Nine Perfect Strangers

At least at a wedding you could quietly chat to the other guests while you waited for the bride. Compliment your friend on her pretty bolero jacket. This was more like a funeral, although even funerals weren’t this silent as people murmured their soft condolences. She was paying to be here and it was worse than a funeral.

She looked dolefully around the room. There were no nice stained-glass windows to enjoy like in a church. There were no windows or natural light at all. It was almost dungeon-like. She was in a dungeon on an isolated property with a group of strangers, at least one of whom was a serial killer. She shivered violently. The air-conditioning was on too high. She thought of the inscription Yao had showed her from the convict stonemasons and wondered if the place might be haunted by their tortured spirits. She’d set a couple of her books in haunted houses. It was helpful for when you wanted your characters to leap into each other’s arms.

Napoleon sneezed. A high-pitched shriek of a sneeze, like a dog’s yelp.

‘Gesundheit!’ cried the handsome man.

Frances gasped. He’d broken the noble silence already!

The handsome man clapped his hand to his mouth. His eyes danced. A wave of laughter ballooned in her chest. Oh God, it was like trying not to laugh in class. She saw the handsome man’s shoulders shake. He chuckled. She giggled. In a moment she’d be crying with laughter and someone would order her to leave the room ‘until she could control herself’.

‘Namaste. Good afternoon.’

The atmosphere changed instantly as a figure strode into the room, altering the particles of air around her, drawing every eye, bringing the coughs and sneezes and throat-clearing to an instant halt.

The laugher trapped in Frances’s chest vanished. The handsome man went still.

‘A very warm welcome to Tranquillum House. My name is Masha.’

Masha was an extraordinary-looking woman. A supermodel. An Olympic athlete. At least six feet tall, with corpse-white skin and green eyes so striking and huge they were almost alien-like.

In fact, Masha did seem like a different species, a superior species, to every other person in the room, even the handsome man. Her voice was low and deep for a woman, with an attractive accent that made certain syllables shift sideways. Namaste became nemaste. The cadence of her speech rol

led back and forth between broad Australian and what Frances picked as exotic Russian. Indeed, the woman could easily be a Russian spy. A Russian assassin. Like all the staff, she wore white, except on her it looked less like a uniform and more like a choice: the perfect choice, the only choice.

The muscles on her arms and legs were sculpted in clean, sleek lines. Her hair was bleached platinum and cut so short she’d be able to shake her head, dog-like, when she got out of the shower and be ready to face the day.

As Frances’s eyes ran over Masha’s exquisitely toned body and compared it to her own, she sank into herself. She was Jabba the Hutt, all pillowy bosom and hips and soft oozing flesh.

Stop it, she told herself. It wasn’t like her to indulge in self-loathing.

Yet it would be disingenuous to deny the aesthetic pleasure of Masha’s body. Frances had never bought into ‘everyone is beautiful’, a platitude only women had to be sold, as men could be beautiful or not without feeling as though they weren’t really men. This woman, like the handsome man, had a dramatic, almost shocking physical presence. Frances had to talk or write or flirt or joke or in some way act before she could make an impact on people around her, otherwise, as she knew from experience, she could stand at a counter in a shop and be ignored forever. No-one could ignore Masha. All she had to do for attention was exist.

For a long, agonising moment Masha surveyed the room, turning her head in a slow arc that took in their cross-legged, silent subservience.

There’s something demeaning about this, thought Frances. We’re sitting at her feet like kindergarten kids. We’re silent, she speaks. Also, the rule was no eye contact, and yet Masha appeared to be inviting it. She set the rules so she could break them. I’m paying for this, thought Frances. You work for me, lady.

Masha met Frances’s gaze with warmth and humour. It was as if she and Frances were old friends, and she knew exactly what Frances was thinking and found her adorable for it.

At long last, she spoke again. ‘I thank you for your willingness to take part in the noble silence.’ I thenk you.

She paused.

‘I understand that some of you may find this period of silence particularly challenging. I understand, too, that the silence was unexpected. Some of you may be experiencing feelings of frustration and anger right now. You may be thinking: But I didn’t sign up for this! I understand, and to you I say this: Those of you who find the silence the most challenging will also find it the most rewarding.’

Mmm, thought Frances. We’ll see about that.

‘Right now you’re at the foot of a mountain,’ Masha continued, ‘and the summit seems impossibly far away, but I am here to help you reach that summit. In ten days, you will not be the person you are now. Let me be clear on this, because it’s important.’

She paused again. She looked slowly around the room, as if she were satirising a politician. The drama of her delivery was so deliberately hyperbolic it wasn’t even funny. It should have been funny, yet it wasn’t.

Masha repeated, ‘In ten days, you will not be the person you are now.’

No-one moved.

Frances felt hope rise in the room like a delicate mist. Oh, to be transformed, to be someone else, to be someone better.

‘You will leave Tranquillum House feeling happier, healthier, lighter, freer,’ said Masha.