2018
When Quinn pushes the door of the monastery, it gives way with a rotting sigh. Together, she and Sofia step into the cool gloom of the interior. A space roughly the same size as the Pure Heart kitchen. Light slants through the broken window on their right but most of the space is deep in shadow.
A rustling sound at the back of the room makes Quinn start. A snake, hiding here from the heat of the day? Her sensitised ears trick her into thinking she can hear it sliding over to them on its smooth, treacherous belly. Ridiculous, she tells herself. She must stay calm, for Sofia’s sake. She is here to facilitate the girl’s healing. To hold the space for her.
Sofia is trembling. The tiny vibrations of her hand travel into Quinn’s.
‘It’s just a building; it can’t hurt you,’ Quinn says, although it feels as if the ancient stone walls are closing in on her. An illusion. A trick of the light, or lack of it.
Sofia releases her hand and wanders around the desolate space that must have once been a picturesque place of prayer. Along each wall are faded images of the Virgin Mary and cloaked Byzantine saints. The floorboards beneath their feet are decaying, spoiled by the rain that seeps in through the roof each winter. At the back of the room, in what may once have been the altar area, there are no floorboards, just hard, compacted earth.
Sofia stops where the wooden floor and the bare earth meet and lifts her eyes to the ceiling. The wooden beam Eva hanged herself from is no longer there. Andreas removed it after her death. It had no functional purpose; unlike the two supporting beams it was connected to.
The creak of the door becomes that beam creaking with the weight of Eva’s body. That sound was one of the first things Quinn noticed that terrible day when she ran down here to find Eva dead and swinging.
She shakes the image away. Stay calm. Hold the space.
Sofia stoops to examine the wreath of dried wild roses laid by Holly.
‘We never forgot her,’ Quinn says. She will never forget the enigmatic tilt of Eva’s snapped neck or her bulging eyes.
‘I watched her walk down here that day.’ Sofia’s gaze returns to the ceiling. ‘I was sitting at my desk, reading the book Charles gave me, and I watched her walk across the field and into the trees.’
Quinn shivers. She hears the rustling again. Something dark slithering closer.
‘I got sleepy, so I had a nap,’ Sofia says. ‘When I woke and she wasn’t in her room, I knew something was wrong. I should have come down sooner.’
‘You mustn’t blame yourself.’ Is it forgiveness Sofia wants? Is that why she came to Pure Heart? ‘You were just a child.’
‘I don’t blame myself.’ Sofia fixes her with a chilling stare. ‘Not at all.’
Above Quinn’s head a sudden, startling movement. A blurry vision of wings. An angel? A demon?
‘It’s only a bird,’ Sofia says.
Quinn looks up again and sees a large jay, squawking and flapping.
Sofia laughs. ‘Poor Quinn. You must be feeling the effects now.’
‘Effects?’
‘The psilocybin. I put a large dose of it in your tea.’
‘The tea? But you drank it too.’
‘No. I poured some for myself before adding the drugs to the flask.’
Mushrooms. Quinn’s heart mutates into the flapping jay and thrashes around in her chest. When Sofia opens the door and sets the jay free, her heart remains trapped.
‘I had to find a way to make you face up to yourself,’ Sofia says. ‘You’re never in the wrong, are you?’
‘That’s very irresponsible, Sofia.’ Quinn’s voice sounds fearful. ‘You’ve no idea how my body or mind might respond to—’
‘Unpleasant, is it?’ Sofia asks. ‘Someone messing with your body chemistry? With your mind? Drugs are powerful, aren’t they?’
Quinn lays a hand on her chest and tries to soothe the little bird trapped inside it. ‘I didn’t give your mother drugs,’ she says. ‘I helped her stop taking them.’
‘And the withdrawal symptoms messed with her brain chemistry. That’s why she hanged herself.’
The floor buckles beneath Quinn’s feet. Straightens. Buckles again. Mushrooms. She first took them when she was thirteen years old. In her youth she tried everything except heroin. Twenty years of smoking and snorting and sipping and altering her consciousness in whatever way she could. Looking for spiritual enlightenment not cheap thrills. Her last drug experience was an ayahuasca ceremony in the depths of the Peruvian rainforest. After that life-changing experience, she knew she no longer needed substances to connect with her Higher Self.
You know how to do this, she tells herself. Do not go to the dark side. Do not let in the fear. She is not in the ideal mindset for taking hallucinogenic substances, nor is this the ideal setting, but if she relaxes into it, the drug should bring her some kind of insight.
The fear, though. She’s not a teenager or a young woman any more. What if her mind and her nervous system don’t react well to the trip?
‘I’m tired of feeling this way,’ Sofia says. ‘Grief never ends.’
