The phone continues vibrating for the next ten minutes. Her mother is not keen on being hung up on, although Keera herself has never done it before. But there’s a first time for everything.
On Thursday morning, Dianne’s sick.
‘She was fine on the beach last night,’ says Grazia, who appeared to be the person who says what everyone else is thinking and does not say. ‘I do not think she is sick, pah!’
Rose doesn’t think Dianne’s sick, either. She’s the onlyperson who hasn’t revealed their personal story and she’s ruining Rose’s carefully worked out plans.
Dianne is getting a home visit in her villa bedroom this afternoon when everyone else is going to be getting some exercise and working on their notebooks. Dianne’s notebook was found in the garden on Tuesday, so Rose got Beata to put it back in Dianne’s room that evening. It has not been thrown out since, so far as Rose knows.
‘Keera,’ says Rose, once they’ve done their ten minutes of morning breathwork, ‘I wonder how you’ll feel if we come back to you, my dear?’
Keera is ready for this.
Since her mother’s outraged phone call last night, Keera’s mind has been full of moments when Dr Bobbi shouted at her or manipulated her.
She had told Rose about the call.
‘You’ve never hung up on your mother before,’ Rose had said. ‘It would have been an insane concept, but you just did it. That’s progress. You’re laying down boundaries.’
Throughout the meditation on the beach, all Keera thought of was the day the interview came out. It was the first time she’d felt that everything was falling apart.
Sunshine fills the hotel suite whereEmpresshas come to interview singing superstar, Keera. Already one of the artists who are known by one name only, Keera joins icons like Beyoncé and Zendaya, whose career hers most closely resembles.
Plucked from obscurity to appear in a kids’ TV show, Keera’s talent was immediately obvious, and a meteoric rise to teen stardom followed.
Yet it’s hard to reconcile a girl who turned her kooky smile and exquisite voice into millions ofdollars with the thoughtful young woman I’m interviewing today.
In the flesh, Keera is refreshingly normal. Polite.
‘Do you want coffee or water?’ she asks, gesturing at the juices and coffee pot laid out on a side table.
She’s drinking only iced water, which I mention must be proof of what it takes to take care of the luminous Celtic skin that’s rumoured to be responsible for a top-secret-for-now deal with Lancôme.
She can’t talk about that, she says apologetically, neither denying nor confirming it.
But she can talk about the album she’s making with a multi-award-winning producer – ‘It’s such a privilege to work with Santi Montavano,’ she says earnestly.
She’s also eager to talk about the children’s charity she’s donating her early TV wardrobe to for a star-studded auction.
Some of the outfits from the early days ofKeera & Catare on show already: including the red gingham pinafore Keera wore for at least half of the first series.
Her face angled towards the LA sun, the now-twenty-eight-year-old Keera’s beauty is ethereal. She has 1950s screen goddess curves, what she laughingly calls ‘Proof that I actually eat.’
Dressed in a norm-core pair of Levis and a vintage tee with her luxuriant dark hair shining in waves, she’s an intriguing combination of honesty and normality.
The latter quality has earned her many fans but, in a luxe suite in The Contessa Hotel in Bel Air, she’s as glamorous …
‘Fuck.’
It’s taken Keera one minute to scan the start of the article and realise that despite being as charming as humanly possible to the bone-thin forty-something woman who interviewed her two months ago, she’s been fat-shamed.
‘Screen goddess curves …’ She can imagine her mom’s reaction to that.
Knowing it was coming out today, Keera was anxious as she opened the pre-publication onlineEmpressinterview messaged to her by Lara LaGrand, the current publicist. Dr Bobbi believes publicists need to be kept on their toes so, no matter how tough it is, she fires them regularly.
Lara has made the cut for longer than usual because of mentions of her family’s vast home on Philadelphia’s old-money Main Line.
Keera knows her mom is a sucker for inherited wealth.
