Chosen (9 page)

‘Going to try them on, then?' Hannah says. Her eyes are still on the door Martha went out of, and there's a snarky little smile on her face.

‘I don't particularly want to change,' Dodie says.

‘You really
like
being a sore thumb?'

Dodie shrugs. It's not such a big deal, and she is hot.
All the things I do for you!
she'll say to Seth. She steps out of the jeans – should have taken the boots off first; she unzips and hops about ridiculously, while Hannah and Rebecca wait, looking at the floor. She puts on the loose, cool trousers; a little too long after all. Rebecca kneels to roll up the bottoms for her. Dodie peels off her sweater – her favourite green cashmere – and hands it over. She pulls the capacious T-shirt down over her own vest. Of course there
is no mirror. Wearing these pyjama-like clothes makes her sleepier than ever.

Hannah folds the old clothes and stores them on a shelf, alongside her boots.

‘You forgot your watch.'

Dodie's hand clasps over it. ‘I'd rather not, if you don't mind. It's just I always wear it.'

‘Imagine if we all wore watches what it would be like here! All the time-junkying.' Hannah puts her hand out.

‘What?'

‘Ticking and bleeping and counting the minutes.'

Dodie looks to Rebecca for support, but doesn't get any. Hannah keeps her eyes on the watch until, sulkily, Dodie unbuckles the strap and hands it over.

‘Keep it safe, though,' she says.

It was a present from Rod when she had Jake: a green strap, a wooden face with numbers he inlaid himself, a proper watch with tiny cogs, not digital. He made it secretly when she was still pregnant. He brought her home from hospital to a house filled with flowers, some bought, but mostly nicked from the Botanics: roses shedding petals, rusty dahlias and huge crunchy hydrangea heads. There was champagne on ice and a fridge full of all her favourite treats, cheeses and anchovies and a coffee cake he'd actually made himself. But the blanket was already descending by then, the sky squashing in on her like a collapsing tent and the baby in the car seat was a stranger, dangerous, with hard gums and a grotesquely pulsing head. She'd sipped champagne and strapped on the watch, but the effort of smiling was a fight against gravity.

‘Let's find you some slippers.' Rebecca chooses her a pair of espadrilles. ‘These fit?'

Dodie sticks her feet in them. Now she feels properly ready for bed.

Hannah escorts them on yet another trek through featureless corridors. ‘Enter silently and with respect,' she
says. ‘Follow Rebecca's lead.' The door opens into a larger room filled with a throbbing hum; it's like walking into a hive, but instead of bees, lilac people humming, the most powerfully undoing sound.

‘Just copy me,' Rebecca whispers. She blinks and grasps her thumb, bows her head to a man inside the door, who's wearing a long white robe and a mask. Dodie snorts and glances at Rebecca, and receives a sharp, green look. She presses her lips together and follows Rebecca to a stool in the back row. John and Daniel are both there. Daniel looks up, smiles his pretty smile, lowers his eyelids. The electric light illuminates the strange ridges of John's scalp and makes him look a ghastly colour, like parchment. He smiles as he hums – no, it's not humming this time, but a kind of intense murmuring. In front of her a row of necks: black, brown, white; stubble from the cropped hair in every shade. The backs of ears have such a ridiculous and vulnerable look, such silly flaps.

Rebecca has started up the mumble now, but Dodie can't distinguish the words.
So sleepy
. No window in here, so you can't tell the time of day. Not enough lunch – and so late. Will they have a tea break; a slice of that nice cake? White ceiling, flat white light fitting. The chanting is actually quite soothing. Twenty minutes then, the time it takes to walk a mile, imagine walking from the park to the roundabout, that's about a mile. She closes her eyes. Does the bookie come before the dry-cleaner's? A car driving through a puddle sends up a sheet of water to soak her legs.
Stop it
. She breathes and watches and counts her breaths. Go with the flow, go with the flow; she watches the shapes behind her eyelids: clouds, and blurry light and a figure, shadowy, a broken puppet dangling in a hallway.
No
. Her eyes jolt open.

She studies the necks again, thick necks and thin necks. She closes her eyes.
Don't
. Seth. A prickle of frustration.
No
. Jake with his bright round eyes.
No
. She tries to be soothed and buoyed by the voices washing all around her, closing her eyes again. Breathe and breathe.

