Nine Perfect Strangers

‘Fuck!’ he said with deep feeling.

Frances stared. What in the world? The man had tattoos of bright yellow smiley faces on both his butt cheeks. It was extraordinary. It was like discovering he was wearing a secret clown suit beneath his clothes.

She ducked her head. A second later she heard the pool gate slam. She looked up and he was gone.

Smiley-face tattoos. How drunk must he have been? It kind of changed her entire view of the man. No longer the arrogant sneering man. He was Tony. Tony with smiley face tattoos on his butt.

Tony, the smiley-face-tattoo-butted serial killer?

She chuckled, sniffed, and tasted quite a lot of blood.

chapter twenty

Masha

Another email from him. In just a matter of days. Masha stared at her ex-husband’s name on her computer screen. The subject heading of this one read: pozhaluysta prochti masha.

Please read, Masha.

It was as if he were speaking directly to her. There was an attachment to the email. She heard herself make a noise, a silly, pathetic little squeak, like the sound of someone standing on a child’s toy.

She remembered the weight and warmth of his arm across her shoulders as they sat on an awful Soviet-made couch, in a flat that looked identical to their own, except that this one had something extraordinary: a VCR.

If not for that wonderful, terrible VCR, where would she be right now? Who would she be? Not here. Not this person. Maybe they would still be together.

She deleted the email then went straight to her deleted items folder and deleted it there too.

This was a crucial moment in her professional life. Focus was essential. People were depending on her: her guests, her staff. She did not have time for so-called . . . what was that rhyming phrase Delilah used? Blasts from the past. She did not have time for blasts from the past.

And yet her stomach continued to lurch about like the sea. She needed to practise detachment. First, she needed to identify the emotion she was experiencing, observe it, label it, let it go. She looked for a word that could describe how she felt and could only find one from her native language: toska. There was no adequate English word to describe the kind of anguished longing she felt for something she could not have and did not even want. Maybe because English-speaking people did not experience that feeling.

What was going on? This was not like her! She stood and went to the exercise mat on the floor of her office and did push-ups until her forehead was covered in sweat.

She returned to her desk, breathing hard, and opened the security program on her computer to check on the location and activities of her guests, her mind focused once again. She had installed CCTV cameras around the property for security reasons, and right now she could see most of her guests.

The young couple walked down the back footpath towards the hot springs. Jessica was in front, her head bowed, Ben a few steps behind, studying the horizon.

The Marconi family appeared to have split up. Napoleon was in the rose garden. He was down on his knees, sniffing a rose. Masha smiled. He was literally stopping to smell the roses.

Meanwhile, his wife was out running. Heather was nearly at the top of Tranquillity Hill. Masha watched for a moment, impressed by her pace on the steep section. Not as fast as Masha, but fast.

Where was the daughter? Masha clicked through grainy black-and-white images and found her in the gym, lifting weights.

Tony Hogburn was leaving the pool area, where Frances Welty sat on a deckchair, dabbing at her face with a towel.

Lars Lee lay in a hammock in the pergola with some sort of drink he’d obviously persuaded the kitchen staff to give him. He would have used sign language and his good looks. Masha had his number.

No-one else? She clicked through the upstairs corridors and came across a woman wearing a sarong, walking briskly. Carmel Schneider. The other single woman.

Carmel took off her glasses and rubbed her face. Possibly crying?

‘Deep breaths,’ murmured Masha as Carmel struggled with her room key and banged her fist with frustration against the door.

Eventually, Carmel opened the door and almost fell inside. If only Masha could see what she did once she was in her room. People were so prudish. Yao and Delilah got worked up about legalities. Masha had no interest in seeing the naked bodies of her guests! She simply wanted to gain knowledge in order to do her job to the best of her ability.

She would have to rely on audio only. She turned a dial on her screen and keyed in Carmel’s room number.

A woman’s tear-choked voice emerged loud and clear from Masha’s monitor.