Chapter Nine
‘Welcome,’ says Rose, now that the introductions have been made. She walks to a chair and sits down.
Nobody speaks.
‘Collect your thoughts for a moment,’ she says, to calm the nervous ones. ‘The plan for the week is for each one of you to tell your story and then, as a group, we look at how to move on from the past, how to solve problems. Not every story will resonate with each of you but that doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of the lessons from that story.’
Her seat is almost a throne: a curved wooden chair with a footstool, deep with blue and white cushions and in the very coolest spot on the terrace, hidden from the sun and with the sea at her back.
The merest hint of a sea breeze floats up every now and then and Rose can feel it.
Keera and India have moved their chairs so they’re sitting beside each other, each with fresh notebooks and pens ready.
She watches Dan, who is sitting between the rest of the group and the two younger women. He’s already sunk hiscoffee and has an old A4 lined pad in front of him with a selection of random pencils. He’s left-handed, and his wrist is curved around a pencil now, possibly dating the page like any good scientist.
She looks across to Grazia and Sir Bernard, who have made a little area for themselves away from the big olive-wood table. Grazia has put a very expensive handbag on the small side table.
A Lady Dior, tan leather, lots of glittering gold bits dangling off it. Adorable. Perfect for Greece in the summer for the millionaire class. Screams ‘Money!’
Rose prefers the hand-quilted and embroidered little bags sold in the hotel’s lobby shop, made by Christos’ yaya and her friends in a riot of hand-dyed colours: amber, turquoise, indigo, fern green, blossom pink.
‘I want everyone to close their eyes and think about their breath for a moment. Breathing’s very important and it’s amazing how many of us breathe shallowly, especially if we have some trauma in our life.’
Nobody looks convinced.
‘We’ll be doing this simple breathing technique every day. Hold the breath for a count of four, then breathe out through your mouth for a count of six. Let’s do that again. Slowly, purposefully, feeling the breath fill your lungs.’
Rose leads the group in ten minutes of breathing, then, when they’re suitably off-guard, she pounces.
‘Now, Dan,’ says Rose, ‘tell us about yourself.’
There’s a startled silence. Everyone was getting into the breathing, and now this?
‘Dan, why are you here? What’s the trouble that’s brought you to this crossroads in your life? Because, trust me, people only ever attempt such desperate measures when there is big trouble.’
She smiles at Dan who has a bunny-in-headlights look on his handsome face.
He has decent shoulders, Rose notices: good looking in a smouldering Byronic hero sort of way. Not a clue that he’s good looking either, which is nice. Nobody probably told him when he was younger.
‘It’s hard to be the first,’ Rose says cosily, ‘but could you start?’
Dan’s shoulders come down and he raises his chin.
There is silence.
Will he bottle it or ask if someone else can go first?
Keera looks at the ground; India stares into space. Sir Bernard looks like he hates silence and is bouncing with energy to fill it, when Dan suddenly speaks.
‘I’m not really sure why I’m here,’ he repeats.
Rose fixes him with a stern look.Really?
Her stern looks can stop traffic and Dan instantly wavers under her gaze.
‘I mean, I do and I don’t know,’ he self-corrects.
He has a soft deep voice with no trace of an accent anywhere but crisp vowel sounds.
