Chapter Nineteen
India and Keera inspect the kitchen. It’s smaller than they’d expected but it shines cleanly at them, a tiny palace of stainless steel.
‘What are all these gizmos?’ India says, gazing at a serried rack of hanging utensils of every shape and size. ‘And this? What is this?’
She stands beside a big square machine which sits beside several industrial-looking hand blenders.
‘Sous vide machine,’ says Keera, then sees India looking at her in astonishment.
‘I had to spend half an hour in a hotel kitchen once because I was the support act at a charity event and there was a delay. I couldn’t eat anything because I was about to perform – I was wearing a dress I’d been sewn into. ’
She grins as India’s eyebrows lift.
‘Yeah, sounds extreme but at least if you’re sewn in, you’re less likely to have a costume malfunction.
Although nipple covers help with that. So the chefs showed me around the kitchen.
Sous vide cooks meat, fish, that kind of thing, in vacuum-packed bags, I think that’s it – not entirely sure how it works but that’s the idea. ’
‘You’ve had such an interesting life!’
India feels such enormous pity for Keera and how much she cried on the terrace that afternoon that she wants to find the lightness in her new friend’s life.
‘Being sewn into your clothes, nipple covers. You’ve had some fun times – in between the tricky ones, that is!’
She finds a tin opener mounted on the wall and marvels at how huge it is.
‘Is this for enormous cans of tomatoes?’
‘Probably. Show business is not that exciting when it’s all you’ve ever known, honestly,’ says Keera.
‘There are lots of downsides to the industry that don’t get talked about enough.
I know an actress who put duct tape on her boobs for filming because they had nudity co-ordinators, et cetera, but she didn’t trust the director not to film her tits if they appeared. Total sleazoid.’
‘Me Too stuff?’ asks India anxiously.
Keera nods.
‘Women actors are treated differently just because they’re women. Don’t get me started. Much of the casual sexism never gets talked about because you’re famous and make money, so you’re not supposed to be upset by shit like that. It’s like – You signed up for this life, honey.’
‘Yeuch,’ India says. ‘Nobody signs up for that. You weren’t actually Me Too-ed, were you?’
‘Nope. My mom was with me all the time. People were scared of her, which was handy, I guess,’ Keera says and smiles.
‘People were scared of her because they knew she’d go mental if anyone touched me,’ she goes on. ‘She’s kind of tough. Mama lioness.’
‘She’s your manager?’
Keera lets out a breath.
‘Yeah. I should have said that earlier. Nobody was getting twenty per cent off us while she had breath in her body.’
They both laugh.
‘Sounds like the sort of thing my dad would say,’ India offers. ‘He’s in the rental car business, though.’
‘My mom used to be a performer, a cabaret singer, that’s how I got into this business.
I remember her doing shows when I was little.
’ Keera clears her throat, her voice becoming a little croaky.
‘She had this guest slot in Phoenix once for a whole year. It was the best year, actually. I was a kid, seven, maybe, and I loved Phoenix. We lived in this lovely little motel with a kids’ playground out the back and a pool that was clean, which was a rarity, I can tell you, compared to some of the places we lived. ’
India can see Keera’s eyes getting misty as she remembers the past.
‘Life on the road is hard but Mom wanted to make it big, so we had to travel. I thought Motel Six was my address for a long time. They’re low-budget motels and when you passed from state to state, if you hit the information offices, you got coupons for motels and food.
A good motel coupon was like Christmas had come early.
I don’t talk about this when I’m interviewed,’ she says wryly.
‘My mom likes the “my daughter just fell into stardom” version.’
‘I feel so ashamed of my puny problems,’ says India. ‘I never had anything like that. My parents both had money. Mum from her modelling and Dad because he built his business. Georgie, she’s my stepmum, has a brilliant business too. Very not a wicked stepmother,’ she adds, smiling.
‘That sounds really nice,’ says Keera, ‘but you can still have problems even when it all looks fabulous. Sadness and anxiety don’t care if you’ve cash in the bank.
‘Right, we are cooking dinner. Where are Dianne and Grazia? I bet they can cook.’
‘I bet Bernard can’t,’ says India, laughing.
