The Break-Up Retreat(73)

“How are you feeling now, Kat?”

“I don’t like to be called that.” Katarina’s words are sharp and clear.

Martina smiles.

“Good,” she says. “That’s a good start.”

“No,” Katarina says. “Not a start. Talk to someone else. I don’t want to anymore.”

A hint of surprise flitters in Martina’s eyes. Gone again, in an instant.

“. . . all right.” Martina recovers. “Let’s take a beat, so that you can gather your thoughts, Katarina. How about we go back to Isobel?”

Her head swivels.

“How are you feeling? You look stressed,” Martina observes.

Clara mutters something under her breath, and Martina looks over at her. It’s clear she expects Clara to speak up, but to my surprise, she clamps her mouth shut, instead.

“Is there anything I should know?” Martina asks, clearing her throat.

She’s lost control of the room. She doesn’t like it.

The lights in the ceiling flicker.

“What the—” Leyla exclaims, but then they stabilize.

“You told us the electricity wouldn’t go out.” Pernilla’s face is pinched.

“It’s all okay.” Martina tries to calm us down, but she looks visibly distressed. “Even if the electricity did go, we have a backup generator. It will all be fine.”

“It doesn’t feel fine,” Leyla mutters.

“Anyway ,” Martina says. “Isobel, let’s get back to you. I’d like to know how you feel now about this morning. About wanting to leave Himlafall.”

It’s clear she expects the others to have a big reaction to this, but no one responds.

“I feel fine.” I smile, showing as many teeth as I can muster. “Happy as a clam.”

Martina’s hands clench. Once, twice.

“You all seem unsettled,” she manages, looking around the room, turning the full force of her gaze on us. “Are there any questions I can answer for you? To help soothe your nerves?”

“Actually, Doctor,” Leyla raises her voice. “I do have a question.”

“About what?” Martina smiles.

“Is it true that someone has been going through our stuff?” Leyla asks.

Martina looks genuinely taken aback by this.

“Of—of course not,” she stammers. “Why would we do that?”

Her surprise looks real; none of the overly smooth, closed-off smugness I’ve come to expect from her. It startles me.

Leyla raises her eyebrows at me, wordlessly urging me on.

“Something was taken,” I admit. Martina is the last person in the world I feel like sharing this with, considering I’m fairly convinced she was involved, but if I want the others to see what I have seen I have to.

“From my cabin. A couple of days ago.”

Martina visibly pales.

The slight rouge on her cheeks attempts to conceal it, but I can see the color disappearing from her lips.

“. . . well.” She wets her lips with her tongue. “Maybe you misplaced it?”

I don’t know what to think.

Either she’s a better actress than I thought, or she’s . . . scared.

“I didn’t,” I say. “I’m sure.”

Doctor Martina opens her mouth, stays like that for a couple of seconds. It looks like she’s actually lost for words.

The rain is hammering against the ceiling, the walls, the windows; it feels like an intentional assault, like we’re under attack. Like the woods and the skies have decided to rid themselves of this unnatural intrusion into their domain and use wind and water to tear it all down to the foundations, until the forest can take it all back, until there is no trace that any of us were ever here.

“I . . . wish you would have told a staff member, Isobel. We might have been able to help you look for what it was you lost.”

“I thought you had taken it.” I watch her closely, to see her reacting, but there is nothing: no guilt, no anger, no recognition.

She didn’t do it.

“Why would you think that?” Martina sounds baffled.

“Because it was a cell phone,” I say. “One I wasn’t supposed to have.”

Martina just shakes her head, gives a slight, gulping laugh, so very different from her usual pearly peals.

“You think you’re the first patient to take a phone in here? For fuck’s sake, Isobel, half our guests keep an iPad or a laptop. We don’t go through your bags. We’re not cops.”

She stares at me, her chest moving in short, shallow bursts.

“You didn’t take it,” I repeat it for confirmation.

“No one working here would ever violate your space like that,” Martina insists. “Himlafall is founded on the principle of trust.”

“Principle of trust ?” Pernilla interrupts, sharply. “Like how you tell everyone the personal things we’ve told you in private?”

Martina stands up from her seat and runs her hand over her face.

“Listen to me,” she says. “I understand that you’re all feeling unmoored and upset right now, but these accusations are ridiculous. This is a very strenuous process, but you all knew that when you came here.