Chapter Twenty-Seven #3
Adriana leans into him.
‘I hope you’re right,’ she says.
Back on the terrace, there’s no escaping Rose.
The group have barely settled into their seats before Rose has India in her sights again.
‘I think we need to reframe the way you look at relationships,’ Rose says, ‘and concentrate on what you get out of these connections, India. Do you think you put too much emphasis on finding a true love or “great love” as you call it?’
‘Isn’t everyone looking for love?’ India replies, feeling instantly hemmed in at having to explain her choices.
Rose has a way of angling her head that signals understanding.
‘People look for lots of things – emotional security, financial security, safety, acceptance,’ she says gently. ‘The list goes on. But there is a particular type of emotional reward some people get from love: the glow of love itself, the focusing of all of your hopes on one person you have chosen.’
India nods. She can buy this idea.
‘Is this what you feel when you fall in love, India? As if this one guy alone holds the key to your life?’
India nods again. She sounds like an idiot when Rose explains it all back to her but she’s still reeling from thinking about Lily-Blossom.
‘We’re all a by-product of our history,’ Rose goes on earnestly. ‘Your mother has a world view that tells you how to live – to be a lovely butterfly – what was it?’
‘Fragile unicorn-butterfly,’ recites India. ‘It’s stupid, right? Really stupid.’
‘Yes and no,’ says Rose thoughtfully. ‘It’s your mother’s theory and it’s worked for her but it shouldn’t be yours just because she advises you to behave the same way. You don’t have to be a fragile unicorn-butterfly. You’re funny, India,’ Rose says. ‘Funny, sparky, enthusiastic. And clever.’
‘I’m not clever,’ India says flatly. ‘I was terrible at school. That’s why I took so much time off and watched your show with my friends.’
‘Intelligence is not simply about how well you do at school,’ Rose says. ‘There are so many types. You say your stepmother is an interior designer. Where did she learn this?’
‘It’s a gift, she sees things totally differently. It’s vision, it’s—’
‘It’s not something she learned in school at the age of fourteen, is it?’
India laughs. ‘No. She did study it but she has natural ability.’
‘As do you,’ says Rose. ‘Look at your clothes today – everything you wear is a piece of art. Can you not see that?’
India looks down, almost bewildered. This is not how she’s ever looked at how she dresses.
‘You’re so good with clothes,’ Keera interjects. ‘Look at how you mended this dress.’
‘Fabulous,’ says Grazia, getting up to peer at the patchworked frill Keera is holding up. ‘Think of yourself like a curator of clothes.’
‘Now, the relationships …’ Rose goes on. ‘We need to look at what they mean to you. The first thing in my mind is how you invest so much in a relationship. How you’re vigilant for any sign of abandonment.
‘But another word keeps popping in: limerence.’
She smiles to herself, while everyone else looks confused.
‘Bear with me,’ says Rose, holding up a hand. ‘Limerence is an almost obsessive love where the most important thing is not the person but the miasma of love itself.’
India stares. What is this?
Limerence. It sounds like something you paint on your toes if you’ve got a toenail infection.
This cannot be her problem. And what about Lily-Blossom? She’d bared her soul there?
‘Limerence means that you are totally absorbed in the notion of this new love,’ Rose is saying. ‘Before you really know the person, you’ve already created this vision in your head of a life you’re going to lead together. Is that a fair assessment of things, India?’
‘… Er, yes …’ mutters India, thinking back to her first love, Jake, and how she’d imagined them living together, imagined them cooking in the evening, laughing at the table and holding each other close in bed at night.
They would be each other’s perfect other.
Or at least he was going to be her perfect other.
‘Perhaps you put the concept of love on a pedestal,’ Rose is saying.
‘Achieving love was the main goal. But that’s not how it works for young men, in general terms. In a first relationship, they want fun, freedom, sex – not being tied in a relationship.
It makes sense why they ran, India,’ Rose finishes.
‘Limerence sounds ridiculous,’ says India, rubbing her temples.
‘Is it like addictive behaviour?’ Keera asks Rose. ‘The looking for love or taking drugs is the byproduct of something in life. If you feel alone, you become addicted to finding partners?’
Sweet Keera, thinks India. Trying to workshop India’s stupidity.
But both Rose and Keera’s analyses make sense.
‘If your world view is that the world is a hard place and you need a partner to navigate it, then you will do everything in your power to have a partner. That’s your main aim, your attachment style, to use jargon. You romanticise the relationship early on.’
Rose pauses. ‘You are afraid of being abandoned. When you are, you search for the connection again.’
‘I’m such an idiot,’ India says quickly. Easier to say it herself than have anyone else say it.
‘No, you’re not,’ says Keera. ‘We all fall in love and imagine it’ll be for ever. I mean, who goes out on a date thinking it’s going to end in a week? Nobody.’
‘Exactly,’ agrees Rose. ‘Negative feelings about yourself are a huge part of this. Therapy can change how you feel about yourself, change the negative self-talk. We’re unpacking this so you can go forward in a different way, India.
