The Telling Wall

By Leone Mary Britt

In The Telling Wall, the sequel to Leone Mary Britt's first novel An Inch of Love, An Inch of Ashes, the main character Calinda Carruthers continues on her troubled little sojourn through time. Among other things, she tries to change her life by doing a self awareness course which end up disgusting her. She seeks solace in other people's opinions, which confuse her even more. Her daughter Diana is diagnosed with a mental illness and things look grim. One of her great comforts is the graffiti on a wall that she passes every time she takes the bus, and this eventually becomes her avenue of redemption. Things gradually change for her as she struggles to help her daughter, and to find some peace amid the chaos. When circumstances teach her to fight she is eventually forced, by her need to make things right, to confront the most powerful members of society to reclaim her own power.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jan 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493131280

Leone Mary Britt

Leone Mary Britt was born in Orange, central western New South Wales, Australia, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism from Charles Sturt University even though she left school aged 14. She has had two marriages, four beautiful and talented sons (one now deceased) and worked at various jobs including six years at Australian Associated Press. Leone trained as a broadcast officer at 2CR, the ABC radio station in Orange when she was known as Leone Marten. She has had short stories published in the literary magazines Meanjin and Quadrant and had poetry published in The Australian and both the Newcastle and Sydney Morning Heralds and won two national poetry prizes. An earlier manuscript of The Telling Wall was chosen in the long shortlist of 30 in the Varuna Award for Manuscript Development circa 2001.

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Copyright © 2013 by Leone Mary Britt.

ISBN:          Softcover                                 978-1-4931-3121-1

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4931-3128-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 12/12/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

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www.Xlibris.com.au

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

You can corner a rat only so long. It eventually fights back

For my four sons, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John

Chapter 1

Images from a dream in which she flew up into the clouds like a skylark and hovered above the Big Cherry that sat like some mouldering old parochial icon outside her home town west of the Blue Mountains drifted into the chaos of Calinda’s consciousness as she rode the 136 bus to the city to change her life.

The dream reminded her of a line from the old I Ching oracle she consulted years ago when she obsessively shook three one-shilling coins and threw them onto the table, then read the meaning from the book according to the way they fell—either heads or tails—in a desperate bid to make it tell her she would soon find love and a better life. The memory sent a thrill up her spine the way good poetry did and she remembered the line which said the skylark was a creature of the earth, but was mortal and only a sojourner in heaven hovering up there in the shape of a cross after shooting straight up into the sky so high that humans could barely see it. Calinda had never heard one sing, but the joyous and triumphant song of this plain looking bird was said to sound even better than human poetry or rain falling like tiny glass petals down to earth.

Rounding a familiar bend, the bus thrust Calinda slightly forward as the brakes squealed, the engine wheezed, and the vehicle shuddered to a halt. Peering out the window she read on an old brick wall: ‘Injustice to One is Injustice to All’ and a zap of electricity shot up her spine to the top of her head as yet another weird coincidence collided with her reality. That very subject had been on her mind of late. But she wondered how there could ever be any justice in her world, filled as it was with so many deeply flawed humans; people she often felt had treated her worse than they had treated vermin. She sighed, sat back and admired the mystery messenger’s daring and determination and realised she looked forward eagerly for the appearance of each new scrap of philosophy, worn cliché, slogan, or abbreviated, yet pertinent phrase from literature or the Psalms. Last week the graffiti artist spoke of man’s inhumanity to man, which Calinda presumed included women. The messages, in whopping great capitals, were spray-painted black on the wall of a dilapidated and obviously empty building with a faded, antique sign much higher up advertising Goldenia Tea, an extinct brand of her favourite brew. She began to call it ‘The Telling Wall’, and she wondered how the perpetrator had evaded detection as he or she somehow cleaned off the old missives and wrote new ones in the usual clean, clear, and artistic letters. Yawning, she covered her mouth with her fist and then opened The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, by Oscar Hijuelos, a new book by a Latin American author whose books she had found while wandering aimlessly in a second hand bookshop recently. Sitting back in the hard bus seat, she remembered that old television show, I Love Lucy, around which the book had been written. It brought back memories of Calinda’s Aunt Mona who had loved that show, and had laughed uproariously at the crazy, beautiful, Lucille Ball. Poor Mona had slit her wrists in a warm bath years before because she believed she had cancer, when, in reality, she had been in a state of total good health, physically anyway, with no sign of the disease.

