Nine Perfect Strangers

by Liane Moriarty

  ‘I hear there is a waiting list,’ said the interviewer. ‘And that people are paying quite hefty fees to attend.’

  ‘There is a waiting list,’ said Masha. ‘People should visit my website if they would like to go on the list, or call the toll-free number I believe is appearing on the screen right now. There is a special offer for those who call within the next twenty-four hours.’

  ‘If there is nothing illegal going on, I wonder why the locations are kept secret and change on a regular basis,’ said the interviewer. She looked at Masha expectantly.

  ‘Was that a question?’ asked Masha, with a seductive smile straight at the camera.

  ‘What a nutter,’ said the man’s daughter-in-law. ‘I bet she’s making millions.’ She stood, and held out the baby to her father-in-law. ‘Will you hold her? I’ll make us some tea.’

  The man moved the spanner off his lap and took his granddaughter. His daughter-in-law left the room.

  Masha was talking about something called ‘holotropic breathwork’, which she said was ‘psychedelic therapy without the psychedelics’.

  ‘That’s where you breathe fast to get high, right?’ said the interviewer, rather rudely and sceptically.

  ‘It is a much more complex, sophisticated process than that,’ said Masha.

  An image appeared on the screen of Masha at some kind of conference centre, striding about a stage with a tiny microphone attached to her ear, while an auditorium packed with people looked on with rapt attention.

  The man held the baby up and spoke in his native tongue into her ear. ‘That crazy woman is your grandmother.’

  *

  He remembered the day their second son was born, only three months after they lost their firstborn so tragically.

  ‘He is yours.’ Masha had refused to look at the baby. Her averted face, her sweat-soaked hair flat against her forehead, could have been carved from marble. ‘Not mine.’

  A nurse at the hospital said, ‘Mum will come around.’ It was the grief. She was still in shock, probably. Such a terrible thing to go through, losing her son when she was six months pregnant with her second. That nurse did not know his wife’s strength. She did not know Masha.

  Masha discharged herself from the hospital. She said she was going straight back to work, that very day, and she would send money. She would make enough money in her job so that her husband could take care of the new baby, but she wanted nothing to do with him.

  She spoke very calmly, as if this were a business arrangement, and she only lost her temper once, when the man fell to his knees and clutched her and begged her to let them be a family again. Masha screamed into his face, over and over, ‘I am not a mother! Can you not understand this? I am not a mother!’

  So he let her go. What else could he do? She did exactly what she said she would and sent money, more and more each year, as her career became more successful.

  He sent her photos. She never acknowledged them. He wondered if she even looked at them and he thought that maybe she did not. She was a woman with the strength to move mountains. She was a woman as weak as a child.

  He remarried two years later. His son called his Australian wife ‘Mummy’ and spoke with an Australian accent, and they had two more sons and lived an Australian life in this lucky country. They played cricket on the beach on Christmas Day. They had a swimming pool in their backyard and his sons caught the bus home and on hot summer days they ran straight through the house, tearing off their clothes, and jumped into the pool in their undies. They had a large circle of friends, some of whom dropped by their house without phoning first. His second wife grew up in a small country town, and her accent was from ‘the bush’, broad and thick and slow, her favourite phrase was ‘no big deal’ and he loved her, but there had been occasions over the years when he would be standing in his backyard at the barbecue, turning steaks, a beer in his hand, cicadas screaming, a kookaburra laughing, the splash of water, the smell of bug spray, the early evening sun still hot on his neck, and without warning Masha’s face would appear in his mind, her nostrils flared, her beautiful green eyes blazing with superiority and contempt but also childlike confusion: These people! They are so strange!

  For many years he had given up communicating with Masha. He didn’t bother to send photos of their son’s wedding, but five years ago, when their first grandchild was born and he was awash with the fierce, all-consuming love of a new grandparent, he had emailed again, attaching photos of the baby, with the subject heading: please read, masha. He wrote that it was fine that she chose not to be a mother, he understood, but now, if she wanted, she could be a grandmother and wasn’t that wonderful? There was no reply.

