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At the end of the session, Taio treated them to an exhibition of the kind of power the pure spirit possessed: he turned his back on them and levitated inches off the stage. Robin saw it with her own eyes, saw his feet leave the floor, his arms rising heavenwards, and then, after ten seconds, saw him fall back to earth with a bang. There were gasps and applause, and Taio grinned at them all, his eyes flickering once more towards Robin.
She wanted to leave the basement as quickly as possible after that, but as she made her way towards the wooden stairs, Taio called her back by name.
‘I was watching you,’ he said, smirking again as he descended from the stage. ‘You didn’t like what I was saying.’
‘No, I thought it was really interesting,’ said Robin, trying to sound cheerful.
‘You didn’t agree,’ said Taio. He was now standing so close to her that she could smell his pungent body odour. ‘I think you’re finding it hard to let go of the materialist framing of sex. You were engaged, weren’t you? And your marriage was called off?’
‘Yes,’ said Robin.
‘So until recently, materialist possession was very attractive to you.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Robin, ‘but I do agree with what you said about control and limiting people—’
Taio now reached out and stroked her cheek. Robin had to resist the impulse to knock his hand away. Smiling, he said,
‘I knew you were a Receptive the first time I saw you, in the Rupert Court Temple. “The Receptive is the most devoted of all things in the world.” That’s from the I Ching. Have you read it?’
‘No,’ said Robin.
‘Some women – the Receptive is female, the Creative male – are constitutionally prone to devoting themselves to one man. That’s their nature. Those women can be very valuable church members, but to become pure spirit, they must lose their attachment to material status or any notion of possession. It’s not unacceptable to prefer only one man, as long as they’re not trying to limit or control him. So there’s a way forward for you, but you need to be aware of that tendency in yourself.’
‘I will,’ said Robin, trying to sound grateful for his input.
Another group of church members came down the stairs, ready for their lecture, and Robin was permitted to leave, but she’d seen the line between Taio’s heavy brows deepen as she turned away, and feared her agreement had been insufficiently enthusiastic or, worse, that she ought to have responded physically to his caress.
Others, as she swiftly realised, had already begun to demonstrate their willingness to rise above the material and embrace the spiritual. Several times over the next few days Robin noticed young women, spiky-haired Vivienne included, dropping out of scheduled activities, then reappearing from the direction of the Retreat Rooms, sometimes in the company of a man. She was certain it was a matter of time before she, too, was pressured to join in.
The next destabilising occurrence was Robin’s own fault: she went to the plastic rock a night early – at least, Robin thought she’d been a night early, but she had no means of knowing how many extra pebbles she’d picked up, forgetting that she’d already done so earlier in the day. She might, in fact, be as much as forty-eight hours out. Her disappointment at finding no letter from Strike and no chocolate had been severe. Someone from the agency would now have picked up her disappointingly news-less letter, but she didn’t dare make another night-time trip before it was absolutely necessary, because of what happened the morning after her premature trip.
She’d been silently overjoyed to hear that her group would be going into Norwich for the first time to collect money for the UHC’s many charitable enterprises. This would give her an opportunity to check the date on a newspaper and restart her pebble collecting again from the right day. However, shortly after breakfast, Robin was called aside by a stern-faced woman who’d never spoken to her before.
‘Mazu wants you to stay at the farm today,’ she said. ‘You’re to go up to the vegetable patch and help the workers there.’
‘Oh,’ said Robin, as Becca Pirbright led the rest of her group out of the dining hall, some of them looking curiously back at Robin. ‘Er – all right. Should I go there now?’
‘Yes,’ said the woman curtly, and walked away.
Robin had been at Chapman Farm long enough to recognise the subtle signs that somebody was in disgrace. There were still a few people sitting along the breakfast table from her, and when she glanced towards them, all looked swiftly away. Feeling self-conscious, she got to her feet and carried her empty porridge bowl and glass over to a trolley by the wall.
As she left the dining hall and made her way towards the large vegetable patch, which she’d never worked on before, Robin wondered nervously what she’d done to be demoted from the high-level recruits. Was it her insufficiently enthusiastic response to the concept of spirit bonding? Had Taio been displeased with her reaction to their conversation and reported her to his mother? Or had one of the women in her dormitory reported seeing her leave it by night?
She found several adults planting carrot seeds on the vegetable patch, including the now very heavily pregnant Wan. A number of pre-school children were also there, in their miniature scarlet tracksuits. One of these was the white-headed Qing, who was easy to recognise because of her dandelion clock hair. Only when the man nearest Qing straightened up to his full height did Robin recognise Will Edensor.
‘I’ve been told to come and help,’ said Robin.
‘Oh,’ said Will. ‘Right. Well, there are seeds here…’
He showed her what to do then returned to his own planting.
Robin wondered whether the silence of the other adults was due to her presence. None of them were talking except to the children, who were more hindrance than help, more interested in scooping up the seeds and digging their fingers into the earth than in planting anything.
A strong smell wafted over the vegetable patch, which lay downwind of the pigsty. Robin had been working for a few minutes when Qing toddled over to her. The child had a crudely made toy spade of wood, which she banged on the earth.
‘Qing, come here,’ said Will. ‘Come and help me plant.’
The child struggled away across the damp soil.
