Nine Perfect Strangers

7 am: Breakfast in the dining room. (Please remember to continue to observe the silence.)

8 am: Walking meditation. Meet at the bottom of Tranquillity Hill. (This will be a slow, silent, mindful hike giving you plenty of time to stop and contemplate the magnificent views. Enjoy!)

10 am: One-on-one exercise class. Meet Delilah at the gym.

11 am: Remedial massage with Jan in the spa.

12 noon: Lunch in the dining room.

1 pm: Guided sitting meditation in the yoga and meditation studio.

2–4 pm: FREE TIME.

5 pm: Yoga class in the yoga and meditation studio.

6 pm: Dinner in the dining room.

7–9 pm: FREE TIME.

9 pm: LIGHTS OUT.

Lights out! Was that a suggestion or an order? Frances hadn’t been to bed at 9 pm since she was a child.

But then again, maybe she’d be ready for bed by then.

She’d yawned her way through the tai chi class in the rose garden with Yao, silently eaten her first breakfast in the dining room (very good, poached eggs and steamed spinach, although it felt kind of pointless without the essential accompaniment of sourdough toast and a cappuccino) and now here she was with the other guests participating in the ‘walking meditation’, which was basically a slow uphill hike on a bushland track a short distance away from the house.

The two wellness consultants, Yao and Delilah, were with them. Delilah led the group at the front and Yao was at the back. The pace, set by Delilah, was extremely slow, almost agonisingly slow, even for Frances, and if she found it difficult to walk this slowly, she suspected the Marconis – ‘exercise fanatics’, according to Zoe – were just about losing their minds.

Frances was in the middle of the group, behind Zoe, whose glossy ponytail swung as she walked behind her dad. The serial killer was directly behind Frances, which was not the ideal position for a serial killer, but at least he’d be obliged to kill her in mindful slow motion, so she’d have plenty of time to escape.

At random intervals the group came to a stop, and they then had to stand and gaze silently at some fixed point on the horizon for what felt like an extraordinary length of time.

Frances was all for a leisurely hike with lots of rests to enjoy the view, but at this rate they would never get to the top.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, they filed up the hiking trail and slowly, slowly, slowly, Frances felt her mind and body adjust to the pace.

Slow was certainly . . . slow . . . but also it was quite . . . lovely.

She considered the pace of her life. The world had begun to move faster and faster over the last decade. People spoke faster, drove faster, walked faster. Everyone was in a rush. Everyone was busy. Everyone demanded their gratification instantly. She’d even begun to notice it in the editing of her books. Pace! Jo had begun to snap in her editorial comments, where once she would have written: Nice!

It seemed to Frances that readers once had more patience, they were content for the story to take its time, for an occasional chapter to meander pleasurably through a beautiful landscape without anything much happening, except perhaps the exchange of some meaningful eye contact.

The path steepened, but they were walking so slowly that Frances’s breathing stayed steady. The trail curved and slivers of views appeared like gifts between the trees. They were getting quite high up now.

Of course, Jo’s editing had probably taken on that frenetic tone in response to Frances’s declining sales. No doubt Jo could see the writing on the wall and that accounted for her increasingly feverish pleas: Add some intrigue to this chapter. Maybe a red herring to throw the reader off the scent?

Frances had ignored the comments and let her career peacefully pass away, like an old lady in her sleep. She was an idiot. A deluded fool.

She walked faster. The thought came to her that she might be walking a little too quickly at the exact moment her nose slammed straight into Zoe’s shoulder blades.

Zoe had stopped dead. Frances heard her gasp.

Heather had somehow veered off the trail and onto a large rock that overhung the steep side of the hill. The ground fell away directly in front of her. Another step and she would have gone over.

Napoleon had his wife’s arm in a fierce grip. Frances couldn’t tell if his face was white with anger or fear as his hand closed around her thin upper arm and he hauled her back onto the hiking trail.

Heather didn’t thank her husband or smile at him or even meet his eyes. She extricated herself from Napoleon’s grasp with an irritated shrug of her shoulder and walked ahead, tugging the sleeve of her threadbare t-shirt straight. Napoleon looked back at Zoe and his chest rose and fell in tandem with his daughter’s audibly ragged breathing.