Dan’s cigarette has gone out as he’s been staring blankly out at the view.
He relights it and inhales deeply, blowing smoke outtowards the inky sea. Adriana, the woman who’d checked him in earlier and who’s one of the house’s proprietors, has told him that there will be some time off for people to swim and possibly sail but not much.
‘Rose has a pretty full schedule for you all,’ Adriana said, dark head bent over the weathered oak table where she welcomed them to the villa.
What exactly will we be doing?Dan wants to ask, but he can’t.
He’s booked this and has arrived without allowing himself to eventhinkwhat’s involved in a week-long retreat. Does he have to stare deep into his soul?
Does he have to confess everything he’s ever done wrong in his life?
Dan is a neuroscientist: he has no idea how this sort of delving into the mind works.
He likes facts.
The current facts are stark, however: his beloved Julia is no longer his girlfriend. She wants a break from their relationship so she can ‘figure out what to do, babes’.
That conversation nearly broke Dan.
He adores Julia more than life itself. He sees them together for ever and cannot bear to think that anything he says or does could harm her.
And yet, here he is, forced into a therapy retreat.
There’s a fresh notebook with ‘from Rose’ written on a label ready for him to ‘journal’ through the week. Dan hates that sort of thing.
All questionnaires and holding hands to feel each other’s pain?
Answer twenty questions and we’ll tell you what sort of person you are? Which is obvious bullshit. How is there a scientific method in asking people who they are and relyingon their answers? People lie. Over a thousand miles away from his small, spartan Bristol home, with his bike – he loves his bike – and his gaming chair – which he also loves – Dan aches at the thought of Vicky’s words.
His sister is not the swearing kind of person. She’s gentle, thoughtful.
But she was insistent that he get help. Him, not Julia.
This rankles. Why the hell doesheneed help?
He resents the whole concept bitterly.
Plus, Vicky never told him that Rose’s one-time-big TV show had been cancelled over a scandal, which he found out from googling in the airport.
He resents not knowing that too.
In fact, he resents every single thing about being here in Xanthe.
His cigarette has gone out again. Annoyed, he drops it into the saucer he’s using as an ashtray and lights up another one. He does not need fixing. He’ll make that plain first off and maybe he can leave early?
Dan has two decent pens with him. He takes one now and flicks open to the first page of Rose’s notebook. It’s too small for him. He likes A4 pads and hardback laboratory notebooks. He has tiny handwriting that’s always easy to read because no scientist wants a lab notebook with indecipherable writing.
He has no idea what to write.
I’m here and isn’t that enough?
His phone is on the desk beside him.
He is tired and irritable, tired of being blamed.
He writesPiss offin the notebook, which gives him a frisson of being a teenager again, always the good, quiet one, always doing what he was told. Until Julia came along, of course.
He fills in a whole page writingPiss offin a giant scrawl,then scribbles over it, partly in irritation, partly in shame.