Calinda felt sleepy after working a late shift at Clear Waters Nursing Home and had crawled out of bed early to make it on time to her destination, a ‘Life Awareness’ workshop, reluctant, albeit, about going. Her old blue Datsun 180B had been playing up—something to do with a needle in a little glass container with fuel in it, and she didn’t feel safe driving any further than the local shops because sometimes the car would suddenly stop, and she would have to get out and lift the bonnet, take off the air filter and tap the little glass container until the stuck needle moved. She had broken down before, and she remembered how a man had shown her what to do, so from then on she could do it herself. But one day the Datsun stopped at the lights in Darktree Beach and a man ran across the street to help her. She was busily undoing the air filter, in a hurry, so she said thank you but she was fine. The man stood and watched her as if he didn’t believe her and when she got back in the car and started it up he walked off in a huff. Well, what was she to do? Act like a helpless female to stroke his ego? There was a time she would have pretended.

Had she driven in, she could have slept in a bit later, but she loved riding on the bus, and mostly took it to work to save on fuel. She couldn’t afford both the self-awareness workshop and expensive car repairs, so she’d had to toss up whether to use the money to change her life, or fix the car.

Mandy, one of the other nurses at Clear Waters had raved about her own so-called transformation with nothing less than evangelical zeal, swearing on her mother’s grave that the workshop had changed her life. Still, Calinda could not detect any real difference in Mandy, apart from her fanatical babbling about the workshop. But anything was worth a try, and Calinda sure needed to do something about her fucked up life. Despite her troubles, she had so far managed to hold down her job at the nursing home; her first full-time job in seven years. She felt a little better about herself because of that, despite the pathetic wage, which left her broke well before the next payday. Another thing that made her feel better, though not particularly about herself, was the anonymity of living in the city. This appealed to her, especially after spending most of her life in a country town where everybody knew everybody else’s business, and what they didn’t know, they made up to suit their own, often evil, imaginations.

However, she sometimes came home from work and paced the floor like a disturbed, trapped animal. When she realised she was behaving like a lion in a cage she would sit on a black cane chair in her tiny kitchen and look out her large window, allowing her gaze to reach far out to sea while she sipped a cup of organic tea (low caffeine, no tannin, supposedly better for you).

The lonely ships far out on the horizon, the tiny splashes of red and black that someone had dabbed on the sea canvas, pertained to industry, rather than escape, a subject that seemed to have lodged permanently in the grey folds and chaotic waves of her brain from birth.

Her most angst provoking worry, one that gnawed at any peace the sea might have provided, was a feeling of being crippled inside after almost five years of waiting for the esteemed, tall and elegant Dr Hal Hatter, to do the honourable thing and marry her. Since moving the base of his practise to the city, Dr Hatter had networked his way from a garden variety shrink right up to the top of his field, and was now a respected forensic psychiatrist. Calinda had become what she called ‘pathologically patient’ waiting for him and felt time was running out while she juggled her moods so they could perform like trained animals in the circus called her life. A kind of numbness had set in, though tears sometimes seeped through, and the years seemed to fly since Dr Hatter closed her file, told her she was no longer a patient, and had sex with her for the first time in his house back in Cherry Glen. Her recollections of that soft, sprinkling, autumn night, after he told her she had to make herself better so they could have a personal relationship, were vivid, and flashed into her mind at the oddest times.

As the bus made its way through the Saturday morning suburban traffic, Calinda thought perhaps she should have stayed at home and slept in. It was her favourite occupation, and she sometimes wished she could sleep forever, because although she had dreadful nightmares, and sometimes sleep evaded her entirely, she often dreamed that she was soaring like an eagle above the ocean and the trees, leaving gross humanity and her troubled past behind.

Drawing her long hair away from her neck, she let it fall in a rope over her shoulder, and then she rested her elbow on the windowsill, moved her amethyst earring so the silver hook didn’t dig into her neck, and curled her fist underneath her ear so she could lean her head into it. With her other hand, she separated a silken strand of her hair from the rest, twirled it around her index finger, and then she slid her fingers down its length to feel the silky softness, the sleekness.

