Chapter One
It was hard to say what was odd about the group. They were women my age, of a type I recognised: unattached, unfulfilled at work, not yet defined by anything or anyone. They were extremely familiar, in fact. Perhaps that was it. I could see myself in each of them, more than I wanted to admit.
But there was something else, too. Their uniformity: fair or light brown hair, jeans and Converse, or smart work boots, a patterned scarf or big earrings adding a touch of individuality. I was blonde too then, though my hair had frizzed on the way over, and I tugged off the bluebird scarf I’d put on at the last minute, scrunching it in my hand. Was I really so predictable?
I looked around the room full of strangers with a tight feeling taking hold, as though something was tugging at my stomach from the inside. I needed to leave. Perhaps I could go to the toilet, and slip out. But then the only door to the room was pushed shut with a small click, and it was too late.
The first woman to speak was called Jane. Later, Liam and I would call them all ‘the Janes’: Jane One, Jane Two, Jane Three, Jane Four. Later still, I would struggle to picture their individual faces, blurred into one in my memory, as I tried to understand what it was that had made me stand out, why I had been the one who was chosen. But for now I listened warily to Jane One, translucent-skinned and high-pitched, as she recapped her week’s ‘progress’, her silver hoops bouncing as she spoke.
‘It’s been quite a hard one, to be honest.’ Wisps of fair hair fell forward as Jane looked at her hands. She was picking her nails, bitten short with frayed cuticles, but her tone was clear, a hint of North London rounding her vowels. She might have problems, but she belonged: she owned the space she sat in, her oversized cardigan draped around raised knees. ‘I’ve had to face up to the fact that I’m not really moving forward with Rob, and … it was all down to the motivational mantras, really.’
I looked at the other women. They were nodding, but their eyes darted towards Della, her face still and expectant. They were waiting to gauge her response.
‘The thing was, every time I said them, he took the piss. And I just thought, well, if you really don’t care enough to come with me on my journey, then I can’t do this any more.’
The women murmured, there were more nods, but Della’s smile was tight, her eyes narrowed at the corners. This clearly wasn’t the kind of inner transformation she wanted to hear about.
‘Thanks for sharing that, Jane,’ Della said. ‘And do you think the mantras made a difference to how decisive you felt in that moment?’
‘Oh yes, definitely.’ Jane was as quick as the others to pick up on Della’s cues. ‘I don’t think I’d ever have had the courage to end it if it wasn’t for you … I mean, for the group. I feel like I’m making so much progress.’
‘That’s wonderful.’ The straight lines of Della’s face transformed into curves, and Jane’s pale cheeks pinkened. I felt a shiver run through me. I should never have come.
I’d known it as soon as I’d arrived. Something about the imposing, three-storey Victorian terrace had made me take a step back. I should have walked away then, forgotten all about the group – life-coaching, the flyer said. How many times have I gone over that moment, wishing I had? Instead I stood there rocking on the outside edges of my Converse, fiddling with my phone in my pocket, rooted to the spot.
I’d been expecting a hall or a meeting space of some kind, not this: an enormous family home – front garden full of pink and white roses, surrounded by chips of slate, a red and black tiled pathway leading up to a wide bottle-green door with stained-glass panels.
I don’t know how long I’d been standing there when the door disappeared, and suddenly in its place stood Della, blond hair swept up in a messy chignon. She was wearing the same expensive skinny jeans she’d had on the first time we met, or an identical pair. Another crisp, oversized shirt, buttoned low – this one pale blue like her eyes and tucked in at one side, as though she was far too busy to check her reflection; her style was natural, effortless. Her feet were bare, her brown bony toes and pearly nails curled against the March air.
‘Kate, you came,’ she said, her voice rich and gravelly, her smile lifting her eyes in what looked like genuine pleasure. ‘Come in.’ She extended a long arm into the high-ceilinged hallway, as if it was entirely natural to be welcomed into this grand house by a woman I’d met only days before.
Once inside, there was no space to think at all. Only to process my surroundings. The kitchen, overwhelmingly white, flashes of yellow here and there: an Eames-style armchair, a vase of primroses, a golden head bent over a colouring book, warm evening sun framed in the wide folding doors. I perched on a stool at the marble-top island and tried not to look out of place but, catching my reflection in the shiny cooker hood, I could see I’d failed. I’d taken extra care with my appearance in the café toilets, taming the frizz of my hair, adding eyeliner, smoothing out my green New Look top, but the girl staring back at me looked cheaply dressed and startled.