  He looked now at his granddaughter. He thought he could see something of Masha in the shape of her eyes. He held the baby with one arm and extracted his phone from his pocket with the other, and snapped a photo of her exquisite, sleeping face.

  He wouldn’t give up. One day Masha would answer. One day she would weaken, or find the strength, and she would answer.

  He knew her better than anyone.

  One day she would.

  chapter seventy-seven

  Reader, she didn’t marry him, but he moved to Sydney for her and they lived together, and Tony was there beside her during the resurgence of her career, when Frances’s first foray into ‘romantic suspense’ turned out to be a surprise hit. (A surprise to everyone except Jo, who called her up the day after she delivered the revised manuscript and said, in a very un-grandmotherly tone, ‘You fucking nailed it.’)

  Frances was also a surprise hit with Tony’s grandchildren in Holland, who called her ‘Grandma Frances’, and Tony credited Frances with the family’s decision to move back to Sydney, which was entirely unwarranted, as his son Will had got a transfer, nothing to do with her. But she was besotted with his grandkids – her grandkids – and all of her friends said that was just so typical of Frances, to skip the hard yards and go straight to the good part, where you got to love them and spoil them and hand them back.

  But they forgave her.

  chapter seventy-eight

  Of course, not everyone gets a happy ending, or even the chance of one. Life doesn’t work like that. Case in point: Helen Ihnat, the reviewer of Frances’s novel What the Heart Wants, lost her entire life savings in a mortifying, high-profile cryptocurrency scam and lived in a state of quite profound unhappiness for the rest of her days.

  But as she despised neatly tied-up happy endings, she was fine with that.

  chapter seventy-nine

  Oh, reader, of course she married him eventually. You’ve met her. She waited until her sixtieth birthday. She wore turquoise. She had eleven bridesmaids, none of whom was under the age of forty-five, thirteen flower girls and one page boy, a toddler just learning to walk, who clutched a Matchbox car in each of his tiny fists. His name was Zach.

  Every chair at the reception was tied up with a giant white satin bow at the back.

  It was the most beautiful, ridiculous wedding you’ve ever seen.

  Acknowledgements

  As always there are so many people to thank for their support with this book. Thank you to my talented editors who worked so hard to make Nine Perfect Strangers so much better in so many significant ways: Georgia Douglas, Cate Paterson, Amy Einhorn, Maxine Hitchcock, Ali Lavau and Hilary Reynolds.

  Thank you to Elina Reddy for giving so generously of her time to help me develop the character of Masha. Elina is not only a wonderful artist but has the ability to paint such vivid pictures with her words. Maria (Masha) Dmitrichenko was the winning bidder at a Starlight Children’s Foundation charity event to have a character in one of my books named after her and I thank her for the use of her name.

  Thank you to Dr Nikki Stamp for answering my questions. She is one of only a handful of female heart surgeons in Australia and the dialogue I gave Masha’s heart surgeon
came straight from her fascinating book, Can You Die of a Broken Heart?

  Thank you to Kat Lukash and Praveen Naidoo for help with my Russian and my football, to Lucie Johnson for sharing health resort stories and to my brother-in-law Rob Ostric, for the expression on his face when I asked how he would feel about driving a Lamborghini down an unsealed road. Thank you to my sister Fiona for instantly answering my texts demanding information. Thank you to my charming fellow guests at the Golden Door health resort for a lovely week where I saw the sun rise, which was very pleasing, although I feel no particular need to see it do so again.

  Thank you to my agents: Fiona Inglis and Ben Stevenson in Sydney, Faye Bender in New York, Jonathan Lloyd and Kate Cooper in London and Jerry Kalajian in LA. Thank you to my publicists for your patience and for all that you do: Tracey Cheetham in Sydney, Gaby Young in London and Marlena Bittner in New York. Thank you also to Conor Mintzer, Nancy Trypuc and Katie Bowden.

