How to be perfect, p.8
How to Be Perfect, page 8
There was Guru Gwendi, the meditation teacher, who called everyone ‘blessed soul’ and carried a teeny-tiny gong with her everywhere she went. It was meant to be a meditation cue, but Elle had noticed she tended to dong it whenever she was bored of talking to a particular client: ‘Next, blessed soul.’
And finally there was Dr Jonti, a plastic surgeon who operated out of a small private clinic in Byron. For clients who wanted to roll their stay into a procedure at his place, he offered five-star service, door-to-door transfers and a discounted rate.
Dr Jonti had redone Elle’s breast implants during her first month at Gurva. She—and Ben, truth be told—had wanted a slightly smaller, more ‘natural’ look than what she’d upgraded to after Freddie’s birth three years earlier. He’d done such an excellent job that they’d asked him to be Gurva’s ‘breast man’, and he said the referrals had transformed his business. Enquiries about Dr Jonti’s services tended to peak on day three, after the group had seen Elle’s keynote performance.
As Elle was limbering up in the empty studio before her class, she showed Matt her engagement ring. ‘Can you believe this shit?’ she said, offering up an enormous round blue diamond on an engraved platinum band.
Matt lifted her hand, twisted it from side to side. ‘That’s some rock. Bigger than your first?’
‘Yes, but … I wanted that one.’ For my own reasons, she thought. The jewellery that Adrian had bought her was all stashed for safe-keeping, just one of many ‘insurance policies’ she had hidden around the place.
‘Most chicks would be stoked with that,’ Matt said, letting her hand go. ‘Ben Bont proposing. A permanent place in his family. A right to the fortune.’
‘What it is,’ Elle spat, ‘is a power move.’
‘Jesus, so romantic. I thought women loved huge rings and men telling them it was forever …’ Matt took to shuffling the yoga mats into straighter lines.
‘Women do not love being owned,’ Elle replied, sticking a leg in the air and yanking it towards her for a deep stretch.
‘Elle,’ Matt got gruff when he was irritated, ‘you have a baby and a business with the guy. It’s not like you two have just been on a few dates.’
‘Shut up, Matt,’ she snapped. ‘I just need to work out how to play this thing. Maybe you should focus on letting in the paying customers?’
‘Sure,’ he said, shrugging. ‘But Elle, if you two are plotting some sort of big reveal, I think you should take the bauble off. The punters aren’t going to miss that, and it will be all over social as soon as practice is finished.’
He was right. Elle took off her sparkly ball and chain, and pushed it deep into her bra. ‘Let’s do it.’
• • •
Elle-ness 101 had a rock-star vibe to it.
The believers, the Elle-ness retreaters, were here for this reason: Elle Campbell, in the flesh.
The guests were weak and depleted from two days of consuming only vegetable juice with photogenic garnishes, and they’d been pulled and pushed in every direction by their yoga/Pilates/yogalates instructors, then encouraged to run around the dam at dawn.
So they were already in a highly emotional state when they came into the studio to meet their guru. This encounter was meant to bolster them, replenish them, push them into the next day and towards solid foods with a renewed enthusiasm. Sometimes, someone screamed. And more than once, someone had fainted.
After the clients were ushered in by Matt and several Gurva staffers wearing the uniform—white tunics, placid smiles—they arranged themselves on their yoga mats, glass bottles of green potion beside them, and whispered and giggled and chatted among themselves until the music started.
Today, it was ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ by Taylor Swift.
Elle walked out from the side of the raised platform, wearing a tiny white sports bra and tiny white shorts, tan gleaming, plait swinging, bare feet with painted toes (she was working on getting her go-to nude shade trademarked and in the online shop). And she stood there, hands clasped together at ‘heart centre’, while the hullaballoo of sixteen whooping women died down.
‘Friends,’ Elle said. ‘Friends. Thank you for believing in me. There is no greater honour.’
Cue another explosion of noise.
‘There’s only one thing better than feeling the way I feel right now, standing here, basking in your love …’
Silence fell.
