‘Don’t drink too much water,’ Heather had told Frances when she’d seen her returning from the bathroom after filling her water bottle yet again. ‘Only drink when you’re thirsty. You can die from drinking too much water because you flush out all the salt in your system. You can go into cardiac arrest.’
‘Okay,’ said Frances resignedly. ‘Thank you.’ She’d thought drinking lots of water would stave off the hunger pangs, although she wasn’t as hungry as she thought she would be. The desire for food had peaked just before they’d found the useless Russian doll package and then gradually begun to wane until it became more abstract; she felt like she needed something, but food didn’t seem to be the answer.
Her friend Ellen was a fan of intermittent fasting and she’d told Frances that she always experienced feelings of euphoria. Frances didn’t feel euphoric, but her mind felt scrubbed clean, clear and bright. Was that the drugs or the fasting?
Whatever it was, the clarity was an illusion, because she was having difficulty differentiating what had and hadn’t happened since she’d got here. Did she dream of her nosebleed in the pool? She hadn’t really seen her dad last night, had she? Of course she hadn’t. Yet the memory of talking with her father felt more vivid than her memory of the nosebleed in the pool.
How could that be?
Time slowed.
And slowed.
Slowed.
To.
A.
Point.
That.
Was.
So.
Slow.
It.
Was.
Unsustainable.
Soon time would stop, literally stop, and they would all be trapped in a single moment forever. That didn’t seem too fantastical a thought after last night’s smoothie experience, when time had elongated and contracted, over and over, like a piece of elastic being stretched and released.
There was a long, heated discussion about when and if they should turn the lights out.
It had not occurred to Frances that there was no natural light down here. It was Napoleon who’d figured it out; he’d been the one to find the light switch this morning when he woke up. He said he’d crawled around the room on his hands and knees and run his hands around the walls until he found it. When he flicked the switch to demonstrate for them, the room was plunged into a thick, impenetrable darkness that felt like death.
Frances voted for the lights to go off at midnight. She wanted to sleep: sleeping would pass the time, and she knew she’d never sleep with those blazing downlights. Others thought that they shouldn’t risk sleeping; they should be ‘ready to take action’.
‘Who knows what they’re planning next?’ Jessica shot a hostile look at the camera. At some point she had scrubbed off all her make-up. She looked ten years younger, younger even than Zoe; too young to be pregnant, too young to be wealthy. Without the make-up, the cosmetic enhancements looked like acne: a teenage blight that would pass when she grew up.
‘I don’t think anything sinister is going to happen in the middle of the night,’ Carmel said.
‘We were woken up for the starlight meditation,’ said Heather. ‘It’s entirely possible.’
‘I liked the starlight meditation,’ said Carmel.
Heather sighed. ‘Carmel, you really need to kind of reframe your thinking about what’s going on here.’
‘I vote for lights off,’ said Frances in a low voice. Napoleon had showed them where the microphones were installed in the corners of the room. He’d told them all, in whispers, that if they wanted to share something they didn’t want heard they should sit in the centre of the room with their backs to the camera and keep their voices as low as possible. ‘I think we should give Masha the impression of total acceptance.’
‘I agree,’ whispered Zoe. ‘She’s exactly like my year eleven maths teacher. You always had to let her think she’d won.’
‘I’d prefer lights on,’ said Tony. ‘We’re at a disadvantage if we can’t see.’
In the end, there were more in favour of ‘lights on’.
So here they all sat. Lights on. Occasional low murmurs of conversation like you’d hear in a library or a doctor’s waiting room.
Long periods of silence.
Frances’s body kept twitching and then she would remember that there was no book to pick up, no movie to switch on or bedside lamp to switch off. Sometimes she’d be almost on her feet, before she realised that the decisive thing she was planning on doing was leaving the room. Her subconscious refused to accept her incarceration.
Carmel came and sat next to Frances. ‘Do you think we’ve gone into ketosis yet?’ she asked.
‘What’s ketosis?’ asked Frances. She knew perfectly well what it was.
‘It’s where your body starts to burn fat because –’
‘You don’t need to lose weight,’ interrupted Frances. She tried not to snap, but she had not been thinking about food and now she was.
‘I used to be thinner,’ said Carmel. She stretched her perfectly normal legs out in front of her.
‘We all used to be thinner,’ sighed Frances.
‘Last night I hallucinated that I didn’t have a body,’ said Carmel. ‘I feel like there was maybe a message my subconscious was trying to give me.’
‘It’s so obscure. What could that message possibly be?’ mused Frances.
Carmel laughed. ‘I know.’ She grabbed the flesh on her stomach and squeezed. ‘I’m stuck in this cycle of self-loathing.’
‘What did you do before you had children?’ asked Frances. She wanted to know if there was more to Carmel than just hating her body and having four children. Early in Frances’s career, a friend had complained that the mothers in her books were too one-dimensional and Frances had thought secretly, Don’t they only have one dimension? She’d tried to give them more depth after that. She even gave them the leading roles, although it was hard to know where to put the children while their mothers were falling in love. When her editorial notes came back Jo had written all over the margins, Who is looking after the kids? Frances had to go back through the manuscript and make babysitting arrangements. It was annoying.