  Thank you to Adam for helping me create Tranquillum House, for stopping to answer strange random questions at intervals throughout the day, for waking me with coffee, for looking after me and for always being on my side. Thank you to George and Anna for being beautiful and for helpfully pointing out the swearwords whenever you saw my manuscript open on the screen. Thank you to my mother, Diane Moriarty, for help with proof-reading and for being the sort of mother who would thankfully never move to the south of France.

  Writing can be a lonely job so I want to thank some of my ‘colleagues’ in the business. Thank you to my sisters and fellow writers Jaclyn Moriarty and Nicola Moriarty, and thank you to my friends and fellow writers Dianne Blacklock, Ber Carroll, Jojo Moyes and Marian Keyes. Thank you to the talented Caroline Lee for your wonderful narration of my audio books.

  Thank you to Nicole Kidman, Per Saari and Bruna Papandrea for their extraordinary faith in this book before they’d read a single word.

  Thank you to my readers. Like Frances, I have the loveliest readers in the world and every day I’m grateful to you.

  I’ve dedicated this book to my sister Kati, and to my father, Bernie Moriarty, because they have always been so strong and brave and funny in the face of adversity and because I suspect even on their bad days they could do more push-ups than Masha.

  *

  The following books were useful to me in my research: No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide of a Loved One by Carla Fine, Acid Test: LSD, Ecstasy and the Power to Heal by Tom Shroder, Therapy with Substance: Psycholytic Psychotherapy in the Twenty First Century by Dr Friederike Meckel Fischer, and The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley.

  *

  If you or anyone you know is suffering from depression, call Lifeline on 13 11 14, beyondblue on 1800 22 4636, or Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.

  About Liane Moriarty

  Liane Moriarty is the Australian author of seven internationally bestselling novels, including the number one New York Times bestsellers The Husband’s Secret, Big Little Lies and Truly Madly Guilty. Her books have been read by more than fourteen million people worldwide, including two million in Australia.

  The Husband’s Secret was a number one UK bestseller, an Amazon Best Book of ٢٠١٣ and has been translated into over forty languages. Big Little Lies and Truly Madly Guilty reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list in their first week of publication – the first time this has been achieved by an Australian. Liane is also the author of the Space Brigade series for children. She lives in Sydney with her husband, son and daughter.

  You can find out more about Liane’s books at her website www.lianemoriarty.com

  Also by Liane Moriarty

  Three Wishes

  The Last Anniversary

  What Alice Forgot

  The Hypnotist’s Love Story

  The Husband’s Secret

  Big Little Lies

  Truly Madly Guilty

  The Petrifying Problem with Princess Petronella

  The Shocking Trouble on the Planet of Shobble

  The Wicked War on the Planet of Whimsy

  MORE BESTSELLING FICTION BY LIANE MORIARTY

  Liane Moriarty

  Truly Madly Guilty

  If only they’d said no . . .

  Clementine is haunted by regret. It was just a barbeque. They didn’t even know their hosts that well, they were friends of friends. They could so easily have said no.

  But she and her husband Sam said yes, and now they can never change what they did and didn’t do that Sunday afternoon.

  Six responsible adults. Three cute kids. One playful dog.

  It’s an ordinary weekend in the suburbs. What could possibly go wrong?

  Marriage, sex, parenthood and friendship: Liane Moriarty takes these elements of our lives and shows us how guilt can expose the fault lines in any relationship, and it is not until we appreciate the fragility of life that we can truly value what we have.

  ‘This is a world we understand. And it can be fraught, despite the benefits of education and money, which to a large degree explains the universality of Moriarty’s writing’ THE AGE

  ‘Races at a tantalising pace as it flits back and forth in time, delivering twists you don’t see coming’ AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S WEEKLY BOOK OF THE MONTH

  ‘One of the few writers I’d drop anything for’ JOJO MOYES

  Liane Moriarty

  Big Little Lies

  ‘I guess it started with the mothers.’