‘… helping you to feel the way I feel right now, standing here, basking in love.’
More wild whooping.
‘You have come here, to my home, on a journey to help you better understand yourself, and your potential. And today, in this practice, we are going to move, and we are going to share, and we are going to shake off the negativity that has been bringing us down …’ At this point, Elle—as she always did—lowered her voice and spoke conspiratorially, ‘And believe me, I know a little bit about people trying to take you down with negativity …’
Cue uproarious laughter.
‘But even if you haven’t been shamed on a global media stage, as I once was—’ loud boos ‘—there’s no doubt you carry your own shame around with you.
‘There is no doubt that people who don’t understand your gifts try to reduce you all the time … Try to make you small like them. Bitter and jealous like them … WELL!
‘Here’s my message for you, friends:
‘You are not mediocre. You are not messy. You are not going to accept a second-rate version of yourself. This week, today and forever, you are going to pledge to remake your body and soul to reflect the strength within.
‘You are going to leave Gurva more beautiful, less weighed down by your baggage—yes, your emotional and your physical baggage—we are going to throw that stuff OUT.
‘You are going to commit to being your best self every single day!
‘And when you’re niggling yourself with “no” and “maybe” and “can’t be bothered”, what are we going to say?!’
‘NO EXCUSES!’ the small crowd chanted at her.
‘What was that, lazybones?’ she called to them.
‘NO EXCUSES!’
‘What was that, poor me?’
‘NO EXCUSES!’
Blisteringly loud dance music came on, and Elle led her followers in a twenty-minute cardio blast that saw her leaping and squatting and running and dancing, and a room full of hungry mere mortals trying to mimic her every move, before the music changed to a chiming Zen beat, and she brought them all into a fifteen-minute wind-down of yogic Elle-ness moves and affirmations.
‘You are a work in progress,’ she called.
‘I am a work in progress,’ they replied.
‘You are in love with your life.’
‘I am in love with my life.’
‘You will not lose.’
‘I will not lose.’
‘No excuses.’
‘No excuses.’
The session ended with Elle sitting cross-legged on stage while each depleted disciple filed up to meet her, one by one. A staff member made sure the line moved quickly—‘No photos,’ they said, every five seconds.
Women cried—they always cried, and Elle would nod along and sometimes offer a comforting pat. But as she’d learnt when she’d begun doing these sessions, it was best not to listen to the women’s stories: they were all the same. And most were real downers, Elle found. Stories about breast cancer, divorce and anxiety. It was a lot to take on.
‘Oprah, eat your heart out,’ Matt said to one of the new staff, approvingly, as Elle came off stage. He was smiling widely as he watched the women file out, dabbing themselves with their Gurva-branded sweat towels.
‘You are pretty good at that,’ the young female staff member said to Elle. ‘I can’t believe you’ve just had a baby.’
‘You should have seen her do it when she was pregnant,’ said Matt. ‘It was really something to see her doing those kicks, in those shorts, with a belly.’
Elle caught the way the new girl looked sideways at Matt as he said that, her eyes slightly narrowed.
‘He means I’m unstoppable,’ Elle said to the girl. ‘That’s what they want to see.’
The session had been forty-five minutes, start to finish. The guests would see her again, on their last night, when she came and led them in a meditation on resilience and discipline.
In their six days at Gurva, they’d get two doses of Elle. And they’d dine out on them for months.
• • •
In truth, Elle was knackered when she came off stage after a 101.
She’d been a trainer and a fitness instructor in her pre-Adrian life, so she was used to leaping around in front of a class, but she’d never been a public speaker. So she had literally studied TED Talks and, yes, Oprah monologues until she’d got it down.
‘I think we need to be doing this with bigger crowds,’ Matt said as he walked her back up to the farmhouse. ‘If you bottle the energy in that studio, it’s worth a shedload if we can scale it.’
‘One step at a time.’ Elle was now wearing a white robe and trainers, like a prize fighter after a bout. She was happy not to have to do that again for a week or two; the neediness of those women drained her. ‘Remember I’m preaching to the hardcore here, the people who are on our side. I don’t think we’d fill a stadium with those people yet.’
