Nine Perfect Strangers

‘It’s time to hand over all your electronic devices,’ said Yao. ‘Mobile phone, tablets, everything.’

‘No problem.’ Frances retrieved her phone from her handbag, switched it off, and handed it to Yao. A not unpleasant feeling of subservience crept over her. It was like being on an aeroplane once the seatbelt sign was turned on and the flight attendants were now in charge of your entire existence.

‘Great. Thanks. You’re officially “off the grid”!’ Yao held up her phone. ‘We’ll keep it safe. Some guests say the digital detox is one of the most enjoyable elements of their time with us. When it’s time to leave, you’ll be saying, “Don’t give it back! I don’t want it back!”’ He held up his hands to indicate someone waving him away.

Frances tried to imagine herself in ten days and found it strangely difficult, as if it wasn’t ten days but ten years she was imagining. Would she really be transformed? Thinner, lighter, pain-free, able to leap from her bed at sunrise without caffeine?

‘Don’t forget your massage at the spa,’ said Yao. ‘Oh – and that nasty paper cut!’

He walked to a sideboard, selected a tube from an array of Tranquillum House-branded cosmetics and said, ‘Let’s see that thumb.’

Frances presented it to him and he placed a dab of soothing cool gel on her paper cut with tender care.

‘Your wellness journey has begun, Frances,’ he said, still holding her hand, and instead of smirking Frances found herself close to tears.

‘I’ve actually been feeling very unwell lately, Yao,’ she said pitifully.

‘I know you have.’ Yao put both his hands on her shoulders and it didn’t feel silly or sexual; it felt healing. ‘We’re going to get you well, Frances. We’re going to get you feeling as well as you’ve ever felt in your life.’ He closed the door gently behind him as he left.

Frances turned in a slow circle and waited for that inevitable moment of solitary traveller gloom, but instead her spirits lifted. She wasn’t alone. She had Yao to take care of her. She was on a wellness journey.

She walked out onto her balcony to admire the view and gasped. A man on the balcony next to hers was leaning so far over it he looked in danger of falling.

‘Careful!’ she warned, but only under her breath so as not to startle him.

The man turned in her direction, lifted his hand and smiled. It was Ben. She recognised the baseball cap. She waved back.

If they raised their voices they could probably hear each other perfectly well, but it was better to pretend they were too far away to chat, otherwise they’d feel obligated to talk every time they happened to see each other on their balconies, and there was going to be enough obligatory chatting at every meal.

She looked in the other direction and saw a row of identical balconies stretching to the end of the house. All the guestrooms shared this same view. The other balconies were empty, although, as Frances watched, the figure of a woman emerged from the room at the furthest end of the house. She was too far away to distinguish her features, but Frances, keen to be friendly, gave her a wave. The woman instantly spun around and went back inside her room.

Oh, well, perhaps she hadn’t seen Frances. Or perhaps she suffered from tremendous social anxiety. Frances could handle the dreadfully shy. You just needed to approach slowly, as if they were little woodland creatures.

Frances turned back to Ben, and saw that he’d also gone back inside. She wondered if he and Jessica were still arguing. Their rooms were adjoining, so if things got heated Frances might overhear. Once, on a book tour, she’d stayed in a thin-walled hotel where she had the pleasure of overhearing a couple argue passionately and descriptively about their sex life. That had been great.

‘I don’t get the obsession with strangers,’ her first husband, Sol, once said to her, and Frances had struggled to explain that strangers were by definition interesting. It was their strangeness. The not-knowing. Once you knew everything there was to know about someone, you were generally ready to divorce them.

She went back inside her room to unpack. It might be nice to have a cup of tea and a few squares of chocolate while she read her information pack. She was sure it was going to have rules she would prefer not to follow; the ‘noble silence’ that was beginning shortly sounded foreboding and she would need sugar to cope. Also, she hadn’t exactly followed the suggestion about reducing her sugar and caffeine intake in the days leading up to the retreat so as to avoid withdrawal symptoms. Frances couldn’t be dealing with a headache right now.

She went to pull out her contraband from where she’d carefully hidden it right at the bottom of her bag, underneath her underwear, wrapped in her nightie. She’d laughed at herself for hiding it; it wasn’t like they were going to be checking her bag. This wasn’t rehab or boarding school.

‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ she said out loud.

It wasn’t there.

She emptied all her clothes onto her bed with a growing sense of fury. They wouldn’t, would they? It was unconscionable. Illegal, surely.

It was very bad manners!

She turned the bag upside down and shook it. The nightie was still there, neatly folded by invisible hands, but the coffee, tea, chocolate and wine were most definitely gone. Who had been through her bag? It couldn’t be Yao; he’d been with her the whole time from when she arrived. Someone else had rifled through her underwear and confiscated her treats.

What could she do? She couldn’t ring reception and say, ‘Somebody took my chocolate and wine!’ Well, she could, but she didn’t have the requisite chutzpah. The website made it clear that snacks and coffee and alcohol were all banned. She’d broken the rules and she’d been caught.

She would say nothing and they would say nothing and on the last day they would hand it all back to her with a knowing smirk as she checked out, like returning a prisoner’s personal effects.

This was deeply embarrassing.

She sat on the end of her bed and looked dolefully at