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  There was a rumble of dismay through the room and Malcolm laughed.

  “Yes, I know it’s a strange idea, but for too many in the western world food is also a crutch – look around, some of you should be grateful for the chance to fast! OK – that’s it, please listen to the facilitators at all times, go with the course, try to surrender to it – fighting for your cigarette or sandwich will waste your time and ours and won’t do you any good in the long run. Anyone who thinks they can’t go with these rules is urged to leave now, your registration fee will be happily returned to you. You have five minutes to sort out your things – please hand all your coats and bags and shoes over to Janet in the cloakroom, anyone who can’t make the commitment and wants to leave can sort that out with Anne Marie at the registration desk and I will take the rest of you through to the back hall in four minutes’ time. Welcome! We’re glad to have you with us.”

  Bitterly regretting that she hadn’t eaten after her run, Saz took a few identifying papers from her bag and then handed her things over to the smiling Janet in the cloakroom. Anne Marie wasn’t smiling quite so much as she returned money to the eight people who had chosen to leave and she almost lost her smile completely when one middle-aged man started shouting about the false advertising of breakfast. Luckily, Anne Marie quickly summoned another grinning assistant to help shuffle him out of the door. Saz was pleased to see that Malcolm was managing to smile a lot at the other end of the room.

  “Down here everyone please. This is where the day really starts. Are we all gathered? Good. Now, when we go in to the back hall, I’d ask you not to sit next to anyone you know, we want you to expand as much as possible today, so no old patterns – please.”

  “Not bloody likely to be expanding much with no food all day!” said a young woman to Saz’s left. She’d spoken quietly but Malcolm was on to her, he pushed through the crowd and came right up to her face.

  “Very funny – let’s see, Julie is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have a problem with food, Julie?”

  “Only when I can’t get enough!” replied Julie who was slightly overweight.

  “I’d say you had a big problem with food and that these jokes of yours were a very common defence mechanism. Wouldn’t you?”

  The laughter Julie’s remarks had caused completely stopped now and everyone was staring in fascinated horror as Julie’s face turned bright red. She looked up at Malcolm who was a good seven or eight inches taller than her.

  “I … I don’t…”

  “Come on Julie. I’m sure you do know or you wouldn’t have decided to come today. Aren’t you one of those who stood up when I asked who had a problem with food or drugs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Right. So do you or do you not have a problem with food?”

  Julie looked miserably down at her feet. Saz couldn’t believe that no one told him to piss off and leave the poor woman alone. She couldn’t believe that she didn’t do so either. But she just stood there along with the other one hundred and ninety people, as they had done in countless school assemblies, glad it wasn’t them and terrified of drawing attention to themselves. Malcolm stood over Julie for what felt like ages until she finally nodded her head. Then he hugged her and turned to the rest of the group.

  “Julie’s done very well, she’s been honest, dealt with a denial and started the ball rolling. Thanks Julie.”

  Julie looked up at him in shock.

  “But the rest of you probably feel like shit for not stopping me bullying her don’t you?”

  A couple of people laughed, most nodded and a few said “Yes” out loud.

  “Well, that’s OK too – partly you were wrong to say nothing, partly you were right. Plenty of people will be challenged today. Maybe not all of you, but most of you will be directly challenged by either Dr North or a member of the facilitating group. It will do no one any good at all if we have to waste time explaining the methods – believe me, by the end of the day you’ll see how things work. Anyone who wants to can still leave now … No? Right. You’ve chosen to be here, so Be Here! Stay attentive, stay in there. It will become clear.”

  With this last cryptic message Malcolm knocked on the two big doors leading to the back hall and, with his arm still around Julie’s shoulders led them into the room.

  With everyone else, Saz gasped as she saw the huge table with coffee and juice, bread, cheeses and fruit laid out in front of them. Standing on the other side of the table was Maxwell North. In his Armani suit and silk tie he looked like he’d just stepped out of one of the magazine photos Saz had spent the last few days poring over.

  “Surprise! Breakfast is served!”

  Everyone laughed as Malcolm led Julie to the table first and Dr North explained.

  “Over the years running these seminars, we’ve found that there are always some for whom the idea of change is just too much. So we set up a few hurdles at the starting post, that way we can ensure that those who are here really want to be. Enjoy your breakfast while Malcolm tells you what our plans are for the day.”

  Saz helped herself to a big mug of coffee and a sticky Danish pastry while Malcolm told them that everything he’d already said still stood, he just said it nicer this time. No talking, no smoking and no loo-going during the three-hour sessions. He then gave them half an hour to chat and breakfast and told them the first session would start at nine thirty on the dot. Saz wondered if it was wise to fit another diuretic coffee in before then and wisely opted for another Danish instead.

  CHAPTER 9

  By the time Saz got home that night she was totally drained. Ignoring the frenzied flashing of her answerphone, she set her alarm for six and went straight to bed. She slept soundly until the alarm woke her, then she rolled out of bed and listened to the messages while she got ready for her run. The first was from her sister.