‘But we might,’ Matt said quietly, ‘when you’re reintroduced to the world as Mrs Ben Bont.’
‘I get it, Matt. Stop with the hard sell.’
And she left him outside the farmhouse door and went in to check up on the baby nurse.
Elle hadn’t replied to Abi’s email yet. It was another source of rage alongside how to deal with Ben’s proposal.
The idea that Abi—the woman behind Elle’s public humiliation last year, Adrian’s sanctimonious ex-wife, Elle’s enemy—was basically raising her boys was a reality she hadn’t let herself entertain, until now.
Teddy and Freddie living with Adrian, she could take. She’d imagined him employing nannies and getting his tedious mother Bonnie to come in and help him look after them in the past year. But Abi’s email had pushed that mental image aside: Elle now saw her beautiful boys in hemp (shudder), knee-deep in mud, roped into being hippie pageboys at Abi’s big fat lesbian wedding (news of that hadn’t eluded Elle’s social feeds).
Her frustration was rippling on her surface, coming off her in waves. As she marched through the house to the nursery, Mauna and the housekeeper ducked out of the way.
Pushing open the double doors to Alma’s bedroom, Elle saw Lucille, the baby nurse, bending over. Her little finger was hooked in Alma’s mouth; Alma was smiling, kicking her legs in the air, making a gummy maw-maw-maw sound.
Lucille looked up at Elle. ‘I think there’s a tooth coming through, Mum! She’s advanced, our girl,’ she said cheerfully.
‘Get your finger out of my baby’s mouth!’ Elle shouted. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
‘I …’ Lucille seemed scared.
This only infuriated Elle more. She dashed over to where Lucille and the baby were: Alma on a tasteful patchwork quilt on an antique-white change table, Lucille in uniform, protective hand on the baby’s tummy. And Elle shoved her.
Lucille stumbled back, her head knocking the wall as she half-fell against it.
‘She’s not YOUR baby! She’s not OUR girl!’ Elle was shouting. ‘She’s MY girl. And she doesn’t want your dirty fingers in her mouth.’
Alma was crying. Lucille’s hand was at the back of her head, and she was looking at the floor. ‘You crazy woman,’ she muttered.
‘GET OUT, you’re fired!’ Elle screamed.
As she felt strong arms around her, she realised she was lunging towards Lucille.
‘Elle. Calm down. Stop, for fuck’s sake.’ It was Matt. ‘Just stop.’
Lucille pushed past them both and ran out the door.
‘Fuck!’ said Matt, watching her go. ‘That was not a good move.’
He’d let go of her now, and was holding something out to Elle—the blue diamond. ‘You dropped your ring,’ he said. But Elle couldn’t really hear him. She was looking at Alma, pushing her own little finger into her daughter’s mouth, hoping to stop her crying.
‘It’s true,’ Elle half-whispered. ‘She has got a tooth.’
CHAPTER 12
ABI
The fun police
It’s easy to go to war over a wedding.
I’m organising one, GDs, and I can tell you, it might sound ridiculous when I say this but I never knew it was so fucking difficult.
And I’ve actually done it before.
It was back in the year 2001, and honestly, I barely remember sorting anything. I bought a forgiving dress, we had some cake, and my parents controlled most of the guest list.
We probably spent too much money and created too much waste.
Now, all of us here know how that marriage worked out, but since I came out of it with my two daughters, it will always rank as one of my life’s better decisions.
One thing’s for certain—I didn’t spend any time worrying about table settings and hashtags.
But now I’m making decisions about the craziest things. Rice, not rose petals, for throwing. One meat meal on the vegetarian menu for my dad, who’s never looked sideways at a lentil. No posed photos, only a roaming reporter.
G wants me to take care of it, deal with all the details.
Except for this one: My glorious G wants our wedding to be DRY.
No booze. No booze at all.
Just a selection of refreshing, kombucha-based punches with fruit from our garden.
