The Lie (9 page)

“You guys
have
to come to Isaac’s talk.” Daisy leans against the wall, one hand on her hip. “Johan might be there, and I don’t want to look like Billy No-Mates.”

Al grins. “And, what? We sit there like gooseberries while you try to make Isaac jealous by flirting with Johan? Bloody hell, Daisy, I can read you like a book.”

“
I’m
going to Isaac’s talk.”

“Of course you are.” Daisy rolls her eyes at Leanne, who is wearing a purple sarong and a grey vest top, with a multi-coloured beaded necklace that hangs past her waist. She looks like a shorter, bonier version of Cera. “And” – she turns her attention back to Al and me – “so are you two.”

The four of us are having a stand-off in the shower block at the back of the girls’ dormitory. It’s 6.55 a.m. and Isaac’s talk starts in five minutes. Other than Leanne, who’s been to each and every one of his talks since we arrived, the rest of us have successfully managed to avoid them. With titles like “Freeing your Toxic Mind”, “Achieving Contentment by Breaking Unhealthy Attachments” and “Harnessing Health through Positive Thought”, they don’t exactly appeal.

“You can badger me all you want, Daisy,” Al says, resolute, “but I’m not going. I don’t want to run into Isis.”

Daisy sighs. “Oh, for God’s sake, Al. You’re not still going on about that, are you? Isis is about as psychic as my backpack.”

“She knew things about Tommy that only you guys know.”

“Then she must have overheard someone talking about him. Leanne, are you sure haven’t mentioned him?”

Leanne, who’s been picking at the knot in her sarong with her spindly fingers for the last couple of minutes, looks up. “I haven’t, Daisy I swear. I wouldn’t do that to Al. It’s too personal.”

“Emma?”

“God, no.”

“Then maybe you were talking in your sleep, or something? Seriously, Al, if Isis freaks you out that much, just tell her to sod off if she tries to talk to you. You don’t have to listen to her voodoo claptrap if you don’t want to. You managed to avoid her last night, didn’t you?”

“Only because I went to bed early and pretended to be asleep when she came in. She was staring at me the whole way through dinner. She would have come over if I hadn’t left the room.”

“And what’s your excuse for not coming to the talk, Emma? I thought you were Isaac’s biggest fan?”

She asks the question lightly, but there’s a hint of irritation in her voice. I deliberately haven’t told anyone what happened with Isaac during my massage yesterday. Al was too upset after her experience, Leanne hasn’t stopped going on about how inspiring and amazing Isaac is, and if I tell Daisy, she’ll have a go at him and that’ll be it, holiday over. For now, I’m going to pretend it never happened and avoid being alone with him.

“I’ll go if everyone goes.” I look at Al. “Or stay behind with you, if that’s what you want …”

“Al.” Leanne gives me a dirty look then lays a hand on Al’s wrist. “Please come. I’ve hardly seen you since we got here.” She nestles her head against Al’s shoulder and looks up at her with dark, pleading eyes. “I miss you. I’ll have a word with Isis if she comes over to talk to you. We get on really well, she’ll listen to me.”

Al looks at Leanne for the longest time then exhales noisily through her nose. “Okay. But if she so much as looks at me, I’m out of there.”

The meditation room is largely empty. It’s just me, Al, Leanne, Daisy, the two Swedish girls who arrived yesterday, and a man I vaguely recognise from breakfast. He’s older than the rest of us by at least twenty years. I think he’s called Frank. He entered the room ten minutes ago and headed straight for the bookshelf at the back of the room. He’s been sitting in the corner, flicking through a book about Maoist culture for the last ten minutes. Every now and then, he glances up and smiles or nods at me. The first time he did it, I smiled back. Now it’s just got weird and I’m studiously avoiding eye contact.

Al hasn’t spoken since she entered the room. She’s sitting with her back against the turquoise, roughly plastered wall, her knees pulled up to her chest, her eyes on the door. Leanne is sitting beside her, on the other side of Daisy, listening to the full no-holds-barred details of her sex marathon with Johan yesterday. Daisy is attempting to whisper but she’s so excitable everyone in the room can hear every word. The Swedish girls keep nudging each other and laughing.

