Chapter Fourteen
India’s first back on the terrace after lunch, holding a small cup of Greek coffee which contains what tastes like a metric tonne of caffeine from Mount Double Espresso itself.
The day is almost too sweltering for a hot drink but India’s aware that such intense concentration from the morning and the walk to the beach in full sun has tired her out.
It was gorgeous to walk with Keera. India feels as if she’s found a friend, and their conversation made India feel as if she has a right to be here.
Rose can help her, and India will take any help with open arms.
She’s swapped her pretty swirling chiffon dress for a pink spaghetti-strapped cotton dress she packed as an emergency outfit. The cotton dress is much cooler and the only item of clothing in her two suitcases that’s suitable for the Greek heat.
She’ll have to shop, which is no bother. India loves to shop. She manages her love of clothes by selling on things she’s grown tired of and looking in vintage shops for bargains.
‘You’ve got an eye, India,’ Georgie says, but India’s sure her stepmother’s just being nice to her.
In the distance, India can see Rose talking to the couple who run the villa.
Rose’s dress is flowy and relaxed: a bit psychedelic for India’s taste, but Rose can pull it off.
Rose is tall too, tall and regal as hell with that long, curling silvery-grey hair, the tanned skin, and those eyes, like a wild sea creature’s blue irises with her pupils outlined in a darker blue, like lapis.
Please Rose, don’t pick on me. Not yet, India thinks as she finds her chair and sets up her pretty notebook in front of her.
Maybe she can put Rose off for today.
Give herself some leeway before it’s her turn to be autopsied.
Where is everyone else? India finishes her coffee and watches a white cat slowly descend the stone steps from the raised lavender garden, its feline body undulating.
Even though India reaches down and calls it, the cat does not come to her and she sighs and relaxes back in her chair again.
She’d love a cat. She’d love—
Oh, what does it matter? She can’t have any of the things she really craves.
She’s just an idiot who can’t do life.
She feels like crying again. She cried so much on the beach that her eyes are still puffy. It’s like simply being here has broken some wall inside her and let all her feelings come out.
Doodling a bit on her pretty notebook, she’s well aware that simple stuff like pretty notebooks make her happy.
Also, neat clear pencil cases for her handbag where coloured pens can sit brightly, all organised.
And make-up. She loves make-up and beauty products. Would spend vast sums of money on them if she allowed herself to.
Does that make her shallow?
Should she only be happy when there’s world peace?
India never thought she was shallow before.
To banish these annoying thoughts, she lies back in her chair and lets the heat wash over her, the sound of crickets making their strangely rhythmic noise, and she drifts into dreams.
Dan wakes India up by taking the chair beside her again.
‘Hi,’ he says.
‘Shi— Sorry.’
India rapidly sits up in her chair, entirely discomfited. Was she asleep? Those damn crickets or cicadas or whatever made her sleepy with twinging their little legs. Their constant drone is much better at curing insomnia than counting sheep.
The heat makes her sleepy too.
The sun’s high in the sky, glittering off the azure pool, bouncing into her face.
‘I must have dozed off,’ she mutters to Dan.
She realises that everyone else in the group is trailing in.
Sir Bernard is a bit red-faced and has obviously been sunbathing. Grazia is the same caramel colour as ever.
To India’s astonishment, Grazia smiles at her.
India lets her fingers flutter a Hello.
She feels guilty for bitching about the older woman now. Who the hell is she to make random judgements of other people? A woman too. So much for being loyal to the sisterhood.
Sweat breaks out on India’s face.
‘You OK?’ asks Dan, passing both a glass and a blue ceramic jar of water to her.
‘Yes. No – I don’t know,’ she whispers back.
Rose has arrived.
The group has loosened up, Rose sees.
India was half asleep in the sun.
Dan was comfortable enough to wake her up, which says he noticed that she patted his arm during his painful storytelling.
‘Everyone ready?’ she calls.
Keera’s adjusting her baseball hat and settling herself in on the other side of India.
Sir Bernard and Grazia are settled comfortably in their chairs, while Dianne slips into the empty chair beside Grazia. Dianne wears a sort of half-smiling mask that’s polite and nothing more.
What is Dianne’s secret? thinks Rose.
She’s bottling something up and Rose thinks that when Dianne finally gets to tell her story, it will rage out of her like a tornado.
‘I trust you all had a lovely lunch and a walk on the beach,’ she says to the group.
Everyone nods and Grazia surprises her by saying: ‘It is a pretty beach. We have travelled a lot but I have never been here before.’
