‘Smaller. Tighter. Tuck in those arms and heads.’
We are on mats in the dance studio, trying to make ourselves disappear.
‘Now, slowly, slowly, start growing,’ says Grace. ‘First the tips of your fingers, then your wrists and elbows, your toes, the soles of your feet. Feel yourselves expanding. Stretch out your arms, your legs, unfurl every single vertebra in turn, make your necks as long as a giraffe’s. Raise up the top of your heads as if someone is pulling on a string from above. Feel how tall you are. Give yourselves permission to get bigger, to take up more space. Take a deep breath and repeat after me, “I contain multitudes.”’
‘I contain multitudes,’ we all mutter, our arms outstretched, necks craning.
I feel myself grow lighter. Since Mum’s visit yesterday, when I told her about William Kingsley, my mind has been too churned up to relax. When I was with Laura afterwards she asked me to imagine I was on a riverbank in autumn with a gentle breeze blowing through the trees and causing coloured leaves to fall to the ground. ‘Pick one up,’ she told me. ‘Feel its texture, stroke it against your cheek. Note how it’s cool and damp against your skin. Now place it gently in the river and watch it float downstream. Pick up another one and put that too into the water. And another. Now imagine that each leaf contains a negative thought or memory. Watch them drift away.’ Though I tried to focus on what she was saying, tried putting Oliver Roberts on a leaf and watching him drift away, I couldn’t rid myself of the tight knot of dread in the pit of my stomach.
But today, standing on my mat, stretching every bit of me to accommodate my multitudes, I feel a sense of release. Normally, I run a mile from this sort of stuff. Megan once got dragged off to a breathing workshop by a new-agey friend of hers, and we laughed about it for days. ‘I’m so much better at breathing than you,’ she’d tell me. ‘I’m a trained breather.’ But I want to get better. I want to get out of here. I’ll do as much growing and unfurling as it takes. When Danny comes tonight I’m going to tell him I’m coming home. I’m ready. And if he doesn’t like it, that’s too bad. I know he got hurt, and I’m truly sorry. But I don’t think he was hurt as much as I was.
I know Stella will wait around for me after the class, but I want to be on my own. I want to make this sense of wellbeing last just a little bit longer. Not that I’m nervous of Stella any more. But I am sad for her. I don’t know how she can be made whole again.
So I say I need the loo and dash out across the rose garden and round the back of the old building and in past the reception desk. I’m heading for the Mindfulness Area and the sanctuary of the egg chair but, through the glass window in the door that separates reception from the rest of the building, I see the route is blocked by Justin and Drew, who are talking to Dr Chakraborty. Justin has his back to me and doesn’t notice me but, on the far side of him, Drew raises his head from his viewfinder and stares at me through the glass. He is wearing a red jumper, against which his skin appears pale and grey. From this distance his eyes are like deep black holes, and I stop dead. Usually, Drew’s face is an impassive blank, but now he twists his mouth into an expression I cannot read and which makes the skin on my arms break out in icy bumps, and I turn around and hurry back outside.
It’s pleasant out here now there’s a let-up in the rain, and the air has a freshness that I gulp down.
Conscious that the others will soon be spilling out from the dance studio, I head the other way, crunching over the gravel car park. There’s a path that runs down from it, bordered by bushes, through which I get glimpses of the lawn on one side and the flower garden on the other. It leads to the vegetable plot, where, twice a week, Inès, the horticulture therapist with the lazy eye and the aged Jack Russell that always makes me think of Mum’s dear departed Madge, comes to show us how to make mulch and check leaves for diseases.
I don’t have much of a clue about gardening, but there is something therapeutic about getting your hands dirty and seeing things grow out of bare soil.
I go into the shed where we keep the tools. It’s small, about two metres by three, and crammed with rakes and brushes and twine and shovels and things about whose function I have no clue. Selecting a small trowel and a pair of heavy-duty green gloves which are too big for my hands, I make my way back outside. Someone has left an empty sack by the door, and I grab it on the way out to preserve the knees of my jeans.
Most of the weeds come up easily, as if they weren’t really growing at all, just passing the time. But some are really deeply entrenched and I have to dig my trowel into the earth underneath to loosen them.