The door opens and Johan and Isis appear in the doorway. They’re an unlikely double act. He’s late twenties, tall, six foot four at least, and slim with broad shoulders, while Isis is short and petite and quite a bit older, with grey cropped hair, purple hessian trousers and a grey tank top. As they stroll into the room, Daisy and Al snap apart. Their reactions to the new arrivals couldn’t be more different. Al slumps into herself, head down, and rubs at the back of her neck with her hand, while Daisy sits up straight and pushes back her shoulders. She tips her head to one side and smiles coyly at Johan but he walks straight past her and crouches beside Frank. They have a conversation, after which Frank nods and reaches into his back pocket and hands over a passport. Johan pockets it then straightens up. He nods at Isis as she sits down to the right of the altar, in front of the gong, and strolls straight back out of the room.

“Arsehole,” Daisy says as the door closes behind Johan.

No one says anything else and we sit in uncomfortable silence for several minutes before the door clicks open again and Isaac appears in the doorway. My cheeks grow warm and I look down at my hands, knotted in my lap, before he can make eye contact with me. The next time I look up, he’s lounging on a beanbag in front of the altar, facing the group.

“I’m so glad to see so many of you here, especially when I know some of you weren’t sure about coming to this session.”

I glance at Al but she’s looking at the floor.

“Yesterday, we talked about detoxing the mind.” He reaches into his shirt pocket for his tobacco tin and proceeds to roll a cigarette, nimbly handling the thin papers with his long fingers. “This session continues that theme, only today we won’t be talking about attachment, anger or ignorance. Today, we’ll be talking about clearing emotional damage.”

I shift on my beanbag. Al isn’t the only one who feels uncomfortable sharing her secrets with strangers.

“I was physically abused as a child. My stepdad beat the shit out of me on a regular basis,” Isaac says. “He hated that my mum had had a kid with another man, so first he got her pregnant, then he turned her against me. She put me into care when I was eight years old.”

He stops speaking and the sentence hangs in the air, demanding a response, but no one says anything. I look at the floor and trace a knot in the dark wood with my finger.

“It fucked me up for a long time,” Isaac continues, “a really long time, and without really knowing it, I fucked up other people, too, because of what had happened to me.”

He sparks his lighter and the scent of burning tobacco fills the air. “As I grew up, I became your quintessential bastard. I adored the chase, but the second a woman started caring about me or putting pressure on me to emotionally commit, I was off. Sometimes they refused to let me go, and then I’d have to get cruel.” He pauses and looks at Isis, who nods thoughtfully. “I didn’t want anyone to care for me. I didn’t need looking after or saving or loving. Fuck that shit.”

Isaac cranes back his neck and blows a long stream of smoke up towards the ceiling. He rocks back ever so slightly on his tailbone then looks at us. “I thought I was protecting myself by not letting anyone get close. I thought I was stopping myself from getting hurt, but I was actually making things worse. I was screwing myself up.” He shrugs. “And then I met this lot” – he looks at Isis again – “while I was travelling, and I figured some stuff out. I went to India, I studied with yogis, I learned to let go.”

I’m suddenly aware that what he’s saying is having an effect on Daisy. Her eyes are trained on his face but her hands are fidgeting in her lap, her fingers pulling and twisting at the tassels on her skirt. I know she’s thinking about her mum and sister. Isaac wasn’t the only one who had a shit childhood.

“How?” she says. Her voice sounds unnaturally high and strained. “How did you let go?”

Isaac smiles. “You want an easy solution, don’t you, Daisy? You want me to say ‘chant this meditation’, ‘get this massage’, ‘visit this temple’ and all your shit will go away.”

“No.” Daisy pulls a face; she looks awkward, embarrassed. “I don’t want you to do anything apart from answer my question.”

“Touché!” He laughs and the atmosphere in the room lifts. “Okay, I’ll tell you what did it. I opened up and started talking. About everything, to anyone who’d listen, every dirty little detail. Every filthy fucked up secret I’d kept to myself for twenty-four years. I thought that, by keeping it to myself, by blocking it out and pretending it hadn’t happened, I was stronger than the abuse my stepfather had inflicted on me. But I wasn’t. I was its slave. I was carrying it around with me everywhere like a monkey on my back, and it affected everything I did, everything I said and everyone I met. So I put my shit out there – I put it all out there – and when I did, it didn’t have the strength to hurt me any more.”

“So – what – now you don’t treat women like shit any more?” The vulnerability has disappeared from Daisy’s voice and her normal confident, scathing tone has returned.

