Nine Perfect Strangers

Heather felt a burst of powerful irritation – or perhaps it was simply her body demanding a macchiato – because this so-called ‘holiday’ was not meant to be about suffering. There were undoubtedly multiple other health resorts that offered the same peaceful environment without these draconian deprivations. None of the three of them needed to lose weight. Weight was just not an issue for Heather! She weighed herself every morning at six on the dot and if she ever saw the needle move in the wrong direction she adjusted her diet. Her BMI was in the ‘underweight’ category, but only by a kilo. She’d always been lean. Zoe sometimes accused Heather of having an eating disorder, just because she was kind of picky about when and what she ate. She didn’t put just anything in her mouth – unlike Napoleon, who ate like a vacuum cleaner, hoovering up whatever was around him.

Napoleon stood. He lifted his suitcase onto the bed, unzipped it and removed a beautifully folded t-shirt, a pair of shorts and some underpants. He packed like a soldier whose kit bag would be inspected. He took off his dressing-gown and stood in all his skinny, white, hairy, naked magnificence.

His uncharacteristic silence made him suddenly a stranger.

The muscles on his back moved in unison like an exquisitely engineered machine as he pulled on his t-shirt. Napoleon’s height and nerdy demeanour disguised his sexiness.

The first time they had sex, all those years ago, Heather kept thinking to herself, Well, this is a surprise, because who knew that a guy like Napoleon would have the moves? She’d liked him well enough, he was sweet and funny and attentive, but she’d kind of thought sleeping with him would be like doing community service. It was meant to be polite, friendly, ‘thanks so much for dinner and the Kevin Costner movie’ sex, not mind-blowing sex. She knew Napoleon’s memory of their first date was different from hers. His memory was wholesome and sweet and correct, the way the memory of a first date between a future husband and wife should be.

Napoleon zipped up his shorts and buckled his belt. He slid the brown leather through the silver metal clasp with irritatingly quick, efficient moves. He must have felt her eyes upon him, but he didn’t look at her; he was so determined to follow these silly rules, no matter what. He was such a good man, so fucking perfect in every fucking way.

The rage hit her with the power and momentum of a contraction during active labour. There was no escaping it. She saw herself punching his face with a closed fist, crunching his cheekbone, the diamond cluster of her engagement ring breaking his skin, over and over and over and over, blood dripping. The rage wrapped itself around her body, almost lifted her off her feet. She had to grip her toes to the floor to stop herself lunging at Napoleon as he zipped the bag back up and placed it on the floor in the corner of the room where nobody could trip over it.

She focused on a point on the wall where there was a small, island-shaped scratch in the wallpaper and used the variable breathing method she taught mothers to use during the transition phase of labour: pant, pant, blow, hee-hee-hoo, pant, pant, blow.

Napoleon walked across the room and stepped out onto the balcony. He stood with his legs apart and his hands clenching the railing, as if he were on the deck of a lurching ship.

The rage eased, receded, vanished.

Done. She’d got through it again. The oblivious object of her rage bowed his head, exposing his defenceless white neck. He would never know. He’d be horrified and so deeply wounded if he ever knew the violence of her secret thoughts.

Heather felt shaky. Her mouth tasted of bile. It was as though she’d just vomited.

She opened her own suitcase and found shorts and a tank top. Later this afternoon, after the ‘meditation’, she would need to run. She wouldn’t be relaxed after sitting and focusing on her breathing for an hour; she’d be on the verge of madness.

Coming here was a mistake. An expensive mistake. They should have gone to a big anonymous hotel.

She tied the laces on her runners with vicious tugs and opened her mouth to speak. She

was definitely going to speak. This silence was unnecessary. They wouldn’t speak in the presence of the other guests, but there was no need to maintain this awkward, weird and unhealthy silence in the privacy of their own room.

And what about poor Zoe, alone and silent in the room next door? Heather and Napoleon both panicked if she was alone in her bedroom at home for too long, which was hard because she was twenty years old and needed to study. If there had been no sound for a while one of them would make an excuse to go and check on her. She never complained and she never closed her door. But there were no family suites at Tranquillum House. They’d had no choice but to book her a single room.

She said she was fine, she constantly reassured them she was fine, she was happy; she understood their need to be reassured. But she’d worked so hard this year, much too hard, tapping away grimly on her computer as if a ‘media studies’ degree were a matter of life and death, and she deserved a break.

Heather looked at the wall above their bed that separated their room from Zoe’s and wished she could see straight through it. What was she doing right now? She didn’t have her phone. Twenty-year-olds needed their phones by their sides at all times. Zoe found it stressful if her battery power dropped below eighty per cent.

They shouldn’t be risking their daughter’s mental health like this. Zoe didn’t sleep alone in a bed until she was ten years old.

Had she ever stayed in a hotel room on her own before?

Never. Zoe had been away on holidays with her girlfriends but they would have always shared a room, or so Heather would have thought.

She just broke up with her boyfriend and now she is alone in her room with nothing but her thoughts.

My God. Her heart raced. She knew she was catastrophising. She is an adult. She’s fine.

Napoleon turned from the balcony, caught her eye and once again dropped his gaze. Heather felt her molars grind. He’d be so disappointed in her if she spoke only five minutes into ‘the noble silence’.

Jesus. This was unexpectedly hard. The silence made her thoughts scream. She hadn’t realised how much distraction Napoleon provided with his incessant chatter. How ironic if she was the one who couldn’t handle silence, not him.

They didn’t need silence or fasting or detoxification. They just needed a refuge from January. Last January they’d stayed home and that had been a disaster. It was even worse than the year before. It seemed that January was a cruel-eyed, clawed vulture that would terrorise Heather’s tiny family forever.

‘Maybe we should go away this time,’ Napoleon had suggested a few months ago. ‘Somewhere peaceful and quiet.’

‘Like a monastery,’ Zoe had said. Then her eyes brightened. ‘Or, I know, a health resort! We’ll get Dad’s cholesterol down.’

Napoleon’s school had offered all the teaching staff free health assessments back in June and Napoleon had been told his cholesterol was high, and his blood pressure was becoming worrisome, and it was great that he exercised, but he needed to make dramatic changes to his diet.