Rose smiles. She loves people being relaxed enough to talk without being asked questions.
‘Corfu is very beautiful,’ she agrees, ‘and one of the marvellous things about having our sessions here is that being somewhere totally different allows us to escape our real lives. It’s a version of lying on the couch in traditional analytical therapy where you’re staring up at the ceiling with your therapist sitting out of sight.
Being in a different location works in the same way. You’re here with your fellow …’
She pauses. What can she call them?
‘Seekers of Truth,’ suggests Keera suddenly and everyone laughs.
Rose beams at her.
‘Brilliant name,’ says Rose. ‘Now, before this session, I want us all to breathe deeply the way we did this morning. I want you to get in touch with your bodies, settle yourselves. Think about how you feel.’
A few eyes open widely.
Feeling?
‘Breathe in slowly. Become aware of how deeply you’re breathing: if your breath comes from your chest or your belly …’
Rose watches them all.
Dianne seems grimly determined not to feel anything.
India’s possibly afraid to close her eyes in case she nods off again.
Dan is doing his best. His chest is rising and falling with deep breathing.
Grazia’s trying it too but her husband has merely closed his eyes, his hands crossed on his stomach, and he looks as if he’s dozing off.
Keera’s glossy blonde head is bent as if she can’t hold the weight of her head up.
Nobody speaks. Rose doesn’t expect them to.
After ten minutes, she leads them back to open-eyed readiness.
‘This afternoon we’re going to move on.’
‘I hope you’re recovering from this morning, Dan?’
She looks at him questioningly and wonders if he is actually sitting less stiffly in his chair. As if some tiny weight has been lifted perhaps?
‘I’m …’ Dan flounders a bit. ‘I can’t find the words,’ he admits. ‘You’ve given me a lot to think about,’ he says.
He pauses as if he’s been planning what to say. ‘I want to clear up any confusion about myself and Julia. She’s a wonderful person, I want everyone to know that.’
He looks around at them all earnestly.
‘In case it sounds as if our relationship is over, the bottom line is that we love each other: we’ve been together for over twenty years. We’re just taking a break at the moment.’
Keera’s eyebrows lift.
‘Rose, I think you’re wrong about Julia,’ Dan goes on. ‘Although she says we’re over now, I don’t think she wants us to be apart, or to actually leave me, for good.’
Time to nip that one in the bud.
‘I didn’t say she would,’ Rose points out, ‘just that she could. Julia can choose not to get back with you. We can’t bind people to us.
The problem occurs when the relationship becomes one-sided, when one person is co-dependent on the other.
Where one person walks on eggshells to avoid hurting the other. ’
Dianne snorts loudly.
‘You want to add something, Dianne?’ asks Rose.
Dianne’s eyes narrow. ‘You’re smothering your girlfriend, Dan,’ she says abruptly, her Melbourne accent strong.
‘You do everything for her. What if something happens to you and she’s left there, all alone, not able to do anything because you refused to let her be an ordinary person with needs? Or …’
Dianne looks very fierce now.
‘What if she wants to escape but you won’t let her go? What if you’re caging her like a wild animal?’
‘No!’ says Dan. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. She needs me, I’m the person she turns to when she needs help—’
‘So you’re her all-powerful man, are you?
’ Dianne demands. ‘Poor, bewildered Julia’s own personal god.
Not that I believe in God,’ she adds as an aside to Rose.
‘I want to know why God is never there when you call for him. I don’t believe in that manifesting rubbish, either.
Psychic ordering. Huh.’ She snorts again.
India, who loves psychic ordering, looks appalled.
‘Why do people get a new car or a new job thanks to psychic ordering and people in poor countries still get nothing but war and famine? Answer me that?’
She’s shouting now and Rose, who has let this conversation run on, is pleased that Dianne’s cracking open.
‘Do you feel God has let you down?’ she asks Dianne gently.
‘Don’t believe in him,’ Dianne snaps. ‘It’s all fake.
No point waiting for God. It’s up to everyone to fix themselves.
All this religion nonsense is to make people feel happy about themselves when they’re really horrible people: they go to church, sing along to the hymns, and let me tell you this … ’
She stands up, feet apart in an angry stance.
‘That’s all for show,’ she hisses. ‘Stupid people worrying about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Real people can suffer and nobody cares! Worse, the people closest to them don’t care.
It’s all for the audience. But you know that, Rose,’ she snaps nastily.
Dianne pushes past her chair and storms off.
Rose lets her go.