‘And why is that? Why do you not get offered vintage Balenciaga or JW Anderson? Because of your weight! I work so hard and fixed up this interview and you blow it by not being able to stick to any fucking diet or exercise plan. I have given up my whole life to take care of you, to be your manager, and this is how you treat that sacrifice.’
In the distance, someone slams a screen door and it brings Dr Bobbi back to realising she’s not in a sound-proofed room.
‘Look what you made me do. I hate shouting at you,’ she says in lower tones.
The shift from anger to recrimination is sudden.
Dr Bobbi’s eyes suddenly glisten with tears and Keera knows the worst of it is over.
Relief means that Keera’s body unlocks.
But coming back into herself means she can nowfeeleverything. Her heart thudding in anxiety. Her body slowly creeping out of its taut rictus.
She drops her cigarette in the ashtray and pulls the blanket around her.
Her mother loses it sometimes but this feels like another level.
‘I told you to get a handle on your weight, didn’t I?’
Dr Bobbi is calmer now.
But the ache of rejection means that Keera suddenly wants something to take away the pain of not being enough.
A few Xanax, maybe with a tequila shot or six. Tequila works wonderfully fast. She wants that bone-melting sense of not being able to feel.
Her neck aches. Tension, she knows.
A massage will not touch this, nor even one of her mother’s chiropractic sessions.
No, only the soft release of Xanax to soften her edges and a meltingly fabulous amount of alcohol. Then some coke to make her happy and she’ll want to dance, whirling in an energetic haze and she won’t have to feel anything.
‘Did you take something to calm yourself?’ asks Rose.
The sunny terrace in Villa Artemis comes into view again.
‘Yeah,’ says Keera. ‘I took a lot of stuff.’
‘What’s it like reliving that moment?’
The group are silent.
‘Scary,’ says Keera finally. ‘Shocking. I didn’t see hownegative it was until I told you all. It was a huge interview to get, the interviewer was positive about me and that one thing made Mom go off at the deep end. I was fat and I was disappointing her, ruining all her work by that one thing.’
She pauses.
It’s a tough moment, Rose knows: speaking about her relationship with her mother makes Keera see it through other people’s eyes.
She also feels that Keera doesn’t entirely trust her own version of events. There’s no other child to ask how such a situation looked. No sibling.
There’s only Keera with her memories.
‘How does it make you feel physically?’ Rose asks.
The body doesn’t lie.
‘Fat, ugly, like a whale-sized piece of blubber …’ Keera’s voice breaks a little.
‘You’re not,’ shrieks India and suddenly she’s on her knees beside Keera’s chair, holding her. ‘You’re so beautiful. How dare anyone tell you otherwise. That’s a fucking lie!’
