Rose wanted the entrance hall to look like somebody’s grand house with a cosy feel that involves armchairs, a stone fireplace and wildflower bouquets.
They could easily talk in private in one of the two vast window seats but Rose wants absolute privacy. She leads Adriana to the big oak-wood desk that serves as reception and then swerves to the right to the double doors that lead to the private quarters and the compact office where the villa’s administration work is done.
Rose sinks into a chair and holds her head in her hands.
‘Sorry,’ she mutters, as Adriana kneels in front of her. ‘I’m really sorry. I needed a moment. I think I’ve screwed up. There’s something about Bernard that’s scaring me. I’m not sure if he’s going to go crazy or do what he says and try to ruin us all. I’m afraid I’ve made a terrible mistake. What with the Instagram thing and now Bernard. I’ve messed up.
‘Again.’
Rose is remembering being in the TV building where her show was filmed. It’s the day everything went wrong. The last day.
A sunny Tuesday in early September, the show is back after a very successful last season.
She’s talking with her hairdresser – discussing new hair products. Of all things!
‘Protein products, Rose: that’s what your hair needs. I’ll bring some in for you,’ Denise, the hairdresser, is saying.
Rose gets lots of free stuff. She can have any hair product she wants by just getting her team to phone the right PR people.
But she doesn’t care about hair products now. She’s operating on automatic. Talking about hair and make-up, smiling at the right moments.
‘Thank you, Denise,’ she says, smiling.
She’s operating on automatic because her beloved Theo is gone. He left two weeks ago and Rose has been heartbroken but doing her best not to show it ever since.
They’d argued at dinner. They never argued.
It was one of their strengths – they discussed everything and came to compromises but, this time, they’d gone to bed without resolving it.
‘Love you,’ Rose had mumbled as she slid into bed beside him, and Theo had turned and said, ‘Love you, too.’
He’d then turned a bare tanned shoulder to her and lain down, sleeping so quickly that Rose felt hurt.
She’d lain there awake, running over the argument in her head, watching him sleeping deeply and wishing he’d just agree with her.
Theo had said that she should renegotiate her contract when the last series ended.
‘I am not trying to tell you what to do,’ he’d said. ‘But I thinkThe Talisman Effectis so popular that the producers are going to push for more and more drama. You need to protect your reputation, darling. They will push you to the limit.’
Rose’s agent hadn’t wanted her to renegotiate if it meant putting the brakes on her career.
‘It’s a stratospheric show!’ Maylene had shouted down the phone. Maylene didn’t really need the phone: she could probably communicate just by yelling. ‘The only way we’ll renegotiate is upwards when we push the show further!’
So Rose had done nothing, changed nothing, had not asked for the show to be more mindful of guests and their issues.
She’d thought about it but had decided it would ruin everything.
During the evening, she’d told Theo this.
‘Is this really what you want, Rose?’ he’d asked quietly.
Theo never got angry – he was the most even-tempered man she’d ever met.
But she could see something worse in his eyes that evening.
Sadness.
And an awareness that they were standing on different sides of a fault line.