The sound is like water bubbling, all the individual voices merging into a continuous babble. She's on a bridge, water flowing underneath her, breathe in and out and in and out, water running over stones and rising and in the water Stella's face –
no!
She snaps her eyes open to all the lilac and hair and white and the distinct black dots of stubble on the back of someone's neck and nothing else to see so shut your eyes again, go with it, with the flow, and breathe and breathe.

The time goes slowly. The twenty minutes feel like hours. The sounds are petering out. She opens her eyes, blinks, feels like she's been asleep and dreaming something that has evaporated. Her mouth is dry. One foot is numb, she fidgets it and the blood returns just as a high, thin bell tingles in the air. Everyone raises their arms above their heads and stretches forward, foreheads to the ground, a groaning and cracking sound as their bodies move again. Dodie does the same, feeling a delicious popping in the muscles between her ribs.

They stand and do the movements: a stretch, a bend, a twist, like a speedy yoga class and she tries to keep up, copy the row in front of her and it's so nice to move after all the sitting still. She'd never learn it though, never learn to move in unison, and who wants to move in unison anyway?

‘Cup of tea?' Rebecca whispers as they leave.

‘God,
yes,
' Dodie whispers back. ‘I'd kill for a cup. And then I really
must
phone. Rod'll be going spare.'

‘Rod your husband?'

‘Boyfriend. I
think
,' she says, tantalizingly, but Rebecca doesn't take the bait.

Y
ou'd keep fit here, all the hurrying through the corridors after the tiny lunch. John lets them into a poky room with two sofas and a low table. Daniel looks up at them over the rim of his mug. On the table there's a teapot, but no sign of any cake or even biscuits.

‘What's with the masks?' Dodie says.

‘The Masks have completed initial Process,' Daniel says. ‘One day we get to wear them too.'

‘But
why
? Why the hell would you want to wear a mask?'

John puts his finger to his lips. ‘Sister, you are too loud,' he says.

Loud?
Dodie opens her mouth again but nothing comes out.

‘You'll understand in time,' Daniel says.

‘Sit and have some tea.' Rebecca fills two mugs.

Dodie does sit on one of the sofas, kicks off the espadrilles and tucks her feet underneath her. ‘So, how long have you been here?'

Rebecca hands Dodie her tea. ‘Personal' – she seems to search for the word – ‘
chitchat
is, like, not encouraged.'

‘Any activity that is a distraction from Soul Work is not encouraged,' John adds, then presses his hand to his stomach and winces. Dodie sips the tea, something herbal, greenish and a little bitter, not the Earl Grey she was hoping for.

‘No biscuits?' she says.

‘The Process requires a clearing out of mental . . .' John stops. ‘Helps clear . . .' he says, ‘the Process,' and then he stops again, droplets of sweat clouding his face. ‘Pardon me.' He gets up, makes for the door. Daniel follows, puts himself under John's arm as a prop.

‘Hope it's not the tea.' Dodie eyes her cup.

‘Come, John,' Daniel says, supporting him while he takes two or three attempts to key in the right number – and then they are out.

Rebecca shakes her head. ‘He's got something, I think. Like, you know, something really bad.'

‘Poor John. But hey, how does he know the number to get out?'

‘John is a big buddy – more advanced. Been here years.'

‘How long have you been here?'

Rebecca wraps her hands round her mug of tea and looks round nervously. ‘We're not meant to be alone, in a twosome,' she says.

‘What?'

Rebecca sips her tea. Dodie copies her. Actually it's not bad; under the bitterness there's a hint of something sweet, liquorice maybe. ‘Strange,' she says.

‘A special balance of herbs,' Rebecca says. ‘Helps concentrate the mind.'

‘Like a drug?'

‘Soothing.'

‘What is it?'

Rebecca shrugs.

‘I can't just hang around,' Dodie says. ‘Rod'll be having kittens. Anyway, what's up between Martha and Hannah?'

Rebecca wrinkles her nose. ‘Yeah, something. I dunno.'

‘I mean, I thought it was meant to be all peace and love here.'

Rebecca puts her head on one side. ‘Peace and love,' she echoes, thoughtfully. She stands up, sits again. ‘Look, Dodie, I think we should like, shut up and quietly wait. Just contemplate.'

