Lara fixed the interview and has just messaged that it’s ‘fabulous!’, which it is. Except for one thing that’s going to ruin Dr Bobbi’s day. And it’s not the mention of the possible Lancôme deal, which is a totally manufactured piece of news created by Dr Bobbi herself.
‘Makes you sound sought-after,’ she said, ignoring her daughter’s look of horror.
It’s after half nine in the morning and it’s been a slightly foggy start to the day on Martina Street in San Francisco. February can be like that. The day starts with a mist around the house, and then suddenly it lifts, allowing the sun to glitter the bay.
Keera likes this house on the hill. She likes the utter anonymity of San Francisco and how the beach is only a walk from the house. Los Angeles is all entertainment industry, where nobody’s ever an ordinary person – they’rean influencer waiting for a big break or they’re peering over your shoulder to see if anyone more important is coming along.
Dr Bobbi’s great at that.
She’s got the three-minute attention span of the relentless social climber.
This means endless lies about everything.
She’s told Keera to be vague about where they live.
‘Say Pacific Avenue,’ she insists. ‘We’re renting a huge house there. With …’ Dr Bobbi has to think of what she can add on to this mythical house – ‘a housekeeper, a zen garden with a cloud tree, a sauna, gym with a barre and Pilates reformer, and an infinity pool.’
‘Sure,’ Keera always says.
Sureis a word that says nothing.
Now she makes her third cup of coffee of the day and walks out into the back yard where she was sitting earlier with an old furry blanket around her. She’s been smoking and the aluminium ashtray has three butts in it already.
Stressed, Keera lights another, knowing this will boil her mother’s blood.
Her mother smokes.
In fact, it’s a mystery to Keera as to why Big Tobacco hasn’t flown Dr Bobbi out to Kentucky and planted a tree in her honour.
But Keera isnotallowed to smoke.
It’s about appealing to the widest age group – both young girls and people in their twenties.
No smoking, no drinking, smile politely all the fucking time.
Her mother’s rules.
Oh yeah, and be thin.
Pretend to not care about being thin but work reallyhard at being thin so that she can fit into size zero pants and have the hips of a twelve-year-old.
Dr Bobbi makes the rules and insists on a weigh-in every week.
Keera has tried slimming pills but amphetamines make her wildly nervous and weight-loss injections affect her particularly badly with nausea.
Now she’s smoking and, while that works in terms of flattening her appetite, she’s not supposed to be smoking. She’s supposed to be doing intensive training with a guy who allegedly once got Lady Gaga in shape for a tour.
She’s exhausted trying to be thin. Why is this the only metric by which she’s measured? Thin first. Pretty next. Only then is her actual work considered.
Keera hates the misogyny of it.
She’s come to realise that women artists are never celebrated purely for their art: instead, it’s all folded up with physical attractiveness and ranked depending on how the powers that be – men – define women’s art.
Today, she and her mother have lunch – which means lines of coke and possibly margaritas – with Santi Montavano’s ex-wife, who is an old pal of Dr Bobbi’s and the one who got them the introduction to Santi himself.
They’ve only done one day in the studio so far. Keera feels too burned out to have sung well. It had not been a good day.
Santi’s heavily booked for the next two months, so with its implications of much time to come with the fabulous producer, the article contained another half-truth, which she hates.
