Dan cannot continue to date Julia.
She’s a complete stranger to the truth and is nothing like the fragile woman Dan described. She might have been oncebut now, all India sees is someone who is pretending to be someone she’s not.
Rose will know how to sort the situation.
India stomps up to her room. Even though Dan’s not hers, he doesn’t deserve Julia.
Rose has made her mind up: no matter what happens, she will handle it.
If the Instagram menace tries to out her, she will make sure that Adriana is not involved.
If Bernard tries to destroy the Villa Artemis business, Rose will give interviews to everyone and their lawyer about how she was threatened by him.
She is going to fight back.
At half four, Rose puts on her big straw hat and another blast of factor 50. She has definitely had too much sun over the past few weeks. She peers into her mirror, angling her face this way and that.
She has sun spots.
Years ago in Los Angeles she had laser treatment to get rid of all blemishes. Her ancestry is Celtic via Wales and sun spots are part of the deal, along with pale skin that doesn’t tan easily.
But she’s a long way from her old cosmetic surgeon and the life that required such a doctor.
She picks up her white-and-blue hand-sewn tote bag with sea urchins, fish and pretty starfish embroidered upon it. If she’s going to rescue the retreat, she needs to walk off her worries and plan what to do next.
She also needs some of Elena’s Magic Tea. The one that’s known to calm every anxiety but has the side effect of smelling like a witch’s brew with frogs thrown in.
It’s siesta time, but she knows there is a shady path down through the woods to the village and she can be back in time for the evening session and dinner.
She needs to take the hidden path to avoid any more questions from her retreaters.
First, Keera had come into the private part of the hotel and told Rose about her confrontation with her mother.
‘I walked away,’ Keera said sadly. ‘I can’t see her any more.’
‘We can talk about it after dinner on the beach,’ Rose said. ‘You can see her and you can be honest with her, I promise.’
‘I don’t know,’ says Keera. ‘I showed her my shaved head and she went mad.’
Keera is still wearing her wig and Rose has an idea.
‘Why don’t you ditch the wig for good?’ she suggests. ‘Then your mother will have a very visual cue that life is going to be different.’
India had been next.
She’d been upset about Dan but also keen to share that Julia was totally the wrong person for him.
‘Rose, I hate saying this about another woman, especially one who’s gone through so much. I mean, I am a woman’s woman, you know!’
India had been upset that what she’d been told about Julia and what Julia is now presenting vary so much.
‘Dan didn’t lie, did he?’ India had asked.
Rose had shaken her head.
‘He loves her but he loves this vision of her and that’s not who she is!’ India said. ‘If you’d heard the things she was saying in the bar!’ It was all invented.
‘She could still be very emotionally fragile,’ Rose explained. ‘If looking at your life is too painful, people can invent a fantasy life.’
