The Break-Up Retreat(28)

“I won’t leave your side.”





Chapter 16


“Thank you, Belinda,” Martina says.

Belinda smiles, and then leans down behind me, whispering in my ear, her breath warm on the sensitive skin on my neck.

“Good luck,” she whispers, like an omen.

Then she walks off.

True to her word, Belinda hasn’t left my side in the hour and a half that has gone by. She’s kept up a steady stream of small talk, the whole time, talking about music and film and literature, never leaving any space for any questions or pauses.

She steered me, expertly, until it was time to hand me over to Martina for my individual therapy session. And now, that time has come.

I hear the door closing.

Martina looks down at her notepad on her lap. Then up at me.

“So,” she says, drawing the syllable out. “Isobel.”

It sounds like she’s tasting my name.

We’re sitting by the window. I’m on the green couch, Martina in the armchair. There are two cups of tea on the table, and I reach out and grab the one nearest me, just to have something to do with my hands.

She’s crossed her legs at the ankles; her shoes, I notice, are white patent leather loafers, and completely spotless.

“Yes,” I say. “Hello.”

“How nice of Belinda to keep you company this afternoon.” Martina looks bemused.

“Very,” I agree. “She’s very nice. You’ve all been very nice.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Martina says.

I take a sip from the tea. It tastes like cardamom and citrus; it’s lukewarm, and very good, with just a hint of sweetness.

Martina looks down at her notepad again, tapping the end of her pen against it a few times. The silence feels purposeful, like she’s waiting for me to fill it. But I want to see what she will do if I remain quiet.

When she looks up, she asks me:

“Tell me, Isobel, what is it that you want to get out of your experience here at Himlafall?”

“Healing, I guess.” An Isobel Anderssen answer. “I want to be happy. I want to find someone.”

Martina presses her lips together, studying me closely.

Then she turns the notepad upside down and puts it down on the table, leans back in her chair.

“You know,” she begins. Her tone is chatty, like we’re two girlfriends sharing casual secrets.

“I had a therapist, during my marriage. I saw her twice a week for two years.”

“Oh?” I say.

“Yes.” Martina nods. “Her name was Mika. She was Finnish. Lovely woman. She was very sweet. Very kind. She had this soft, lilting voice. I found it incredibly soothing.”

“Okay,” I say, wondering where she is going with this.

“The whole time I was seeing her, I was incredibly unhappy,” Martina says. “But I didn’t want anyone to know about that, so I didn’t tell her about it. I’d let some of it slip, occasionally, and then Mika would give me little exercises, and I would come back the next session, telling her I’d done them and that they had helped, and then we were both happy, at least for a little while. She was happy, because she thought she was helping me. And I was happy, because I felt like I had pleased her. I felt like I was being a good patient, and a good psychologist, and a good wife, because I was carrying all of my burdens by myself. I wasn’t forcing anyone else to have to deal with them.”

Martina falls silent. Her amber eyes bore into me without blinking.

After another sip of tea, I put the cup back on the table.

“You’re wondering if I’m telling the truth.” Martina chuckles. “Aren’t you? You’re thinking I’m making this up, in order to make a point.”

“I . . . no.” The surprise makes my voice hollow.

“Yes, you do,” Martina says, immediately. “But, yes, I’m being truthful.”

That word again.

Truthful.

As though being truthful is the highest good; as though I’m a liar, and she knows it, and I know it.

Do they repeat that, with all the patients?

Or can she tell there is something off about me? Can she tell what I’m hiding?

“I didn’t think you were lying.”

Martina ignores me.

“I want you to tell me why I told you that story.” Martina raises an eyebrow. “Take a guess. Humor me.”

“Probably in order to . . . find a parallel in what you’re telling me. Right? Like it says in your book. All stories are the same stories.”

I surprise myself with the quote. I read all her books cover to cover in preparation for this story, but I didn’t know it was going to pop out of my mouth.

Martina leans forward in her chair and rests her chin in her hands, her elbows leaning on her knees.

It makes her look like a schoolgirl at a sleepover; conspiratorial, as though about to share a morsel of gossip. Like we are whispering to each other in the dead of night, fragile threads of trust weaving back and forth until the web is stronger than any of the individual fibers could be on their own.

“You think you’re too smart for therapy.”

“No,” I say, but she shakes her head.

“You’re lying,” she says, a singsongy twist to her words. “You do. You think you can see through all this shit. You think you’re too complicated and too intelligent for therapy to work on you. It’s a superiority complex. You hold it up as a shield against the world, thinking it will keep you safe, and despite the fact that it keeps failing, despite the fact that the only thing it’s doing is keeping you lonely, you keep holding onto it, because you’re too scared to try anything else.”