with new faces and new experiences: the long drive here; screaming on the side of the road; the serial killer on vacation (it was that damned book’s fault for making her think of serial killers); Ben and Jessica in that car; Yao unexpectedly filling a test tube with her blood; Masha and her near-death experience; chatty Napoleon and his intense wife; lovely young Zoe with her multiple piercings and long smooth brown legs, sitting in the Lavender Room telling Frances about her dead brother. That’s why Zoe’s mother had looked so sad on the stairs. She probably wasn’t intense at all. Just sad. The tall, dark, and handsome man who’d cried, “Gesundheit!” and the flustered lady with Frances’s glasses.
A lot for one day. Stimulating and distracting. She hadn’t had time for any more existential crises, so that was something. She hadn’t even thought much about Paul Drabble, apart from when she was telling Jan and Zoe about what had happened. She’d be over her internet scam by the time she left. Over the review. Over everything.
And thin! She’d be so thin! Her stomach rumbled. She was starving. Dinner tonight had been possibly the most excruciating meal of her life.
When she took her place at the long dining room table, she picked up a small card propped in front of her plate:
At Tranquillum House we recommend MINDFUL EATING. Please take small bites of your food. After each mouthful, place your cutlery back on the table, close your eyes, and chew for at least fourteen seconds, slowly and pleasurably.
Oh God, she thought. We’re going to be here forever.
She put down the card and looked up to share a “Can you believe this?” glance with someone. The only ones prepared to meet her eyes were the astonishingly handsome man, who possibly winked at her, and Zoe, who definitely grinned, and responded with a look that said, “I know. I can’t believe it either.”
Masha wasn’t in the dining room, but her presence was felt, like that of a managing director or schoolteacher who could turn up at any moment. Yao and Delilah were there but they didn’t sit down to eat with the guests. Instead they stood at the side of the room, at either side of a large candelabra on an ornate sideboard. The lighting in the room was muted and the candelabra had three lit candles.
They sat in silence for at least ten … endless … minutes before the meals came out, delivered by a briskly smiling gray-haired lady in a chef’s hat. She didn’t say a word but nevertheless exuded goodwill. It felt so rude not to thank her. Frances tried to convey warm gratitude with a nod of her head.
Every person at the table received a different meal. Both Heather and Zoe, who sat next to Frances, received delicious-looking steaks together with baked potatoes. Frances’s meal was a quinoa salad. It was excellent, but in Frances’s world she’d call that a “side,” and by the time she’d masticated each mouthful for fourteen seconds it had lost all flavor.
Napoleon, who sat opposite Frances, received some sort of lentil dish. He leaned forward over the bowl and waved the rising steam toward his nose, enjoying the scent. It was clear the poor man was desperate to chat. Frances would bet that in normal circumstances he would have been discussing the history of the lentil.
The serial killer studied his giant bowl of green salad mournfully before picking up his cutlery and stabbing three cherry tomatoes onto his fork with an air of tragic resignation.
The flustered lady with the quirky glasses received fish, to her apparent delight.
The astonishingly handsome man was assigned chicken and vegetables, which he appeared to find mildly amusing.
Ben received a vegetable curry and finished his meal well before the rest of the table.
Jessica was given a really delicious-looking stir-fry, which was the wrong dish for the poor girl. She spent ages laboriously twirling the long noodles around her fork and then dabbing worriedly at her face with her napkin for splashes of food.
Nobody broke the silence or made eye contact. When Napoleon sneezed again, nobody responded in any way. How quickly people adapted to strange rules and regulations!
Heather ate less than half her steak before putting down her knife and fork with a little puff of irritation. Frances had to restrain herself from leaping on it like a wolf.
Throughout the meal, Yao and Delilah stood silent and unmoving. They were like footmen, except you couldn’t snap your fingers and tell