by Sophie White
‘Well, she sent a DM from another account. She hasn’t actually said a whole lot yet and there’s been no mention of money – thank god. Imagine if I had to ask Dan for money to pay off a blackmailing blogger?’
Amy didn’t smile. ‘I hope you’re taking this seriously, Shelly. You never know who’s really behind a social media handle. You don’t want to antagonise her.’
They’d caught up on bits of gossip – Hazel was bringing out a new line of lotions called Holistic Glow that claimed to empower women to ‘glow instead of conform to impossible tanning standards’. ‘It’s absolutely still a tanning product.’ Amy had rolled her eyes. Soon after, she’d headed back to the station.
Shelly tuned back in to Adrienne just as she began whispering some kind of incantation directly into Sylvia’s crotch. She surfaced and assumed another pretzel-like pose and began to pontificate once more.
‘The vaginal canal is our pathway of communication. You must commune with your baby, mamas.’ Adrienne demonstrated by parting her legs and swooping forward until she was nose to nose with her own undercarriage. ‘Whisper your love, your plans, your truth, your aims for sleep schedules. Commune with your baby.’
Schedules! Shelly suppressed a laugh. As if any baby in the history of babies ever gave a crap about a schedule.
‘Eh … Not sure I’m able to get down there with this in the way.’ A nervy-looking dark-haired woman held up an arm tentatively across the clearing, indicating her bulbous belly.
Ali Jones snorted, threatening to set Shelly off as well. Just don’t catch her eye, Shelly warned herself.
‘Of course.’ Adrienne unfurled and began to dispense small mirrors to the rounder women. ‘Maintaining eye contact is another option.’
‘Eye contact with …?’ Ali was looking mischievous.
‘With the vaginal opening, Alessandra.’ Adrienne could get very stern if she detected the slightest hint that someone wasn’t taking her instructions seriously. ‘The vaginal opening is the window to the womb. There is a flap in the front of your pants for access or you may practise this exercise in your rooms if you prefer.’
Shelly saw her chance and seized it. She had thought the odd little pants flap seemed ominous and now she knew why. She dragged herself up into standing, the decidedly ungraceful move compounded by a guttural oomph that escaped. The other women looked affronted by her lack of grace, something that ordinarily Shelly would be troubled by, but in the last few weeks she’d noticed a shift in her attitude. Amy would call it no-fucks and she would be most concerned about its effect on brand SHELLY. Shelly, on the other hand, was finding it kind of liberating. Losing your marriage could do that to a person.
‘I’m gonna do my vagina-gazing back in my room, thanks, Adrienne,’ Shelly announced. She was giddy at the thought of escaping back to her secret stash of chocolate. She gathered her letter and, feeling playful, finished with, ‘Wouldn’t want a poor, defenceless woodland creature accidentally wandering up there. Things aren’t what they used to be after Georgie ploughed her way out.’ She gave the group a wink and left them in stunned silence.
Back at her room, a little wood-panelled haven under the eaves, she hopped onto her bed. It was such luxury to be by herself, though her phone was pinging away incessantly. Shelly picked it up to kill the alarms and turn on airplane mode and then dropped it abruptly. Something was wrong. The background of the phone was different. Wasn’t it? Shelly struggled to remember the picture she’d had before. She knew it was her and Georgie but couldn’t remember the exact photo. She just knew it wasn’t this one. This one was taken at the Daddy Bears’ Picnic a few weeks ago. She peered closer. It was her and Georgie, taken from off to the side and close up, but now that she examined it, she was sure it hadn’t been taken by Amy. Why would Amy be taking pictures off to the side like that? And how had it got on her phone? What the hell was going on? She screen-grabbed the wallpaper and sent it to Amy, who’d gone on to stay with friends in Kerry.
Pretty sure my wallpaper just changed of its own accord? Is that possible? Do you know this picture?
She sat back against the crisp cotton sheets, all delight at her me-time evaporated. She shivered involuntarily. The wardrobe opposite the bed had doors with wooden slats and she found herself unable to take her eyes off the dark gaps. A horrible thought flashed across her mind, an image of herself sitting as she was right now on the bed, knees drawn up to her chest, as seen from inside the wardrobe.