‘Eva wouldn’t want you to feel this way.’ Quinn believes this. If she can just crack Sofia’s hard, cynical veneer and reach the lost soul inside, she can resolve this crazy situation.
‘What was I like before it happened?’ Sofia says.
‘You were a beautiful child.’ Quinn strains to see the plump, smiling, girl in the lean, embittered young woman before her, but not even the drugs help with that. ‘Warm, kind.’
‘Gentle?’
‘Always.’ Sofia often cared for Eva when she was having one of her bad days. Reading stories to her as Eva lay in bed. Feeding her spoonfuls of nourishing soup.
‘You’ve suffered so much loss,’ Quinn says. ‘Your mother. Your father.’
‘I feel nothing for my father.’ Sofia bends down and picks up the wreath of dried roses. ‘From what I heard, we were better off without him.’
Quinn stares at the wreath. Are the roses nodding at her? She shakes her head. Tries to centre herself. ‘Losing a parent so young was another deeply traumatic experience. I doubt you’ve ever addressed it.’
Sofia sighs. ‘Oh, Quinn. Haven’t you realised yet? I’ve no desire to compete in the Olympiad of Victimhood. I know it’s more fashionable than ever to share your deepest wounds with anyone willing to listen but I’m not playing.’
‘We all need to heal our—’
‘I actually get why you don’t want this place to become a retreat. The people who will come here aren’t on genuine spiritual quests. They want a quick fix for all their problems. An escape from their everyday lives.’ Sofia tosses the wreath aside. ‘But you don’t need to worry about all that. You’ll be dead.’
‘I’m not going anywhere.’
‘Everyone has a price,’ Sofia says. ‘I wish that wasn’t true, but it is. Perhaps that’s partly why I came back here, so I could see if there really are people in the world beyond the temptation of money.’
‘That temptation is coming from you.’ Quinn tries to swallow but her mouth is too dry. Has her tongue always been this thick? ‘Eva would hate how materialistic you’ve become.’
‘My mother had a price too.’ Sofia reels round, her face blazing with anger. ‘When she eloped with my father, her parents threatened to disinherit her. She said she didn’t want the money, but she did. She was a spoilt princess. They offered her a generous allowance but only if she signed a legal document that gave them sole custody of me in the case of her death. She sold me out.’
‘I… I didn’t know.’
‘No. Eva didn’t tell anyone that.’ Sofia looks up at where the missing beam once rested. ‘She sold me out so she’d have enough money to party in Ibiza with a second-rate DJ.’
‘She was young,’ Quinn says. ‘Your father was a bad influence.’
‘She wasn’t a saint, but how can I judge her? I sold my soul too. I could have escaped my grandparents when I was old enough. I could have made a different life for myself, but I chose not to. I became who they wanted me to be so I could get my hands on the money.’
‘The money is your birthright. You can do what you like with it. Transform it into something amazing.’
‘Give it to you, you mean?’ Sofia laughs. ‘The money itself isn’t the buzz. It’s the power it gives you. People really will do anything for it.’
Quinn feels a sudden urge to liberate her feet. She kicks off her Crocs and tiptoes over the damp, rotting floorboards until she reaches the bare earth in the altar area. She stands still and imagines roots shooting down from her feet into the earth. Deep as a tree. No one will uproot her. This thought steadies her. Then she realises they could cut her down or poison her or—
‘I can feel her.’ Sofia’s arms shoot up in the air. ‘My mother’s here. She’s with us.’
Is she? Quinn squints into the gloom but sees only Sofia swaying side to side, her eyes closed. ‘Speak to her,’ she says. ‘Tell her anything. Speak from the heart.’
Sofia stops swaying and opens her eyes. Cruel peals of laughter echo around the monastery. ‘She’s not really here. I’m not a lunatic.’
Quinn dips to one side as if blown by a strong wind. She senses a splitting deep inside her, a crack through which a dark, suppressed memory escapes.
Two days before Eva hanged herself, Quinn was with her in her room.
‘I do not feel right,’ Eva said. ‘Maybe I should take the medication again?’
‘No,’ Quinn said, determined to help Eva stick to her healing path. ‘You have to stay strong.’
‘I am having suicidal thoughts.’ Desperation in Eva’s haunted eyes. ‘I want to kill myself.’
‘You don’t want to kill yourself,’ Quinn said. ‘Your thoughts are symbolic. You want to kill off the sick part of you. The part that’s stopping you living your life.’
Now Quinn is back in the monastery with Sofia and her bare feet are sinking into the earth. The earth is sucking her down and she is lying on her back, and she hears the metallic ring of a spade striking stone. The spade glints above her and then all is darkness. She is buried deep in the earth and she scrabbles around and she feels bones. They are her bones, and she thinks: this is what will happen to me, this is where I will end up. Here alone in the darkness.
Bones, bones, bones.