‘See, I've got too much to contemplate,' Dodie begins, ‘it's driving me bonkers.' But Rebecca looks pointedly away. It would be an outrageous snub in any other circumstance, but Dodie senses sympathy. She considers leaving the tea; what if it
is
drugged? But she's thirsty. And Rebecca's on her second cup. ‘I wonder what time it is?' she says. Nothing. ‘Is this room bugged?' she asks. ‘Is that why you won't talk to me?'

Rebecca gives a delicate snort.

‘Why not then? How long have you been here? Eh? Eh?' She keeps saying it until Rebecca cracks and grins. She's not pretty but her face lights up outrageously when she smiles. She would be a laugh if you met her anywhere but here.

‘Days like, lose their edges,' she explains.

‘How come you're here?' Dodie says.

‘OK.' Rebecca hunches forward and speaks quickly, keeping her eyes focused on her tea. ‘Met this guy – this fisherman – at Manchester Piccadilly. He was selling flowers. I was, like, in a bad place and, somehow, he scooped me up. He saved me.'

‘A
fisherman
?'

‘We call them our fishermen – and fisherwomen – they wait in, like, airports, stations, places of transition,' Rebecca says, ‘where people who need – people trying to, like, escape – often are.'

‘The Lost?'

‘Yup. The Lost shall become the Chosen.'

‘Hmmm.' Dodie frowns. She gnaws the edge of her green nail, the colour disastrous against the lilac outfit. ‘Who are the fishermen?' she asks.

‘Us, the Chosen, once we've completed the Process. Once we're clear. I
so
want to be clear.'

‘The Chosen,' Dodie says. ‘
I
'm not chosen.' And nor does she want to be. ‘So, what was up?' she asks. ‘A bad place, you said.'

Rebecca drops her gaze and shakes her head. ‘It was just . . .' She seems about to veer away from the question but then it snags her. ‘This fisherman' – she looks nervously at the door – ‘comes up and just, like, hands me this flower, a white carnation, just, like, an ordinary old bog-standard carnation but somehow it seems to glow. He tells me I'm chosen. Chosen. Ten minutes before, I'd been about to throw myself under a train.
Chosen
, he says and just like that –'

‘What
was
up?'

Rebecca sighs and puffs, reels off her troubles like a shopping list: ‘Preggers, dumped, failed my exams, kicked out of college.' Her voice deepens as the memory takes hold. ‘I lived with my dad when I was a kid then he married some bitch and they had children of their own.' Her pupils flare. ‘I had no one,
then
. I felt, like, nowhere. I had an abortion and then I was so, so, so, so sorry.' A choke comes to her voice. ‘I wanted it you know, I didn't even know I wanted it till too late.' She begins to cry. ‘My arms were empty.' She holds them out as if cradling a child. ‘Then I just, like, went into a downward spin.'

Dodie goes to put her arm round Rebecca just as the door opens and Hannah walks in. She flicks a hostile look at Dodie as she goes to Rebecca.

‘Sorry, sorry.' Rebecca sniffs. ‘But John was taken ill and –'

‘Your Brother must learn to be strong in the face of his symptoms.' Hannah takes a handkerchief from her pocket, puts a finger under Rebecca's chin and wipes her eyes.

‘Blow,' she says and, like a child, Rebecca blows her nose.

‘There.'

Hannah takes Rebecca's hands and pulls her to her feet. ‘Rebecca, Sister, look at me,' she says. Rebecca raises her eyes, the pale eyelashes spiky wet, and Hannah blinks into them. ‘Let it go,' she whispers, ‘let it go, let it go. Come on.'

They hum together, a wavering two-tone note that grows in strength until it breaks. Rebecca's chin rises, she blinks into Hannah's eyes and she smiles. ‘Thank you, Sister.'

‘This is why we don't encourage intimacy,' Hannah says. ‘What's the point of getting yourself in a state about the past? Do you believe that? What is the past?'

‘Nothing,' Rebecca says.

Satisfied, Hannah nods and lets Rebecca go. ‘I'll get some more tea.'

‘Is there anything to eat?' Dodie dares to ask.

Hannah frowns. The lines are deep as knife cuts between her eyebrows and beside her eyes. Her lips are thin and dry and bitten. ‘
Silence
. I won't be long.' She goes out with the teapot.

‘
God!
' Dodie says, once Hannah's left the room, but Rebecca doesn't react. She looks straight ahead, as if fascinated by the wall. ‘It's not bad to feel things.' But Rebecca won't even look at her. ‘You have to work things through. This place is crazy.
You
're crazy if you stick it.'