I’m woken yet again at some unearthly hour. Can’t I ever get a decent night’s sleep? But this time I think I’m hearing the strangest sound of gongs beating gently in the dawn. I turn over, telling myself I’m imagining things, and go back to sleep.
Half an hour later I am convinced I can totally hear a gong beating. Boom. Boom. Boom. In the Royal Trocadero? Weird!
I can’t hold out any longer. I slip on my robe and creep to the door and peep out. The bodyguards have given up patrolling my floor because ever since I’ve been here absolutely nothing has happened. From the security point of view, the nasty threat thing seems to be a bit of a disappointment. The guys tend to hang around downstairs instead. But in place of them – now this IS weird – walking down the corridor is a totally shaven-headed monk in a saffron robe. He has bare feet and is swinging a small woven basket with a lid.
He comes to my door, holding his two hands together as if praying, and bows his head.
‘Er, hi!’ I try.
Silently, he holds out his basket.
I peer inside to find a cheese sandwich and a peach melba yogurt.
‘Errrm?’
He bows again. The penny drops. Of course. He’s Buddhist. A monk. He’s asking for food.
‘Hold on. I’ll be back.’
I head for the mini-bar, wondering if anything inside will be suitable for a Buddhist’s breakfast. I present him with a packet of luxury salted cocktail nuts, a Coke and a Kit-Kat.
He bows again in acceptance and moves on down the corridor.
I go back to bed thinking ?????????
All is revealed. I have summoned up the courage to go up and see Mum and found her deep in meditation on a prayer mat opposite my mystery monk.
Vix holds a finger up to her lips.
‘How is she coping?’ I whisper.
Vix casts a glance towards Mum’s bedroom. ‘Well, she’s stopped flinging things around.’ Mum’s door is open. The room’s a tip.
Vix then takes me aside and gives me the low-down in an undertone.
The monk’s name is Sit (which suits him, I later find, since that’s what he spends most of his time doing – admittedly with his legs in a very uncomfortable sort of cat’s-cradle position, but still).
Sit is Mum’s new ‘spiritual adviser’. It seems she’s now done Roman Catholicism – period. Or as Mum told me later: ‘Let’s face it. What has it done for me? All that praying and I didn’t win a single Grammy.’
She now thinks an Eastern religion might be more ‘her thing’. She picked up Sit early one morning when she was jogging at Venice Beach. Apparently, he’s doing a kind of Buddhist version of our ‘year out’, i.e. a ‘year in’ a Buddhist temple.
‘It seems to be helping,’ whispered Vix. ‘To cope, you know.’
I nod. They’ve just got to the mumbly-chanty bit. I creep off to my singing lesson and leave them to it.
I ask Jasper why he thinks Mum needs a ‘spiritual adviser’.
‘Oh, it’s because she’s so insecure,’ says Jasper without a moment’s hesitation.
‘Mum, insecure?’ Are we talking about the same person?
‘Yeah, sure. Imagine what it’s like being at the top. If you’re going to be going anywhere, there’s only one direction. And that’s down, baby. Now she’s missed out on those Grammys she’s scared rigid that her fame is suddenly going to fade away. She’s going to slide down a slippery slope to nowhere and wake up one morning a has-been.’
I stare at Jasper disbelievingly. ‘But, I mean, she’s so famous, she’s so rich, she’s got all these people working for her. Like Mum says, she’s an empire.’
‘A house of cards,’ says Jasper. ‘One litttle pouff and it could all be blown away.’ He turns to the piano and plays a few chords: ‘Down … down … down … down …’ he sings and then he continues with some lyrics.
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a chorus from Metropolis. There are all these people in the subway, right? And they’re going down. But it’s also about the city. A city sinking under the weight of all the dirt that’s going on.’
‘Isn’t that a bit gloomy?’
‘Sure it’s gloomy. So’s life sometimes. It’s not all nice, you know, Holly.’
After that I tell him about how Mum so very nearly changed her mind about ‘Home is Where Your Heart is’.
‘Typical insecure behaviour. She’s too scared to commit herself. She has to keep changing her mind until it’s a “fait accompli”.
‘What does that mean?’
‘It’s French for “too-late-baby-there’s-no-going-back”.’
We spend the rest of the lesson working on a couple more songs. I have been practising my scales and my breathing exercises and Jasper says I’ve extended my range by a couple of notes at the top of my register, whatever that means. But I feel pleased anyway.
I go back to my room thinking about what he said about Mum being insecure. Surely not.