‘I know it’s difficult,’ Rose coaxes gently, her legs curled under her, ‘but it will help to release the story that’s inside you.’
‘It’s more than difficult,’ says India, looking up but not at Rose: instead she stares into the distance as if looking for something in the beautiful craggy mountains beside them, searching for something amid the thickets of rosemary and the olive trees.
‘We’re here to shine a light on whatever is hurting deep inside us,’ Rose goes on.
Lily-Blossom comes into India’s mind again. Little fat hands and rounded little arms as soft and plump as a white peach. Lily-Blossom with the cloud of dark hair that smells of baby.
‘It feels intrusive, India, but this is a group therapy and you will find that sharing your pain helps. It’s difficult, reallydifficult to unburden in front of a group but,’ Rose’s eyes flicker towards Dan, ‘it’s the start to healing.’
Everyone shifts uncomfortably in their chairs at all this talk of shining a light on their pain.
Rose knows that they all want their pain magically sucked out.
‘I can’t go next,’ says India suddenly, her hands held up to her mouth as if she’s physically preventing herself from speaking. ‘Can someone else take a turn—I’m really sorry. I do want to heal but this is all so new and I thought we’d be doing yoga, sitting in a circle on the beach, something holistic—’
It’s Keera who rescues her.
‘I’ll do it.’
India shudders with relief.
Keera looks questioningly at Rose. ‘If that’s OK?’
‘Of course,’ says Rose, with a nod.
‘What trouble brought me here?’ says Keera, sighing. ‘OK, I can do trouble.’
Chapter Seventeen
Keera thinks she might be an empath.That’swhat she is, it makes so much sense.
She’s always tried to work out why she’s different – and not just because she’s famous – but this could be it.
She’s an empath. She has all the traits: she connects with other people, feels their pain, can always read the room, jumps at loud noises. These are common empath traits, right?
Her mother, or Dr Bobbi as everyone calls her because Mom is a chiropractor by training and chiropractors get called Dr, is definitely not an empath. She’s more of a force of nature, Keera thinks with a smile, but is this a category?
She has written this new discovery down in her journal.
Me: empath.
Mom: force of nature, poss?
The journal is a new thing: in an NBC green room in Chicago, she met a woman who had just written a memoir and who started journaling.
‘This has saved me from myself,’ she told Keera as they sat on too-low couches – the couches were always designed for really short people so that people got stuck in them – and the woman drank honeyed tea to save her voice from doing so many back-to-back shows.
‘I was lost. Trying to be someone I wasn’t. I started journaling and this came out of it. Of course, Rose Talisman started me off. Do you know her? She’s been off the scene for a while but she was amazing. One of her things is to start people journaling and then she picks the journal delicately into pieces and examines all the clues. Sort of Sherlock Holmes but with your heart.’
That sounded a bit radical but, since then, Keera’s been journaling and she’s ordered Rose Talisman’s book.
Making Lemonade: What to Do When Life’s Lemons Appear.
It hasn’t arrived yet but the current tour takes them all over the place and it’s hard for the mail to catch up. Now they’re in Australia, so who knows when her precious book will arrive.
Her current journal entry is about identifying people in her world. If she can’t designate Mom as a force of nature, and nobody’s talking about this online, then what is she?
She keeps the journal with her all the time and has tied it up with lots of mysterious knots in the ribbons around it, in case anyone finds it and tries to read it.