Did people really live like this? I walked past houses like these every day on my way to work, imagining the family scenes playing out behind the white shutters and well-kept window boxes. I took a strange comfort in those fantasies, like I had on the nicer streets near school in Cambridge. As if by living close to these people I could somehow absorb some of whatever it was that made their lives so much better than mine. I didn’t realise then how much more complicated life could get. I didn’t appreciate the value of simple comforts, familiarity, innocence.
The space Della led me into wasn’t a room so much as an entire floor: open plan, white designer kitchen leading into a white-walled living room, panelled partition doors revealing large cream sofas, a shiny chrome standing lamp and a reading nook in one corner, where a straight-backed green armchair nestled next to tall bookshelves. Both rooms had high ceilings and ornate coving, the line between them marked by the transition from deep cream carpet to oak parquet floor. A row of three matching pendant lights hung above the huge central island where I sat at the breakfast bar, in front of me a double sink, arched shiny mixer taps and a hot tap, like the one they had in the café. I’d never seen one in a house before.
I watched Della sweep around the room, picking up scraps of paper and shuffling them into a pile, which she hid away in a vast neatly organised cupboard of art supplies. On the walls of the kitchen were one or two splotchy children’s paintings, sympathetically framed, alongside a row of four artfully-shot canvas prints of tree-lined hills and grass-edged sandy beaches, the greens echoing the flash of lawn visible through the bifold doors.
‘I’m so pleased you got here first,’ Della said as she ushered a small child from the long oak table towards the door. He looked about two or three, with a mop of white-blond hair, and he scuttled off obediently, flashing me an eager smile as he disappeared. ‘That’s Jasper,’ Della said in a stage whisper, ‘pretend you didn’t see him!’ I laughed with her, though I wasn’t sure why.
‘He’s very sweet.’ My voice sounded smaller than usual. ‘Am I early?’
‘Not at all. Mark should have taken them both upstairs by now. Mark!’
He appeared almost immediately, tall, broad-shouldered, his shirt sleeves rolled up and curly light brown hair ruffled, as though he had been grappling with another child elsewhere. He received his orders regarding the putting to bed of the two children and gave Della a mock salute, catching my eye with a grin as he left. I felt my cheeks grow warm and turned away, but when I looked back, Della’s smile was amused, indulgent even. She was clearly used to people admiring her husband, her house, her life.
The rest of the group arrived one by one, eyeing me warily as we settled on the two large sofas, the kind you sink so far into you don’t know where to put your feet. Of course we had shed our trainers at the door, this was unmistakably a shoes-off house, and the others seemed to find a comfortable position, tucking feet under or hugging their knees. One woman arranged herself on a herringbone rug by the fireplace, legs entwined self-consciously in what looked like a complicated yoga pose.
Large abstract paintings hung behind each of the sofas, splashes of yellow and gold picking up on the cushions and assorted objects on the shelves either side of the marble mantelpiece – copper vase, shiny bowl, gold-framed photographs and pictures. I sat stiffly at one end of the sofa nearest to Della. She was set apart in the corner armchair, the tall lamp glowing white against her hair, a pink Smythson diary resting on her crossed legs. She listened intently, making notes as each of the women spoke in turn, introducing themselves to me and recapping on their ‘homework’ assignments.
They all looked younger than Della. None of them over thirty. None appeared to have children, or mapped-out career paths, or the kind of home life they found themselves at the heart of here. Some, it seemed, had been coming for months, though it was hard to work out exactly why.
There was Helen, a bottle-blonde whose large, glassy eyes watered and round cheeks flushed when she spoke, and who seemed preoccupied with finding ‘the one’ at any cost. She looked uncomfortable, in tight jeans and a striped jumper she tugged at, a tide of red creeping up her neck. Next to her was Eva, an events organiser who had moved to London from Poland ten years ago. She was slightly older, thirty even, with fine lines beginning to appear around her dark eyes. She wanted to get into the fashion industry, with her pixie crop and black asymmetric top exposing one bony shoulder. Everything she said came back to her frustration with her hapless musician boyfriend, and I started to feel some sympathy towards Jack, and his desire for freedom.
