‘But I’m betraying her—’
‘If you don’t stand up for what you feel, then the person you’re betraying is yourself,’ says Rose firmly.
She can tell that the group are all on edge, so she shifts her focus.
‘India,’ Rose says, ‘tell us about your outfit today?’
India looks astonished.
‘Me? This was dirt cheap,’ she says holding up the linen skating skirt she’s wearing with tennis shoes and a floppy cerise polka-dot blouse. ‘I got it in the Oxfam shop. This,’ she waves her arms around and the small sleeves of her blouse wave, ‘was expensive. It’s Chloé. Twenty-five quid at a car boot sale.’
‘That is not expensive,’ says Grazia, ‘but it is lovely.’
‘Twenty-five’s a lot at a car boot,’ India explains. ‘I put ribbons in the tennis shoes for fun.’
She holds up one long leg with the shoe at the end decorated with neon-green ribbon laces.
‘Who says you’re not clever?’ Rose remarks and India laughs.
‘I told you: you’re an artist.’
Rose ends the session by standing up.
‘You’re all free from now till six this evening when we meet to discuss any insights from your notebooks. Yours too, Bernard,’ she says.
Bernard glares at her.
Once she’s walked away, Dan stands up and stretches his long arms over his head.
‘I’m going to do a hike,’ he says to India and Keera. ‘You two want to come?’
Keera shakes her head.
‘Didn’t sleep well last night,’ she says.
Her sleep was full of rehab-style nightmares where she’s been drinking and lying about it. She needs to phone her closest NA friend, Yolande. Ask what it means when you haven’t had a drink or used, but think you
have.
‘I’ll go with you,’ says India suddenly. ‘I think a march will be good for me!’
‘I didn’t say a march,’ says Dan. ‘We can’t be out too long – you heard what Rose said, it’s too hot and we can only carry a certain amount of water with us.’
‘Fine,’ says India. ‘Where are we starting from?’
‘The beach,’ says Dan.
‘See you there in half an hour, then,’ India says and skips off.
Rose gets a cup of coffee from the kitchen, then goes into the air-conditioned cool of her room and sits down at her desk, pulling her notepad towards her.
Rose thinks again about how Keera thought she was an empath.
Rose is fed up of the word – to her, it just means people who were raised on a knife-edge and who’ve learned to anticipate the inevitable explosions.
If you learned as a kid how to predict the anger/rage/whatever of your supposed adult carer, you knew how to hide or get out of the way.
Rose learned that early on.
