Wanda Phinn

Wanda Phinn’s journey from London to the Nature Absorption Academy is driven by a conviction that Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi has marked out a future for her. An athlete accustomed to action and competition, she arrives expecting to meet him and serve at his community; instead, her determination to stay makes her a target of Pirjo Abanshamash Dumuzi. Wanda’s disappearance becomes more than an absence: a belt she leaves behind gives Shirley grounds to suspect that Pirjo has concealed what happened to her.

Identity and Earlier Life

Wanda is introduced through her athletic ability and the physical discipline of her life. She had married Chris McCullum, an English cricket player who went to Jamaica to train the Jamaican national team. McCullum’s six-month assignment was to improve the team’s scoring by ten percent. From March to September he practised with the players in the heat, while Wanda ran on a cinder track nearby. His first sight of her, moving at speed with long, muscular legs and glistening skin, presents her as a strikingly physical presence before the story turns to her own ambitions.

Later, Wanda’s knowledge of epilepsy reveals a different part of her background. One of seven children, she had a beloved younger sister who suffered frequent focal seizures and monthly seizures involving loss of consciousness. Wanda had seen enough of the illness to recognize that the episode Pirjo performed did not resemble any form of epilepsy she knew. Her judgment is not professional expertise, but hard-won familiarity: a history of caring about her sister has made her alert to a false display of vulnerability.

Shirley and the Decision to Leave London

Shirley is Wanda’s only friend, living two doors down from her. Their friendship gives Wanda a point of connection in London, where Shirley’s interests in the occult, heavenly inspired music, Polynesian kahuna fortune-telling, and tarot readings make her unusually open to a new spiritual movement. Shirley invites Wanda to Nature Absorption Intro and offers to pay, hoping the experience will become something they can share. The website presents Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi as a radiant spirit from a Scandinavian dream world, bringing a teaching intended to explain the energy and connections of humanity.

For Wanda, the invitation becomes personal after an encounter with Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi. He caresses her cheek, calls her his flower, and leaves her overwhelmed; when she comes to, she is enthralled by his eyes and feels his lips on the back of her hand. She comes to regard him as the future she has dreamed of. The strength of that conclusion is visible in what follows: Wanda does not simply attend an introduction and return to her old life. She leaves her job without giving notice, drops her cap on the floor, says goodbye to the woman at the control, and walks out. The image of the wall of Victoria Embankment Gardens falling away accompanies her sense that a larger life has opened before her.

Shirley warns that the beautiful buildings, rituals, and nearby sea may amount to little more than flirtation, and that Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi can attract as many women as he wants. Wanda hears the warning but does not retreat. The contrast between Shirley’s fear that her friend is being carried away by an illusion and Wanda’s certainty that she has found her future establishes the emotional risk behind her departure.

Arrival and Conflict at the Academy

When Wanda reaches the community, Pirjo Abanshamash Dumuzi tries to send her back to London, presenting a return ticket as the remedy for a misunderstanding. Wanda calmly offers her hand and identifies herself, then makes clear that she will not go home before meeting Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi. She knows there are no course places available, but that does not change her purpose. Her persistence turns an attempted dismissal into a direct contest with Pirjo, who understands that Wanda will not be satisfied until she has stood before Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi.

Pirjo takes Wanda across to Öland, presenting the drive as a chance to see the island. As Wanda holds lightly to Pirjo’s jacket and looks over the sea toward the island, Pirjo is already considering how to make her fall near the windmills and, if necessary, ensure that the fall kills her. The apparently hospitable tour is therefore also a concealed attempt to remove Wanda. Pirjo talks about the divided parcels of land and families who eventually had to leave rather than starve, while privately concentrating on how to use the side wind. The discrepancy between the excursion’s surface and Pirjo’s intention gives Wanda’s arrival a quiet but decisive danger.

Wanda does not accept the subordinate position Pirjo is trying to impose. When Pirjo tells her where to turn, Wanda accelerates after the bend on the moorland road, making clear that she intends to control the pace. She recognizes that Pirjo does not welcome her, and feels the impulse to strike back, but decides instead to keep her temper and look for another way to win. She plans what she will say to Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi: that she is grateful for his care in London, that she has come to serve without expecting payment, and that her sports training could help the course participants get fit. Her ambition is practical as well as romantic; she imagines that she might secure a permanent place at the community.

Attack and Disappearance

For a time Wanda mistakes Pirjo’s intentions. Seeing her from a distance, Wanda waves and briefly feels compassion, supposing that Pirjo simply does not know how to get rid of her. When the gap closes, Wanda sees Pirjo’s face and realizes that she has misread the situation. Her pulse races as she understands that Pirjo may want to kill her, and she runs.

The attack culminates at close range. As Pirjo’s scooter reaches her, Wanda jumps aside; when she turns to strike back, she sees Pirjo swinging a compact spade at her face. That is the last thing Wanda sees. The narrative gives no account of her return to London or of any subsequent contact from her. Her abrupt disappearance leaves Shirley without an explanation and gives later clues their force: what might otherwise have looked like a sudden departure becomes increasingly difficult to separate from Pirjo’s violence.

The Belt and the Aftermath

A two-tone belt becomes the most concrete trace linking Wanda to the Academy after she vanishes. Shirley identifies it as an expensive birthday present she bought for Wanda before Wanda left London. The belt’s details make the identification specific: its red-and-grey coloring, the distinctive scratch on the buckle, a dent, and a stretched hole consistent with Wanda’s very thin waist. Shirley also learns that Jeanette found the belt among old clothes stored in the loft, where her own black belt should have been. These particulars persuade Shirley that Wanda had been at the Academy, despite the absence of any acknowledgment that she was ever there.

Shirley places the belt on her windowsill beside her toiletries and books. She tries to reassure herself that Wanda must be in Jamaica, but doubts whether she contacted the right people or asked the right questions. As her memories of Wanda’s background and plans grow less certain, the belt remains in view: neither intrusive nor forgotten. When Valentina notices it and hears Shirley’s full account, she turns away and stares out of the window in silence. Their exchange changes Shirley’s private suspicion into a shared unease.

Valentina’s dream adds another line of suspicion. She connects Pirjo, her yellow scooter, and the Stable of Senses to the day Wanda left London and the day Malena miscarried. Shirley later recalls Valentina’s dream and the other incidents Valentina had described, while also wondering why Valentina has suddenly rejected her. When Pirjo tries to deflect Shirley’s accusations by showing her examples of similar belts online, Shirley insists that common designs cannot explain the scratch, dent, and wear on this particular one. Pirjo’s attempt to make the belt seem ordinary therefore does not dissolve the evidence that troubles Shirley.

By the time Shirley realizes that Pirjo helped her pack and that items such as her shoes and nail scissors are missing, she believes she herself may not be meant to leave alive. She concludes that Wanda had been at the Academy and that Pirjo made her disappear; she wonders whether Wanda’s body is hidden in one of the other houses. This remains Shirley’s conclusion and fear rather than a discovery of the body. Wanda’s narrative significance lies in the way her determined pursuit of a chosen future is answered by an attempt to erase her: first she refuses to be sent away, then she disappears, and finally the surviving belt makes that disappearance impossible for Shirley to dismiss as a change of plans.