Bernard lies on a sunlounger in front of the infinity pool with a vast tumbler of good scotch whisky and ice beside him on a small table. The notebook Rose gave him is also on the table, along with some factor-20 SPF.
He has written nothing in his notebook.
His phones sit on top of it.
Nobody needs him right now. He’s not cooking dinner, whatever Rose says. He’s had two work calls and ripped the heads off a few people. They deserved it.
He talked briefly to his son, Stephen, and agreed that Stephen’s newest business idea is a good one and funding will be sorted out within the week. It’s a terrible idea but Bernard would never say that.
He’s just pushed more money into his daughter Viola’s handbag business even though she has none of his business acumen and won’t listen to any advice. Still, he’s their dad. His job is to give them everything he was never given. They’re happy.
All is well in his world.
He closes his eyes against the luscious heat of the September sun.
If Rose asks what he’s put in his notebook, he’ll lie. This is Grazia’s thing. He’s here for her. Doesn’t mean he has to do anything, does it? No therapy-guru quack will make Bernard do anything he doesn’t want to.
But he thinks of Rose’s face when he was trying to book the boat for a day out.
She looked as if she knew something about him. Something very hidden.
Grazia cannot have told her, can she?
Bernard feels a ripple of fear but he knows how to handle it. Bernard is very proud of his ability to handle anything life throws at him.
Rose knows she should be celebrating a successful day on the terrace but instead, she and Adriana are sitting in Adriana’s pretty family room, listening to an anxious voice note on Adriana’s phone.
It’s from Mercedes, the wildly cool twenty-something Corfu woman who has been in charge of all the social media for Villa Artemis and Rose’s retreat.
She’s been amazing, understands algorithms and how to make Instagram posts pop.
She thinks email and Facebook are for old people, likes TikTok and is dying to see what’s coming next.
Mercedes would rather burn her new Louis Vuitton multi pochette with pink flaps than move out of Athens and back to Corfu because she says it’s full of people Adriana and Christos’ age.
With this in mind, she treats Christos, Adriana and Rose like sweet but bewildered people from a different century, one without electricity.
But today, Mercedes is worried, which is why Rose is not sitting on the private bamboo-surrounded terrace, drinking an iced tea and congratulating herself on how well the first day is going.
Mercedes sounds uncharacteristically unsure of herself: ‘I saw the message on Instagram a few minutes ago. I don’t want to bother you with every weirdo or random hate-watcher but …
’ Mercedes pauses. ‘This message is a bit weird. I’ve sent you the screenshot.
It’s oddly personal, Rose: as if the poster is saying Rose is not your real name.
I know, insane, right? I thought I should warn you, thought maybe you had people in America who could make sure there’s no problem.
I don’t know if you had a stalker or whatevs but we can just block this person. ’
Rose closes her eyes and tries to calm herself with breathing.
She has no people in the US any more. Her agent’s the only one who ever occasionally contacts her to see how she is. Rose feels guilty when this happens. She can’t go back there, despite all the work her agent could line up in a moment.
Her special private-banking expert at her US bank has no interest in her any more now that pretty much all her money has gone into renovating and setting up Villa Artemis. Thankfully, she has never had a stalker.
‘Let’s look at the screenshot,’ she says to Adriana.
Adriana shows her the picture of the message sent by Mercedes.
I know all about you, bitch. All your pretending. You might think you got away with it but you didn’t. I have never forgotten, ‘Rose’. I was waiting for someone to out you but you must have paid them off. But I know who you really are and where you’re from and I’m going to do it. Payback time.
Rose feels a combination of anger and fear ripple through her.
Adriana’s face is bleached white.
Rose holds out her arms and Adriana falls into them. They stay, hugging, for a few silent moments.
‘We need to know who it is for certain,’ Rose says finally. ‘I won’t have someone come and blackmail us like this …’
‘It could be like Mercedes said,’ Adriana says hopefully. ‘Just a weirdo?’
‘Or it could be someone with the power to mess up everything we’ve spent years trying to hide,’ says Rose, sighing.
Why can’t the past ever go away?
The day, which was going so well, feels darker now.
‘Perhaps it’s better to have it all out in the open?’ Adriana suggests hesitantly.
