Haina’s wide smile doesn’t change. “Documentary,” she repeats. “They’re as eager as we are to demonstrate what a sanctuary Hex House is from the rest of the world. Please make them feel very welcome while they get settled over the next few days.” She looks down at the filmmakers. Her hand lands on Theo’s shoulder and he flinches slightly. “Is there anything either of you would like to say?”
Theo pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, his small smile like an apology. His gaze skips over the cooling bowls of food as he says, “Just pretend we’re not here. Don’t feel any pressure to act in a certain way. We want to capture things as they are.”
“Be authentic, natural,” adds Siobhan, nodding. “Also, we’re looking for a couple of volunteers who wouldn’t mind doing some to-camera interviews – simple stuff, what brought you here, what you think about the house.”
Elly feels some of the women around her bristle.Simple stuff. She doesn’t know many details of the women’s stories, but she doubts anyone around this table would define what brought them to Hex House assimple, or would feel comfortable unravelling it all in front of the camera and examining the threads.
“Excellent,” Haina says, clapping her hands together. “Let’s eat.”
The table rumbles into hesitant action and slowly, chatter starts up. Elly helps herself to a slice of pie. A skin of grease has formed over the top of the potatoes while they’ve been sitting. Her eyes return to the head of the table. Siobhan whispers something to Theo, then elbows him in the ribs. He pushes her gently and she laughs, her mouth wide open, full of food. There is an easiness to both of them, to the way they interact, that gives away the invisible stitching of family. Something about it makes Elly’s stomach ache. Haina speaks more to Theo than she does to Siobhan, pressing into him and giggling, squeezing the top of his arm.
“It’s been so long since we’ve had a man in the house,” she hears Haina say at one point. “It’s been such a long time.”
Theo smiles uncertainly, leaning away.
“Don’t like this,” mumbles Margot beside her. Her plate is empty.
“It’ll be alright, Margot,” says Elly. “You don’t have to speak to them. Pretend they’re not here, like he said.”
Margot says nothing. Her fingers are splayed and running up and down the length of her thighs, making ripples in the faded blue denim.
“Come on, you should eat something.” Elly piles some vegetables onto her plate, but Margot doesn’t touch them. Throughout dinner, she ignores Elly’s attempts at conversation and mutters to herself under her breath, barely looking up. Elly can only pick out the odd phrase.
“Not safe here anymore, Little Mouse,” she says. “Not safe.”
***
For a couple of days, no one really speaks to the filmmakers. Life at Hex House unfurls in its familiar routine – breakfast, chores, lunch, downtime, dinner, evening in the parlour, and eventually, bedtime. Sometimes, while Elly is working in the kitchen, baking loaves and laminating pastry for croissants and carving endless joints of meat, she forgets all about them. They sleep separately to the rest of the guests, in an attic room overlooking the garden. But then she’ll catch a glimpse of one or both of them, cameras pointing at faces from a distance, drinking up the house’s secret details, committing it all to tape. It’s strange, the things they deem important enough to film: a butterfly landing on the upturned face of a coneflower, the red sisters scrubbing the hallway floors, singing to each other, the messy covers of the just-vacated beds in the dormitory. Sometimes, Elly notices Siobhan alone, no camera in hand, just observing. Perhaps she means to be inconspicuous, but her height and the confident way she moves mean she always draws attention. Watching her, Elly feels like the interloper. Theo is more stealthy, more able to slip by unnoticed. Sometimes, she won’t even realise he’s in the room until she hears the soft bleep of a camera as it stops recording, and when he meets her eye it’s with a sheepishness, a wordless apology. Will her mum ever see this footage? she finds herself wondering. Will Ethan? Will they glimpse her in the background, jump forward, pause the TV? At least then, she reasons, they’ll know she’s okay. That she left them, but she’s okay.
The signs of acceptance come slowly, subtly. Elly notices Janine smile at Theo when he walks past her one afternoon in the hallway, rubbing a hand shyly over hershorn head once he’s gone. Over breakfast one morning, Lakshmi passes Siobhan a bowl of porridge. Margot is still fractious, but at night she whimpers in her sleep, rather than screams.
On the morning of Elly’s second session with Haina, she finds herself fidgety at breakfast, barely able to touch her food. She pulled a grey Harvard sweatshirt out of the communal clothing bin this morning and now it feels too heavy and too tight, straining over her swelling stomach. She’s been waiting for this, for the opportunity to be in a room alone with Haina again, to ask questions, to begin to understand. But now she only feels a creeping sense of dread, a fear that makes tea taste bitter in her mouth. She looks down at her fingers wrapped around her mug. Her gold wedding ring catches the light. Last night, she’d tried to remove it, only to find her pregnant fingers too swollen. It feels now like a tiny manacle, slowly cutting off her blood supply.
As the guests start to leave the refectory for chores, Haina gets up from the table. She lays a heavy hand on Elly’s shoulder as she passes, giving her a silent nod. Elly’s skin tingles at the point of contact. She takes a deep breath, then follows Haina down the hallway and into the study.
When the door is locked behind them and Elly is seated once more on the velvet armchair, running her hands the wrong way along its surface, Haina says, “One moment.” She’s writing some notes on her pad, seemingly in no rush. Outside the window, birds trill in the bushes and the women’s chatter is a low hum as they prune, plant and water. Elly can hear Margot, squealing over the colour of a dahlia. After a minute or two, Haina turns to Ellyand says, “I imagine you have some questions about what happened in our last session?”
Elly almost laughs.Some questions. “I’ve been struggling to understand…” she says eventually, “what happened to me. What it means.”
Haina’s expression doesn’t change. “What do you think happened to you? What did it feel like?”
Shifting. Shedding. Body getting lighter and thoughts quieter, a feeling pure and hot in her veins. “I don’t know. I felt… annoyed, I think.”Annoyed atyou, she almost adds.At the way you spoke to me like I was nothing.
Haina smiles. “I think you were more than annoyed. I think you were angry.”
Elly shifts in her seat. “Maybe.”
“Do you often get angry, my angel?”
“In what way?”
“Well, in any way. In your day-to-day life, do you tend to feel angry? Or does that seem like something you’re not allowed to feel?”
Elly bites at her nail. Anger doesn’t feel like something that’s particularly relevant to her. In an argument, she’s much more likely to cry than to shout. If she had ever become angry with Ethan, in the way that he did with her, so often and so effortlessly, what would have happened? The thought makes her shrink into herself, back pressing into the armchair. “I don’t know how to answer that,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“Because I don’t think I’m doing this right.”