I KNOW. I know that’s good for us, GDs. I know that here in this intentional community of like-minded souls we eschew binge-drinking and wine o’clock, and the nonsense created to make us spend our hard-earned money on drugs that keep us dulled to our own possibilities. I know, I know.
I know that in my previous life, there was much too much ‘casual’ drinking. It could lead, often, to ‘casual’ words of cruelty, ‘casual’ car accidents, ‘casual’ tears, ‘casual’ domestic violence, ‘casual’ divorce. So yes, I know, I know.
BUT—Champagne at a wedding! Tipsy dancing under the tree-tops! Fancy wine in fancy buckets on fancy tables! A drunk uncle telling you for the fourteenth time why you should have stayed married to that nice man in a suit … That’s a WEDDING, right???
What say you, my tribe?
If the bride is always right but two brides disagree, who gets to make the call? Just how righteous do we want our righteous day to be?
I await your word.
Your QGD—Abi xx
‘I can’t believe you’re writing about that,’ said Grace, leaning over Abi’s shoulder as she finished typing. ‘I mean, slow news day.’
‘You’re just worried about being shown up as the wowser you are, sugar,’ replied Abi, kissing Grace’s hand.
‘Really? I think your people will support my vision for a non-toxic celebration.’ Grace pulled her hand away. ‘Who wants people punching on in the bathroom and throwing up on the dancefloor?’
‘Give our nearest and dearest a little more credit,’ said Abi. ‘They’re not footballers on a bonding weekend.’
‘Still, weird post,’ said Grace, setting an assortment of glass bowls on the table and placing a jug of water with them. ‘You running out of wars to wage?’
Grace was still home-schooling her youngest, Otto. He was nine and the most sensitive of their kids; his preferred place was at Grace’s skirts, always. That’s where he was right now, as Abi typed and Grace laid out a lesson plan—science experiments, today—on the kitchen table. Otto was sprawled on the floor at her feet, reading a book about worms.
‘There’s a war I’d like to start,’ Abi said. ‘But I don’t think it would be good for us.’
She turned her laptop around to face Grace. It was open to The Goddess Project—and there, lying across the top of the page, was the gleaming, dark, naked body of a woman: tiny waist, defined abs, arms casually draped across her breasts, legs crossed at the thigh, glistening all over. The woman was headless, the only identifying sign a thick black plait hanging across her body.
‘Who is that? Not your usual taste in lady sites.’ Grace smiled and nudged Abi as she made this crack.
Abi didn’t smile back. ‘Scroll down,’ she said.
Grace did, and came to the next picture: another body shot, but this time the woman was in a sports bra and very tiny shorts. She was contorted into a complex stretch, face still obscured. The heading read: The Goddess Project. Release weight, years and negativity to remake your life.
‘Is that …?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wow.’ Grace kept scrolling. The next picture did show Elle’s face, and her round pregnant belly, in a warrior pose in front of a stunning traditional farm homestead, surrounded by green rolling hills. ‘Pregnant?’
‘Um, not anymore. Baby girl.’
‘O-kaaay. So many questions, Abi.’
‘Mum, are we going to start lessons soon, or is my brain going to turn to mud?’ Sol piped up from the floor, holding up a picture of an earthworm in the ground.
‘Any minute, now, Sol. Abi?’
‘It makes me so fucking angry—’
‘Swear jar!’ yelled Sol.
‘Which part?’ Grace went on shifting the bowls around in order of size. ‘At least now I know why you’re distracting yourself with posts about this wedding.’
This wedding, again?
‘The shit she’s peddling, Grace. Take away all the stuff about Adrian and the boys and her being a lying, devious cu—’
‘Swear jar!’
‘It’s this shit right here—I had to subscribe to this, with actual money. And people do. They hand over hard-earned cash, and for what? For her to show me naked pictures, share ridiculous recipes no one can follow without taking out a bank loan, and spout a lot of psycho-babble about being your best self. I mean …’ Abi put her head on the table. ‘It makes me … want to hit someone.’
