Coming here was a mistake. An expensive mistake. They should have gone to a big anonymous hotel.
She tied the laces on her runners with vicious tugs and opened her mouth to speak. She was definitely going to speak. This silence was unnecessary. They wouldn’t speak in the presence of the other guests, but there was no need to maintain this awkward, weird and unhealthy silence in the privacy of their own room.
And what about poor Zoe, alone and silent in the room next door? Heather and Napoleon both panicked if she was alone in her bedroom at home for too long, which was hard because she was twenty years old and needed to study. If there had been no sound for a while one of them would make an excuse to go and check on her. She never complained and she never closed her door. But there were no family suites at Tranquillum House. They’d had no choice but to book her a single room.
She said she was fine, she constantly reassured them she was fine, she was happy; she understood their need to be reassured. But she’d worked so hard this year, much too hard, tapping away grimly on her computer as if a ‘media studies’ degree were a matter of life and death, and she deserved a break.
Heather looked at the wall above their bed that separated their room from Zoe’s and wished she could see straight through it. What was she doing right now? She didn’t have her phone. Twenty-year-olds needed their phones by their sides at all times. Zoe found it stressful if her battery power dropped below eighty per cent.
They shouldn’t be risking their daughter’s mental health like this. Zoe didn’t sleep alone in a bed until she was ten years old.
Had she ever stayed in a hotel room on her own before?
Never. Zoe had been away on holidays with her girlfriends but they would have always shared a room, or so Heather would have thought.
She just broke up with her boyfriend and now she is alone in her room with nothing but her thoughts.
My God. Her heart raced. She knew she was catastrophising. She is an adult. She’s fine.
Napoleon turned from the balcony, caught her eye and once again dropped his gaze. Heather felt her molars grind. He’d be so disappointed in her if she spoke only five minutes into ‘the noble silence’.
Jesus. This was unexpectedly hard. The silence made her thoughts scream. She hadn’t realised how much distraction Napoleon provided with his incessant chatter. How ironic if she was the one who couldn’t handle silence, not him.
They didn’t need silence or fasting or detoxification. They just needed a refuge from January. Last January they’d stayed home and that had been a disaster. It was even worse than the year before. It seemed that January was a cruel-eyed, clawed vulture that would terrorise Heather’s tiny family forever.
‘Maybe we should go away this time,’ Napoleon had suggested a few months ago. ‘Somewhere peaceful and quiet.’
‘Like a monastery,’ Zoe had said. Then her eyes brightened. ‘Or, I know, a health resort! We’ll get Dad’s cholesterol down.’
Napoleon’s school had offered all the teaching staff free health assessments back in June and Napoleon had been told his cholesterol was high, and his blood pressure was becoming worrisome, and it was great that he exercised, but he needed to make dramatic changes to his diet.
So Heather had Googled ‘health resorts’.
Are you in need of significant healing?
That was the opening line on the home page for the Tranquillum House website.
‘Yes,’ Heather had said quietly to her computer screen. ‘Yes, we are.’
It seemed likely that Tranquillum House targeted people of a socioeconomic status a few income levels higher than those of a high-school teacher and a midwife, but their last proper holiday had been years ago, and Napoleon’s inheritance from his grandfather had been sitting there in a term deposit. They could afford it. There was nothing else they needed or wanted.
‘Are you sure you want to be stuck with your parents at a health resort for ten days?’ she’d asked Zoe.
Zoe shrugged, smiled. ‘I just want to spend this holiday sleeping. I’m so tired.’
Normal twenty-year-old girls shouldn’t be spending that much of their summer break with their parents, but then Zoe wasn’t a normal twenty-year-old girl.
Heather had clicked Book now and instantly regretted it. It was strange how something could appear so attractive and then, the very moment you committed to it, become wildly unattractive. But it was too late. She’d agreed to the terms and conditions. They could change the time they went, but they couldn’t get their money back. The three of them were doing a ten-day ‘cleanse’ whether they liked it or not.
She’d spent days kicking herself. They didn’t need to be ‘transformed’. There was nothing wrong with their bodies. Everyone always said the three of them were exercise fanatics! This wasn’t the place for the Marconis; it was the place for people like that woman Napoleon had accosted on the stairs. What was her name? Frances. You could tell just by looking at her that she filled her life with lunches and facials and her husband’s work functions.
She looked vaguely familiar to Heather – probably because Heather knew so many women just like her: wealthy middle-aged women who hadn’t worked since before their children were born. There was nothing wrong with those women. Heather liked them. She just couldn’t be with them for too long without succumbing to rage. They were utterly unscathed by life. The only thing they had to worry about was their bodies, because all that lunching didn’t help their figures, so they needed to come to places like this to ‘recharge’ and to hear the experts tell them the amazing news that if you eat less and move more, you will weigh less and feel better.
Once the silence was over and they were allowed to talk again, Napoleon and Frances would get on like a house on fire. Napoleon would listen with genuine interest as Frances humble-bragged about how her children were studying at Harvard or Oxford or taking a gap year in Europe, where they seemed to be visiting more nightclubs than museums.
Heather wondered idly if she should suggest to Napoleon that he take the opportunity to have an affair while they were here. Perhaps the poor man craved sex, and Frances would be a fine buxom choice.
Heather knew the exact date she’d last had sex with her husband. It was three years ago. If she’d known it was going to be the last time she’d have sex for the rest of her life, she might have bothered to remember the details. She was sure it was good; it generally was good. It just wasn’t possible anymore, not for Heather.
She sat on the end of the bed, and Napoleon came and sat down next to her. She could feel the warmth of his body along hers, but their bodies didn’t touch, as per the rules.
They waited for Zoe, who was going to knock on their door once she was showered. That was the plan. Then the three of them would wait, silently, for the bell and go downstairs together for the first ‘guided sitting meditation’.
Zoe was fine. Of course she was fine. She was a good girl. She would do what she said she would do. She always did. She tried so hard to be everything for them while they tried so hard to pretend that she wasn’t their only reason for living.
Heather felt the pierce of grief as sharp as a samurai sword.
She could always hide the rage, but never the grief. It was too visceral. She put her hand to the base of her throat and a tiny, mouse-like sound escaped.
‘Just ride it out, sweetheart,’ murmured Napoleon. He spoke so quietly it was almost a whisper. Without looking at her, he took her hand, enfolding it in the warmth of his palms, breaking his beloved rules for her.
She clutched at him, her fingers locked into the grooves between his knuckles, like a woman in labour holds her partner’s hand as the pain tries to drag her away.
chapter eleven