She starts going six weeks after she finds out, on the advice of a therapist. It is important to have a community, dear. It’s only online, but just before it starts, her hands tremble and she drinks three ice-cold glasses of water. She doesn’t speak. The first week she scans the others and finds them embarrassing—repellent double chin, lurid jumper colour, straggly grey hair—a mess of unstylish, expectant faces. People nothing like her, in her patterned silk pyjamas. She feels in the top of her chest a heavy, wincing grasp when anyone speaks. In the third week, it worsens. In the fourth week, her whole body burns – her face bright red. Her leg taps the floor manically. These people have ruined our lives. She keeps going back. After six weeks, she is full of stories of how the others have been let down, disgraced, deceived, and made fools of. Just like me. She stops turning her camera on and seethes silently. We are all women. She eats copious amounts of caramel chocolate, its stickiness around her lips liberating. She stops wearing her silk pyjamas and sits in her big, stained knickers, bits of chocolate stuck to her crotch. Her throat feels smaller.
There is one woman, Sandra, who is Scottish and sad in the most tragic way: it has seeped into her skin, which is a crisscross of deep, haunting lines. Sandra has repeated the same messy cycle with her son for years. She is always taken in by his latest set of lies. Tessa listens to Sandra talk each week, the pressure boiling in her chest. She thinks about Sandra outside of the meetings and even dreams about her and her son, who, although Tessa has never met him, can be seen as clearly as the sky on a cloudless day: cracked lips, a halting gait, and tired, searching eyes. She always turns into a panther and rips his face off.
“I realised,” Sandra says one week “I’m addicted to my own suffering, to the drama of it all”. Her crinkled face holds anguish that gathers around her lips, which wobble as she finishes: “There were so many times I chose suffering instead of peace”, she murmurs. Nods of understanding ripple around, and little emoji hearts appear next to people’s faces. Tessa hisses We didn’t choose this, none of us did, spittle landing just above Sandra’s left eyebrow. The meeting finishes, and she continues to repeat these words; they spill into the air around her, heavy and bloodstained. She spits them as she walks from room to room, picking up discarded toys and wiping up crumbs of food, as she scrubs the bathroom on her knees, little flecks of bleach adding to the stains on her leggings. She thinks of Sandra—somewhere blaming herself. That night, as she puts her daughter Alva to bed, for the first time in weeks- she doesn’t cry. Tessa strokes her belly, watching her chest rise and fall. As Alva twitches to sleep, she whispers, “We didn’t choose this, did we, baby girl?” The now familiar pressure sits heavy on her chest as the mess of his choices swims around them like lost fish in the gaping ocean, stupid and deadly.
In the morning, she wakes but doesn’t open her eyes. She scans her body, as she has done for the past few weeks, searching for the pressure. Today it’s in her arms, which are weighty and bruised. The dappled sunlight on her face feels accusatory—another beautiful day she can’t enjoy. Tessa opens her eyes and watches the spotlight of sun on Alva’s perfect, pale face. The space is filled with his absence. She rises quietly and sits by the window, looking out onto the road. That was the last time she saw Theo. He had dropped them both outside the house, her asking him, “Why did you do it again?” Theo’s tense frame had been guarded, on his shoulders, an insouciant shrug. “It’s not a big deal”. But it was, and something had snapped—a last filament of patience, the last shard of her heart. She stares at the spot where he had stood so hard that her eyeballs hum. He chose our suffering. She hisses as Alva wails.
They walk along the sun-streaked pavement, Alva in her pram, reaching for the crisp mint green of the bushes they pass, babbling at the world. Her little fingers grasp at the air, possessed by awe. She drops her off at nursery, the bright, round face of her key worker a full moon of safety. As she wanders along the high street with the looming stretch of time before her, a man hands her a leaflet. “Sri Durga Devi, Famous Astrologer, Spiritual Health Practitioner, and Psychic Reader” She finds herself walking towards the address on the leaflet.
Sri Durga is younger than she expected, closely shaven, and has a red quilted turban atop his head. They are in a small backroom of an Indian restaurant. The deep, amber smell of sandalwood permeates the air. She pinches the skin on her arm and releases it over and over. Nausea rises in her as the possibility of him telling her something she doesn’t want to hear looms. Sri Durga’s eyes remain closed as he shuffles a pack of tarot cards. “Knock the cards three times with your left hand, ma’am,” he instructs her, his Indian accent thick and his vowels elongated. “Now, shuffle them, please”. She does, and he watches her, his small brown eyes alert and quick under his furrowed brow. Around them are framed photos of deities, and the words “remove black magic and evil spirits” are in bold type above them. She can hear the din of the restaurant, orders shouted, plates scraping, and the sizzle of chicken. When she has laid out the cards as instructed, face down, Sri Durga looks in her direction, but his eyes flicker around her, as if she is surrounded by something. He nods slowly, the beads around his neck gently clacking together.
