Amanda’s not been popping her head in as much as she was before either. She spent yesterday morning with some acupuncturist she met, and Erin hasn’t seen her this morning. Perhaps it’s her acknowledgement that, although Erin had asked her to help with Bobby, she had overstepped the mark a little. But Erin’s missing their little chats, Amanda asking about people she had met in town, telling Erin about the history of some natural beauty she’d visited or trying to educate her about a new holistic practice that Erin would almost certainly never try. Amanda not being around as much has also made Erin wonder about how she’ll manage when she goes. Grace is finalising negotiations on a contract for a brand ambassadorship that would involve going to London at least once a fortnight and probably far more, and even if she can convince Raf to put Bobby in childcare, it’s not something that can just happen overnight. There are settling-in sessions and she knows people whose babies have basically been rejected because they’ve screamed from the moment they were dropped off. Erin’s fairly sure Bobby would be such a baby.
She finds herself trying the handle of the glazed door of the studio, telling herself that she’s just checking everything’s OK with it for Amanda, as she walks in. But the smell that hits her is so overpowering she thinks it might wake Bobby so she nearly turns round and goes straight back out the door. It’s herby, a bit like weed but not quite as acrid. There’s notes of a pizzeria, basil, which she’s always thought tastes like the smell of fresh-cut grass. On the shelf above the one-burner hob there’s a line of small hessian sacks, with various types of dried herbs and spices poking out of the opening at the top of them. Erin wanders over to the kitchenette and studies the labels. The names are like something from Game of Thrones. Ginkgo Biloba, Feverfew, Belladonna, Digitalis, Verbena, and then ones she’s heard of, Camomile, Echinacea, Eucalyptus, Elderberry. The colours are tantalising and she has a desire to sniff them but, knowing she’d probably manage to spill something all over Bobby’s head, thinks better of it.
She opens a cupboard and sees a blue Post-it stuck to the bottom corner of the inside of the door. ‘SONNET 116’ it says in black biro capitals. Erin had to learn some of Shakespeare’s sonnets for their voice classes at drama school but she can never remember which one’s which.
As she turns away from the kitchenette, Erin notices that Amanda’s arranged a collection of her crystals in a pattern on the table. There’s a circle of them intersected by lines of little rocks that lead to a tiny obelisk-like murky grey crystal in the middle, a little larger than the others. There are pale pink stones, the same as the crystal Amanda gave her, but also a brighter pink with lines of white within it, and then some translucent deep red, highly polished stones, like rubies. The whole arrangement is bordered by a square of peach-coloured rose petals with a plain white candle at one corner. Erin’s read that crystals are a big wellness trend at the moment.
She picks up a small pebble from the corner opposite the candle, careful to clock where to replace it. She rubs her thumb over the roughness on one side of it. What ‘energy’, she wonders, does this perfect little pattern indicate? Calm perhaps. Are these the secret to Amanda’s effortless tranquillity?
She seems so content with everything. Like every leaf on every tree is the most wonderful thing in the world. It might be she’s had a lot of therapy, Erin thinks, her brother had an old girlfriend who was similar. Very level. Very calm. Every word measured. Erin later found out it was down to years of therapy when she was a teenager. The cadence of Amanda is similar. She seems so joyful. Perhaps, Erin thinks, she sees herself like the bus in Speed, that if she ever showed anything negative, she might explode.
Erin skips past the window and into the bathroom. The studio was a fairly new addition to the house put in by the previous owners so the room has the grey slate finish and gleaming dark tiles that Erin’s seen on various home improvement shows, but the room’s tiny. A box of a shower, toilet, small corner sink with a bathroom cabinet above it and barely space for an adult to be able to access any of them. On the ledge above the sink stands a large muddy-green wedge of soap, the sort with chunks of bark in it that you might get from one of those shops that smell so pungent that the staff must be nursing a constant headache. She looks down at a bamboo cup at the back of the sink. A wooden-handled toothbrush, accompanied by a tube of some toothpaste brand she doesn’t recognise, but there’s something else in the cup. She plucks it out by the handle, it’s a small screwdriver. She tries to find what Amanda has been fixing in the bathroom, but she can’t see anything. She replaces the screwdriver and tries to reposition it exactly where she found it.
She opens the door of the cabinet and reveals a line of tiny glass bottles containing different coloured liquids and covered in Chinese symbols. She picks out a luminous pink one. On the back there’s a picture of a droplet going into an eye. She closes the cabinet, being careful not to clatter it into Bobby
