‘I’ve been thinking – I hate that rehab schtick but it could be merchandisable. You hear me? So phone me, Keera. We need to get you on the talk-shows telling everyone about your pain or whatever. Then an album. Then the money’s rolling back in again!
‘Phone me.
‘ASAP.’
Keera listens to the voice message and then deletes it.
She doesn’t want to give herself the opportunity of listening to it again.
Once is enough.
She cannot think about her mother now. There’s too much whirling around in her head. Bobbi in real life is insistent enough; Keera’s only hope is to banish her voice for now.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Tuesday dawns and it’s another glorious sunny day in Corfu. Rose bounces out of her soft bed and hops in the shower.
Today is going to be a fantastic day, she thinks, soaping herself with the villa’s handmade olive-oil-and-wild-lavender soap.
She is not going to think about the Instagram menace – why worry when it could be just another crazy person who made it sound as if they knew Rose’s secret. Nobody knew.
Today, she’s going to be positive!
The group are not all open to therapy, that’s a challenge.
Bernard and Dianne are hold-outs.
When Rose worked in California, one of the advantages was that an awful lot of the population had engaged in some sort of therapy or another. Whereas the group on the island retreat are a mix of people who have, with the exception of Keera, eschewed analysis.
Never mind, Rose thinks cheerfully. She’s got this.
At breakfast, she goes into the kitchen to pick up the egg-white omelette that Christos has made her.
It’s not on the menu and he makes them just for Rose. She will eat her breakfast away from the group because she’s pretty sure that if this high-protein, low-fat omelettewason the menu, both Keera and India would order it non-stop.
Rose does not want to give them the chance.
She sits in the small garden behind the private part of the buildings. It’s a sprawling site and Rose and the architect wanted to build in lots of little hidey-hole places where people could find peace. Like the acropolis up high behind the terrace, or the little terrace surrounded by lavender under the infinity pool.
Rose knows that she has put on far more weight than is good for her knees, but she is still fit from all her walking over the island.
She likes that she is not tormented by her own body.
It’s a wonderful thing. She feels physically capable of so much.
No matter what happens in the next few years, she vows that she is not going to put on a single pair of controlling underwear.
No Spanx or Skims, no more squashing her intestines into cramped conditions like Victorian ladies wearing corsets that made them faint.
As she gets her things after breakfast to start the second day of the retreat, Rose reflects that she’s really enjoying working with this first group. The whole point of the island retreat is that it’s gentle.
It’s not offering instant solutions, which was what Rose had been backed into doing onThe Talisman Effectby the end. No wonder it had all exploded into chaos.
Here, Rose is not promising to fix them – she is helping them see their problems and giving them the tools to continueworking on them. It’s a more realistic way of working. She loves it.
And Corfu.
Rose doesn’t think she’ll ever leave the island. Between the climate, the beauty of the island and the glorious generosity and fun of the people, Corfu is a paradise.
