everything Frances said, his professionalism slipping for just a moment.
That was Paul’s only misstep: he underplayed his hand. She would have sent double, triple, quadruple – anything to save Ari.
And then: terrifying silence. She was frantic. She thought Ari must have died. Then she thought Paul had died. No answers to her texts, her voicemail messages, her emails. It was her friend Di who made the first tentative suggestion. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, Frances, but is it possible that . . .?’ Di didn’t even need to finish the sentence. It was as if the knowledge had been lurking away in Frances’s subconscious all along, even while she booked non-refundable airfares.
It felt personal, but it wasn’t personal. It was just business. ‘These people are getting so smart,’ the detective had said. ‘They’re professional and polished and they target women of your age and circumstances.’ The sympathy on his handsome young face was excruciating. He saw a desperate old lady.
She wanted to say, ‘No, no, I’m not a woman of age and circumstance! I’m me! You’re not seeing me!’ She wanted to tell him that she had never had any trouble meeting men, she had been pursued by men all her life, men who truly loved her and men who only wanted to have sex with her, but they were all real men, who wanted her for herself, not con artists who wanted her money. She wanted to tell him that she’d been told on multiple occasions by multiple sources that she was really very good in bed, and her second serve caused consternation on the tennis court, and, although she never cooked, she could bake an excellent lemon meringue pie. She wanted to tell him she was real.
The shame she experienced was extraordinary. She had revealed so much of herself to this scammer. How he must have sniggered, even as he somehow responded with sensitivity, humour and perfect spelling. He was a mirage, a narcissistic reflection of herself, saying exactly what she so obviously wanted to hear. She realised weeks after that even his name, ‘Paul Drabble’, was probably designed to begin the act of seduction by subconsciously reminding her of Margaret Drabble, one of her favourite authors, as she had posted for all to see on social media.
It turned out many other women had been planning lives as Ari’s stepmother too.
‘There are multiple ladies in the same situation as you,’ the detective said.
Ladies. Oh my God, ladies. She couldn’t believe she was a lady. That sexless, gentrified word made Frances shudder.
The details of each scam were different but the boy’s name was always ‘Ari’ and he always had a ‘car accident’ and the distraught phone call always came in the middle of the night. ‘Paul Drabble’ had multiple names, each with a carefully curated online presence, so that when the ladies Googled their suitors – as they always did – they saw exactly what they wanted to see. Of course, he was not the friend of a friend of a friend. Or not in the real-world way. He’d played a long game, setting up a fake Facebook page and pretending an interest in antique restoration furniture, which had got him accepted into a Facebook group run by a university friend’s husband. By the time he sent Frances a friend request, she’d seen enough of his (intelligent, witty, concise) comments on her friend’s posts to believe him to be a real person in her extended circle.
Frances met up with one of the other women for coffee. The woman showed Frances pictures on her phone of the bedroom she’d created for Ari, complete with Star Wars posters on the wall. The posters were actually a little young for Ari – he wasn’t into Star Wars – but Frances kept that to herself.
The woman was in a far worse state than Frances. Frances ended up writing her a cheque to help her get back on her feet. Frances’s friends spluttered when they heard this. Yes, she gave more cash to yet another stranger, but for Frances it was a way of restoring her pride, taking back control, and fixing some of the trail of destruction left by that man. (She did think a thankyou card from her fellow scam victim might have been nice, but one mustn’t give only in expectation of thankyou cards.)
After it was all over, Frances packed away the evidence of her stupidity in a file. All the print-outs of emails where she’d spilled her foolish heart. The cards that accompanied real flowers with fake sentiments. The handwritten letters. She went to shove the folder into her filing cabinet and a sheet of paper sliced open her thumb like the edge of a razor blade. Such a tiny, trite injury and yet it hurt so much.
The therapist’s thumbs moved in small, hard circles. A liquid warmth radiated across Frances’s lower back. She looked through the hole in the massage table at the floor. She could see the therapist’s sneakered feet. Someone had used a sharpie to doodle flowers all over the white plastic toes of her shoes.
‘I fell for an internet romance scam,’ said Frances. She needed to talk. The therapist would just have to listen. ‘I lost a lot of money.’
The therapist said nothing, but at least she didn’t order Frances to stop talking again. Her hands kept moving.
‘I didn’t care so much about the money – well, I did, I’d worked hard for that money – but some people lose everything in these kinds of scams whereas I just lost . . . my self-respect, I guess, and . . . my innocence.’
She was babbling now, but she couldn’t seem to stop. All she could hear was the therapist’s steady breathing.
‘I guess I’ve always just assumed that people are who they say they are, and that ninety-nine per cent of people are good people. I’ve lived in a bubble. Never been robbed. Never been mugged. Nobody has ever laid a hand on me.’
That wasn’t strictly true. Her second husband hit her once. He cried. She didn’t. They both knew the marriage was over in that moment. Poor Henry. He was a good man, but they brought out something terrible in each other, like allergic reactions.
Her mind wandered off down the road of her long and complicated relationship history. She’d shared her relationship history with ‘Paul Drabble’ and he’d shared his. His had sounded so real. It must have had some truth to it? So says the novelist who makes up relationships for a living. Of course he could have fabricated his relationship history, you idiot.
She kept talking. Better to talk than to think.
‘I honestly thought I was more in love with this man than any other man I’d met in the real world. I was quite deluded. But then again, love is just a trick of the mind, isn’t it?’
Just shut up, Frances, she’s not interested.
‘Anyway, it was all very . . .’ Her voice trailed off. ‘Embarrassing.’
The therapist was completely silent now. Frances couldn’t even hear her breathing. It was like being massaged by a giant-handed ghost. Frances wondered if she was thinking, I’d never fall for something like that.
