Chapter 23 #2
Sofia nodded. ‘Henry does. Adam told him yesterday.’ She swallowed.
‘That’s why I thought I’d come over. I just wanted to talk to someone who knew…
I can’t tell Mum stuff like this – she thinks our life is ludicrous, I know she does.
Well, she thinks I’m ludicrous, for doing what I do, for wanting things to be better. ’
‘She might…’ conceded Peg, knowing full well this was true.
‘But I’m also certain that if she knew any of what you’ve just told me, she’d understand the reasons for your behaviour.
She’s your mum, she knows you better than anyone, and she’ll already know that something hasn’t been right for a while.
Trust me, she will. You just need to find a way to open up to her, same with Henry. ’
‘But how do I do that when he doesn’t even like me?’
Peg shook her head sadly. ‘You know, he’d hate the fact that you’ve never shared any of this with him before.
He probably doesn’t feel he knows you all that well, and that’s because, by holding it back from him, you’ve held yourself back too.
Sometimes you have to let a person see who you really are, and that bond of trust – allowing someone to see the real you, with all your faults and failures as well as your strengths and successes – that’s how you become close.
I think if you share how you’re feeling with Henry, he’ll be a lot more understanding than you give him credit for. Same with your mum.’ She smiled.
‘And if you think about it, Henry is in a very similar situation to you and Adam. He’s having to take stock of a few things and put some changes into place.
He might be moving towards living a different kind of life, but that doesn’t mean it will be a bad one.
It might even turn out to be much better.
’ She studied Sofia’s face, at least the small part of it she could see.
‘You know, this is an opportunity for all of you to think about what you really want from your lives. If all the balls are being thrown up in the air then you need to make sure you know which ones to catch.’
Sofia lifted her head from her hands, staring at Peg. And almost immediately her eyes began to well up. ‘I don’t think you understand,’ she said, a flash of anger crossing her face. ‘I make cushion covers,’ she added. ‘Cushion covers and curtains, and that’s pretty much it.’
It was Peg’s turn to stare. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘The rest of my business doesn’t really exist. It’s just me trying to pretend that I’m a successful interior designer.
Throwing loads of money at it in an attempt to gain some high-profile clients which, by the way, includes broadcasting every detail about our Instagram-perfect lives in an effort to convince people that’s what they want too.
And what they can have, if they would only give me full rein over their bank balance.
But it doesn’t work, so in the end I make cushion covers.
And curtains.’ She swallowed, the tilt to her chin a little defiant.
Peg glanced up at her window. ‘Did you make the curtains in your house?’ she asked. ‘The incredible set in your big bay window which I remember thinking must have cost you a fortune?’
Sofia nodded. ‘I’ve made all the curtains in our house. Plus the blinds, the covers for the sofa and the drapes in our bedroom, too. Although, of course, you haven’t seen those.’
‘Then sorry, maybe I’m missing something here, but isn’t that a successful business? What you’ve made is beautiful.’
‘Maybe… but anyone could do that.’
‘I couldn’t,’ said Peg.
‘Okay, but it’s not being an interior designer, is it?
That’s the point. Only a handful of really successful designers get to work with the kind of clients who have the money to do something different, to fundamentally change their houses instead of just fiddling with the soft furnishings, or swapping the colour of paint on the walls. ’
Peg thought about Farrow & Ball’s Breakfast Room Green and smiled. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that though, surely? We don’t all have money to burn.’
‘No, I realise that, it’s just…’ Sofia sighed, frowning as if she was trying to catch a thought.
‘Maybe it’s not that at all, maybe it’s the fact that the few clients I do manage to get just want the same as everyone else does – which is whatever’s trending on Instagram.
Because, in reality, no one wants to stand out from the crowd, do they?
We all want to belong. Only it’s to a club that has no name, and no organisation, and the rules of it change almost every day.
Yet we still want to be a part of it. It’s baffling when you think about it. ’
‘And that club is full of people with picture-perfect lives,’ agreed Peg, nodding.
‘With beautiful houses, beautiful bodies and in beautiful relationships… things that most of us struggle over and never feel we attain. And yet we keep on striving, because we keep on believing. But what if we tell ourselves those lives are fake, Sofia? What then? Doesn’t it change the pressure we put ourselves under?