“You stopped listening to your intuition ma’am. Are you getting these symptoms?” He proceeds to reel off a list of her ailments: headaches, anxiety, low mood, constipation, the inability to look at herself in the mirror, and the pressure that sits on her constantly. She nods slightly, and he continues, “Forgiveness is for you, not them”. The tide of panic rises in her chest, she flushes red. He turns over the cards. A winged person, pouring water between two cups; a young man, a sword in his hand, pointing skywards; a horned goat, half man with wings; an upturned pentagram; and a burning tower with people flailing as they fall from its great height. He pauses, his full lips pursed, creating an area of pale brown at his cupid’s bow. He closes his eyes again and hangs his head, taking a sharp and deep breath. Suddenly, he is chanting, a low melodic hum, his tone beautiful and rich. She feels self-conscious at first, unsure of what to do, but when she closes her own eyes, the vibration of his voice seeps into her and her pulse slows down. Then, his hand, cold and soft, is on her forehead, and his hums are hisses, furious and interjected with words she doesn’t understand. She feels the familiar pressure in her chest, and the sounds of the cafe disappear. Images fill her head. She is eight, her father’s back cased in blue denim as he walks away, her mother on the floor sobbing, a knife in her hand; she is nine.
The slow thud of realisation that it was just her and her mother She is fifteen, and her mother sits on the lap of a new, shadowed man. She is seventeen, and she has to escape the man whose shadows have filled their home. Then Theo is there, his eyes bloodshot, his mouth trembling. I’m an addict. I love you. Images fill her mind in a rapid, overlapping franticness before they explode in a red mist. She is wailing and clawing at the air around her. An ancient rage bursts through her chest, and she is screaming, she stands up, so the chair falls violently away from her. A guttural sound reverberates from her, her voice shrieking, her mouth open wide, her throat growling. She lunges towards Sri Durga and her fingers aim for his eyes—teeth barred, spit flying through the air. The red mist turns black, and she falls to her knees.
She is sitting on the floor of the small room. Sri Durga’s long, tapered fingers are holding a black, opaque stone with a waxy lustre and a white streak. He looks up directly into her eyes, and three different shades of brown and a tiny fleck of green glint at her. This will protect you. Black jade. His face remains passive, and then the best things are coming.
She walks out into the bright light of the day in a daze. Her body feels raw like the skin has been peeled back. But the pressure is gone. She heads towards a coffee shop. As she turns into the entrance, she sees her. At first, she thinks it is her imagination creating a trick—the strangeness of Sri Durga spilling out into the world around her. She rubs her eyes but is confronted with the same image. The map of wrinkles is even more intricate in real life. As she has only ever seen her on a screen, she is shocked by how tall she is and by the elegance of her gait. She moves so lightly that Tessa feels all the faded calm she feels morph into a slight frenzy. It is her; it is Sandra.
Sandra leaves the coffee shop and heads towards the fields at the end of the road. Her movements are delicate as if she is dancing on the pavement. Tessa follows her to a cafe, a greasy spoon with tables littered outside, caught in the sunshine. Sandra sits on the table at the end, pulls out a slim book, and orders a coffee and a bacon sandwich. Tessa sits on the table next to her, her back to Sandra, and pulls out her phone. She tries to look inconspicuous. Her heart is galloping. She feels so intricately connected to her, but Sandra has no idea who she is. A thrill passes through her.
Suddenly, a figure approaches Sanra. He is thin, tall and gaunt. His shoulders are slumped, and his hoodie is stained. His lips crack at the sides of his mouth. Tessa lets out an audible gasp and covers her mouth. He looks exactly as she saw him in her dreams—a character come to life. Sandra’s son. He sits down opposite his mother. Tessa can’t see him, but she hears his rasping voice. “I’m sorry, Mum”. She is surprised by the tenderness in it—the chinks of pain. She risks looking and turns around to peek at Sandra. Her face is transformed; Tessa no longer sees sadness but a glittering skeleton and radiant love. She puts her hand over her son’s and says, “I know, my boy” Her voice is gentle with something unconditional. Tessa gets up and walks away before she can overhear any more of their conversation. When she picks Alva up from nursery, she hugs her tight and whispers in her hair “Your father loves you, you know”.In the eighth week, Tessa turns her camera on. Her hands tremble slightly as she grips the glass of water at her side. She sees Sandra at the bottom right of her screen and smiles. She looks at the checkerboard of faces and sees soldiers assembling, battle scars glistening. Hi, I’m Tessa, and I’m ready to not be angry anymore. Little emoji hearts appear next to everyone’s faces.