‘OK,’ she hears her mother shout and she knows Bobbi is coming up behind her, gold platform sandals clopping with each step.
De Havilland sandals, Keera knows. Nobody can ever say that Bobbi doesn’t give every outfit the full rock-chick look.
At the top, Rose and Adriana have planted aromatic peachy-pink oleander bushes that smell of floral talcum powder. They’re blooming, clusters of flowers with vibrant green leaves. There’s a long wooden bench installed by Christos close to the edge of the tiny terrace and Keera sits on it now, taking in the sight of the sea. In the distance she can see boats – large luxury yachts with vast masts and sheeny white flanks, alongside colourful small fishing boats.
Keera closes her eyes and lets the sun warm her face. She loves it here.
If only she could stay, but she can’t. She has to go back to the real world and face it.
But the retreat and Rose have opened a door for Keera. A door that allows her to realise that she has to make her own choices.
‘I don’t know why we have to clamber up here,’ pants Bobbi as she arrives and sinks on the bench, slipping off her golden platforms.
Keera stays silent. Once Bobbi has her breath back, she starts afresh.
‘I’m angry, Keera, and I have a right to be angry! You disappear, telling me damn all about where you’re going,with fuck all money left in our accounts – and don’t pretend you don’t know this, madam – and then, when I need you to come home to record songs with Santi, you don’t answer your phone any more. You’re just –pouf.’ Bobbi mimes blowing a bubble. ‘Gone. What have you got to say for yourself?’
The idyllic calm of Xanthe has allowed Keera’s mind to step off the cortisol merry-go-round. She sees her mother almost frothing at the mouth and yet, in her head, she hears Rose speaking to her.
You can’t control other people or what they feel. You can only control your own feelings, thoughts and actions. You are not responsible for other people or their happiness.
Thisis what she came to the retreat for. This clarity.
She’s also mindful of Rose’s dictum about approaching difficult conversations with love.
‘Mom, I love you,’ she starts.
Bobbi makes a ‘hmfff’ noise.
‘Funny way of showing it. I had to hawk myself around Vegas trying to get work!’
Keera feels her scalp itch with irritation and anxiety.
This is hard. She has never spoken to her mother honestly – not about important stuff.
Bobbi’s the one who makes the decisions and Keera has to follow those decisions.
But then she thinks about all the work she’s done here on herself: how she knows she tries to keep her mother happy and how, as Rose explains it, we can’t fix other people.
‘Mom, I’m sorry we don’t have much money left but let’s live in the real world now. I’m not making any money right now. Why didn’t you look for a normal job if you couldn’t get singing work?’
Bobbi explodes.
‘Normal job!’ she shrieks. ‘I don’t do normal jobs. I’m a performer! I’m in the entertainment business!’
It’s now or never, Keera thinks. In her head, she sees the whirling dreams of her mother – from a small Donegal town to the dizzying heights of backstage at Madison Square Gardens where her daughter had once, just once, played two opening numbers before a teenage country-music star had headlined.
Keera had been so excited at the time but it was nothing compared to her mother. Bobbi had been on a high for weeks.
Her mother had needed that buzz more than Keera had.
‘Mom, we both need normal jobs from now on,’ says Keera. ‘I can’t go back to touring and making records: not in the same way, anyway. It’s bad for me. I’m clean and sober and I won’t be for long if I stay in the industry.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s what we do,’ says her mother dismissively.
‘I don’t want to do it any more,’ Keera says. ‘We’ve got to find other ways to make money, Mom. We’ve lots of contacts, we could get personal assistant jobs or stuff like that—’
‘Personal assistants! I’m not going to be some wage slave,’ Bobbi hisses. ‘How can you even say that? We’re artists: people would kill to have even a tenth of our talent.’
