She said she was fine, she constantly reassured them she was fine, she was happy; she understood their need to be reassured. But she’d worked so hard this year, much too hard, tapping away grimly on her computer as if a “media studies” degree was a matter of life and death, and she deserved a break.
Heather looked at the wall above their bed that separated their room from Zoe’s and wished she could see straight through it. What was she doing right now? She didn’t have her phone. Twenty-year-olds needed their phones by their sides at all times. Zoe found it stressful if her battery power dropped below eighty percent.
They shouldn’t be risking their daughter’s mental health like this. Zoe didn’t sleep alone in a bed until she was ten years old.
Had Zoe ever stayed in a hotel room on her own before?
Never. Zoe had been away on holidays with her girlfriends but they would have always shared a room, or so Heather would have thought.
She just broke up with her boyfriend and now she is alone in her room with nothing but her thoughts.
My God. Her heart raced. She knew she was catastrophizing. She is an adult. She’s fine.
Napoleon turned from the balcony, caught her eye, and once again dropped his gaze. Heather felt her molars grind. He’d be so disappointed in her if she spoke only five minutes into “the noble silence.”
Jesus. This was unexpectedly hard. The silence made her thoughts scream. She hadn’t realized how much distraction Napoleon provided with his incessant chatter. How ironic if she was the one who couldn’t handle silence, not him.
They didn’t need silence or fasting or detoxification. They just needed a refuge from January. Last January they’d stayed home and that had been a disaster. It was even worse than the year before. It seemed that January was a cruel-eyed, clawed vulture that would terrorize Heather’s tiny family forever.
“Maybe we should go away this time,” Napoleon had suggested a few months ago. “Somewhere peaceful and quiet.”
“Like a monastery,” Zoe had said. Then her eyes brightened. “Or, I know, a health resort! We’ll get Dad’s cholesterol down.”
Napoleon’s school had offered all the teaching staff free health assessments back in June and Napoleon had been told his cholesterol was high, and his blood pressure was becoming worrisome, and it was great that he exercised, but he needed to make dramatic changes to his diet.
So Heather had Googled “health resorts.”
Are you in need of significant healing?
That was the opening line on the home page for the Tranquillum House website.
“Yes,” Heather had said quietly to her computer screen. “Yes, we are.”
It seemed likely that Tranquillum House targeted people of a socioeconomic status a few income levels higher than those of a high school teacher and a midwife, but their last proper holiday had been years ago, and Napoleon’s inheritance from his grandfather had been sitting there in the bank. They could afford it. There was nothing else they needed or wanted.
“Are you sure you want to be stuck with your parents at a health resort for ten days?” she’d asked Zoe.
Zoe shrugged, smiled. “I just want to spend this holiday sleeping. I’m so tired.”
Normal twenty-year-old girls shouldn’t be spending that much of their summer break with their parents, but then Zoe wasn’t a normal twenty-year-old girl.
Heather had clicked Book now and instantly regretted it. It was strange how something could appear so attractive and then, the very moment you committed to it, become wildly unattractive. But it was too late. She’d agreed to the terms and conditions. They could change the time they went, but they couldn’t get their money back. The three of them were doing a ten-day “cleanse” whether they liked it or not.
She’d spent days kicking herself. They didn’t need to be “transformed.” There was nothing wrong with their bodies. Everyone always said the three of them were exercise fanatics! This wasn’t the place for the Marconis; it was the place for people like that woman Napoleon had accosted on the stairs. What was her name? Frances. You could tell just by looking at her that she filled her life with lunches and facials and her husband’s work functions.
She looked vaguely familiar to Heather—probably because Heather knew so many women just like her: wealthy middle-aged women who hadn’t worked since before their children were born. There was nothing wrong with those women. Heather liked them. She just couldn’t be with them for too long