Sighing, she closed her eyes as she twirled, thinking again about the recurring flying dreams. Were they a hangover from her childhood? An image flashed into her mind of the time she had climbed up the Granny Smith apple tree in her pink cotton dress, and then crawled out onto a limb that hung over the verandah roof of the old white weatherboard house on Union Street. As a ragged, untamed child of about seven, Calinda was often left alone after school waiting for her mother, Hazel, who worked at the whitegoods factory called ComCo, testing sealed units that went into refrigerators. One day Calinda tied a towel around her neck, climbed the tree and jumped from the roof imagining she could fly like the hero Superman that she read about in comics. Her mother could never afford to buy the comics, so Calinda read them while devouring passionfruit sponge cake when she played with Gwen and Ricky in the Robertson’s house next door.

She remembered her playmates had not believed her when she told them she was going to fly, but they watched, rapt, as she climbed the tree, spread her arms out and jumped, landing on her heels in the dust and rolling over in agony. Her heels had ached for hours afterwards, and the pain was so bad she decided to abandon her doubtful quest or end up crippled for life.

But now it fascinated her that in her dreams, flying came so easily. In them, she often told a dream onlooker, as they shaded their eyes from the sun while looking up at her in awe as she floated on a warm current of air in the mackerel sky above them:

‘All you have to do is go to the place in your brain that isn’t tainted by what people have told you is impossible—or even possible—just remove both states of thought because possible brings impossible to mind and vice versa,’ she would shout.

‘Then, with your clear and limitless thoughts, with the great power of your mind, you take a running jump and go up, up, up, and before you know it, you are soaring like me past telegraph poles and wires and over the tops of trees, roofs and whole townships. You can fly over oceans and deserts and around the whole world because your mind is the engine, the accelerator, and the pilot, and you can do anything imaginable.’

Nevertheless, there were times she dreamed she had to hide the startling fact that she could fly like the birds, or she would be stoned to death by an angry mob in the streets. But during her dreams, Calinda believed so very deeply that she could fly, however, she also knew that if she stopped believing it—if she allowed one atom of doubt to enter her mind—it would act like a pinprick in a balloon and she would surely plummet to the ground like the skylark. Sometimes, as she soared, a wall of rage welled up inside her and made her want to scream. When she awoke, she sat up and felt elated, but flopped back on the pillow, hardly able to cope with the disappointment that it had proved to be only another dream.

As the bus veered onto the Pacific Highway, with the relentless traffic roaring in both directions and the sky a stunning, cloudless blue, Calinda read a few pages more of her book, then put it down and considered the graffiti on the old brick wall. She knew there were very few people who would give a toss about an injustice done to one woman, no matter what the mystery messenger wrote.

If only she could follow her great urge to scream her rage into the wind, stand triumphant on a gusty headland like some Queen Lear, screeching bat-pitched with her silver rocket voice until she became hoarse and her body, from her crooked toes and bunions to the top of her head, was freed from the years of heartache that echoed down the roads of her past like a midnight gale.

The idea of screaming it into the wind felt safer. Then nobody could hear it and she need not face the accusations, the blame. Victims were always blamed. A counsellor she had consulted in a mad rush to ease a wave of old anxiety that sprang out of the blue one Friday afternoon had called her an innocent vixen, whatever that meant. She didn’t go back, of course. Nevertheless, even though she thought about doing it, even though her body tightened with anxiety and her joints became sore from the weight of the pain she kept hidden in her body, she had not yet screamed it anywhere.

When the bus stopped in Elizabeth Street, Calinda bounced down the steps in her pink runners and sprinted towards the sandstone building, but stopped short to read some graffiti.

‘The lord is my shepherd’ had been written the ‘word’ is my shepherd. She smiled and went into the building, thankful the workshop was on the first floor because she feared she would faint in a lift, or be trapped and die if it malfunctioned. She hated lifts and tunnels and had vowed the day she read about the Sydney Harbour Tunnel, that she would never ever go that far under the sea floor in case it all collapsed and trapped her and all the people in their cars.

She searched for the female toilet sign of the girl in a dress and headed in that direction where the pungent scent of jasmine blossom made her feel slightly nauseated. Sprigs of it were tied to door handles, stuck in small vases and dangled from railings. Soft music, with the high pitched sound of whales singing, played in the background and the warbling of women giggling came from a corner of the room.

Calinda pushed open the toilet door and saw a girl sitting on a lounge chair weeping while a woman patted her on the shoulder, and then hugged her, smiling as Calinda passed and slipped into a cubicle.

