With her coffee and her cigarette, Keera sits and looks out at the parts of the bay where the fog is lifting.
Peace.
Blissful peace.
And then she hears her mother’s roar of temper.
Dr Bobbi has clearly seen the article too.
Wearing an old Disney TV tee as a nightshirt, her hair askew and last night’s make-up still mashed into her eyes, her mother does not paint a pretty picture. Her evident rage doesn’t help.
‘Did you see this?’ she demands, waving her phone at Keera. ‘Why didn’t you wake me when you got it? Look at it, just look!’
‘I did.’
Keera gets up but holds on to her cigarette, almost as a defence. She tenses, every muscle now locked tight.
‘You didn’t think it was worth waking me?’
This is a rhetorical question.
Dr Bobbi rages on. ‘See this crap about you having curves! She means fat,’ screeched Dr Bobbi. ‘How many times have I told you?’
Again, rhetorical.
The fog is lifting.
Keera hopes the neighbours have already left for the day or they’ll hear every word of the row.
Her mother is in a full-on temper now.
‘I don’t care if a hundred women “with curves” make it on the socials – they might sell a few hundred control knickers and slimming corsets but they will never be players.Never!’
She screams this last bit.
Keera thinks what she might say:It’s a lovely article, apart from that one bit. The journalist made me sound like a decent person…
No, that would never do.
Dr Bobbi has spent years patiently explaining to Keera that stars are not normal. Stars have to be different. Special.
It was tough but, one day, Keera would appreciate all her mother’s work …
‘I thought I sounded nice in this, normal—’
That’s a mistake.
‘Normal? Stars aren’t supposed to be normal,’ Dr Bobbi hisses. ‘Normalwrites the music for other people or stays in the background, never making it, always on the fringes. You’re supposed to be astar, stupid girl!’
Keera steps back, as if the words are physical.
‘That’s what I’ve taught you for years and you’ve never understood it, have you? Were Vuitton or Dior offering you gowns for the last Grammys?’ Dr Bobbi is in her stride now. ‘Any of the big fashion houses? No! You get offered cheap tramp clothes or dresses from people who want to revitalise their careers after being cancelled.’
Keera winces.
Her mother is so into social media and watches the guillotine of cancellation closely. Women who pop their head up get brutally eviscerated.
That’s why women like Keera can’t be trendsetters, Bobbi often says. They have to follow the crowd.