Next time you fall for someone, you won’t automatically envision life with them for ever.
That’s putting huge pressure on both you and the date. ’
‘How do I stop myself doing that?’ says India. She still feels exhausted from talking about wanting a baby. This new theory is making her feel stupid as well as tired. She wants it all to end, now.
‘You know what it is now,’ says Rose kindly. ‘The thing about patterns is that once you identify that there is a pattern, you can learn to avoid making that mistake again. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.’
India and Keera nod at that.
‘Your future does not rely on random people, India. It lies with you.’
Rose wants to give time for all of this to sink in but they’re running out of morning now.
‘Did you ever talk about having children with any of the men you’ve been involved with?’ she asks delicately.
‘Of course not,’ says India and, as soon as she says it, she knows it’s the stupidest thing she’s ever said.
The boyfriends and her desire for her own baby Lily-Blossom are separate things. Two fairy tales. The limerence one with the guys, and the wild pain of baby hunger.
Or maybe they’re not so separate.
The crazy, all-encompassing love affairs allow her not to think at all about having her own child. Perhaps not at first, when she was young, but now – it all makes sense.
‘Can we stop?’ she asks. ‘I see it now but I need a break.’
‘Of course,’ says Rose. ‘Now we’ve got lunch and any spa treatments you want. As I said, I’ll be on the beach or around for a walk from one thirty, OK?’
Losing the baby changed everything. It wasn’t that he wanted one, but me losing it made things far worse. It was a failure. He hated failure, believing somebody needed to be responsible for any failure.
I didn’t see any of this then. I was so stupid. But then, I was still trying to do the impossible: please him. I thought we were normal people in a normal marriage and that I was messing it up constantly.
Everything that went wrong was my fault. Now, I know precisely what this is – but then, I merely thought I was the most useless person on the
planet.
I can see now that I was depressed.
How could I not be?
Let me tell you that feeling depressed is agonising when you’re with someone who simply doesn’t want to hear your pain.
The neighbourhood women attempted to be kind about the loss of the baby.
Nobody knew what to say, but they came around, bringing food, hugs, kindness. They really tried, I can see that. But what to say? There are no words.
He sucked all the air out of the room when they came around, pretending he was a good husband. He was an expert at it.
‘Isn’t he a pet,’ the neighbour ladies would say to me when he made a pot of coffee for them all, commenting on new hairdos, pretty dresses.
He could pinpoint what people wanted to hear.
‘Kev never notices when I get my hair done!’ they might say. ‘You’re a lucky woman to have a man like him.’
And then they’d catch themselves because every one of us knew that nothing could make up for the loss of my child.
Still, a supportive husband was seen as an enormous benefit.
If only they’d been able to see what he really was …
We moved house soon after because he couldn’t bear to live in the place where he’d thought we’d have everything. We left so quickly that we didn’t have time to say goodbye to our ‘friends’.
We were starting over and he hoped I wouldn’t be such a ‘drama queen’ in the new house. It was supposed to be a new beginning.
He got a promotion, then another. I had always seen how he could be two different people, one person to me and another one entirely to other people, but his promotions showed just how good he was at this.
There were more people in our circle in the new neighbourhood. More men and women to impress which meant he had to be careful how he treated me in public.
And the more careful he was, the more punishment came my way. He watched my spending like I was Imelda Marcos. I had to ask for money. Beg him.
When I bought groceries, I’d haul them all in, unpack and laboriously put them away as he sat unmoving in a kitchen chair, overseeing, examining the purchases forensically.
‘Why did you buy apples? We have apples.’
I’d try to explain that we had eating apples and I’d bought cookers to make him dessert.
He didn’t want an explanation: the apples were simply the weapon of the day.
He wanted to control, to beat me down, to show me how bad I was at everything.
When I bought anything for myself, he wanted to see me in it. He’d put his head to one side and say: ‘It would really suit someone thinner.’
I was the thinnest I’d ever been but this was immaterial. I was a mess. He was ashamed of me.
Even his first wife had dressed better and had style.
I never met her, obviously, but had been taught to despise her.
How did I not see this as the reddest of all red flags?
Because I was imprisoned in the sort of prison where you don’t see the bars.
Instead, I kept my head down, tried to take up as little space as possible. Tried to avoid being a mess, being overemotional or dramatic. These were my flaws and I did anything to avoid punishment.
It was almost impossible to make sense of it all. For so long, I lived in this chaotic state of high anxiety, waiting for the next attack, the next vicious comment.
I looked back over the past, recalling how much he’d loved me at first. I thought that if I could see where I’d gone wrong, where I’d made him so angry, then I could make it all better.
Initially, he’d run after me and besieged me.
Sworn his undying love.
He’d been so lovely to my mother. After he’d met and charmed her.
‘I wanted her to like me, silly,’ he’d said.
He said it so easily that the clarity of those words was lost entirely.
I understood it later, though.