Chapter 6
I pull my sweater tighter around myself as I start walking. I’m the only one on the path; the other cabins are all dark, the windows all reflecting the pond and the woods. It’s like walking past a set of mirrors, each containing a slightly hunched, nigh unrecognizable version of me.
The smell does, indeed, reach me before the sound. The tart, crispy notes of fresh tomatoes; the smoky umami of frying meat; the thick, yeasty scent of bread baking.
The larger, barnlike structure at the end is the only one that is lit up. There is a long, low building in between the main house and the dining hall—staff housing, probably.
For a moment, I consider going in there, trying the door, trying to sneak a peek while everyone is at dinner, but I decide against it. It’s too early to get caught somewhere I don’t belong. If I get kicked out now, all this will have been for nothing.
And I will get access later anyway. If nothing else, I know that much.
As I approach the dining hall, I see that the doors are open, warm light spilling through them into the early evening, and I hear voices. A low murmur, short and halting. Music playing softly, some kind of piano composition.
I stop and draw a deep breath, taste the pine in the air from the nearby trees. I can hear my heart thumping in my chest, feel my pulse in my lips.
I am Isobel Anderssen. I am heartbroken. I am miserable. I am here because I want to heal.
Exhaling, I switch on the recorder hidden deep in my pocket.
Showtime.
When I’m a few steps away from the doors, a figure appears, silhouetted against the light, and I stop, squinting.
“Come on in,” Belinda says, putting an arm around my shoulders. “Now that we’re all here, we can get going.”
She leads me in through the doors, her arm strong and firm around my shoulders. Reminding me that it’s too late to back out now.
I blink as we walk in through the doors, my eyes adjusting to the light.
The ceiling is very high, upward of twenty feet, and the interior very bare. There is a long table in the middle of the room, medieval-hall-style, and Martina is standing at the end of it.
“Isobel,” she greets me, smiling. “Hi. I’m so glad you could join us.”
Funny phrasing, given that I was told it was mandatory.
Martina claps her hands, looking around the table, and her smile grows ever more luminous. Her hair is in a soft, loose braid now, and she’s got a shawl over her white button-down.
It makes her look like an off-duty socialite, or maybe a tech CEO, someone who’s spent all day trying to figure out how to get away with firing workers in favor of AI and is planning on spending the weekend at a meditation retreat in the mountains.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to make a speech,” she says, and the woman next to me laughs, much louder than the joke deserves.
When I look at her through the corner of my eye, I see that she’s much younger than anyone I might have expected to see at Himlafall.
She’s at most in her early twenties, sporting a golden tan and long, luscious peach-pink waves in a high ponytail.
When she turns her head to Martina, I see that she’s got a tiny star tattooed behind one ear.
“The first night here is always hard,” Martina continues, sounding very much like she is, in fact, making a speech.
“You are all in a new place, surrounded by people you have never met before. You have left behind your homes, your jobs, your friends and families in order to come here.”
Her eyes seem to glisten with tears for a second, but when she blinks, they are gone. A trick of the light.
“And I am so grateful,” she continues, “that you made that decision. Not just for the privilege of meeting all of you. Not just for the journey we are going to go on together. But for yourselves. For the fact that all of you decided to take care of yourselves. To love yourselves enough to do this.”
The woman next to me is nodding energetically, her pink ponytail bouncing.
When I sneak a glance at the woman sitting opposite me, who appears to be closer to my age, with long, straight black hair falling around her shoulders and a long, thin face, she appears to be listening intently, a small but deep wrinkle between her eyebrows.
“Tomorrow, we are going to start the work. And I am not going to lie to you. I am not going to tell you that this will be easy. Nor will it always be pleasant. Change is painful. Opening up is painful. At the end of this week, you will have discovered things about yourself you had buried deep down within. You will see yourself, and your history, and your context in a very different light than you do right now.”
Martina looks around the table once more. Am I imagining it, or does she linger when she looks at me? Is there an intensity there, a sense of connection?
Or is that just her specific brand of charisma?
Maybe we all feel like she’s looking directly at us. Talking directly to us.
The skin on my arms prickling, I pull at my sweater.
