Rose wonders now who’ll do it and who won’t.
People get so crushed by the baggage they carry from the past and by living up to other people’s expectations that they neglect to think about whattheywant.
This exercise will help with that.
She reminded them about the thought for the day, too:You can’t change other people.
She hopes it’s beginning to sink in.
Before she goes to sleep, she writes down her fears about the anonymous messager in her journal. She firmly believes in writing fears and gratitude down in a journal. But tonight, writing doesn’t heal her the way it usually does.
The guests on the island retreat would be shocked to learn the real truth about Rose, who has built her reputation on being a clear-sighted, truthful woman. They think that a TV-show disaster is the worst thing in her past.
It isn’t.
Chapter Twenty-One
In their luxury suite, the biggest bedroom in Villa Artemis, Bernard sits on the edge of the bed and watches Grazia taking off her make-up.
No matter how tired she is, she goes through the ritual. Then she will do her before-bed stretches. These things keep his wife strong.
Her mother, a tricky woman who had been jealous of her beautiful daughter, had advised Grazia:
‘Do not waste time on diets. You may have no food one day. Put cream on your face, any cream is better than no cream. Never try to be someone you are not.’
Grazia never does that, Bernard knows.
She is a remarkable woman.
Given their money, Bernard knows Grazia could have changed every part of herself. But she hasn’t. She’s had some fillers, as she calls them, and Botox, but no surgery, which is so common now that it surprises Bernard.
His forty-year-old personal assistant has had a full facelift.
She looks younger but different somehow.
Grazia goes to fitness classes and has a personal trainer come to the house when they’re in France and has another she works with in the New York apartment. Women trainers. Bernard isn’t stupid.
He knows his wife is a beautiful woman and younger too.
It’s hard getting older, Bernard thinks bitterly.
Sometimes he just longs to sit in a chair all day and read. That isn’t an option, obviously.
When Bernard was young, which seems like a million years ago, people like him did not sit in chairs and read.
Instead, they worked for other people until their bodies were broken and they retired to live in poverty.
Learning to read had been an accomplishment for many of his peers. His father had never thought much of reading and had been handy with a belt.
Bernard has not built the company he runs today by sitting down and relaxing.
Neither has he run it by being a softie, even though he knows Grazia hates that he is hard now. It’s the aura of power – it becomes a cloak he wears all the time.
His children know how much he loves them: they might have forgotten this but they know, deep down—
‘Shall we work on the notebooks that Rose gave us?’ asks Grazia.
‘Of course, darling,’ he says. ‘You do it. I might early in the morning, I’ll see if I have the energy.’