Isaac looks at her steadily, his eyelids narrowed against the stream of cigarette smoke escaping his lips. “I don’t treat anyone like shit now.”

Daisy doesn’t look away and they continue to stare at each other for one thump of my heart, two, three, four. The room is silent and everyone is still, but there’s a frisson in the air, an invisible cord connecting Isaac and Daisy.

“How about you, Daisy?” Isaac’s whispered question breaks the strained silence, and everyone shifts position. “What baggage are you carrying that’s weighing you down?”

Daisy’s cheeks pale and a fine sweat beads across her top lip.

“I …” The word escapes from her lips then she closes them again. She glances around the room as though she’s just woken up and realised where she is. She catches Al’s eye and smiles. Al is up on her haunches, her upper body twisted towards the door as though she’s seconds from running out of the room. “I think someone else should go first.” Daisy looks at me, and laughs. “Emma?”

I shake my head. Any secrets I have are staying hidden.

The rest of the group stay silent. The two Swedish girls are sitting so closely together they look like they’re conjoined at the arm. Frank, the older man, is staring out of the window, his eyes unblinking.

“I’ll go first,” Leanne offers. She’s sitting cross-legged now, her sarong puddling on the floor around her.

“Thank you, Leanne.” Isaac nods at her and she lights up like a beacon.

“The last time I saw my mum,” Leanne says, not taking her eyes off Isaac, “she told me that God must hate her. When I asked her what she meant, she said, ‘Well, the abortion didn’t work and I got saddled with you, didn’t I?’”

One of the blonde Swedish girls gasps and I close my eyes. The room sways and I feel sick. I can’t listen to Leanne talk about abortions, not after what happened to me.

Something twitches on my knee and I fight to stay calm. It’s just Daisy’s hand. I focus on it, on the warmth of my skin under her palm, and imagine the sound of her voice.

You are on a beautiful beach in the Caribbean, lying on a towel on the warm sand. Dig your fingers and toes into the sand, Emma. Feel how warm they are. Feel the sun on your face.

Daisy was the only one who could talk me down from my panic attacks at uni, the only one I trusted to see me in that kind of state. She’d stroke my arm and talk to me, conjuring up my ideal holiday, making me live it in my mind. She didn’t make me close my eyes and she didn’t make me focus on my breathing, but by taking my mind somewhere else, she’d break the cycle of hyperventilating, rapid heartbeat and “I’m going to die” thoughts, and my anxiety would gradually dissipate.

“My mum was drunk when she said that about the abortion,” Leanne continues, and I open my eyes again. “She’s always drunk. My dad was killed in a car accident when I was fifteen, and Mum’s been drinking ever since. She said he was the love of her life, but that didn’t stop her bringing men back from the pub. I lost count of how many there were.”

She stops speaking and stares at the floor. She is utterly still, lost in thought. Isaac rises soundlessly from the floor, crosses the room and sits directly in front of Leanne, crossed-legged. For a couple of seconds, he says nothing. Daisy and I share a glance.

“Look at me, Leanne,” he says, so quietly I barely catch the words.

Leanne slowly raises her head. Isaac leans forward and looks deep into her eyes, the expression on his face so tender, so concerned, that she immediately tears up.

“Did one of your mum’s boyfriends hurt you, Leanne?” he whispers.

She shakes her head.

“Who crept into your room when your mum was passed out on the sofa, Leanne?”

She drops her chin but Isaac catches it, lightning fast, and tips her face back up towards his. “Who hurt you?”

She attempts to shake her head but Isaac tightens his grip on her jaw.

“Who?” he says, his voice louder, his tone more urgent. “Who hurt you and what did they do?” He pushes the strap of her grey vest top down over one shoulder, revealing her pale-skinned, bony frame. “Who made you hate yourself so much you stopped eating? Who made you feel that starving yourself was the only way you could feel in control?” His voice is so loud now that it’s bouncing off the walls and filling the room. The scent of the incense sticks, dotted around the meditation room, wedged into church candles, plant pots and wooden holders is overpowering. The air is thick, jasmine scented and heavy with emotion. The rough walls seem to be closing in, constricting the space, forcing the eight of us closer. I want to stand up, throw open a window and let some air into the room, but I’m rooted to my beanbag. “Who raped you, Leanne? Say his name. Say it out loud. Say it and let go of the hold he has on you.”