Rose Talisman has him here on the damn island retreat – what more is he expected to do? Carve his own heart out of his chest and leave it on the big olive-wood table outside?Fat chance, Rose.
Chapter Four
Rose stands in her bedroom, which is above the sun-filled terrace in the private part of the villa, psyching herself up for her first day of therapy work in five years. She’s doing this with some ultra-strong Loumidis coffee with a cube of brown sugar courtesy of Christos.
The Fear is upon her and, despite herself, self-doubt ripples through her.
All the clever therapy phrases she wrote in her wildly successful book have dried up in her head. The royalties have dried up too, which is why she, Adriana and Christos have to make both this retreat and the Villa Artemis work. They ploughed all their money into it: Adriana and Christos remortgaged their now-rented-out home on the other side of Xanthe. Rose has no more income.
If this fails, Rose doesn’t want to think about the financial peril they will be in. Not to mention the fact that if she can’t run this retreat successfully, then her reputation as a therapist will be destroyed beyond repair.
Of course she’s feeling The Fear.
Amusingly,Stop being afraid of fearwas one of hertherapy commandments for a happy life: written on the backdrop of the studio where she filmedThe Talisman Effect.How’s that for ironic?
Create healthy boundaries,was another vital message on the backdrop.
Personally, Rose would have this lesson drummed into students at school.
She thinks of the sheer number of people she worked with either in her original private practice or onThe Talisman Effectwho had not a single boundary in place.
No boundaries was the car crash of therapy.
Find a person who desperately wanted to please other people without having a clue whattheywanted or didn’t want, and the car crashed right off the road.
It took time but italwayscrashed.
You can do thiswas another favourite phrase of Rose’s – she told people to write it on Post-its and stick them on mirrors in their homes. Viewers loved that one.
Trite pop-psychology, screamed her detractors.
Rose had learned to more or less ignore the haters.
Despite its simplicity, the Post-it made people aware of the critical inner voice in their heads: the voice that told them they were useless, stupid, fat, whatever. Becoming aware that the inner voice was just that – a voice and not reality – made a huge difference.
But on the cusp of piecing her career back together, of facing actual patients for the first time in five years, all her TV therapy mottos seem insanely simple.
You can do it even though you crashed and burned out of your successful TV career five years ago!
Rose knows she’d need a very big Post-it to write that.
Breathing, she decides: that’s what she needs to do now to quell her last-minute nerves.
Pranayama breath can solve anything.
The six guests waiting will know how her career ended. Breathe in and hold.
That they still want to be here on the island with her shows that they believe she’s a good therapist.
They trust her. That matters hugely to her.
Rose knows she looks way different from back in her TV days: she has no wardrobe of Spanx and figure-hugging trouser suits, no chestnut hair blown out and sprayed into place.
Now she wears Birkenstocks and flowing dresses she buys in Xanthe. Her skin glows with health, and her hair is a long, healthy coil of sheeny silver that she wears in a soft plait or loosely around her shoulders.
Theo wouldn’t recognise this vibrant, earthy woman. Rose ended up hiding who she truly was from him.
Ironically, darling Theo was the only man she’d ever lowered her guard for. He adored her and yet she hid a huge part of herself from him, she reflects sadly.