The sharpest knife-point of her humiliation was this: before, if Frances had been asked to pick the sort of person likely to fall for an internet scam, she would have chosen someone like this woman, with her bulky body, buzz cut and questionable social skills. Not Frances.
Frances said, ‘I’m sorry, I missed your name before.’
‘Jan.’
‘Do you mind me asking, Jan, are you married . . . in a relationship?’
‘Divorced.’
‘Me too,’ said Frances. ‘Twice.’
‘But I’ve just started seeing someone,’ offered Jan, as if she couldn’t help herself.
‘Oh. Great!’ Frances’s mood lifted. Was there anything better than a new relationship? Her whole career was based on the wonder of new relationships. ‘How did you meet?’ she asked.
‘He breath-tested me,’ said Jan, with a laugh in her voice.
The laugh told Frances everything she needed to know. Jan was newly in love. Frances’s eyes filled with happy tears for her. Romance would never be dead for Frances. Never.
‘So . . . he’s a policeman?’
‘He’s a new cop in Jarribong,’ said Jan. ‘He was bored sitting on the side of the road doing random breath-testing, and we got chatting while he waited for another car to come along. It took two hours.’
Frances tried to imagine Jan chatting for two hours.
‘What’s his name?’ asked Frances.
‘Gus,’ said Jan.
Frances waited, giving Jan the opportunity to wax lyrical about her new boyfriend. She tried to imagine him for herself. Gus. A local country cop. Broad-shouldered, with a heart of gold. Gus probably owned a dog. A lovable dog. Gus probably whittled. He probably had a tuneful whistle. He probably whistled while he whittled. Frances was already half in love with Gus herself.
But Jan had gone silent on the subject of Gus.
After a while, Frances kept talking, as if Jan had actually shown interest.
‘You know, sometimes I think it was almost worth it, the money I paid, for the companionship over those six months. For the hope. I should email him, and say, “Look, I know you’re a scammer, but I’ll pay you to keep pretending to be Paul Drabble.”’ She paused. ‘I would never really do that.’
Silence.
‘It’s funny, because I’m a romance writer. I create fictional characters for a living, and then I fell for one.’
Still nothing. Jan mustn’t be a reader. Maybe she was just embarrassed for Frances. Wait till I get home and tell Gus about this loser.
Gus would give a long, low (tuneful) whistle of surprise and sympathy. ‘That’s what happens in the big smoke, Jan.’
Frances managed to stay silent for a few moments as Jan kneaded her knuckle into a spot on her lower back. It hurt in a glorious, necessary-feeling way.
‘Do you work full-time here, Jan?’
‘Just casual. When they need me.’
‘You like it?’
‘It’s a job.’
‘You’re very good at it.’
‘Yup.’
‘Extraordinarily good.’
Jan said nothing and Frances closed her eyes. ‘How long have you worked here?’ she asked sleepily.
‘Only a few months,’ said Jan. ‘So I’m still a newbie.’
Frances opened her eyes. There was something in Jan’s voice. Just a shadow. Was it possible she wasn’t quite sold on the Tranquillum House philosophy? Frances considered asking her about the missing contraband, but how would the conversation progress?
‘I think someone went through my bags, Jan.’
‘Why do you think that, Frances?’
‘Well, some things were missing.’
‘What sort of things?’
She was too ashamed and too vulnerable without her clothes on to confess.
‘What is the director like?’ asked Frances, thinking of the reverence with which Yao had looked at that closed door.
Silence.
Frances watched Jan’s feet in their chunky sneakers. They didn’t move.
Finally, Jan spoke. ‘She’s very passionate about her work.’
Yao had also said he was passionate about his work. It was the theatrical language of movie stars and motivational speakers. Frances would never say she was ‘passionate’ about her work, although she was in fact passionate about her work. If she went too long without writing she lost her mind.
What if she was never published again?
Why would anyone publish her again? She didn’t deserve to be published.
Don’t think about the review.
‘Passion is good,’ she said.
‘Yup,’ said Jan. She chose another spot for knuckle-digging.
‘Is she possibly too passionate at times?’ asked Frances, trying to understand the point, if any, that Jan was trying to make.
‘She cares a lot about the guests here and she’s prepared to do . . . whatever it takes . . . to help them.’
‘Whatever it takes?’ said Frances. ‘That sounds –’
Jan’s hands moved to Frances’s shoulders. ‘I need to remind you that the noble silence will begin in just a few moments. Once we hear the third bell we’re not allowed to talk.’
Frances felt panicky. She wanted more information before this creepy silence began.
‘When you say “whatever it takes” –’
‘I only have positive things to say about the staff here,’ interrupted Jan. She sounded a little robotic now. ‘They have your best interests at heart.’
‘This is sounding kind of ominous,’ said Frances.
‘People achieve great results here,’ said Jan.
‘Well, that’s good.’
‘Yup,’ said Jan.
‘So are you saying that some of their methods are possibly a little . . .’ Frances tried to find the right word. She was remembering some of those angry online reviews.
A bell rang once. It reverberated with the melodic authority of a church bell, clear and pure.
Damn it.
‘Unorthodox?’ continued Frances hurriedly. ‘I guess I’m just cautious now, after my experience with that man, that scammer. Once bitten –’
The second bell, even louder than the first, sliced through the middle of her cliché so that it hung foolishly in the air.
‘Twice shy,’ whispered Frances.
Jan pressed her palms down hard on Frances’s shoulder blades as if she were performing CPR and leaned forward so that her breath was warm against Frances’s ear.
‘Just don’t do anything you’re not comfortable with. That’s all I can say.’
The third bell rang.