After she tucked her white singlet top into her black jeans and zipped them up, Calinda flushed the toilet and walked out to the mirror and took a tiny makeup mirror from her bag and positioned it so she could see herself from behind to make sure she had no visible panty line. Then she checked her face, and yes, she had remembered to clean her teeth, so she combed her hair that rippled down her back in a shiny wave and washed her large, capable hands then dabbed some more tea rose oil on her wrists.

When she was ready to face the workshop, she walked out into the big, low-ceilinged room, heard the hum of voices, and saw a sea of people in tracksuits of varying styles and colours seated facing a stage. Boxes of tissues had been placed on the floor at the end of every row of seats and just as she was about to sit down, a man holding a clipboard with a pen on the end of a string asked her for her name and details.

He ticked her name off his list and asked her to sign a confidentiality form and a waiver saying she would not hold the self-awareness organisation or someone called Robert Cavendish liable for any damage she might sustain either physically or psychologically from doing the workshop.

She then sat down in a middle row, placing her black vinyl handbag at her feet, and folded her arms just as another young man walked along the aisle like a church layman collecting money on a plate. He wasn’t collecting money, but everybody’s watches. Calinda wondered if it was elaborate heist.

‘Do you melt them down for the gold?’ she said, smiling.

He laughed. ‘No, the workshop functions best if you aren’t aware of the passing of time,’ he said.

‘I don’t wear a watch,’ she said. ‘Never have . . .’

People Calinda later learned were called ‘facilitators’ seemed to prowl up and down the aisles, waiting for someone to try to escape. Then the room hushed. A thin man in blue jeans and a tracksuit top walked onto the stage and for some reason he reminded Calinda of her long ago lover, Gabriel, the horseman poet, and she sighed, remembering. But this man was so much taller and Calinda thought he should be playing men’s basketball. He flicked his shoulder length, black, rock n roll hair over his shoulder and then cleaned off some coloured writing on a blackboard before he walked over to the microphone.

‘Are we ready?’ he said, turning to a man behind him, who gave him the thumbs up.

‘Good morning everybody,’ he shouted into the microphone in a sing-song, deep and rumbling voice with an American accent. Then his smile flashed bleached white as the room erupted into applause, whistles and mad cheering.

‘For those new to my workshops, my name is Bob Cavendish,’ he said, bouncing across the stage like Mick Jagger. ‘And hey, will you look at all the people you’ve created here today?’

The room cheered as one, minus Calinda who sat bemused.

‘How powerful is that?’ he said. ‘You know, do you really get that every one of you here has the power to change your lives right here and right now?’

While the room roared with applause Calinda sighed.

‘Oh really?’ she mumbled, still not convinced her life could be changed in one weekend workshop.

A slim woman next to her leaned across and whispered:

‘Bob’s from America. He was in Hair.’

‘I can see why,’ Calinda whispered back.

‘No, sorry, maybe Jesus Christ, Superstar . . . one of them anyway,’ the woman said.

‘I can still see why,’ Calinda said.

The audience sat rapt as Bob went on:

‘Does anybody have anything to share today? Problems, worries, achievements? Because I sure do. Why, only yesterday I signed up one of the biggest corporations in this country to do a series of awareness raising workshops and team bonding with employees, and a government agency I can’t name has given the green light as well, so how’s that?’

This prompted more cheering and whistling, but then the room hushed as Bob paused, and focused on something happening in the back row.

Calinda turned and looked behind and saw a woman had collapsed into tears and a facilitator was hugging her. Then she heard more sobbing and looked down at the front row where more facilitators were running to the aid of others who had fallen into weeping heaps. People were falling about everywhere and for a minute Calinda thought she must have come to the wrong place. Had she wandered into a nutty Christian church service? She expected to hear someone speaking in tongues any minute. One sobbing man was led to the back of the room and was left sitting on a cushion on the floor with a blanket over his head. Calinda wondered what could possibly have made them all crack up.

Bob then said: ‘Some of you have done this workshop before, but for those not acquainted with the procedure here, when something comes up, some painful emotion from the past, and it looks like a shift in consciousness is about to occur, the facilitators act like midwives, helping the person to release the blocks,’ he said. ‘So if you feel the urge for release, try not to hold back because the energy is strong here today.’

He walked to the edge of the stage.

‘What’s your name?’ he said, looking towards the first weeping woman, who had recovered slightly, wiping her nose and her eyes with tissues from a box held by a faithful facilitator.

