The Break-Up Retreat(12)
A man and a woman enter, both carrying heaping plates of spaghetti and Italian meatballs, swimming in thick, red tomato sauce. Two more waiters follow behind, and the food is placed in front of each of us with such speed and efficiency that I hardly have time to get a good look at the waiters before they have disappeared again.
“Wow,” the woman opposite me mutters, looking down at her plate with a dazed expression on her face.
“Don’t worry,” Martina says, from down at the end of the table. “For those of you who reported food allergies, intolerances, and preferences, they have been taken into account. Yours is vegan, Katarina.”
The woman—whose name is apparently Katarina—looks up, surprised, before forming her lips into a smile.
“Thank you,” she says.
The older woman sitting next to Katarina lets out a sigh and shakes her head.
“I simply don’t know if I will be able to eat this much,” she says, seemingly half to herself, half to the rest of us. “This just seems like too much food.”
She looks to be in her late fifties or early sixties, with the kind of good looks that speak about healthy living and generous tweakments. Her hair is shoulder-length, an artful mix of golden blond and silver gray, and though her discreet cream cardigan and fitted navy slacks bear no obvious brands, I’m fairly certain the bracelet dangling off her skinny wrist says Cartier .
“Don’t worry, Pernilla,” Martina says. “You don’t have to eat any more than you want to.”
I hear a snorting laugh from the other side of Clara, and as I stretch my neck to see, I catch sight of the woman between her and the caretaker, Anna.
She’s looking at Pernilla with a smirk tugging at the corners of her lips. Her thick, black hair is cut short, in a classic, French pixie, and her dark eyes are sparkling with something that might be amusement, might be anger; might be both.
She picks up her fork, spears a meatball on it, and then asks Martina:
“Hey, doc, just a quick question. What if we get hungry between meals? We don’t all have the same nutritional needs, you know. It just seems a bit concerning that we’re all getting served the same amount of food.”
“There is a snack bar available in the main building,” Belinda hurries to respond in Martina’s place.
“And if there is anything specific you want, that you didn’t bring, we get grocery deliveries twice a week. If you tell me, or any of the other staff members, we can put in an order for you.”
“Great.” The woman puts the meatball in her mouth and chews slowly, looking directly at Pernilla. “Fabulous.”
As she starts to twirl the fork in the spaghetti, I spot the intricate tattoo sleeve on her left arm, teal and black and burgundy blooming against the backdrop of her brown skin.
Then the older woman, Pernilla, raises her head and looks at Clara.
“I am curious,” she says, her voice so sweet and polite it nearly manages to hide the razor-sharp disdain hiding underneath, “as to what would make you come directly to a place like this from traversing the beaches of Thailand?”
Clara laughs a bit and says:
“I think . . . I mean, we are just meant to be getting to know each other tonight. Right? We can go over all of that tomorrow, when we start therapy.”
“I’m sorry,” Pernilla says, not sounding sorry in the slightest. “I was just curious.”
Clara seems thrown; for a moment, she casts her eyes around, and despite the impeccable grooming she suddenly looks every bit the teenager she was, just a few years ago.
Never having had much of a maternal streak, I still feel a pang of protectiveness. Despite my plan to blend into the background as much as possible, I clear my throat.
“I guess we should continue with the introductions, huh?” I say. My voice is a bit hoarse; I’ve barely spoken at all since Anna left my cabin, two hours ago.
“I’m Isobel,” I say. “I’ve lived in Stockholm my whole life. Not much travelling, I’m afraid, but”—I look at Clara—“I would love to see a bit more of the world, some day.”
The woman across from me, Katarina, pipes up.
“What do you do for a living?” she asks me.
“I’m a technical copywriter,” I say. “I guess I run my own business, but I functionally work full-time for an online kitchenware retailer. It’s a lot of SEO, and completely B2B, so not very sexy.”
Armin helped me come up with the fake job, and the description. Something that sounded qualified but boring, which would conceivably give me enough disposable income to make my presence at Himlafall make sense but wouldn’t invite any follow-up questions.
He told me to make sure to use at least two acronyms. In his experience, he’d said, people stopped listening after two acronyms.
Katarina perks up.
“Oh,” she says. “Which company do you work with? I recently handled a copyright case for a big whiteware retailer. I had to learn a lot about marketing, I thought it was really fascinating.”
“So, wait, are you a lawyer?” Clara cuts in, next to me.
Katarina turns to her.
“Yes,” she says. “I mainly work with intellectual property rights. Mostly cases of international copyright disputes.”
“Like, with China?” Clara says.
Katarina’s face doesn’t betray any emotion as she responds.