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 omelette was on 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 on The Talisman Effect by 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 continue working 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.
Keera looks at what she’s written in her notebook.
It’s not much. Just random thoughts as they occur to her.
Want a new life.
Friends.
I have no friends.
And then the shadow of her mother appears.
Dr Bobbi …? What the hell can she be thinking about merchandising Keera’s rehab?
Keera doesn’t want to even think about this.
Her mother never stops, does she?
Then one more idea occurs to her: such a huge idea that Keera’s stunned to find herself writing it down.
I don’t want to perform any more.
That would certainly break her mother’s heart. Dr Bobbi has put her whole life into Keera’s career so how can Keera tear that bandage off without ripping her mother to shreds?
Even at a low ebb in Las Vegas, Bobbi’s first thought is about how they can get Keera’s career back on track.
Keera scratches out the last point in her notebook, almost making a hole in the page.
If she can’t perform, what does she do? And how to make a living out of it?
Touring is where the actual money is made now: as her mother knows, merchandising is where the cash is.
Keera closes the notebook. Figuring this stuff out is too much for her right now.
Perhaps by the end of the retreat she’ll know what to do.
At ten to ten on Tuesday morning, with an eye on the time, Rose takes her coffee into the airy cream-and-blue dining room with its walls covered with exquisite watercolours of Corfu’s beaches and cultural sites.
Delicately delineated and painted beautifully, there’s the Monastery of Paleokastritsa, the Temple of Artemis, the Old Fortress and Mouse Island.
‘Rose,’ Adriana greets her with a hug.
She is the only person in there; it’s used more for cooler days and some of the evening meals. ‘Did you sleep? After the Instagram thing?’
‘Yes,’ says Rose. ‘We are not worrying about that, OK? I’ve been thinking that there’s no way it was anyone who knows what happened. Why would they wait so long to threaten me?’
‘You think?’ asks Adriana.
‘Absolutely,’ says Rose firmly.
Through the dining room’s big windows, the sisters watch India and Keera arrive on the terrace together, both flushed from what has obviously been an early morning walk on the beach.
Keera’s in flowy trousers and another white shirt but India looks spectacular.
She’s wearing a scarf plaited into her fabulous hair, all colours of gold and honey.
Her dress today is pure 1940s, white, nipped in at the waist and with blue piped around the collar, and cap sleeves.
Rose thinks that India’s quite the artist but doesn’t appear aware that this is a skill.
Dianne follows – she’s another one who’s clearly been getting her steps in: there’s a faint breeze today and Dianne’s hair is a little bit windswept.
She looks less frozen today, Rose thinks.
Bernard’s sitting at a table on his own while Dan has stopped on his way out to chat to the older man.
He’s not there long before Grazia appears from the pool area, a miasma of just-smoked cigarette about her.
Rose walks out to them and examines her notes.
Day Two. She needs more of the guests to tell their stories today so everyone can relax somewhat.
That will give her a roadmap for messages for the day.
A little bit of discussion about who filled in their notebooks, perhaps. Time for the group to walk on the beach or sit on the terrace and think, too. Rose found that people needed time to reflect before the lessons of her type of therapy rooted in their brains.
India has arranged her notebook, coloured pens and tiny Post-its on the table in front of her. She likes organisation. Then she turns to surreptitiously study Grazia and Bernard as they settle down at the table on the terrace for Tuesday morning’s session.
Grazia catches her eye again and gives a little smile.
India beams back.
Yesterday, she’d thought that Grazia was some sort of automaton who didn’t feel things, but here’s Grazia being smiley and lovely.
Stop judging people on how they look, India tells herself.
She writes the thought down in her notebook.
‘You can’t change anyone’ is written down with lots of flowers sketched around it. India is conscious that she knew this on some level and yet, seeing this tenet reflected in Dan’s life makes it seem more real.
Dan wants to be with Julia for ever, she doesn’t appear to want that and there’s absolutely nothing he can do to change that.
When Rose sits down, India catches her eye as if to say, It’s OK, I can go next, but Rose shakes her head imperceptibly and smiles.
‘Later,’ she says softly.
India’s relief is enormous.
Rose starts them off with five minutes of deep breathing, this time asking them to get in touch with their bodies as they breathe.
‘I want you to feel what effects yesterday had on you. The mind–body connection is very strong. We need to ground ourselves before we start looking inwards again.
‘Secondly I want to say that this week and this sort of therapy is very difficult, so congratulations for how much ground we’ve covered already. I know many of you are reconsidering why you’re here but, I promise, it will help, even if you don’t feel that right now.’
Rose looks at them all in turn.
‘When I started training as a psychologist a long time ago, there were many parts of the world where therapy was considered strange, definitely woo-woo.’
She steals a glance at Dan who has the grace to blush.
He was the one who described the island retreat as woo-woo, but Rose is not holding that against him.
‘For younger people, the idea of stepping inside, looking into your inner thought processes and trying to heal, is a more normal concept than for older people. My generation was possibly the first to seriously think that therapy was good. But for those of us who are older,’ and Rose graciously nods to Dianne, Bernard and Grazia as she says this, ‘looking back at our lives and the decisions and traumas that have made us is altogether harder. So well done Grazia and Bernard for being here. And Dianne …’
Suddenly Rose’s gaze is upon Dianne. ‘It’s hard to speak, I understand, but opening up is possibly the only way you can move on.
You need to process the pain of the past or you’ll keep getting stuck in it.
Unprocessed, the pain of the past will be like wading though quicksand again and again.
The only way to be free is to face the pain, walk towards it, take away its power. ’
Rose almost can’t believe it but she thinks she sees the soft gleam of tears in the corners of Dianne’s eyes. Can she be mistaken? So far Dianne has shown absolutely no emotion, apart from quite obvious temper with Dan yesterday.
Is some of this reaching her?
‘Looking vaguely into your life, your choices and how you live is fine as a concept,’ Rose goes on. ‘Doing it is another thing entirely.’ She glances around the group.
India grins involuntarily. Rose is totally right.
Applying for an island retreat to restart your life seems like a marvellous idea when you have had three glasses of wine and is terrifying when you actually have to do it.
She personally feels as if she’s on a rollercoaster but there’s no getting off.