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‘Er – her name was Daiyu, wasn’t it?’ said Robin, still with the tiny pebble held in her closed hand.
‘Yeah, but d’you know who she was? To me?’
‘Oh,’ said Robin. She’d already learned that the naming of family relationships was frowned upon at Chapman Farm, because it suggested a continuing allegiance to materialist values. ‘No.’
‘My sister,’ said Jiang in a low voice, smirking.
‘Can you remember her?’ said Robin, careful to sound awed.
‘Yeah,’ said Jiang. ‘She used to play with me.’
They proceeded towards the entrance of the farmhouse. As Jiang drew a little ahead of her to push open the dragon-ornamented doors of the farmhouse, Robin stowed the tiny pebble out of sight down the front of her sweatshirt, inside her bra.
There was a motto inlaid in Latin in the stone floor just inside the doors of the farmhouse: STET FORTUNA DOMUS. The hallway was wide, pristinely clean and immaculately decorated, the white walls covered in Chinese art, including framed silk panels and carved wooden masks. A scarlet-carpeted stairway curved up to the first floor. A number of closed doors, all painted in glossy black, led off the hall, but Jiang led Robin past all of these and turned right, into a corridor that led into one of the new wings.
At the very end of the corridor, he rapped on another glossy black door and opened it.
Robin heard a woman’s laughter, and as the door opened she saw actress Noli Seymour leaning up against an ebony desk and apparently lost in merriment about something Dr Zhou had just said to her. She was a dark, elfin young woman with cropped hair, wearing what Robin recognised as head-to-toe Chanel.
‘Oh, hello,’ she said through her laughter. Robin had the impression Noli vaguely recognised Jiang, but couldn’t remember his name. Jiang’s hand had again leapt to his winking eye. ‘Andy’s just making me roar… I had to come down here to get my treatments,’ she pouted slightly, ‘seeing as he’s abandoned us in London.’
‘Abandoned you? Never,’ said Zhou, in his deep voice. ‘Now, you’ll stay for the night? Papa J’s back.’
‘Is he?’ squealed Noli, clapping her hands to her face in delight. ‘Oh my God, I haven’t seen him in weeks!’
‘He says you can take your usual room,’ said Zhou, pointing upstairs. ‘The membership will be delighted to see you. Now, I have to assess this young lady,’ he said, pointing at Robin.
‘All right, darling,’ said Noli, offering her face to be kissed. Zhou clasped her hands, pecked her on each cheek, and Noli walked out past Robin in a cloud of tuberose, winking as she passed and saying:
‘You’re in very safe hands.’
The door closed on Noli and Jiang, leaving Robin and Dr Zhou alone.
The luxurious, meticulously tidy room smelled of sandalwood. A red and gold art deco rug lay on the dark polished floorboards. Floor-to-ceiling shelves of the same ebony as the rest of the furniture carried leatherbound books and also what Robin recognised as hundreds of journals of the kind lying on her bed, their spines labelled with the names of their owners. Behind the desk were more shelves carrying hundreds of tiny brown bottles arranged with precision and labelled in minuscule handwriting, a collection of antique Chinese snuff bottles and a fat golden Buddha, sitting cross-legged on a wooden plinth. A black leather examination couch stood beneath one of the windows, which looked out onto a part of the property screened from the courtyard by trees and bushes. Here, Robin saw three identical cabins built of timber, each of which had sliding glass doors, and which hadn’t been shown to any of the new recruits as yet.
‘Please, sit down,’ said Zhou, smiling as he gestured Robin to the chair opposite his desk, which like the desk was made of ebony, and upholstered in red silk. Robin registered how comfortable it was as she sank into it: the chairs in the workshop were of hard plastic and wood, and the mattress of her narrow bed very firm.
Zhou was wearing a dark suit and tie and a pristine white shirt. Pearls shone discreetly in the buttonholes of his cuffs. Robin assumed he was biracial because he was well over six feet tall – the Chinese men she was used to seeing in Chinatown, near the office, were generally much shorter – and he was undeniably handsome, with his slicked-back black hair and high cheekbones. The scar running down from nose to jaw hinted at mystery and danger. She could understand why Dr Zhou attracted television viewers, even though she personally found the sleekness and slight but detectable aura of self-importance unappealing.
Zhou flipped open a folder on his desk and Robin saw several sheets of paper, with the questionnaire she’d completed on the bus lying on top.
‘So,’ said Zhou, smiling, ‘how are you finding life in the church so far?’
‘Really interesting,’ said Robin, ‘and I’m finding the meditation techniques incredible.’
‘You suffer from a little anxiety, yes?’ said Zhou, smiling at her.
‘Sometimes,’ said Robin, smiling back.
‘Low self-esteem?’
‘Occasionally,’ said Robin, with a little shrug.
‘I think you’ve recently had an emotional blow?’
Robin wasn’t sure whether he was pretending to intuit this about her, or admitting that some of the hidden sheets of paper contained the biographical details she’d confided in church members.
‘Um… yes,’ she said, with a little laugh. ‘My wedding got called off.’