The phone buzzed and she jumped. Keeping her eyes on the doors, she carefully picked up the phone and brought it close to her face so she could check Amy’s reply without looking away from the wardrobe. Could she hear breathing? But maybe that was just her own? She strained to listen, to differentiate her fretful breaths and the pounding in her ears from the sounds around her.
What had just a moment ago seemed like a sanctuary now felt very much like a lonely cabin in the woods. It wasn’t quite dark outside but the trees seemed to hunker down around the cottage, blocking out the last of the day and compounding the feeling of remote isolation. Calm down. You’re getting worked up. There are cottages to the right and more further up the lake towards the retreat centre. There’s no one here, she thought firmly.
She pulled her eyes away from the wardrobe to her phone. No WhatsApps from Amy but there was a DM on Insta. She clicked the little paper airplane in the top right of the app and a blurry image filled the screen. A strangled cry escaped her and she scrambled backwards. Wooden slats, darkness, a small light revealing a distant figure on a bed. Shelly moaned, startling herself. A sudden rush of wild energy erupted in her and she grabbed the bedside lamp, ripping it from the wall and flung herself across the room.
Somehow she found her feet and yanked the wardrobe doors open. The hangers clattered as she launched herself in, pushing the hanging clothes out of the way and feeling all the way to the back, fully expecting a foreign hand to grab her wrist at any moment. Nothing.
She staggered backwards until the bed connected with her calves and she slumped down. Her ragged breathing tore at her chest, the roar in her ears continued and she found she was crying. Her whole body was vibrating, coursing with fear. Dropping the lamp, she scooted back to the head of the bed, her shaking hands searching for the phone. She felt sick from the toxic flood of adrenaline. Calm, calm, calm, she whispered. She peered once again at the picture and forced herself to examine it.
They weren’t the slats of the wardrobe door. Of course they weren’t. She tried to quiet her racing heart. But what were they? And more importantly, where were they? Then it hit her. The Seomra had wooden Venetian blinds. She was looking through the window of the little house at the end of the garden and seeing her husband sleeping.
She dragged air into her body and started to shake, right as the phone began ringing. The sound seemed to rip through the stillness of the room and she quickly answered to silence it, irrationally fearful that she would alert someone – but who? – to her presence.
‘Hello?’ she whispered.
‘Shelly!’ A cheery greeting.
‘Who is this, please?’
‘Hee hee, wouldn’t you like to know!’ The voice was high and playful.
Shelly checked the screen and froze. Caller Unknown.
‘How’s Dan? Seeing much of him these days?’
Shelly cancelled the call.
25
Ali woke up to banging on the front door.
‘Rise, mama, it’s time for our final ceremony,’ roared Adrienne from outside as she moved between cottages. Ali rolled over in bed and reached to nudge the curtain out of the way. She could just about see Adrienne’s flowing white gown and some kind of vines braided in her hair. She banged on the next cottage with the large staff she was waving about.
Fucking hell. Ali settled back on the pillows. She’s so intense. For a place that was supposed to be all holistic, it was a fairly gruelling schedule. Ali had mixed feelings about leaving later. She was averaging one response for eve
ry five messages from Sam – she’d told him the signal was patchy so he wasn’t pestering her, as such, just endlessly sharing his thoughts, along with snaps of food he was eating and even a dick pic. Though, of course, it being Sam it wasn’t just any old dick pic but a dick video of his penis lip synching to ‘Fernando’ by ABBA. She’d innocently opened the message in the nourishment centre and nearly died laughing. She’d had to pretend she was choking to get out of explaining what was so funny.
Going home meant dealing with everything. It felt like things were accelerating and it was not pleasant. Mini had texted a few times to impart grim updates on Miles, and Ali felt both guilty and relieved at not being there. Of course, hiding in the woods hadn’t been the relaxing affair she’d anticipated. For one, Adrienne was completely batshit, an oddly tyrannical hippy, and had leaned on Ali pretty hard for lots of Instagram coverage.
Shelly, she noticed, had barely bothered with anything and was apparently unfazed by Adrienne’s snippy comments. Shelly’s whole account seemed to have slowed right down, which was interesting. Amy seemed to be taking something of a sabbatical, and several of Shelly’s clients had emailed Ali in the past week saying they were on the hunt for a new brand rep. One particularly indiscreet PR said they weren’t sure if Shelly was in keeping with their family values angle, which was definitely odd. Ali flashed back on the distant Dan at the Daddy Bears’ Picnic. The girl had said there was some talk but she couldn’t go into it. ‘I’ve already said too much, but let’s just say I’d be celebrating if I were you – you could be poised to clean up.’