  “Hi groover, it’s Cassie. We’re having a party for Amy’s cast-removing and we thought you and Molly might want to come. Our place, midday, next Saturday. Bye.”

  The next message was also from Cassie.

  “Me again. Listen, you don’t really have any choice, Tony’s got to go away and Mum’s already said she isn’t prepared to take on twenty little girls which is very ungrandmotherly of her and anyway you and Molly should be there – it’s your social duty because I lead such a decadent, middle-class, heterosexual lifestyle and my children and their friends need better role models. Come in the morning then you can look after the others while I take Amy and the baby in for the great unplastering. Thanks. Bye.”

  Another beep and then,

  “Hi girl, it’s me. Hope your day was successful and life-enhancing. I’m sure you’re exhausted – they say North’s courses are pretty draining, so call me when you wake up tomorrow and either you can come here for dinner or I’ll bring food over to yours. Love you. Love your body. Want them both. Very much. A lot. Right now, but I don’t mind waiting. The anticipation is kind of pleasurable too. Bye.”

  The tape bleeped several times and rewound. Saz turned the machine on again and went out for her run. She’d been running first thing in the morning for about four years now and still couldn’t get over how fine the world looked at six in the morning with early sunshine and dew everywhere, while for the rest of the day – particularly in Camberwell – it was invariably grey and grimy and cold. She ran for almost an hour and arrived back at her flat just as it began to cloud over.

  “Never fails!” she thought to herself as she ran past the pointless lift and began the climb to her flat. Her weather forecaster’s reverie was stopped in its tracks when she got to her door. There on the doorstep was a small bunch of flowers. Saz picked it up and her hand started to shake when she saw that it was a bunch of weeds – dandelions, daisies, grasses, along with an even smaller bunch of lily of the valley.

  “What the fuck?”

  Saz ran back out to the entrance to her floor but the lift was stuck open as always and there was no one around. Sh
e went inside, put the flowers in water and sat down intending to call Molly, but she couldn’t bring herself to pick up the phone and an hour after she’d run up the stairs, she stripped off her sweaty training clothes and went back to bed.

  Molly arrived on the doorstep promptly at eight with a bottle of New Zealand Chardonnay and more Chinese food than either of them could hope to eat.

  “You OK babe? You sounded a bit strange on the phone – I hope your life hasn’t been changed so much you’ve decided you don’t like Chinese?”

  “No, you know I love it, but don’t you ever go to the Indian takeaway?”

  Molly sighed, “Saz darling, I’d have thought you might have guessed that I am about as likely to enjoy cold paratha and packet-flavoured tandoori from the shop down the road, as you would if you were to buy your mother’s home cooked speciality from your local takeaway only to find it covered in flowing oil and sold at eight times the homemade price.”

  Saz pulled her into the flat and closed the door behind them.

  “For your information the Indian – no, make that Asian – takeaway down the road is totally authentic and their bhaji have not the merest hint of excess oil. What’s more, my mother’s seedy cake can’t be bought in any shop. Overpriced or otherwise.”

  Over special fried rice, spring rolls, fried seaweed, crispy vegetables and sweet and sour prawns Saz explained how the course had gone and all about the false start.

  “So by ten o’clock we were all coffee and caked out and more than a bit confused.”

  “Classic technique really.”

  “Yeah? I thought water torture and sleep deprivation were classic techniques, this just seemed like a good joke. And the coffee was great.”

  Molly refilled Saz’s glass.

  “Well, it is unusual, these sorts of things are more likely to be exactly as your man Malcolm said in the beginning – really harsh and exacting, but, having told you all that guff about needing to give yourself totally to it and rid themselves of the people who weren’t likely to do so, he then turned it around, gave you food and was nice to you!”

  “Ever so nice.”

  “And manipulative. Not only did he make you complicit in a trick against the ones who left, he even gave you food to reinforce his role as provider and protector.”

  “I thought you said you like this guy’s work?”

  “Admiration is not the same as liking. From what I’ve read, he has great results – sometimes that’s all that matters, particularly when you’re dealing with drug dependency or chronic depression, but it doesn’t stop me being cynical about his methods.”

  “Anyway, it worked. I’m pretty cynical too – I was there to spy on him after all – and it wasn’t as if I couldn’t see they’d made it easier for themselves by getting rid of any potential troublemakers right at the start, but it did work.”

  “OK, keep going. What happened next?”

  “We divided up into small groups, each one with a facilitator – my group had Malcolm – and talked about why we were there.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told them I was at a crossroads in my work and needed help finding which way to go next!”

  “Very clever – didn’t you have to be more specific?”

  “No, that was the odd thing about the whole day really. I’d expected people confessing details of their sordid lives and those long boring stories of sad childhoods, but it was all much more abstract – feelings rather than incidents.”

  Molly nodded and nibbled on a cold clump of rice.

  “That is unusual. Most group work is based on the idea that by telling something to a group you can get validation for the event and therefore for the feelings it engendered.”

  “Thanks Mrs Freud.”

  “You don’t want my two years of psych training as a backup? That’s fine. I won’t help at all.”