Jane looked much more ordinary, in an oatmeal cardigan and skinny jeans, but she was desperate to find her feet as an actress, flicking her hair dramatically and weighing each word she uttered for maximum impact. And then there was Jasmine, the hardest to read, tall and very slim with long loose curls, her body seeming to fold over itself where she sat on the floor, floral skirt gathered around her ankles. She was a frustrated writer with ‘creativity issues’, and seemed keen to avoid my eye at all costs.
These women all had a quality I lacked. I hadn’t even been aware of its absence until I sat in that room, surrounded by it like a low hum. It wasn’t confidence exactly – far from it in some cases – it was more like certainty. They seemed to occupy their place in the world, they felt entitled to their neuroses. They didn’t question, as I did, the very notion of having problems. As though even that was an imposition. Here they all were, laying out their weaknesses to be picked over. It was liberating, somehow. And also terrifying.
At the centre of it all was Della. She didn’t disclose – that clearly wasn’t her role, she was there to listen. Like a weather-vane, she turned towards the most interesting person in the room at any given moment, their petals unfurling under her gaze. Once it passed, they retracted, their energy sapped.
Della had an immediate, energising quality I’d never come across before. A beam of warmth and attention that fell like a spotlight, with all the glare and adrenaline and excitement that brought, and a corresponding flatness afterwards. Later, when I tried to understand how I got swept so quickly into her orbit, I would picture her as a bright star in the darkness of my twenties. A point of light that illuminated both the significant moments and the shadows.
At the time, the effect of it all – the energy, the honesty, the eager women jostling for position – was almost too much to bear. I had turned to pick at the hole in the knee of my jeans when the room fell silent. I realised it was my turn to speak.
I had been going over what I might say, but now the moment came it added up to so much less than I’d hoped. I certainly wasn’t going to tell them why I was really here.
‘Right now I’m just a waitress in a café down …’ I became aware of Della shaking her head and faltered.
‘We never share addresses, or surnames, do we?’ Della looked around. ‘There’s no contact outside of the group,’ she said, turning back to me. ‘We can only be fully honest and true to ourselves within our safe space if we know there are no consequences. Nothing we say in these four walls can be connected to the people we are outside. Does that make sense?’
I nodded, but of course it didn’t make sense. Here I was – lonely, new to London – and here were other women my age, opening up in a way I’d struggled to my whole life. And now she was telling me that even if I did let them in, they were off limits anyway. We could never be friends. It didn’t make sense at all.
‘Remember Claire?’ Jasmine said, looking around before her eyes finally landed on me. ‘She tried to arrange a drink after one of the meetings … That was the last we saw of—’
‘That’s enough, Jasmine,’ Della said, the coldness of her tone making us all sit up a little. I felt a shiver run through me. Della stood and moved towards the fireplace, bending forward, straight-backed. For a moment it looked as though she was going to lower herself into a yoga pose – she knew how to hold her audience, I found that out later – but then she picked up a large candle and lit it, placing it carefully back at the centre of the hearth. She took a deep breath and turned around, settling in her chair with a feline elegance, legs curled under her and chin resting on one hand.
‘Let’s not dwell on the past,’ she said, as the flame took hold, throwing a softer light across the upward flick of her eyes. ‘This group is all about the future, about moving forward. Anyway, Kate has the floor now, let’s make her feel heard.’
Everyone turned to face me. I felt hot, unsettled. The mood had shifted so quickly, I was hoping I’d somehow been forgotten.
‘I, um, I grew up in Cambridge, and I’ve been living there, well, until now, more or less. I’ve been in London three months. And … it’s great – so far.’ I knew how unconvincing I sounded, and the smiles looked sympathetic. Perhaps the others were remembering the shock of arriving in London, the disorientation of their first months in this sprawling city.
‘And how about in five years’ time?’ Della asked. ‘What do you picture your life looking like then?’
The question caught me by surprise. No one ever bothered to ask me what I wanted to do with my life. That had been decided for me years ago. And now that I’d left that life behind, finally made it to London, I was finding it hard to imagine five weeks into the future.
‘I really don’t know.’ How could I possibly give voice to my ridiculous fantasies? But I could almost see the disappointment pass across Della’s face like a cloud, as though the sun had gone in, leaving me in the cold.
‘Well, that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?’ she said suddenly, smiling again. ‘This group is all ...
