‘We can always improve ourselves, Dad,’ India said seriously. ‘Since going to Pune in India, my Iyengar yoga has been epic. You should see my downward dog. I was doing it wrong for years. Shocking, right? It’s all about getting expert help, Dad.’
When India was a teenager, she spent a lot of time skipping school and watching daytime TV. Her favourite show wasThe Talisman Effect.
Nobody was judged no matter what they’d done.
People were urged to do their best but also told to realise that nobody’s perfect.
India loved this. She often felt like a klutz because she wasn’t brilliant at stuff like her dad, who’d left school at fifteen and built a car rental company from nothing, or beautiful enough to be a model like her mum, or clever enough to do up giant houses for rich people like Georgie.
Her dad and stepmum both work hard for a living. Meanwhile, India’s been living on money her mum set aside for India from her modelling career – and the money’s running out.
India needs to know what to do next. How to earn a living after abortive attempts to be an influencer and a stylist. How to – she feels silly even thinking this – but how tobe.
India’s convinced that Rose Talisman alone can help her with these things.
Also, and India is almost embarrassed to have to mention this, perhaps Rose could explain why India finds a lovely man, thinks he’s the one, and then it fizzles out in weeks.
Like, why?
India’s thirty-four now.
Men of thirty-four all want twenty-four-year-old girlfriends. India’s ageing out.
And thirty-four is standing at the side of a very big cliff in fertility years. Like, a really big cliff.
At least she’d had Chad, until his sister got pregnant and Chad – perfect on paper – told everyone that his sister was ruining her life andWhy bring a baby into the world, man?
India, lost in imagining soft baby feet curled up in her palms, a downy head nestled in the crook of her elbow, had let out a tiny moan of loss.
Clearly, that was the end of Chad. India knows she’s soft as butter but even she couldn’t stay with him.
The final shock was when Lizzie, one of her two best friends from forever, gave birth to Lily-Blossom, a fairy child with Lizzie’s dark hair, dark eyes and a dimple.
Going into Lizzie’s apartment to meet the baby for the first time, India felt a vast gaping abyss open up inside her at the thought of never having her own Lily-Blossom.
The pain was like carving a giant blade-sweep across her abdomen. It burned and ached but was startlingly invisible to the rest of the world.
Lizzie had a job as a Pilates teacher, a partner and now a baby.
India was manless, and her most recent job was as a sales assistant in a very posh shop where the owner was a friend of Georgie’s.
India’s honesty does her no favours when people try stuff on.
Saying ‘Don’t you have six Lululemon jackets already?’ gets you fired.
The taxi slows down and takes a sharp right up a steep drive to a beautiful stone building that glitters with lights in the dusk.
India hops out of the taxi.
‘Attack each day with enthusiasm,’ is what Georgie always advises.
India has taken this motto to heart, no matter how weirdly anxious she is.
Nobody can ever call me a quitter, she thinks stoically.
She tightens the belt on her travelling cardigan, a very elderly cashmere jacket she has endlessly washed to get the charity shop smell out of.
This is going to be fun, she tells herself. It has to be.
