Nine Perfect Strangers

Heather

Heather didn’t see Napoleon’s tears as they did tai chi.

She was remembering something that had happened last week, after a long, exhausting night shift when she’d helped to deliver two baby boys.

It was impossible not to think of Zach every time she held another newborn baby boy and stared into those sad wise eyes. All babies had that same wise look, as if they’d just come from another realm where they’d learned some beautiful truth they couldn’t share. Every day brought an endless stream of new life.

Heather had gone to get her coffee from the hospital cafe after her shift and run into a familiar face from the past. There was no time to turn away and pretend she hadn’t seen. She recognised her instantly. One of the soccer mums. Before Zach gave it up. Lisa Somebody. A friendly, bubbly lady. It had been years. Lisa Somebody’s face lit up when she saw Heather. Oh, I know you! And then, as so often happened, a moment later her face fell, as she remembered what she’d heard on the grapevine. You could virtually read her thoughts: Oh fuck, she’s that mother, but no time to look away!

Some people crossed the street to get away from her. She’d seen them do it. Some people recoiled. They literally recoiled, as if what had happened to Heather’s family was vile and shameful. This woman was one of the brave ones. She didn’t duck or hide or pretend.

‘I was so sorry to hear about Zach,’ she said. She even said his name without lowering her voice.

‘Thank you,’ said Heather, longing for coffee. She looked at the boy standing next to her on crutches. ‘This must be . . . Justin?’ The name came to her on a flood of memories of shivering Saturday mornings on the soccer field, and suddenly, without warning, the anger exploded in her chest, and this kid, this living, stupid kid, was her target.

‘I remember you,’ she hissed at him. ‘You were the kid who never passed to Zach!’

He stared at her with blank, slack-jawed horror.

‘You never passed to Zach! Why didn’t you pass?’ Heather turned to Lisa. ‘You should have made him pass!’ Her voice rose beyond the bounds of what was acceptable in a public place.

Most people would have made their excuses and scurried away. Some people might have retaliated. Your dead son doesn’t give you the right to be rude. But this Lisa, this woman Heather barely knew, a woman who (Heather now remembered) had once taken

Zoe home to her place and fed her lunch after Zach had an asthma attack on the field, just looked at Heather steadily and sadly and said, ‘You’re right, Heather, I should have made him pass.’

And then Justin, who had been nine years old when he played with Zach, had spoken up in his deep young man’s voice and said, ‘Zach was a great striker, Mrs Marconi. I should have passed to him more. I used to be really bad at passing the ball.’

The generosity, the kindness, the maturity that young man showed that day. Heather had looked at his face – the freckles on his nose, the tiny black whiskers around his young boy’s mouth – and seen the grotesque face of her son on the last day of his life.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she’d said, weak and trembling with regret, and she’d left without making further eye contact with either of them, without picking up her coffee. Yet again she’d turned the anger that should have been directed only at herself on someone else.

‘Snake creeps through the grass,’ said Yao.

She saw herself sitting alone in Zach’s room, her hand opening the drawer of his bedside cabinet. Heather was the snake that crept through the grass.

chapter twenty-nine

Frances

It was nearly 3 pm as Frances made her way, with some eagerness, downstairs to the meditation studio for the breaking of the silence. She hadn’t eaten anything solid since the night before and she was very hungry. When the breakfast and midday bells had rung today, Frances had gone to the dining room to find a row of smoothies set out on the sideboard, labelled by name. Frances had found hers, and tried to drink it slowly and mindfully, but it was gone before she knew it, and her stomach had begun to rumble, loudly and embarrassingly.

She was not really starving, but she was yearning; not so much for food, but for the ritual of food. Maybe if she’d been at home, running around doing errands, it would be easy to skip a few meals (not that she ever did, she’d always had difficulty comprehending the phrase ‘I forgot to eat lunch’), but here, especially during the silence, meals were crucial to break up the day.

She’d tried to distract herself by reading in the hammock but her book had taken an outlandish turn which she couldn’t handle on an empty stomach.

Her spirits lifted when she walked into the studio. The lights had been turned off and the room was illuminated by clusters of flickering candles. It was cool down here, some sort of essential oil burner was pumping out a heady mist, and spine-tingling music was being piped through invisible speakers.

Frances always appreciated a little effort when it came to ambience. She noted low camp-like beds had been set out around the sides of the room, with blankets and pillows. Headphones and eye masks were laid out on the pillows, with water bottles alongside, like business-class seats thoughtfully arranged for a long-haul flight.

Masha, Yao and Delilah sat cross-legged in the middle of the room, along with the three members of the Marconi family and the tall, dark and handsome man.

‘Welcome, please join the circle,’ Masha said as more people filed into the room behind Frances.

Masha wore a long, white, sleeveless satin and lace dress somewhere between a wedding dress and a nightgown. She’d made up her eyes so that they were even more prominent. Yao and Delilah, extremely attractive young people, looked almost ordinary and washed-out next to this celestial being.

Within a few moments, everyone was there. Frances was seated with Heather on one side, and young Ben on the other. She wondered how Ben was feeling. Probably missing his car. She studied his tanned, hairy leg in the candlelight – not in a sexual way, thank the Lord, just in a kind of fascinated way, because all this silent mindful meditating over the last few days made everything fascinating. Each individual hair on Ben’s leg was like a tiny tree in a dear little forest –

Ben cleared his throat and shifted his leg. Frances straightened and met the eyes of the tall, dark and handsome man seated on the opposite side of the circle. He sat straight-backed and solemn, yet somehow in a manner that conveyed he wasn’t taking any of this too seriously. She automatically went to look away but he held her gaze and winked. Frances winked back and he looked startled. She was a terrible winker; she found it hard to close only one eye and had been told that her attempt looked like an extraordinary facial spasm.