but the sudden stink of incense made me want to cough. It was like being in Camden Market. ‘What’s that smell?’
‘It’s cinnamon to raise the energy in the room. It’s a very powerful tool, cinnamon.’
‘Oh. I only have it on porridge.’
‘Florence, quiet please. I’m not interested in your breakfast. I need to summon the goddess.’
I pinched my lips, frozen in position, hoping that nobody would knock and see me lying on Gwendolyn’s pink sofa, clutching a couple of pebbles with a stone balancing on my face. I’d call the police if I stumbled into a scene like this.
‘Repeat after me. I smell the power within.’
‘I smell the power within.’
‘I see the power within.’ My nose twitched with an itch.
‘I see the power within,’ I said, trying to ignore the itch.
‘I feel the power within.’
‘I feel the power within.’
Then Gwendolyn read a short, very bad poem, but all I could think about was my nose. I didn’t want to scratch it and earn a scolding so I just lay there contorting my face in an effort to quell the itch. I imagined her acting the poem out like Eugene, flinging her arms in the air, but I didn’t dare open an eye to check.
‘Worries be gone, she needs you no more, worries be gone, out of the door. Stresses and strains, worries and strife, leave now, depart, be gone from her life!’
On balance, I reckon ‘The Owl and the Pussy-Cat’ was better.
‘Have you finished?’ I asked, after she’d fallen silent.
‘I have,’ she said, removing the stone from my forehead and prising open my fingers for the ones in my palms. I sat up and scratched my nose.
‘I believe this will help you see your path more clearly,’ she said solemnly. ‘You have a good soul, Florence. I know it will make the right decision in the end.’
As she clasped me to her nipples again in a goodbye hug, I wished I was as convinced.
Chapter Ten
‘I SAID NO PENISES!’ shouted Mia.
It was the Saturday before the wedding and twenty of us were sitting round a table in a Soho club. It was a new members’ club just for women, Ruby had explained, and we were going to do a ‘fun’ activity before drinks and dinner.
She’d been very secretive about this activity. No wonder. It turned out to be a class called Milky Moments, which had nothing to do with milk. Instead, a man called Lewis was standing in front of us, explaining that we were about to enjoy a ‘light-hearted’ ninety-minute foreplay lesson. Lewis was a singer from Guildford who ran these classes to make extra cash, he confided to Ruby and me. Once everyone else had arrived, he’d handed out hot pink feather boas, novelty aprons with naked male and female torsos on them, and dildos. This is what had upset Mia: we each had a floppy, rubber dildo on the table in front of us.
‘Keep calm and drink your Prosecco,’ Ruby told her sister.
‘I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one this big,’ said Patricia, who’d finished her glass and was holding her dildo like a lightsaber.
‘That’s what they all say, madam,’ Lewis told her with a wink. He’d draped a feather boa around his neck which clashed with his purple silk shirt.
‘Less of the madam, please, and can I have a top-up?’ replied Patricia, putting down the dildo and waving her glass at him.
Lewis went around the table refilling glasses and we began.
First came a warm-up exercise. ‘Wiggle your fingers, ladies! We need to get those going. That’s it, mother-of-the-bride, very good. And then we need to windmill our arms, watch the person next to you. There we go.’ Lewis’s pelvis rocked back and forwards towards us as he demonstrated, his arms sawing their way through the air like a swimming instructor.
There was a mixture of Mia’s friends around that table. We’d all politely kissed and said hello at the start but I’d already forgotten the names. Some were fashiony sorts from her office. They were the most sombre. Dressed in velvet dresses or silk jumpsuits with blow-dried hair, they’d also looked at their dildos with grim horror.
Then there were the school friends. Less severe, more giggling, they were mostly all married with small children who they’d left at home for the day with Sloaney husbands called things like Biffer and JP.
Hugo’s sisters – Holly and Henrietta – were sitting next to one another. I squinted at them and tried to remember what they did. One schooled show-jumping horses in