  ‘It was all just a terrible misunderstanding.’

  ‘I’ll tell you exactly why it happened.’

  Pirriwee Public’s annual school Trivia Night has ended in a shocking riot. A parent is dead. Was it murder, a tragic accident . . . or something else entirely?

  Big Little Lies is a funny, heartbreaking, challenging story of ex-husbands and second wives, new friendships, old betrayals and schoolyard politics.

  No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Liane Moriarty turns her unique gaze on the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves every day and what really goes on behind closed suburban doors.

  ‘Let me be clear. This is not a circus. This is a murder investigation.’

  ‘It draws out lashings of dark humour, and ultimately drama . . . although the style and emotional register are quite different, Moriarty’s ability to mine suburban anxieties in a compelling way calls to mind Tsiolkas’ The Slap.’ SATURDAY AGE

  ‘The secrets burrowed in this seemingly placid small town . . . are so suburban noir they would make David Lynch clap with glee . . . A fantastically nimble writer, so sure-footed that the book leaps between dark and light seamlessly; even the big reveal in the final pages feels earned and genuinely shocking.’ ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

  Liane Moriarty

  The Husband’s Secret

  Cecilia Fitzpatrick, devoted mother and successful Tupperware consultant, has found a letter from her husband.

  ‘To be opened only in the event of my death’

  But Cecilia’s husband isn’t dead, he’s on a business trip. And when she questions him about the letter on the phone, Cecilia senses something she hasn’t experienced before. John-Paul is lying.

  We all have secrets. But not like this . . .

  ‘Intelligent and funny with a good strong plot and an intriguing premise’ SATURDAY AGE

  ‘Amid three intertwined storylines and terrific plot twists Moriarty presents a nuanced and moving portrait of the meaning of love, both marital and familial’ USA TODAY

  ‘One of the Top Ten Books of the Year’ PEOPLE MAGAZINE

  ‘Emotionally astute, immensely smart . . . destined for critical accolades and a big-screen adaptation’ ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

  ‘A bold and daring novel, layered and morally challenging’ RICHARD AND JUDY BOOKCLUB REVIEW

  Liane Moriarty

  The Hypnotist’s Love Story />
  As a hypnotherapist, Ellen O’Farrell is fascinated by what makes people tick. So when she falls in love with Patrick, the fact that he has a stalker doesn’t faze her in the slightest. If anything it intrigues her, and the more she hears about Saskia, the more she wants to meet this woman. But what Ellen doesn’t know is that they’ve already met . . .

  Saskia has been posing as one of Ellen’s clients. Unable to let go of the life she so abruptly lost, she wants to know everything about the woman who took her place.

  But it’s not only Saskia who doesn’t know when to stop: Ellen also has to ask herself what lines she’s prepared to cross to get the happy ending she’s always wanted.

  ‘A compelling love triangle . . . romance with an edge . . . the latest triumph . . . What lifts this tale to another plane is the level of empathy that runs through the narrative.’ AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S WEEKLY BOOK OF THE MONTH

  ‘Superb in technique . . . All of her novels set themselves extremely difficult tasks . . . The novel blends elements of crime, horror and love story . . .’ SUNDAY AGE

  ‘A warmly humorous, gently poignant, ultimately comforting tale of frustration and redemption . . . Moriarty writes with both a frisky wit and a generosity of spirit that’s truly disarming . . . It will make you feel warm all over.’ USA TODAY

  Liane Moriarty

  What Alice Forgot

  When Alice Love surfaces from a strange dream to find she’s been injured in a gym, her first concern is for her unborn baby. She’s desperate to see her husband, Nick, who she knows will be worried about her.

  But Alice isn’t pregnant. And Nick isn’t rushing to her bedside. She is a mother of three going through a bitter divorce.

  Alice has lost ten years of her life – and she wants them back.