Dessert is a wedge of something brown and crusty that they daringly pass off as chocolate fudge cake. Only the truly mad can eat it. I pass by the drinks dispenser and fill my Styrofoam cup with chilled fizzy orange and pick up some cutlery, plastic obviously.
With my tray of exciting cuisine I make for a table that is empty, and sit down. On the next table a woman in a white gown is drooling into her food. She looks like a zombie. I turn away from the sight with a flash of anger, at what they have done to me. I don’t belong here. I shouldn’t be here.
My eyes collide with another’s—a woman at another table who stares at me murderously. My first reaction is to walk up to her and slap her hard in her face, but, of course, that would be contrary to what is expected of a model patient. I pick up my plastic knife and, never taking my eyes off her, slowly lick the plastic blade. She flinches and averts her eyes. That’s bullies for you. Always cowardly in the face of true power.
I fork the ‘food’ into my mouth. It is horrendous, but I have already learned that those who don’t eat are put on special watch. My plastic knife slices through the overcooked carrot. I spear it, slip it between my lips and swallow the watery mush.
A woman comes and perches timidly on the empty chair beside me. I turn and look at her. She has a wild, haunted look about her startlingly large, light eyes. I sigh inwardly.
‘Be very careful,’ she warns in a frightened whisper. ‘There are spirits in this place. They are restless in their misery and waiting to attach themselves to humans.’
‘Thanks for the warning,’ I say, and turn resolutely away.
She floats away, a ghost herself.
‘Everybody’s curious about you,’ someone says from the left of me. I look up. She is young, terribly common obviously, but not chronically mad. Probably just depressed or something. Her clothes are terrifically unfashionable, but her fingernails are beautifully done in baby blue. Hmm… They didn’t cut her fingernails, which means she must be a model patient. She plonks herself in the chair vacated by the ghost.
‘Are you really a lady? Most of the people who call themselves lord or lady around here are just barmy?’
‘Hmm.’
‘Cooool,’ she crows brightly. ‘I’ve never met a real lady before. It’s sooooo boring in here.’ She quickly makes herself more comfortable in the chair.
Inwardly, I am seething at the indignities I am being subjected to, but I smile politely and take a sip of the awful coffee. I never imagined coffee could taste so bad.
A man marches up to me. He is wearing a brown sweater and golfing trousers and his cheeks are so red it looks as though he is about to have a heart attack at any time.
‘Why are you here?’ he demands in a loud voice, his cheeks flushing even brighter red.
‘I’m minding my own business. You should do the same,’ I tell him.
Apparently that is the right answer. He nods as if impressed and walks away.
‘Way to go, girl,’ my unwelcome companion approves.
I turn towards her. She holds her hand out. Her nails, beautifully manicured, strike me as the most civilized thing in that place. ‘Welcome to the mad house. It’s a treat to find someone who has the guts not to be floating around on their mind-fuck pills all day. I’m Molly Moss, by the way.’
Six
Lana Barrington
We fly into Thailand in the afternoon heat. Thailand, let me tell you, is not just hot, it is like a giant sauna. The humidity is such that my clothes start sticking to me during the short walk from the plane to the air-conditioned airport. In the car, I realize that I am nervous, and as soon as we arrive at the Banyan Tree, I leave Blake to check in and go up to our suite, while I make my way up to Billie’s room.
‘Hey,’ she says, quite nicely brown and grinning.
At the sight of her relaxed, happy face, my tension fades. I was just being overdramatic and paranoid. Maybe it was being in the desert, where it did not feel like we were only a few hours away, but as if we had traveled back in time or to a different world.
Billie throws her arms around me. ‘Sorry I ruined your monumentally epic f**ks, but am I f**king glad to see you.’
I grin. ‘So am I. So glad to see you. Look at you. You’re already as brown as a berry.’
‘Zero SPF always does the trick. Come on in,’ she invites, and closes the door.
‘Where is he?’
‘Having his beauty nap. Jerry has gone to one of the hotel’s gourmet cooking classes,’ she explains, as she takes me to his cot.
My heart swells. ‘It feels as if he has grown,’ I whisper, and, picking up his warm, fat body, hold him close to mine. I breathe in the familiar scent of him and his newly shampooed hair. I don’t know what I thought when Blake said his mother was in Thailand, but a cold hand had come into my body and clutched at my belly. I squeeze him harder against me. But now that he is in my arms again it is clear that my worries were unfounded.
‘I usually just prick him with a pin when I want to wake him up,’ Billie says.
I laugh, and the last remaining shadow of tension slips away. Sorab does not wake up and after a while I put him back into the cot.
Billie and I are chatting when Blake comes to the door. He greets Billie quickly and perfunctorily, his mind obviously preoccupied with other matters. He turns towards me—his mother wants us to meet her downstairs in the coffee lounge in an hour. Then he looks at Billie. ‘Brian will knock on your door in an hour. Will you bring Sorab down then?’ he asks with a frown.
‘Sure.’
‘Thanks, Billie,’ Blake says.
‘No problems.’
He takes my hand and turns to go, and then turns back. ‘You did well to stand up to my mother.’
Billie flushes deep red with the compliment.
I only have time for a quick shower and a change of clothes before it is time to go downstairs. Unsure how I should dress and not really mentally prepared to meet my mother-in-law, I nervously slip on a shift dress over my bikini. I am on holiday after all, and it would be silly to get all dressed up.
Blake leans in and tells me I look a million dollars, but I am unable to stop the feverish and horrid sensation that I have been summoned to the headmistress’s room.
As we enter the lounge I spot her instantly—blonde, blue-eyed, pale, and so carefully preserved she seems an ageless mannequin. There is not a single wrinkle on her face. Why, she could have been Blake’s sister!
She is dressed in a dusky pink jacket that reminds me of the tooth powder that used to sit in my grandmother’s bathroom cabinet. The most distinctive part of her appearance is the large piece of jewelry around her throat. It looks like the horned head of a bull. I have never seen anything like it. It is strange but beautiful, too. She does not rise as we approach.