‘Oh my God.’ Ben put both his hands on his temples. He ran about in a comical half-circle. ‘I just remembered what you said! You’re pregnant! You said last night you were pregnant!’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Jessica, turning to her husband. ‘I forgot.’
chapter fifty-one
Delilah
‘She’s not pregnant.’ Yao’s face was pasty with panic. ‘She is absolutely not pregnant.’
Delilah, Masha and Yao were in Masha’s office, watching the live CCTV footage of their guests in the meditation room.
‘I would never have allowed a pregnant woman to take those substances,’ said Yao. ‘Never.’
‘So why does she keep saying she is?’ asked Masha.
They’d been here for hours. Masha and Yao stood and paced as they watched, but Delilah had finally sat down in Masha’s chair.
Delilah was tired and hungry and kind of over it. Maybe she was kind of over being a wellness consultant. Four years now and the guests were all starting to blend together. They were all so self-absorbed, and sometimes she felt like she was a minor character in a story about everyone except her.
Over the years only a handful of guests had ever asked Delilah a single question about herself. Which, fine, the guests didn’t have to talk to her at all if they didn’t want, but they all assumed she would be so fascinated by them! The things they told her: about their marriages, their sex lives, their bowels! If she had to hear another story about someone’s irritable bowel syndrome, she would slash her wrists.
And then there were the complaints that came thick and fast: the softness of their pillows, the temperature of their rooms, the weather, like she could control the weather.
It was nice when people seemed to truly believe they were ‘transformed’ at the end of a retreat, but Delilah wasn’t quite as evangelical about this whole transformation business as Masha and Yao.
Yes, she enjoyed yoga, her core strength was excellent, she had a six pack and she liked having a six pack, meditation was relaxing, mindfulness was great, and she had no problem introducing drugs into the equation, that made life interesting, and sure, it might give people some insights into their psyches, although, honestly, most of their psyches didn’t seem that, you know, complex. This wasn’t God’s work. This was a health resort.
Delilah was skilled at giving the impression she cared as much as Masha and Yao. She could talk the talk, walk the walk. God, she’d done it with dairy products when she was Masha’s executive PA. Yes, yes, I’m just passionate about yoghurt. Then after Masha’s heart attack she’d left dairy and done it with insurance. All those years working as a PA had been great training to be a wellness consultant: nod and smile and agree and make things happen behind the scenes and don’t ask questions unless absolutely necessary. Masha paid well. Delilah had nearly reached her savings goal. She was going to travel for a year.
‘I did pregnancy tests for all the women,’ said Yao. ‘Even the older women. She’s not pregnant.’
‘So why did she say she was?’ asked Masha again.
‘I don’t know,’ said Yao. He was very upset. Almost in tears.
‘So she can sue us for giving her drugs,’ said Delilah.
‘She doesn’t need money.’ Masha gestured at the screen. ‘Like she said, money is no issue.’
Delilah shrugged and sighed. ‘Maybe she just wants to make a point, like: “What if I was pregnant and you gave me drugs!”’
‘She’s not pregnant,’ said Yao again.
‘She doesn’t know we know that,’ said Delilah. ‘And her husband’s sister is an addict so, you know, they’re really anti-drugs. Pity we didn’t know that.’
Masha swung around. ‘But they should be happy, their therapy went so well! They kissed!’
‘That’s because they were high,’ said Delilah. Sometimes Masha had a bizarre innocence to her. Did she really think the kissing between those two meant something?
‘They kissed for a very long time,’ said Masha to Delilah.
‘Yes,’ said Delilah. ‘That’s what happens when you take ecstasy. That’s why they call it the love drug.’
The first time Delilah took ecstasy she kissed Ryan, her boyfriend at the time, for over two hours straight, and it was incredible kissing, the best kissing of her entire life to date, but it didn’t mean she wanted to marry the pompous British twat with his tight purple shirts. It was just kissing.
‘It wasn’t just the drug,’ said Masha. ‘I led them to many important breakthroughs.’
‘Mmm,’ said Delilah.
Like all of Delilah’s bosses ever, Masha was a total narcissist. Delilah found it hilarious when Masha spoke so solemnly to guests about the ‘dissolving of the ego’, as if her giant-sized ego could ever be dissolved. Over the last few years, Delilah had observed Masha’s ego flourish, nurtured by the guests who hung on her every word and the doglike devotion of Yao.
‘I have a gift for this,’ she said, straight-faced, when, really, what the hell would Masha know about relationships? In all these years Delilah had never known her to be in one. Delilah couldn’t tell if she was straight or gay or bi or just had no sexual orientation whatsoever.
‘I thought they would be more positive at this stage of their journeys,’ said Masha. ‘More grateful.’
Delilah exchanged a look with Yao. Wow. That was almost an acknowledgement of a mistake. At the very least it was the acknowledgement of a moment of doubt.
Yao looked terrified, as if his whole world were falling apart. The dude was obsessed with Masha, probably in love with her. Delilah couldn’t tell if his interest was sexual; it was more like the way a super-fan behaves around a rock star, as if he couldn’t quite believe he was allowed in the same room as her.
‘It will all be fine,’ said Masha to Yao. ‘We just need to carefully consider how we proceed.’
‘We should feed them,’ said Delilah. She knew this from her waitressing days. Get some complimentary garlic bread out to the table. Stuff them with carbs and they’ll stop complaining about the long wait on their mains.
‘It hasn’t even been forty-eight hours yet!’ said Masha. ‘They all knew the retreat would include fasting.’
‘Yes, but they didn’t know it would include LSD,’ said Delilah. ‘Or being locked up.’
She thought that Masha had badly overestimated her guests’ commitment to transformation. When people said they came to Tranquillum House to be ‘enlightened’, what they really meant was ‘skinnier’.
Anyway, as far as Delilah could see no-one in that room looked particularly transformed. There was no way in hell Heather Marconi was coming out of that room and giving them a five-star review on TripAdvisor.
Masha, being Masha, had never doubted that this new protocol was going to be a success. She had no concerns about the issue of consent. She said it was too risky to ask for it because the ones who most needed help would be the ones most likely to refuse. The glorious ends would justify the means. No-one would complain once they experienced their personal transformations!
‘Let’s keep our focus on solutions,’ said Masha now, as she contemplated her guests moving about their temporary prison. She didn’t even look that tired.
Delilah remembered a night more than ten years earlier, when she was working as Masha’s PA. Someone had discovered a major error in their analysis for the budget they were presenting to the board of directors the following day. Masha had worked thirty hours straight, right through the night, without stopping, to rectify the error. Delilah had stayed in the office with her, but she’d had a couple of power naps to keep herself going. The presentation was a triumph.
Six months later Masha had her heart attack.
Five years after that, when Delilah had honestly kind of forgotten Masha’s existence, she called to ask Delilah if she’d like to train as a wellness consultant at a health resort she was starting up.