Ali probably wouldn’t have thought much more of it had Shelly herself not been acting so weird the whole time they were there. Not even bad weird, Ali realised. She was actually just acting quite normal, making jokes and being quite irreverent, which was of course completely abnormal for Shelly. However, maybe she’d heard about the gossip because in the last day or two her demeanour had shifted again and she’d seemed watchful and nervy.
Ali could hear Adrienne passing back towards her and bounded out of bed and down the stairs to open the door before she could bang on it again.
‘Morning,’ Ali beamed, interrupting Adrienne’s raised staff and giving the guru a start.
‘Ah, yes. Morning, Ali. All set for today? Don’t forget the personal items but nothing flammable, please. It’s going to be emotionally demanding and I’m advising everyone to spend some time centring themselves right now. I’m recommending lots of fluids and being among nature.’
She scooped some sand from a leather fanny pouch and cupped Ali’s hands to receive it.
‘And this is?’
‘Nature.’ Adrienne smiled firmly.
‘Couldn’t I just go outside?’
‘This is better nature. It’s from Burning Man,’ she breathed, kissing her fingers and touching them to her heart. ‘Rest, Ali. At noon we journey within to reveal your essence. We will demolish your old identity and through the effluvia of destruction we will birth the new mama-you.’
‘Cool.’ Ali grinned. What the hell do you say to that? Effluvia? Ick.
Adrienne fixed her with a look and Ali squirmed. All week Adrienne had made much of her ‘innate knowledge’, as she called it, reading the women’s magnetic fields, revealing the sex of their babies and communicating the foetuses’ inner thoughts regarding gluten and elective C-sections. It was clearly all very far-fetched but it made Ali uncomfortable nonetheless. Adrienne would catch her alone, fix her with the ‘soul stare’ and a panicked voice in Ali’s head would immediately start up. She can fucking tell you’re a fake – she knows!
Then Adrienne would say, stroking her face, ‘Alessandra … you have been a mother many thousands of times across space and consciousness, but this time, this is the one that means the most.’
Ali would relax momentarily, until the voice would start needling. She’s double-bluffing you!
Adrienne, Ali noticed, was still staring at her. She began humming softly as she dusted herself with some of the pouch sand, holding Ali’s gaze. ‘Bathe in the dust of nature, Ali.’
‘OK,’ Ali blurted, anything to stop the staring. ‘Gotta go do a bit of Instagramming.’
Instagram was the magic word and Adrienne’s razor-sharp focus returned. ‘Yes, excellent, do that. My following has really grown since you’ve been here. It’s fantastic. I’ll let you get on with it.’ She moved closer, and her bony fingers clasped Ali’s upper arm. ‘It’d be great to get, will we say, six tagged Stories between now and the end of the day? And then one big round-up post after the ceremony?’
‘Yep, no probs, absolutely.’ Ali could barely hide her amusement.
‘Excellent, excellent.’ Adrienne casually brought her hands together in prayer behind her back in what looked to be a very uncomfortable pose and began to drift off.
‘Adrienne? Your … eh … staff?’ Ali called.
Adrienne shuffled back, looking flustered. ‘Yes, yes, thank you.’ She grabbed the stick and hurried off, turning one last time to aim the staff at Ali’s belly. ‘That little boy is lucky to have you, Ali. He will bring peace to all he meets.’
‘Cool!’ Ali called, ducking back inside. Double-bluff or double-bonkers, it hardly matters which, she thought, heading back upstairs to set up her ring-light and get ready for all the spirituality.
The women gathered outside the nourishment centre after an early lunch comprised solely of orange food. Ali was fairly acclimatised to Adrienne’s notions by now and didn’t bat an eyelid during her speech about the symbolic significance of the orange meal, though the inclusion of an Easi Single did seem to be taking the theme very literally.
‘That orange and carrot soup was so tasty.’ Helena, a private funds manager, was making small talk as Adrienne filmed the group and talked to her followers.