The woman stood up and Calinda saw she was rather squat, about 50, with short kinked hair, and wearing a pink tracksuit.

‘I’m Barbara,’ the woman said in a girlish, trembling voice, sighing loudly.

‘Would you like to share, Barbara?’ Bob said. ‘As you know, everyone here has signed a confidentiality agreement so nothing leaves this room. How many workshops have you done?’

‘This is my first, and I haven’t told anybody about this in my whole life… but… I was sexually molested by my uncle,’ the woman said softly. ‘But my mother belted me for telling lies.’

‘Now,’ Bob said. ‘What I need to say to you at this crucial point is this… do you know why you created such a terrible thing to happen in your life?’

‘But I was only seven,’ the woman said, obviously shocked.

‘Yes, and that’s the age you are still stuck in. I can hear it in your voice, and see it in your body language, and the way you dress in girly pink. You must let go the pain. You’re an old soul, and I think you’ve been here and done that many times before, so now answer the question.’

‘I’ve heard that you people believe in reincarnation, but I have no idea. How could I know why?’

‘I think Jamie your facilitator can work with you now to help you sort it out, okay Barbara?’ Bob said. ‘Maybe some anger work, Jamie. Oh, and Barbara, remember the affirmations: I have a clear intention to create a better life from this moment on.’

Calinda wanted to scream. She felt disgusted that Bob blamed the woman. What utter fucking nonsense. But as usual, when something was frightening or confronting or abusive, Calinda often just froze and sat there as speechless as a block of ice.

‘So now we’ll get on with what you’re meant to be learning here today,’ Bob said to the group. He then whispered something to his assistant while he drew a large pyramid on the blackboard.

‘This is a pyramid of consciousness,’ he said with an air of superior knowledge. He then drew a line separating a bottom section from the rest and coloured it in red. He pointed the chalk at the red area, saying:

‘This level of consciousness is where your base instincts live, like breathing, sex, eating, sleeping, and excreting. It’s survival instincts, and unfortunately this is where most people remain, in survival mode.’

He then drew a line above that, colouring it orange.

‘This is safety, family, security, and your job, your home, etcetera. Of course those who manage this level hang on to it and want to stay there.’

Some people chuckled. Bob then drew another line and coloured the band in yellow.

‘But this is a higher level of consciousness, friendship, intimacy, caring, not just your gross sexuality and survival instincts.’

Calinda sighed. Ho hum. Her mind drifted off as he went through his boring little pyramid and got to the top, which he coloured purple.

‘But this is where we want to be, in the realms of higher consciousness where we resonate to love, spirituality, morality and all the good things of life. This is where our spirit leaves our body when we die, and this is also where we can talk to the gods, the ascended masters, and create whatever we want from life—and I mean anything. Imagine a new car, new house, love, travel, success, health, and every good thing. These can be yours for the commanding, not even the asking, because we don’t beg and plead here, we command because we know we are more than human, we are gods and we could create a better life for ourselves if only we knew it, and broke through our limitations.’

Calinda listened as Bob went through all the meanings of all the colours on his chart and it reminded her of her flying dreams in a way and she also remembered the way she used to throw three shilling pieces and ask the Chinese I Ching oracle what to do when she had a problem, usually to do with her loveless life. She hadn’t done it lately, mainly because she didn’t have all that much spare time and preferred to read, muse and gaze out her window at the sea.

She fidgeted with a moonstone ring she had bought months earlier at a community market, and wore on her third finger, and watched as the life awareness assistant wrote some of what Bob said into the coloured sections of the pyramid. Oh, how she wanted to believe. How wonderful it would be if a person could just say, ‘I want to be loved’ and get whatever they desired. A woman raised her hand. Bob nodded to her so she stood up.

‘Are you basing this on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?’ she said.

‘And your name is?’ Bob said, and then looked out at his audience. ‘Can I ask people to say their name before asking a question?’

‘Sorry, I’m Cynthia Babinge,’ the woman said.

