The words crowd India’s head: attachment theory, longing for motherhood, limerence, her mother’s crazy unicorn-butterfly stuff, the line of men: Andrey, Felippe … she could probably do it alphabetically and hit every letter of the alphabet. A for Andrey, B for Boris, C for Chad … ‘I want to be loved and needed,’ India says quietly. ‘I want to have my person. My mother has Magnús, Dad has Georgie. Everyone has someone—’
‘You want someone for the right reasons, the right someone,’ Rose says.
India nods gloomily.
Rose moves on.
‘Keera, going back to you: do you think your relationship with your mother was one where you protected her from how you were really feeling? Because she reacted so badly when your needs were different to hers?’
Keera nods cautiously.
‘I don’t want you to get the wrong impression: Mom protected me too,’ Keera says softly. ‘She’d had to be tough and she wanted me to be tough.’
‘But that type of protection doesn’t work for you any more. It was fine when you were using drugs and drinking, then you allowed her behaviour to continue. She didn’t call you out on your cocaine use and you didn’t call her out on treating you like a hopeless employee.’
Keera nods. It all makes so much sense when Rose explains it.
Like putting lots of keys in a door and none of them fit no matter how much you wiggle them in the lock. Then suddenly, someone hands you the right key, it fits and the door opens. Simple.
‘I was so angry with her, especially over Cat, my friend. We did the TV show together and once she was ill – she got lupus – I did the show on my own. I was fourteen, I think. The ratings went up.’
Keera smiles sadly.
‘It’s cheaper to pay one kid in a TV show than pay two, plus it was easier to launch one singing star. It’s all about the numbers.’
‘Did your mother really dislike Cat?’ asks Rose curiously.
‘I’m not sure. I think she didn’t mind me being friends with Taniqua or Luka because they were part of the team. Mom liked them but we paid them as professionals, therefore they weren’t a threat. Catwasa threat.
‘At any point, audience screenings could have shown she was more popular than me. The business is ruthless. I’d have been gone. Therefore, Cat was an opponent. She could have taken away my stardom if she became the more famous one.’
Rose gets up and fills a glass with ice and some orange juice from Christos’ little fridge in the side table.
‘Drink this,’ she says. ‘You’ve got to keep your blood sugar up when you’re examining painful truths. As you say, once you’ve seen this you can’t unsee it. You said you haven’t met up with Cat in a long time: it sounds as though you have complex feelings about that?’
Keera flushes.
‘Cat didn’t really care about being famous. It was fun to her. So when she got canned from the show, I was OK with that. She didn’t care. Me and Mom, we would have killed to keep that show on the road.’
She looks up suddenly. ‘Does that make me a horrible person, Rose?’
‘You were fourteen,’ Rose says. ‘Think about how vulnerable you are when you’re fourteen. The atmosphere you live in is one where you must succeed to make your mother happy. Dr Bobbi is the primary person in your life. She comes first.’
‘I feel like such a terrible friend,’ Keera says. ‘I haven’t seen Cat in years. She must think I’m such a bitch. We used to sleep in each other’s beds when we were little. She braided my hair, I did her eye make-up. I painted her toes every week with a different colour for each toe.’
‘Have you been going over other incidents in your mind with you and your mother where you don’t like what you see?’
‘Yeah,’ says Keera wearily. She drinks her juice. ‘When I got out of rehab, Mom expected me to start work all over again. I was too fragile. Mom thought rehab was self-indulgent. She didn’t come on family day.’
The terrace is silent.
‘When I got out, she said all that rehab stuff was in the past. I was a superstar and I had work to do.’
Keera bursts into tears. ‘I know we’re messed up but I love her. I guess I grew up and she didn’t want me to.’
It takes Rose a while to calm Keera down.
‘You can love your mother and want to change things, Keera: both of these statements can be true at the same time.’
