Grief brought Blue to Hope Marsh House. Mother had been gone three years, but still, it was difficult to let go of her deep-rooted habits, and so, like her, Blue tapped her chest twice if she passed a ring of trees, saluted every magpie and avoided motorways.
Crocuses floated in the roadside fields, the ground saturated with the light, ceaseless rain. She didn’t stop, other than to piss that one time behind a wide oak stump, and drove until the land flattened and the north country was far behind her.
Blue had never been so far south. The furthest she’d travelled from Blackpool was the Midlands when she was twenty-odd, a demonstration she’d done in an old-fashioned theatre in a mining town. Mother had organised it, organised most of them until Blue gave it up.
Mother didn’t get over it, dubbed it the calling. Blue had turned her back on the calling, denied her purpose, shunned the blessed spirits, and how could she do that? Think of the people who need you, Mother had said. They rely on your guidance.
But Blue had no more guidance to give.
Today was Friday. Monday would be three years exactly since Mother died, and Blue still felt its pressure in her chest. Grief filled her as water might fill the lungs of a drowned man. For months she’d obsessed over Mother’s life: the life she led with Blue and that other life, unfathomable and unknowable, which her death had forced into focus. Blue was consumed with grief, with guilt, with loneliness that gnawed at the guts of her. Nothing quenched it. So, as the anniversary loomed, she clicked on a Google ad for bereavement retreat and discovered Hope Marsh House.
The website proclaimed it a haven to work through loss – woodland walks, gentle activities, daily therapy: a place of safety.
A far-off shape rose from the bog and teased with the promise of a house. The landscape tricked the eye and reduced the distance between her and it; the road meandered and dipped and cared nothing for Blue’s time. Fields flashed by: a trailer abandoned in that one, an old tin bath used as a trough in this. There was no livestock. The bath overflowed.
Hope Marsh House glowed, its pale stone a beacon in the grey mizzle. It looked more like a stately home than a retreat; two storeys high with painted white sash windows, a dark grey, slate-tiled roof, and two smoking chimneys. Back home, she still lived in the two-bed ex-council house she’d inherited from Devlin. Still slept in the box room at the front. The double bedroom had been Mother’s.
Blue drove through the gates and on to the gravelled drive flanked by alders and silver birch. The breaks between trees revealed the estate’s forty acres; a burst-bank stream wound along the left perimeter. Last week, the owner had emailed Blue and reminded her to bring wellingtons.
Mr and Mrs Park were the facilitators. Blue called them owners. It made it feel more like a jolly, a trip away to recoup. Thinking of them as facilitators reminded Blue that this wasn’t a holiday, that she had something to work through, and she didn’t want to think about that. If she did, she would likely turn around.
There were reasons Mother’s death was so brutal.
Blue slowed the car to a crawl. Squeezed her eyes shut, reminded herself that this was necessary, that she couldn’t go on without help, but her heart buzzed like a bee in her chest and her dry tongue stuck to her palate. Entwined in her grief was something else, the roots stubborn as knotweed.
But this was a safe place, she told herself, a sanctuary where no harm was done.
Hope Marsh House was in front of her.
A light shone in an upstairs bedroom, and two figures stood at the glass: a white woman, a black woman. The latter dabbed the skin beneath her eye with the sleeve of her orange jumper. Is she a guest, too? Blue thought.
Another window offered a view of the stairs and a slice of the corridor. Someone stood at the top, back to Blue, and all she could see was a vague shape, a smudge of pale hair, the head angled as though trying to listen through the wall.
Out front, a newish Prius in mud-splattered silver sat before the rusted spikes of a vast boot rack. A black Range Rover dominated the space to the right of the entrance. Blue parked her car, older and more dented, beneath an alder tree, cut the engine and stepped out. The change in soundscape caught the women’s attention; they looked down, saw her, shrank back from the window and a minute later the front door opened and one of them stood on the threshold. Blue recognised Mrs Park from the website: fifty-odd and soft-featured, with wide-set green eyes and a bob of blonde hair streaked with white. The woman exuded calm – her expression, her posture, the way she stood and watched Blue lift the rucksack from the boot with pedagogic patience, as though Blue were a favourite student and not a stranger. The antithesis of Mother.
‘You must be Ms Ford?’ A measured smile warmed her face, and drizzle jewelled her hair with pinprick diamonds.
Blue felt untidy; the comfortable tracksuit she’d donned for the trip looked dirty and cheap next to Mrs Park’s clean linen tunic. She brushed away the crisp crumbs from the front of her joggers, tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear.
‘Call me Blue,’ she said and gave a nod, a smile, tried to look friendly and hoped the host wouldn’t press for a handshake. Though it had been years since she’d given a reading, Blue still wouldn’t touch people’s hands.
Mrs Park didn’t press for one. Instead, she held Blue’s upper arms, and Blue felt the heat of her palms through the hoody.
‘Welcome,’ Mrs Park said. ‘My goodness, what extraordinary—’
Blue looked down, so her eyelids covered her irises. Her sunglasses were in the glove compartment; she wished she had them to hand. The usual explanations were on the tip of her tongue, but unlike most who saw the strange helix colours of Blue’s eyes for the first time, Mrs Park pulled back and looked embarrassed, as though she were the oddball and not Blue.
‘I’m sorry, I’ve made you uncomfortable; how dreadful of me, I forget myself.’
‘No, it’s fine, it’s OK,’ Blue said, but she kept her eyes lowered.