Doesn’t it make us kinder to ourselves? More accepting?
’ She paused to give Sofia a warm smile.
‘Doesn’t it make us realise that being ordinary is okay?
That, in fact, being ordinary is extraordinary, because that’s what each and every one of us is – unique and utterly extraordinary. ’
Sofia’s gaze dropped to her hands, still clutched in her lap. ‘That might sound good in theory, but it’s not that simple, is it? We’re all expected to be something these days, be someone.’
‘Can I ask you another question then? Going off on a tangent here, but what made you want to be an interior designer in the first place?’
‘Because I have a degree in textiles, and I thought…’ She gave Peg a perplexed look.
‘I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I thought I’d give fashion a go, but that’s such a competitive area and I knew I didn’t have the stamina for it, nor the skill either, not really.
But I’d started making a few things for myself when I was at university, mainly to save money, and it started from there.
I ended up working in a fabric shop…’ She pulled a face.
‘Which was fine. I enjoyed it, actually. I learned a lot, too, and once Adam and I got married, it was all right for a bit, but then it didn’t seem… enough, maybe, I don’t know.’
‘And that was when you decided to throw a lot of money at your business, and do all the social media stuff to try to attract clients?’
Sofia nodded, looking miserable.
‘So why wasn’t what you were doing before enough, if you enjoyed it?’
‘Because I thought when we got married that children would come along and I’d be a mother. I never really wanted to be anything else. I certainly didn’t want a career.’
‘So why go chasing one?’
‘Because the few friends I told about how I felt thought I was odd. None of them want kids. Or not for ages, anyway. Not until they’ve got where they want to be.’
‘What, none of them?’ Peg frowned, thinking of her own children. Is that really what young people wanted these days?
Sofia’s glance flickered away. ‘Not all of them, no. Quite a lot of our friends already have children. Our old friends that is – but we don’t see them much any more.’
And suddenly Peg understood. She remembered how it was when she was Sofia’s age, how all the friends in her circle gradually paired off, got married, started families, and she’d wondered when it would be her turn.
But then she’d met Julian and suddenly it was her turn.
But how would she have felt if that hadn’t happened for her?
Quite probably the same as Sofia did now – choosing to move in a different circle where the differences between them were no longer so obvious.
Where she wasn’t made to feel left behind and yet she still felt it anyway.
‘My mother used to call it having your cake and eating it,’ she said.
‘Describing women who didn’t just want to be a stay-at-home mum.
Didn’t want to be just a wife and mother.
She made it sound as if there was something wrong with women wanting to run a global company at the same time as having children.
But the point is that it’s a choice, and each decision has its merits.
It’s whatever is right for the individual concerned.
Though, admittedly, it’s often financial pressures which make those choices for us.
Both my husband and I needed to work when our children came along. ’
‘Yes, but it isn’t just that. It’s the pressure to be something, be someone… Which is exactly my point. I have to be something, someone…’
‘Why?’
‘Because…’ Sofia looked up, her eyes suddenly wide.
‘Because I don’t have anything else…’ She trailed off, a surprised look on her face.
Surprise at having finally given voice to the thought which had been in her head for such a long time, the hurt she had held inside of her for so long. A hurt that coloured everything.
Peg let Sofia’s words hang in the air for a moment, giving them space to breathe, to swell and fill the room and hopefully take root in Sofia’s head so that she fully acknowledged them. She leaned forward.
‘I can’t take away your pain, Sofia, but I can remind you to never lose hope.
Because if you have hope, you usher in possibility.
And where there’s possibility, anything can happen, and often does.
Don’t live your life putting distance between yourself and the thing you want the most. Make a home for it instead, here in your head.
’ She tapped two fingers lightly against her crown.
‘You have to make it welcome or it will never arrive. It takes a lot of courage to break from the crowd. To do things differently… But you know, if you did, I think you’d find that people would admire you for it.
Perhaps even be a little bit envious, even a lot envious.
Maybe you should try it. Maybe this is the perfect time to break the mould, Sofia. ’