‘No!’ Rose is adamant. ‘Nobody is going to bully us, not after all we’ve been through. No way.’
She thinks carefully, flipping on the analytic part of her brain. Who could help?
Then it comes to her: ‘I know a guy who used to do a lot of online investigating; he might not even be in the business any more.’ She shrugs.
‘Five years is a long time and internet security is probably totally different now, but if it’s possible to find out who this person is, he’ll work it out.
I’ll message him. Give him all the details. I’ll use the office computer.’
She doesn’t want to email on her own laptop, doesn’t want to let this darkness slither in because, for her, social media can be an evil that permeates everything it touches.
Rose had always found it hard to process the avalanche of social media comments on the show. They ranged from messages of wild approval to ones where anonymous people suggested ways in which she might be tortured and killed.
It’s why she has almost no online presence any more, why Mercedes runs the retreat and Villa Artemis’s accounts.
Rose sends the email then turns to Adriana.
‘Tell her to alert us if any more messages come in,’ she says. ‘Don’t block them. We need to watch this carefully in case it escalates.’
‘Yeah,’ says Adriana, staring at her phone. ‘Mercedes is saying that perhaps if we can get some of the guests to post good reviews on their social media it would be helpful. If Keera could say something, it would be amazing. She’s got so many followers—’
Rose shakes her head. ‘I can’t ask her to do that,’ she says firmly. ‘It’s unethical. I’m her therapist and I can’t profit off her just because she’s famous.’
Adriana looks abashed. ‘I know, sorry,’ she says.
‘We’ll have a place on the webpage where they can leave comments afterwards but that’s entirely up to them,’ Rose says. ‘Now, let’s forget this. We are not going to let some random idiot get us down. Agreed?’
Adriana manages a shaky smile. ‘Agreed. It’s just—’
‘I know,’ Rose says. ‘Scary. The unknown.’ She dons her therapist’s face. ‘We will come through this.’
As she speaks, Rose realises how happy she’d been before this threat. What an idyll her home on Corfu has been.
The past five years have flown by, once they’d had the idea for Villa Artemis, and the idea had blossomed into something, they had worked night and day to make it a reality.
‘I hate that this can destroy everything,’ Adriana says. ‘You’ve lost so much already, Rose.’
‘I’m OK,’ Rose says, which is a definite fib.
‘If you still had Theo in your life, it would be easier,’ Adriana adds.
Rose shakes her head. This is an old argument from Adriana.
‘Far too much time has elapsed,’ she says, which is what she always says to her sister. ‘Even if I got in touch with him, Theo will have moved on. He’s probably married. He left first, Adriana. He left before the show imploded.’
‘But you don’t know if he’s married, do you?’
‘I’m happy here on the island,’ Rose says, which is totally true.
‘Corfu has worked her magic on you,’ Adriana smiles. ‘It worked for me and now for you.’
‘Maybe I’ll find another man like Christos,’ Rose jokes.
Adriana laughs delightedly. ‘There is no other man like him. The gods had the mould destroyed, he is perfect. Theo sounded perfect,’ she adds.
Rose suddenly feels as if she might cry. What is wrong with her?
‘He was perfect and I screwed it up because I never managed to tell him the truth. That ship has sailed,’ she adds firmly. ‘I can’t go back there. I wasn’t honest with Theo. I couldn’t tell him the truth at first and then later … later, it was too late.’
‘If you told him now, he’d understand,’ Adriana says. ‘You lied because you had to, not because you were trying to deceive him.’
Rose loves Adriana’s hopefulness but Theo is a part of her history now, not a part of her future.
‘I doubt that he’d forgive the lie. Either way, let’s forget about Theo,’ she says now. ‘We’ve got a week to put Villa Artemis on the map. Nobody’s going to mess with us!’
She hugs Adriana again, a fierce hug as if everything is all right and they’re an unstoppable force together.
Rose has to sort out this threat on Instagram. It’s a serious threat.
Calling her ‘Rose’.
That was a mistake, Rose thinks grimly. Everyone thinks they know who Rose Talisman is: that she’s a calm, serene woman who heals people. All of which is true. But she’s also a fighter.
Nobody from the past is going to ruin their future. Not if Rose can help it.