‘Please, come inside; it’s warmer and drier in here.’ And Mrs Park ushered her in, cheerful and kind, and Blue thought she might be able to relax after all.
They stepped into a boot room lined with pegs, coats, gaiters and hats, wellies in neat rows on one bench. A black fabric suitcase sat in the corner, big enough to hold a grown man. It must belong to the woman in the orange top, Blue thought, or the person standing on the stairs.
Mrs Park led the way into the house.
The main room was huge, open plan, and a staircase rose from its centre. It was indeed dry, but Mrs Park had been wrong about the warmth. Though decorated to give the impression of it – throws on the sofas, velvet curtains, lit fires – the room was cold.
‘You have a lovely home,’ Blue said, recalling polite things people said on TV.
Mrs Park’s cheeks bulged as she returned the smile, the skin around her eyes creased. ‘Thank you, it’s Georgian. We kept the original features wherever we could.’
Blue tried to find comfort in the glowing light and the smell of woodsmoke, but a chill had set up camp in her bones.
‘Let me show you your room,’ Mrs Park said, ‘then I’ll introduce you to my husband and the other guests. This way.’
She followed Mrs Park up the green-carpeted stairs. The floor on the landing was the same shade, the walls painted a paler sage, the lampshade green, too.
‘A calming colour,’ Blue said as she reached the top, ‘or so I’ve heard.’
‘Yours is the room at the end,’ said Mrs Park.
Blue followed Mrs Park to the bedroom. It looked out over the front corner of the house; a second window showed the stream with the burst banks and, beyond it, thick forest.
‘It’ll be a relaxed day today; the first and last of the retreat always are.’ She watched Blue lift her rucksack on to the bed; the bag with the wellingtons she put on the floor. ‘It’s just you and three others so far: Sabina, Jago and Milton. One more guest is due tonight, and the last two will be with us bright and early; we’ll not start the activities until everyone’s here.’ She stood at the window, her expression expectant, as if waiting to hear how lovely the room was.
Although the pervading colour of the hall was green, the bedroom was all pure white. The colour of new beginnings, the Fool’s colour, Blue thought, though she had never been one for reading her own cards. She’d lost all conviction, but Mother’s faith had been fervent, and she had been made happy by her daughter’s talent. So, too, were the people Blue had read for; they’d hear the story of their tarot with comfort, and in turn, they’d left her comforted: she thought she was doing a bit of good in the world, thought she was making folk feel better.
No, white didn’t bring comfort. The Fool’s colour indeed.
Mrs Park cocked her head to the side. ‘Do you like it?’ she said, as Blue knew she would.
‘It’s lovely,’ Blue said. What did it matter, she thought, if she liked the room? It was Mrs Park’s house; surely what she thought mattered more? Blue felt the old, familiar question needle her: what would the cards say about you?
But she had stopped that.
Mother had called her a little god. Blue’s last boyfriend (back when she still tried to maintain relationships) had suggested she was neurodiverse, and it was like a gift, this label that summed it all up, before she’d been dumped because of it and felt a wretched misfit again.
It was a phrase she’d since read online – neurodiverse: an umbrella term that encompassed all the things she thought were not quite right in her head.
‘Anything wrong?’ Mrs Park said, and Blue pulled herself out of her thoughts. ‘I know it’s daunting, coming to a place like this,’ the host went on, mistaking the lapse for grief or fear, ‘but we’ll take good care of you. I promise. It’s my speciality, looking after people, helping them iron out all their crinkles. There’s a guestbook downstairs, and you can read their testimonies for yourself. It might help you feel calmer.’ She squeezed Blue’s shoulders as a favoured aunt might, or a teacher, or a friend, but Blue wasn’t sure which role best suited Mrs Park. Blue had no aunts, hadn’t gone to school, lacked friends.
Mrs Park said, ‘Now, I’ve left a folder of information on the dresser for you. As you know, there are no computers here, no televisions, no electronics of any kind.’
‘Aye, I know. I left it all at home, save for my phone.’
‘Bring it when you next come downstairs; I’ll show you the safe, and we’ll hide it away. It makes a world of difference, believe me.’
She knew she’d have to give up her phone. Leaving the laptop at home had felt odd enough; only the knowledge that Hope Marsh had no Wi-Fi made it bearable.
‘OK,’ she said. Mrs Park nodded, said she would meet Blue downstairs and left her to it.
Alone, she reassessed the bedroom. It was uncomfortably upmarket, far removed from what she was used to. She waited to feel the comfort the furnishings promised, but the room refused to give in. Above, bare beams drew lines of dark shadow on the high, pared-back ceiling, and there wasn’t a cobweb, not a speck of dust. The mirror didn’t have a single smear. She could see the alder tree through the window; catkins hung limp like dead fingers.
Beyond, a man strode across the field. He carried a wide black holdall beneath his arm and a thinner, longer bag slung across his back. He exceeded six feet and was broad with it, and his shaggy hair poked out from his hat, steel grey. Must be Mr Park, Blue assumed, and as though he could hear her thoughts, he stopped dead. He looked at the house, at each window, landed his gaze on the one above the front door, and his expression shifted. It seemed a pained look to Blue, but she was far off and couldn’t be sure. Perhaps it was relief, she told herself. Perhaps it was straight-up exhaustion. He lifted a hand, pinched the bridge of his nose as if trying to rid himself of migraine or of a vision that was unwelcome, unpleasant.
Downstairs, an old-fashioned telephone rang.