  “Of course I do stupid, but just listen first and then tell me what you make of the whole thing. You think telling only feelings is strange? Believe me, it gets lots weirder than that.”

  Saz told Molly about the rest of the day. The two hours they’d spent lying on the floor wrapped tightly in warm blankets as Dr North guided them in “visualizing” the future – all of them as happy, wealthy, creative and slim individuals leading purposeful and exciting lives.

  “And you can’t imagine how odd that new age stuff sounds coming from a man with a Harley Street practice and fierce reputation among the upper echelons of British medicine!”

  “Not that odd Saz – nothing better to get a pliant patient than treating them like a toddler.”

  “Shut up – you’re supposed to be listening – give me the diagnosis later.”

  Following their afternoon nap, one whole hour in a darkened room with soft music and the by now familiar warm blankets, they broke into small groups again and talked more. They were told to talk about what they wanted and, more importantly, how they planned to achieve it. For Saz this was a little harder as she still had to take care not to give anything away about her real work.

  “So I concentrated on us Moll, and it was great – I told a group of ten strangers all about us. Well, about our relationship – I was careful not to give them any details about you.”

  “Thanks. Very considerate. And?”

  “Well, it did things. One bloke said he’d never have guessed I was ‘that way inclined’.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yawn!”

  “Kind of, but it did make him think, made him look at the others differently too. And one woman came out!”

  “Really came out? For the first time?”

  “Yeah. And she wasn’t even in my group, she’d just overheard me talking and decided she’d better use the opportunity.”

  “What happened?”

  “She asked if her group and mine could be joined up and so we did – very accommodating this lot – and she told everyone she was gay, that she’d always been gay and that we were the first people she’d told, she’d never said it out loud before and consequently she’d never been able to have a relationship. Never! I mean for God’s sake, the woman must have been in her late forties and she’d always been so scared she’d never had any relationship of any kind. Not even with a bloke. That’s just so awful!”

  “And?”

  “Well, North was in charge of her group so he kind of took over from Malcolm and he told her how wonderful she was and all that nice affirming stuff and then he got everyone to turn to the person beside them and say one secret. Some really big secret or desire that they’d never told anyone, but it had to be about you. Really personal. He made all the other groups do it too. We sat in a big circle and all of us did it. A whole room of people saying their one big secret to the person sitting next to them. I heard one woman say she wanted to climb Mt Everest, another who was sure she was psychic. Another even said she would give up everything – her husband, kids, job, the lot – just to go to the moon. I really think she meant it too.”

  Molly suddenly became very interested in the dregs in her wine glass.

  “What did you say?”

  “Ah. Well, OK. This is going to sound a bit strange but, you know how Cassie and I love the sea?”

  “Well, I know you do, I didn’t know she did too. Go on.”

  “When we were little girls we used to swim all the time and we had this idea that we would swim the Channel together.”

  “The English Channel?”

  “What other channels are there?”

  “Bristol perhaps. Geography not your hot point huh?”

  “No. And it’s my story, so listen. When we were kids we wanted to be the first sisters to swim the Channel. But I still want to do it. And I’m going to see if she does too.”

  “Swim the Channel?”

  “Yes. It’s possible. Because that was the main thing about it, they ditched the rest of that section of the workshop and we just worked on planning how we could achieve our secrets.”

  “Even the woman who wa
nted to go to the moon?”

  “Yeah. She’s going to write to NASA and contact those companies that are planning to do a moon trip one day – all the aerospace type places.”

  “And wonderful Mr North said he’d pay?”

  “Dr North actually, no. But he did give her ten quid to start her savings account.”

  “So when do you make the big swim?”

  “Whenever, maybe never, but the idea is, that by telling the secret you can start to do it – or accept it’s impossible if it’s beyond you.”

  “So you’re now totally convinced that North is a great bloke and there’s no mystery at all?”

  “God no, I did get lots out of it and actually really enjoyed the day but it’s not as if I wasn’t aware how manipulative it all was. Or how much money they made – you know, the food was good, but it wasn’t worth a hundred quid, and the ‘work’, especially the secret telling stuff, made me feel great, but I’m sure I could have achieved that in half an hour with a good therapist. And anyway, something else happened.”

  “There’s more?”

  “Well, I didn’t get home until one o’clock in the morning. It did go on a bit. After everyone had made up their ‘Achieve My Secret’ plan, it was time for more food and then we came back to end it. The finishing off was more visualization stuff and a kind of committing ceremony where everyone said how much effort they were going to put into achieving their next goal – the ones we’d visualized in the morning, or into getting their secret to happen. I mean, it takes ages for two hundred people to say what they’re going to do with their lives. And then there was a sort of group huggy thing and that was it.”

  “That counts as something else?”

  “No, wait. You’re so impatient!”

  “Yeah, well, it’s a good story and you tell it really well, but there’s a certain large chunk of me that would rather you were doing something else with your mouth.”

  Saz smiled and picked up Molly’s hand, kissing it and cramming the fingers into her mouth, she licked the tips of each finger and smiled.