‘Private equity,’ said Carmel.
Goodness. Frances wouldn’t have picked that. She wasn’t even quite sure what it meant. How were they going to find a middle ground between private equity and romance?
‘Did you . . . like it?’ Surely that was safe.
‘Loved it,’ said Carmel. ‘Loved it. It was a long time ago now, of course. Now, I’ve got a part-time, entry-level job which is basically just data entry to try to keep the cash coming in. But back then I was kind of a high-flyer, or on my way to becoming one. I worked long hours, I’d get up at five every day and swim laps before work, and I ate whatever the hell I wanted, and I found women who talked about their weight excruciatingly boring.’
Frances smiled.
‘I know. And then I got married and had kids and I got totally swallowed up by this “Mum” persona. We were only meant to have two, but my husband wanted a son, so we kept trying, and I ended up with four girls – and then, out of the blue, my husband said he wasn’t attracted to me anymore and he left.’
Frances said nothing for a moment as she considered the particular cruelty of this kind of all-too-common midlife break-up and how it crushed a woman’s self-worth. ‘Were you still attracted to him?’
Carmel thought about it. ‘Some days.’ She put her thumb to the empty spot on her ring finger. ‘I still loved him. I know I did, because some days I’d think, Oh, what a relief, I still love him, it would be so inconvenient if I didn’t love him.’
Frances thought of all the things she could say: You’ll meet someone else. You don’t need a man to complete you. Your body does not define you. You need to fall in love with you. Let’s talk about something other than men, C
armel, before we fail the Bechdel test.
She said, ‘You know what? I think you are most definitely in ketosis.’
Carmel smiled, and at that moment the room went dark.
chapter sixty-one
Napoleon
‘Who turned the lights out?’
It was his angriest teacher voice; the one that got even the worst-behaved boy in a class to sit down and shut up. They had agreed the lights would stay on.
‘Not me.’
‘Not me.’
‘Not me.’
The voices came from all around the room.
The darkness was so complete Napoleon instantly lost all sense of up and down. He held out his hands in front of him blindly, like he’d done this morning.
‘Is that you?’ It was Heather’s voice. She had been sitting next to him. He felt her hand take his.
‘Yes. Where’s Zoe?’
‘I’m here, Dad.’ Her voice came from the other side of the room.
‘None of us was near the light switch,’ said Tony.
Napoleon felt the rapid beat of his heart and took pleasure in his fear. It was a respite from the grey feeling that descended upon him the moment he woke up this morning. A thick fog had spread its soft fingers throughout his brain, his heart, his body, weighing him down so that it was an effort to speak, to lift his head, to walk. He was trying to pretend he was fine. He was fighting the fog with all his strength, trying to behave normally, to trick himself into getting better. It might be temporary. It might be just for today. Like a hangover. Tomorrow, perhaps, he would wake up and be himself again.
‘Maybe Masha is telling us it’s time to go to sleep now.’ It was Frances. He recognised her light, dry voice in the darkness. Before last night Napoleon would have said that he and Frances had similar personalities, in that they shared a certain base level of optimism, but not now. Now all his hope had drained away, it had seeped out of him and evaporated like sweat, leaving him empty and spent.
‘I’m not tired,’ said Lars. Or maybe Ben.
‘This is fucked.’ That was Ben. Or maybe Lars.
‘I think Masha is about to do something,’ said Jessica, he was pretty sure. She sounded more intelligent when you couldn’t see her face.
There was a moment of silence. Napoleon kept waiting for his eyes to adjust but they didn’t. No figures emerged. The dark seemed to get darker.
‘It’s a bit creepy,’ said Zoe, with a tremor in her voice, and Napoleon and Heather both moved reflexively, as if they could make their way through the darkness to get to her.
‘It’s just dark. We’re all here. You’re safe.’ That was definitely Smiley Hogburn, comforting Zoe.
Napoleon wished he could tell someone that he’d kind of played football with Smiley Hogburn. He realised the person he wished he could tell was himself, the self who no longer existed.
The darkness settled.
It was creepy.
‘Maybe Lars should sing,’ said Frances.
‘At last some appreciation for my talent,’ said Lars.
‘We should all sing,’ said Carmel.
‘No thanks,’ said Jessica.
‘You and me, Carmel,’ said Lars.
He began to sing ‘I Can See Clearly Now’ and Carmel joined in. She could sing beautifully. What a surprise to hear her voice rise in the darkness like that, holding the melody with such grace. How people could surprise you.
Napoleon had thought when he woke this morning that the feeling that permeated his body must be anger, because he had the right to be incandescent with anger at his wife for what she had concealed from him, and what she had chosen to finally reveal in the most nightmarish of settings, as his mind had struggled to separate ghastly fiction from reality – although now he thought he was free of the drugs, he did not have any doubt about what had and hadn’t really happened. He’d dreamed of Zach, but he hadn’t dreamed Heather’s revelation.