While I’m doing this, I think of Danny. I have loved him since the moment I first saw him, and yet, can I say, hand on heart, that I have been happy with him? We have had moments of happiness, sure. Perfect days, like in that Lou Reed song. Perfect weeks even, staying in a beach bungalow in Thailand or holed up in a city neither of us knows, finding hidden treasure in the backstreet bars, staying up all night drinking unfamiliar drinks with strangers who become friends before the first glass is drained.
‘But Hannah, if you can’t be happy on holiday, God help you,’ Becs said once, when I came back from a holiday in the early days of our relationship radiating contentment. ‘It’s how you are when you’re home and arguing over who overfilled the food recycling bag that really counts.’
She was right. When the rows started, following the miscarriage and the IVF, we never addressed what was happening. We each hid more and more of ourselves from the other.
How else to explain her?
Steffie.
At the thought of her I start jabbing the sharp end of my trowel into the soil like I am prospecting for oil.
She came after him. It’s what I always tell myself.
And yet women like Steffie don’t do anything unless they’re assured of success.
What do you expect? You lied to him. The accusatory voice in my head is never far away. But before I can crumble, another, unfamiliar voice pipes up.
He lied first.
I sit back abruptly on my heels contemplating this new voice and this new truth.
He lied first.
Three small words that change everything.
As I sit there pondering what it means, I become conscious of an uncomfortable prickling on my back. It’s not warm here in the garden and I haven’t got a coat, but this is different to feeling cold because I’m outside and underdressed.
This feels like being watched.
I whip my head around and scan past the flower garden to the car park and the back entrance of the clinic.
Nothing.
I turn back to my digging, but the feeling of being observed doesn’t go away.
Once more, I turn around and, this time, I catch sight of a blur of movement behind the row of bushes that flank the path.
Red movement.
I scramble to my feet, my blood noisy in my ears. I don’t know why I’m afraid of Drew, but I am. There is something about the cameraman loitering around our lives at the clinic, recording God knows what, that makes me feel as if a dampness has crept into my soul and is slowly spreading.
He is still shielded from sight by the bushes and I bolt for the shelter of the shed. Hidden behind it, I wait until he steps into the vegetable garden before dashing across the path and cutting diagonally across the lawn. The wet grass soon soaks my canvas shoes and I curse the lack of laces that makes running an impossibility. My breath is tearing from me in painful strips. When I get out of here, I will get fit. I will take up jogging. Join a gym. I will.
Glancing behind me, I see that Drew has spotted me and is coming up behind. I’m still anxious, but also embarrassed. He must know now that I am trying to avoid him. As I near the clinic, intending to go around the building and in through the front, I remember that the front door will be locked from the outside, so I change direction, cutting back through the car park towards the back entrance. Joni is on reception. ‘Drew was looking for you,’ she says, her strips of eyebrow travelling up her forehead when she sees the state of my shoes.
Inside, I think about going up to my room, but then imagine him coming up to find me and decide instead to go to the place I feel safest.
The art room is empty, save for the row of clay busts we’ve been working on. They’re supposed to be representations of ourselves, and Stella has changed the nose on hers so many times that, yesterday, it fell off completely, which made us laugh a lot. Today, though, the busts are watching me steadily as I cross the room, towards Laura’s little office at the back. The door is closed and I feel sure she’s in there. Already, I anticipate the warmth from the fan heater, my fingers closing around the mug of tea she’ll make me, the way we’ll giggle when I ask her to hide me from Drew.
But before I’ve even fully opened the door I know the office is empty. There’s no scent of jasmine, no waft of heat. I step inside, and close the door behind me.
‘Hannah?’
The sound appears to be coming from only a few feet away, near the doorway of the art room. I don’t think I have ever heard Drew speak, and his high-pitched, reedy voice comes as an unpleasant shock. I hold my breath, as if he might be able to hear me breathing through the wooden door of Laura’s office.
For thirty seconds or more, I remain like that, not moving or breathing. When there is no further noise from outside I allow myself to exhale.
Then the door handle turns.
Before I have a chance to react, the door is flung open, light flooding in.
I close my eyes.