‘Bless me, my child, and may your righteous punishment fall upon all who stray from The Way.’
Mazu then got up, still without looking at or speaking to Robin, and headed towards the temple. With an upsurge of panic, Robin followed, with a presentiment of what was about to happen. Sure enough, on entering the temple, Robin saw all her former high-level associates, including Amandeep, Walter, Vivienne and Kyle, sitting in a circle on chairs set upon the shining black pentagon-shaped stage. All looked stern. With an increase of her awful foreboding, Robin saw that Taio Wace was also present.
‘Rowena had taken it upon herself to do a different task to the one she was assigned, which is why you couldn’t find her, Vivienne,’ said Mazu, climbing the stairs to the stage and sitting down in a free seat, spreading out her glittering blood red robes as she did so. ‘She has paid the tribute of humility, but we will now find out whether that was an empty gesture. Move your chair into the centre of the circle, please, Rowena. Welcome to Revelation.’
Robin picked up an empty chair and moved it to the centre of the black stage, beneath which lay the deep, dark baptismal pool. She sat down and tried to still her legs, which were shaking, by pressing down on them with palms that had become damp.
The temple lights began to dim, leaving only a spotlight on the stage. Robin couldn’t remember the lights being lowered for any of the other Revelation sessions.
Get a grip, she told herself. She tried to picture Strike grinning at her, but it didn’t work: the present was too real, closing in upon her, even as the faces and figures of those surrounding her grew indistinct in the dark, and her lips were tingling strangely, as though contact with Mazu’s foot had left some acidic residue.
Mazu pointed a long, pale finger and the temple doors banged closed behind Robin, making her jump.
‘A reminder,’ said Mazu calmly, addressing those in the circle, ‘Primal Response Therapy is a form of spiritual cleansing. In this safe, holy space, we use words from the materialist world to counter materialist ideas and behaviours. There will be a purging, not only of Rowena, but of ourselves, as we unearth and dispatch terms we no longer use, but which still linger in our subconsciousness.’
Robin saw the dark figures around her nodding. Her mouth was completely dry.
‘So, Rowena,’ said Mazu, whose face was so pale that Robin could still make it out, with those dark, crookedly set eyes shining. ‘This is the moment for you to confess to things you may have done, or thought, about which you feel deep shame. What would you like to reveal first?’
For what felt like a long time, though was doubtless only seconds, Robin couldn’t think of anything to say at all.
‘Well,’ she began at last, her voice sounding unnaturally loud in the silent temple, ‘I used to work in PR and I suppose there was a lot of focus on appearances and what other people—’
The end of her sentence was drowned in an outbreak of jeering from the circle.
‘False self!’ barked Walter.
‘Deflecting,’ said a female voice.
‘You can’t blame your profession for your behaviour,’ said Amandeep.
Robin’s thought processes were sluggish after days of manual labour. She needed something that would satisfy her inquisitors, but her panicked mind was blank.
‘Nothing to say?’ said Mazu, and Robin could just make out her yellowish teeth in the gloom as she smiled. ‘Well, let’s see whether we can find a way in. Since entering our community, you felt entitled to criticise the colour of my hair, didn’t you?’
There was an intake of breath all around the circle. Robin felt a wave of cold sweat pass over her. Was this why she’d been demoted to farm worker? Because she’d wondered to Penny Brown why Mazu’s hair was still jet black in her forties?
‘What,’ said Mazu, speaking now to the rest of the circle, ‘would you call somebody who judged another person’s looks?’
‘Spiteful,’ said a voice out of the darkness.
‘Shallow,’ said a second.
‘Bitch,’ said a third.
‘I’m sorry,’ Robin said hoarsely, ‘I honestly didn’t mean to—’
‘No, no, there’s no need to apologise to me,’ said Mazu softly. ‘I set no store on physical appearance. But it’s an indication, isn’t it, of what you think is important?’
‘Judge people’s looks a lot, do you?’ asked a female voice from behind Robin.
‘I – I suppose—’
“‘Suppose” is obfuscatory,’ snarled Kyle.
‘You either do or you don’t,’ said Amandeep.
‘Then – I did,’ said Robin. ‘When I worked in PR, there was a tendency—’
‘Never mind tendencies,’ boomed Walter. ‘Never mind PR! What did you do? What did you say?’
‘I remember saying a client looked too big for her dress,’ invented Robin, ‘and she heard me and I felt terrible about it.’
A storm of jeering broke over her. Taio, who was sitting beside his mother, was the only person remaining silent, but he was smiling as he watched Robin.
‘Did you feel terrible, Rowena?’ asked Mazu quietly. ‘Or are you just giving us token examples, to avoid admitting to real shame?’
‘I—’
‘Why was your wedding called off, Rowena?’
‘I – we were arguing a lot.’
‘Whose fault was that?’ demanded Vivienne.
‘Mine,’ said Robin desperately.
‘What did you argue about?’ asked Amandeep.
There shouldn’t be any points of resemblance between your own life and Rowena’s, Strike had said, but he wasn’t here, stupefied by tiredness and fear, forced to come up with a story on the spot.
‘I… thought my fiancé was kind of… he didn’t have a proper job, wasn’t earning much…’
She was reversing the truth: it was Matthew who’d complained about her poor salary when she’d started working for Strike, Matthew who’d thought private detection a joke of a career.
The rest of the group began to call her names, their voices echoing off the dark walls, and Robin could make out only a few individual words: mercenary fucking bitch, gold-digger, greedy slag. Taio’s smile was broadening.
‘Tell us specifically what you said to your fiancé,’ demanded Walter.
‘That his boss was taking advantage of him—’
‘The exact words.’
‘“She’s taking advantage of you”, “she’s only keeping you on because you’re cheap”—’
While they jeered at and insulted her, she dredged her memory for the things Matthew had said about Strike during their marriage.
‘—“she fancies you”, “it’s a matter of time before she makes a move”—’
Now the surrounding circle began to shout.
‘Controlling cow!’
‘Jealous, self-centred—’
‘Stuckup, selfish bitch!’
‘Go on,’ Mazu said to Robin.
‘—and he loved the job,’ said Robin, her mouth now so dry her lips were sticking to her teeth, ‘and I made it as hard as I could for him to continue with it—’
The shouts became louder, echoing off the temple walls. In the dim light she could see fingers pointing at her, flashes of teeth, and still Taio smiled. Robin knew she was supposed to cry, that mercy came only once the person in the middle of the circle had broken down, but even though she could now see little dots of light popping in front of her eyes, something stubborn in her resisted.
Now the circle demanded the excavation of intimate details and ugly scenes. Robin embellished scenes from her marriage, reversing her and Matthew’s positions: now it was she who’d thought her partner was taking too many risks.