‘Well, Cynthia, information comes to us all from many sources, and if it fits, we use it,’ Bob said. ‘I take an eclectic approach, so yes, it is partly that, but I’m basing this, if rather loosely, on the chakras. The ancients believed that we have certain power points that are connected by meridians, or lines of energy, that radiate all over the body with the main meridians going up the spine from the tailbone to the top of the head. These energy channels get blocked by all sorts of things including bad food and wrongful sex. Meditation and spiritual healing practises can unblock these meridians and power centres and bring us back to balance and health both physically, emotionally and financially. The red is the base, or sex chakra, near your anus or tail bone. The next one is the spleen—it’s orange, and then there’s the solar plexus, your power centre—this one is golden yellow, like the sun itself.’ Calinda listened, remembering that she had read about the chakras somewhere, root, spleen, solar plexus, heart, throat, brow and crown and the colours that went with them. It was difficult not to hear of such things no matter where you were from because spirituality was everywhere these days. She loved colour—her favourites were green and purple—otherwise she might not have remembered them.

By the end of the morning session her mind was in a state of utter exhaustion and she longed for a cup of tea, which was provided along with fruit, carrot cake with cream cheese icing, and home-made biscuits.

During the break, a small, quite delicate looking woman asked Calinda if this was her first workshop.

‘Yep, it sure is, and I’m waiting for my great transformation,’ she said, a little too flippantly.

‘Oh, but that’s up to you, I’m afraid,’ the woman replied, her eyes twinkling with superior knowledge. ‘Bob can’t do it for you, you know. You have to come to an understanding about how you created all your problems from birth, why you came to this planet in the first place, what your life’s mission is; the gifts you were equipped with, and how you are using them to benefit yourself and the world,’ she said.

‘Oh, is that all?’ Calinda said, chuckling. She then decided to approach one of the facilitators and ask if this Bob fellow could help her, or if she had wasted her time and money, although the latter was only a thought. She told him a brief version of the Dr Hatter story, and when she had finished, the facilitator led her to Bob and relayed her story to him.

‘Wow, what a powerful woman you are to create such a hullaboo in your life,’ Bob said, and hugged her.

Calinda felt a sudden zap of energy that went from his crotch to hers, then up her spine with such power that she could almost hear it, and could only describe it later in her journal as being like a vacuum cleaner sucking and roaring, and she knew that sounded very stupid.

Bob stepped back, held her shoulders and looked straight into her face.

‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

Calinda didn’t know why he had thanked her, and couldn’t work out what the zapping was all about. Nothing like that had ever happened to her, and because of it, she couldn’t ask Bob anything more.

Back in her seat, Calinda kept thinking about the zapping, but swore to herself that if Bob used those boring clichés bandied about by so many people—words like ‘journey’, ‘higher selves’ or ‘cosmic consciousness’, ‘angel blessings’ and the like—she would just go home in disgust.

However, Bob wasn’t centre stage during the next session. He sat in a chair to the right while a woman called Bonita Stone stood at the microphone. She had silver blonde hair cut almost stylishly, and her colourful clothes verged on hippy. Calinda loved the soft green suede boots and the purple skirt. She seemed modern, yet the hair and clothes didn’t suit her at all. It was her eyes, though, that caught Calinda’s attention. They looked so dark against the silver hair, and how they danced. Calinda sat mesmerised as she listened closely to every word as if they were falling from the mouth of some modern day goddess.

‘Argue for your limitations and they are yours to keep,’ Bonita said, and wrote it on the board while the room erupted in laughter and whistles.

‘Yes, O, yes,’ some participants cried, reminding Calinda of a Monty Python movie.

‘Many people chose to be victims in their lives, and they allowed people to do bad things when all they needed to do is to stop being victims and they will be fine,’ Bonita said, mixing her tenses.

‘Just let your imagination go wild and never, ever, limit yourself because this world is your playground and you can have anything you so desire but first you must learn to ask for what you want and fully expect to get it. Visualise having that new car, that attractive person or whatever it is you desire, and do it every day, especially just before you go to sleep.’

It was a wonderfully freeing load of bullshit but it turned out Calinda believed a lot of it for a long time.

‘If you keep telling yourself it’s impossible and that you’re too old, too fat, too thin, too poor, too ugly, too unhappy to be happy, or rich or successful, that is exactly what you will be,’ Bonita said.

‘Oh, but isn’t that lying to ourselves?’ Calinda whispered.

‘What you resist is what you get,’ Bonita said. ‘Think about it. How many of you have resisted being poor and wondered why you stayed poor? Give me some examples.’

A dark haired man with a thick, silver chain nestled in a crop of black wiry hair around his neck told how he had for five years resisted going bankrupt before it actually happened.

‘It was only when I did my first workshop here and realised going bankrupt didn’t matter, that the Universe would provide what I needed if only