Masha waved that away irritably, as if it were of no relevance. ‘Something else.’
‘There is nothing else right now,’ said Carmel. ‘There’s no time for anything else. I’m just a normal busy mum. An overweight, stressed-out, suburban mum.’ As she spoke she scanned Masha’s desk for family photos. She must not have children. If she did, she would know how motherhood swallowed you up whole. ‘I work part-time,’ she tried to explain. ‘I have an elderly mother who is not well. I am always tired. Always, always tired.’
Masha sighed, as if Carmel were not behaving.
‘I know I need to work more exercise into my schedule?’ offered Carmel. Was that what she wanted to hear?
‘Yes,’ said Masha. ‘Yes, you do. But I find this also not so interesting.’
‘When the kids are older I’ll have more time to –’
‘Tell me about when you were schoolgirl,’ interrupted Masha. ‘What were you like? Smart? Top of class? Bottom of class? Naughty? Loud? Shy?’
‘I was mostly near the top of the class,’ said Carmel. Always. ‘Not naughty. Not shy. Not loud.’ She thought about it. ‘Although, I could be very loud. If I felt strongly about something.’
She remembered a heated argument with a teacher who wrote ‘the thunder boomed, the lightening flashed’ on the blackboard. Carmel stood up to correct the teacher’s spelling of ‘lightning’. The teacher didn’t believe her. Carmel wouldn’t back down, even when the teacher yelled at her. She was all-powerful when she knew without doubt that she was in the right. But how often did you know for sure that you were right? Hardly ever.
‘Interesting,’ said Masha. ‘Because right now you do not seem like a very loud person.’
‘You should see me in the morning when I yell at my kids,’ said Carmel.
‘Why have I not seen this “loud” Carmel? Where is she?’
‘Um – we’re not allowed to speak?’
‘That is a good point. But see – even then, when you made a very valid point, you said it like a question. You put this questioning sound at the end of your sentences. Like this? Your voice goes up? Like you are not really sure? Of everything you say?’
Carmel squirmed at Masha’s imitation of her speech patterns. Was that really how she sounded?
‘And your walk,’ said Masha. ‘That is the other thing: I don’t like the way you walk.’
‘You don’t like the way I walk?’ spluttered Carmel. Wasn’t that kind of rude?
Masha stood and came out from behind her desk. ‘This is how you walk right now.’ She rounded her shoulders, dropped her chin and did a scurrying kind of sidestep across the room. ‘Like you are hoping no-one sees you. Why do you do that?’
‘I don’t think I exactly –’
‘Yes, you do.’ Masha sat back down. ‘I don’t think you always walked like this. I think once you walked properly. Do you want your daughters to walk like you walk?’ It was obviously a rhetorical question. ‘You are a woman in the prime of your life! You should march into a room with your head held high! Like you are walking onto a stage, a battlefield!’
Carmel stared. ‘I’ll try?’ she said. She coughed, and remembered to turn it into a statement. ‘I will try. I will try to do that.’
Masha smiled. ‘Good. At first it will feel strange. You will have to fake it. But then you will remember. You will think, Oh, that’s right, this is how I talk, this is how I walk. This is me, Carmel.’ She knocked her closed fist against her heart. ‘This is who I am.’
She leaned forward and lowered her voice. ‘I will tell you a secret.’ Her eyes danced. ‘You will look thinner if you walk like that!’
Carmel smiled back. Was she joking?
‘Everything will become clearer over the next few days,’ said Masha, with a gesture that made Carmel stand up quickly, as if she’d outstayed her welcome.
Masha pulled a notepad towards her and began to write something down.
Carmel hovered. She tried to put her shoulders back. ‘Could you just tell me how much weight I’ve lost so far?’
Masha didn’t look up. ‘Close the door behind you.’
chapter twenty-five
Masha
Masha studied the large man who sat on the other side of her desk, his feet planted solidly on the floor, his hands curled in meaty fists on his thighs, as if he were a prisoner hoping for parole.
Masha remembered how Delilah had implied there was something unusual or secretive about Tony Hogburn. Masha did not agree. The man was not especially complex. He seemed to her to be a simple, grumpy fellow. He had lost weight already. Men who drank a lot of beer always did lose weight when they stopped, whereas women like Carmel, who had much less weight to lose, took much longer. In truth, Carmel hadn’t lost any weight at all, but there was no benefit in Carmel hearing that.
‘How did you come across Tranquillum House, Tony?’ Masha asked him.
‘I Googled “How to change your life”,’ said Tony.
‘Ah,’ said Masha. As an experiment, she sat back, crossed her legs, and waited for his eyes to travel down her body, which they did, of course (the man was not dead yet), but not for very long. ‘Why do you want to change your life?’
‘Well, Masha, life is short.’ His gaze moved past hers to the window behind her head. Masha noted that he seemed much calmer and more confident now than when he had complained about his contraband being confiscated. The positive effects of Tranquillum House! ‘I didn’t want to waste the time I had left.’
He looked back at her. ‘I like your office. It’s like you’re on top of the world up here. I get claustrophobic down in that yoga studio.’
‘So how do you hope to change your life?’
‘I just want to get healthier and fitter,’ said Tony. ‘Drop some weight.’
Men often used that phrase: ‘drop some weight’. They said it without shame or emotion, as if the weight were an object they could easily put down when they chose. Women said they needed to ‘lose weight’, with their eyes down, as if the extra weight was part of them, a terrible sin they’d committed.
‘I used to be very fit. I should have done this sooner. I really regret . . .’ Tony stopped, cleared his throat, as if he’d said more than he wanted.
‘What do you regret?’ asked Masha.
‘It’s not anything I’ve done. It’s more everything I haven’t done. I’ve just kind of moped about for twenty years.’
It took a fraction of a second to translate the English word ‘moped’ – a word she didn’t hear much.
‘Twenty years is a long time to mope,’ said Masha. Foolish man. She herself had never moped. Not once. Moping was for the weak.
‘I kind of got into the habit of it,’ said Tony. ‘Not sure how to stop.’
She waited to hear what he would say next. Women liked to be asked questions about themselves but with men it was better to be patient, to be silent and see what eventuated.
She waited. The minutes passed. She was considering giving up when Tony shifted in his chair.
‘Your near-death experience,’ he said, without looking at her. ‘You said you no longer feared death, or something like that?’
‘That’s right,’ said Masha. She studied him, wondering about his interest in this subject. ‘I no longer fear it. It was beautiful. People think death is like falling asleep but for me it was like waking up.’
‘A tunnel?’ said Tony. ‘Is that what you saw? A tunnel of light?’
‘Not a tunnel.’ She paused, considered changing the subject and putting the focus back on him. She had already revealed too much of her personal life earlier to that Frances Welty, with her bouncy hair and red lipstick, nearly knocking Masha’s glass ball off the desk, like a child, asking her greedy, nosy questions, making Masha forget her position.
It was hard to believe Frances was exactly the same age as Masha. She reminded Masha of a little girl in her second-grade class. A plump, pretty, vain little girl who always had a pocket filled with Vzletnaya candies. People like Frances lived candy-filled lives.