Page 14 of The Island Villa

More and more, she’d found herself envying her characters who were loved unconditionally, although admittedly after navigating challenges so significant and occasionally harrowing that Catherine often felt guilty for making their lives so difficult.

Catherine had endured the harrowing and the difficult, but she hadn’t ended up with the unconditional love. Until now.

She had so much to be grateful for.

She breathed in the scent of orange blossom and fixed her gaze on the dusky pink bougainvillea spilling over terracotta.

Lucky, lucky.

She kept saying it, in the hope that she would start to feel it.

But what she thought about as she was standing there, wasn’t her personal life, but her career. And not the successes, but the failures. She wasn’t thinking about the hundreds of times she’d been in that number one slot; she was thinking of this one time when she was number three. She wasn’t thinking of all her happy readers; she was thinking about the people who hated her books. All those people who mocked her writing, who marveled at the fact that she’d sold one copy let alone many hundreds of millions. She was thinking that if she could no longer live in the world she’d created in her head, where would she live?

She was thinking about Miss Barrett. You have no talent.

Why was it that now, after a writing career that had surpassed her wildest dreams, she was thinking about Miss Barrett? She couldn’t remember what she did last week, but she could still remember the words that Miss Barrett had flung at her. She’d never consider having a brow lift, or a tummy tuck, or liposuction, but if a surgeon could have removed those words from her brain, she would have handed over her credit card and laid down on his operating table without question.

It made no sense that it bothered her so much but emotions, as Catherine knew, didn’t always make sense.

Her imagination, both her gift and her curse, spun a future for her that looked bleak and dark. No more glitter and champagne. No more celebrations. No more adoring readers. No more blanket of love. Just a career fading, until one day someone would ask, Catherine who?

This was what she did. This was who she was. She was a storyteller, but what happened to the storyteller when people no longer wanted to hear her stories?

In her writing, she’d always preferred beginnings to endings, and she felt the same way in real life.

If someone had said to her that this was a case of “one door closes and another one opens,” Catherine would have slammed that open door in their face.

But perhaps there was an element of truth there.

She frowned as she thought about the secret she was keeping.

After each of her marriages had ended, she’d started fresh. She’d refused to let difficulties and failures in the past prevent her from forging a good future. Why couldn’t she do the same with her career?

As Andrew approached, she made a decision.

It was time. Time to take the plunge and share the secret she’d been keeping. Time to tell Andrew the truth.

4

Adeline

“So you are going to the wedding?” Mia sat at the little table on Adeline’s tiny balcony, watching the bees hover by the lavender. “What made you change your mind?”

“My father wants me to go.” And that request had put her in an impossible position. If she put her own needs first and refused to go to the wedding, she’d hurt him. She would never intentionally hurt her father, and not simply because he was no doubt already hurting at the thought of another Catherine Swift wedding. Adeline adored him. He was the one person in her life who had never let her down. He’d always been there for her which was why, after she’d calmed down, she’d retrieved the letter from under the potato peelings and placed it on the kitchen countertop. It had sat there ever since, its presence filling her with resentment and dread whenever she boiled the kettle or went to remove something from the fridge.

The letter was responsible for the uncomfortable churning inside her, and for the fact she wasn’t sleeping well. She kept a rigid routine. No caffeine after midday, no alcohol on a weekday, exercise five times a week. She didn’t eat salty or spicy food late at night. She practiced yoga and meditation and still she was awake at two in the morning, staring at the ceiling while dark thoughts used her brain as a racetrack. And there was no doubting the source of this unwelcome nocturnal attack.

Her mother.

The whole idea of the wedding was filling her with dread, but in this instance, her father’s feelings took precedence. If he wanted her to go, then she’d go, no matter the effect on her stress levels and sleep pattern.

“You’re going to need something to wear.” Mia tried to be positive. “If you have to do something you don’t want to do, the least you can do is look good and feel good while you do it.”

“Whatever I wear, I’m not going to feel good.” Adeline didn’t want to waste any more time thinking about the wedding. It was the weekend. This was the time she allocated for relaxation. She wanted to enjoy her Saturday and her friend’s company.

“Maybe it won’t be so bad, although I admit I’m biased because I love weddings.” Mia picked up her glass and ice clinked against the sides. “Weddings are about beginnings, aren’t they? They’re hopeful.”

“Given that this is my mother’s fourth attempt, I think we can safely say that we left hopeful behind a long time ago. We’ve reached desperate. And she has had as many endings as she has had beginnings. She just doesn’t know how to be on her own.” She’d heard from plenty of people exactly like her mother, people who flitted from one relationship to another, seeking something that was missing inside themselves.

---