He didn’t remember asking her about the side effects of the asthma medication and yet he could imagine exactly how she would have replied: with unconcealed impatience, because she was the one in their family in charge of all decisions relating to health. Heather had the medical training, he was the teacher. He was in charge of homework. She was in charge of medication. She took pride in not questioning his decisions about education, although he would happily have been questioned by her, he was always eager for a debate, but she just wanted to get things ticked off the list. She liked to think of herself as the efficient, no-nonsense one in their relationship. The one who got things done.
Well, look what you got done, Heather.
She was right when she said that, given the opportunity, he would have read the leaflet that came with the medication, and yes, Napoleon would have monitored Zach, and he would have told him. He would have said, ‘This might affect your mood, Zach, you need to watch out for it and let me know,’ and Zach would have rolled his eyes and said, ‘I never get any of those side effects, Dad.’
He could have, he would have, he should have, he might have saved him.
Every day for three years Napoleon had woken up each morning and thought, Why? And Heather knew why, or could take an educated guess at one possibility of why, and she had deliberately denied him the comfort of her knowledge, because of her guilt. Did she not trust his love? Did she think he would have blamed her, left her?
Not only that, they had an obligation to make this known, to let the authorities know that this had happened. My God, there could be other children dying. They needed to make the community aware that those side effects should be taken seriously. It was incredibly selfish of Heather to have kept this to herself, to have protected herself at the risk of others. He would call Dr Chang as soon as he got out of here.
And Zoe. His darling girl. The only one to see that something wasn’t right because she knew Zach best. All she’d needed to say was: ‘Dad, something is wrong with Zach,’ and Napoleon would have acted because he knew how dangerous a boy’s feelings could be.
He could have, he would have, he should have, he might have saved him.
They’d had conversations about depression around the dinner table. Napoleon knew all the conversations you were meant to have with your kids, and he made sure they had those conversations: don’t give out your personal details on the internet, never get in the car with a driver who has been drinking, call us at any time of the night, tell us how you feel, tell us if you are being bullied, we can fix things, we promise we can fix things.
Am I angry? He had been asking himself that question all day, wondering if the fog was just anger masquerading as something else, but the feeling that had infiltrated all the cells of his body was something far more and something far less than anger. It was a dull nothingness with the weight and texture of wet cement.
As he sat there lost in the darkness, listening to Carmel sing, as Lars lowered his voice and let her take the song, it occurred to him: Maybe this was how Zach felt.
Whether the asthma medication caused it, or whether it was teenage hormones run amok, or a combination of both, maybe this was how it felt: like his mind, body and soul were shrouded in grey fog. Like there was not much point to anything at all. Like you could act and look exactly the same on the outside but on the inside everything was different.
Oh, mate, you were just a kid, and I’m a man, and it’s been less than a day, and already I just want it to end.
He saw his son’s face. The first rough graze of stubble, the curve of his eyelashes when he looked down, avoiding eye contact. He could never meet his father’s eyes when he’d done something wrong. He hated to be in trouble and the poor kid was always in trouble. Zoe was smarter. She could twist her narrative to make it appear she’d done the right thing.
It looked like girls were controlled by their feelings, but the opposite was true. Girls had excellent contro
l of their feelings. They spun them around like batons: Now I’m crying! Now I’m laughing! Who knows what I’ll do next! Not you! A boy’s emotions were like baseball bats that blindsided him.
At that moment, that morning, three years ago, Zach didn’t make a bad choice. He made what to him must have felt like the only choice. What else could you do when you felt like this? It was like asking those people in the burning towers not to jump. What else could you do if you couldn’t breathe? You would do anything to breathe. Anything at all. Of course you jump. Of course you do.
He saw his boy looking at him with eyes pleading for understanding.
Zach was such a good kid. Of course Napoleon did not accept or condone the kid’s decision – it was the wrong decision, it was a stupid decision, the worst decision – but for the first time ever, he felt he might understand how he came to make it.
He imagined taking him onto his lap the way he’d once done when he was a little boy, holding him close, whispering into his ear:
You’re not in trouble, Zach. I’m so sorry for yelling at you. I understand now, son. You’re not in trouble, mate.
You’re not in trouble.
You’re not in trouble.
‘Napoleon?’ said Heather. He was squeezing her hand too tightly. He loosened his grip.
A black-and-white image flickered on the screen above their heads. Carmel broke off her singing.
‘What the hell?’ said Lars.
Masha’s voice boomed at a volume that made Napoleon’s ears throb. Her face filled the screen. She smiled at them, radiant with love. ‘Good evening, my sweetie pies, my lapochki.’
‘My God,’ said Heather under her breath.
chapter sixty-two
Frances
She’s mad. She’s crazy. She’s nuts. She’s unhinged.
It had all been a joke before. What Frances really meant was that Masha was odd, alternative, intense, excessively tall and exotic and different in every way from Frances. She hadn’t truly questioned Masha’s state of mind. Part of her had wondered if Masha was a genius. Didn’t all geniuses seem mad to mere mortals?
Nine Perfect Strangers Page 33