‘Cheers, Dianne,’ she says aloud.
Once, she’d have loved this place.
When she was in her early twenties, she’d have been so thrilled to be here, delighting in the skin and shower products in the bathroom, scented variously with rose, bergamot, geranium and juniper. She can almost see her young self, when she had long dark hair, slender hips and a smile, dancing into the room, opening every drawer, examining every piece of thoughtful luxury, saying: ‘Isn’t this amazing!’
But who was she talking to in this imaginary moment?
Not her mother, not her one-time best girlfriend Larissa, who’d moved to the Northern Territories with work. Not Lauren or Ellie, her beautiful daughters. Or her sweet son, Toby, who was adored by everyone.
She loved them so much, tried to protect them.
Had tried.
Dianne feels her breath slide into shallowness.
Just like that, the rage is back. Fierce, dangerous.
Excellent.
Rage is the way forward.
It’s her friend.
She takes her water onto the balcony and picks up the little notebook again.
A pretty thing.
Sweet. But not for her.
Dianne picks it up and throws it as far off the balcony as her arm can manage.
She can’t see where it lands. Probably in the garden. Maybe in the pool? Who knows? She doesn’t care. Her secrets are her own.
Chapter Thirteen
Rose has spent the past fifteen minutes lying on her bed fanning herself with a magazine. She’s still running on cortisol and the crazy nervous energy that comes from running a successful group session.
Villa Artemis has air-conditioning but, right now, she’s fanning herself. If she wasn’t off grid, she might see a doctor and get her hormones tested. She’s fifty-three, surely somewhere in the warzone that is the peri- or menopausal crisis?
Right now she craves cool and a bar of dark chocolate, in that order.
When she hears the distant noise of dishes rattling, she knows it’s time to get up.
Rose pats her face with a hand towel in the bathroom and glugs down a huge glass of bottled water.
Adriana had warned her to drink lots when she first moved here five years ago.
‘I’m used to the heat here in September but for tourists, it’s still too hot. The only answer is to drink lots of water. Heat stroke is for people from colder places who don’t behave appropriately in Greece.’
Rose leaves her room and steps down the marble back stairs to the kitchen, which is built into the mountain and thus is blissfully cool, despite both Christos and Adriana doing things involving the oven.
Lunch today is simple mezes: juicy Kalamata olives; a crisp Greek salad in a turquoise porcelain bowl; tomatoes the size of cooking apples glistening on matching turquoise plates and drizzled with olive oil; bowls of hummus, taramasalata and tzatziki sitting in handmade bowls with homemade pitta bread warm beside them.
Beata is not around – she’s worked the morning shift and this evening Christos and Adriana will be on call.
Christos is having second thoughts about Rose’s plan for the group to cook dinner tonight. Rose insists that it will shake the group up a bit and encourage them to talk to each other.
‘I don’t want anyone in my kitchen,’ Christos is saying mulishly to Adriana.