‘Here’s my batch of mamas-in-waiting.’ She trained the camera on the assembled women, some tugging awkwardly on the day’s uniform – an aggressively unflattering co-ord set comprising a hemp bralette and matching shorts.
‘Every one of these women has undertaken a journey here in the wilds of Kerry. It was a journey from a state of unconsciousness to one of self-discovery, and today we will complete the process of self-actualisation during an emotional and intensely private ceremony deep in the forest. Tune in on my IGTV to watch in real time as each of these women dies and is reborn … a mama.’
Ali wanted to laugh. If an intensely private ceremony takes place in the woods and doesn’t appear on the ’gram, is it really happening at all?
‘Glad I’m wearing this hemp nightmare for my Instagram debut,’ muttered Imogene, one of the slightly more cynical in the group.
‘What was that?’ Adrienne had reared back like a premenstrual velociraptor – she didn’t take kindly to any dissent among her disciples.
‘Nothing, nothing,’ Imogene called back airily.
Adrienne began pairing the women off to begin the pilgrimage to the ceremony. Ali and Shelly found themselves shoved roughly together by the sinewy sage as she griped bitchily, ‘Don’t sign the release form then, Imogene, honey.’
Shelly raised her eyebrows and Ali, checking Adrienne had moved on, whispered, ‘She’s terrifying.’
Shelly opened her mouth to respond but was interrupted by the sound of a gong and the line began to move across the car park, past Adrienne’s brand new Mercedes and towards the edge of a wooded area. The sun was high overhead but only slivers of light reached the forest floor. The women walked with heads bowed, each clutching the personal memento they’d been instructed to bring and listening to the ecstatic ranting of Adrienne.
Much of the rant centred around society’s refusal to recognise women as the true mothers of mankind, which seemed like a bit of a reach to Ali. Who was denying that women were the mothers in this equation? The rant veered from society being innately fearful of the power of mothers to ire at the existence of cots. Occasionally snippets of an even more obscure and bizarre personal agenda would seep in.
There was mention of nefarious attempts by the Irish media to discredit her teachings.
‘Nobody fucking bats an eye at the Happy Pears,’ she railed. ‘Then I start making a tangible difference in women’s lives and I “seem a little whimsical”. Oh, fuck you, Mr Middle-Aged Morning Radio guy – stop mansplaining me to me.’
Ali and Shelly exchanged more looks of quiet amusement and Ali felt a flicker of guilt about all the emails currently awaiting answers that could potentially boot Shelly out of a job. What was going on with her?
At last they reached the clearing and Adrienne led them in some sun salutations.
‘Is this safe?’ Imogene asked as some of the pregnant women struggled to assume the poses.
‘You’re suffering from societal Stockholm syndrome,’ Adrienne barked.
‘What?’ Imogene faltered.
‘Some male obstetrician has convinced you there are things your powerful gestating body can’t or shouldn’t do. They have medicalised this process to keep women down.’
‘But … it’s just that … it’s just I can’t lie on my tummy.’ Imogene indicated her bulging belly.
‘Everyone back to your feet,’ Adrienne shouted over her. ‘Now I want you to form a circle holding your offerings.’
Offerings? Ali was confused. She’d brought Miles’s watch – she’d thought it was supposed to be something of personal value not something to offer up. She started to feel alarmed and clutched the watch close as Adrienne knelt in the centre of the clearing and lit a fire. This did not bode well.
She wished she had something she could swap for the watch but they weren’t even wearing underwear under these hemp monstrosities. Obviously there was no way in hell she was parting with Miles’s watch. Shelly, she noticed, was looking similarly disturbed. She was carrying a small wooden box.
Adrienne was stoking the fire with her staff, the rhetoric having taken an unnerving new direction. ‘A woman cannot be a mother without first sacrificing her former identity. You must destroy yourselves in order to birth this new life.’ She aimed the crook at a woman who seemed about to speak. ‘This is not negotiable. You are not you anymore.’ Adrienne was getting sweatier as the speech climaxed. ‘You must murder the woman you once were. Now, each of you regard your totem, regard the woman you thought yourself to be and accept that she is over. In your own good time – but not too long because the IGTV has a ten-minute video limit – hurl that self into the flames.’ Adrienne started recording.