“But it won’t all be painful,” Martina says, her voice softer now.
“It will be a time of discovery. Of recognition.
Right now, you are all strangers to each other.
But at the end of this week, these women will be your community.
Your family. You might not believe me right now, but I have seen it over and over again.
“There is a reason we focus on group therapy here at Himlafall.
Because the issues that have brought you here, the issues that have kept you from finding real, lasting romantic connections, are not just individual.
They are systemic. You will find your own experiences mirrored in the stories you hear.
You will realize that you are not alone.
You will see, together, that you are lovable.
That you are deserving of so much more than what you have received up until now.
“And the first people who will show you what you are worth, and how it feels when you are loved, openly and truly, will be the women sitting next to you.”
Martina falls silent.
As I look up, I see the faces around me, mirroring the apprehension I’m feeling. Eyes searching warily around the table, making contact, then looking away.
“But that is all ahead of us,” Martina announces. “Tonight, we will just have dinner together. We’ll get to know each other a little bit, we’ll have some good food, and then we will go to bed.”
She sits down.
The girl with the pink ponytail starts clapping loudly, and after a few confused seconds, the rest of us join in.
Martina laughs and shakes her head. But I swear that the high blush on her cheeks is one of satisfaction, not embarrassment.
“Well,” the girl with the pink ponytail says, her voice loud and clear. “Maybe we should start by introducing ourselves?”
She looks over at Martina immediately for reassurance, and the doctor smiles.
“I’m Clara,” she says, leaning forward over the table.
“I’m twenty-three. I’ve grown up a bit all over, but most recently I’ve spent the last year traveling around Southeast Asia.
It was a really wonderful experience. I don’t want to sound like a typical white-girl cliché, but I really do feel like I began to find myself there. ”
She laughs. There is not a trace of self-consciousness in it.
As I take a closer look at her, I notice the various diamond studs making her ears glitter as she turns her head.
Ah. Not a young artistic type, as I’d first assumed, based on the pink hair. No, a would-be bohemian, funded by the bank of Mom and Dad.
Clara opens her mouth to say something else, but just then, the door at the other end of the room opens, and our collective attention is drawn by both the sound and the smell.
A man and a woman enter, both carrying heaping plates of spaghetti and Italian meatballs swimming in thick red tomato sauce.
Two more waiters follow behind, and the food is placed in front of each of us with such speed and efficiency that I hardly have time to get a good look at the waiters before they have disappeared again.
“Wow,” the woman opposite me mutters, looking down at her plate with a dazed expression on her face.
“Don’t worry,” Martina says from down at the end of the table. “For those of you who reported food allergies, intolerances, and preferences, they have been taken into account. Yours is vegan, Katarina.”
The woman—whose name is apparently Katarina—looks up, surprised, before forming her lips into a smile.
“Thank you,” she says.
The older woman sitting next to Katarina lets out a sigh and shakes her head.
“I simply don’t know if I will be able to eat this much,” she says, seemingly half to herself, half to the rest of us. “This just seems like too much food.”
She looks to be in her late fifties or early sixties, with the kind of good looks that speak about healthy living and generous tweakments.
Her hair is shoulder-length, an artful mix of golden blond and silver gray, and though her discreet cream cardigan and fitted navy slacks bear no obvious brands, I’m fairly certain the bracelet dangling off her skinny wrist says Cartier.
“Don’t worry, Pernilla,” Martina says. “You don’t have to eat any more than you want to.”
I hear a snorting laugh from the other side of Clara, and as I stretch my neck to see, I catch sight of the woman between her and the caretaker, Anna.
She’s looking at Pernilla with a smirk tugging at the corners of her lips. Her thick black hair is cut short in a classic French pixie, and her dark eyes are sparkling with something that might be amusement, might be anger, might be both.
She picks up her fork, spears a meatball on to it, and then asks Martina:
“Hey, Doc, just a quick question. What if we get hungry between meals? We don’t all have the same nutritional needs, you know. It just seems a bit concerning that we’re all getting served the same amount of food.”
“There is a snack bar available in the main building,” Belinda hurries to respond in Martina’s place.