Page 3 of The Island Villa

Dear Sad in the City, you may not live in the country, but you can still welcome nature into your life. A few well-chosen houseplants can add calm to the smallest living space, and a pot of fragrant herbs grown on a sunny windowsill will bring a touch of the Mediterranean into your home and into your cooking.

After she’d finished researching her answer, she’d gone out and purchased plants for herself, acting on the advice she’d just given her reader. She’d also written two features for other publications on the same topic. It was how she made her living.

She’d trained as a clinical psychologist and had been in practice for six months when a chance meeting with a journalist had resulted in a request to give an interview on a morning chat show on managing stress in the workplace. That interview had led to more requests, which in turn had led to a writing career that she enjoyed more than practicing as a psychologist. Writing enabled her to maintain a level of detachment that had been missing when she’d seen clients face-to-face.

Adeline preferred to be detached.

She put the envelope down on the small table and forced herself to concentrate on the conversation.

“I’m glad the advice column is working out, Erin.”

She was glad, and not only because the column kept her profile high and led to more work than she could handle. The popularity of the column pleased her. It was gratifying to know that people were finding it useful.

She knew how it felt to be lost and confused. She knew how it felt to struggle with emotions that were too ugly and uncomfortable for public display. She knew how it felt to be alone, to be drowning with no lifeboat in sight, to be falling with no cushion to soften the landing.

If the skills she’d learned to help herself could be used to help another person, then she was satisfied. When she was writing her column, she thought of herself not as a psychologist, but as a trusted best friend. Someone who would tell you the truth.

The one truth she never shared was that there were some hurts that no therapist in the world could heal. That knowledge she kept to herself. People assumed she had her own life sorted, and she had no intention of destroying that image. It would hardly fill people with confidence if they knew she was wrestling with problems of her own.

“Good? It’s better than good.” Erin was buoyant, euphoric, proud, because she was the one who had originally had the idea for the “Dr. Swift Says” column. “You’re a hit, Adeline. The suits want to give you more space.”

Adeline deadheaded a geranium and removed a couple of dead leaves. “More space?”

“Yes. Instead of answering one question in depth, we were thinking four.”

Adeline frowned. “It’s important to give a full answer. If someone is desperate, then they need empathy and a full response. They don’t need to be brushed aside with a few lines of platitudes.”

“You wouldn’t be capable of producing an answer that wasn’t empathetic. It’s your gift. You write so beautifully—I suppose in that way you’re like your mother.”

Adeline clenched her hand around the leaves. “I’m nothing like my mother.”

“No, of course you’re not. What you write is totally different. But Adeline, this is huge. I don’t need to tell you what’s happening to freelance journalists right now. Everyone is scrabbling for a slice of a shrinking pie, and here you are being offered a big fat slice of your own. They’ll pay you, obviously.”

She was nothing like her mother. Nothing. Her mother’s life was one big romantic fantasy, whereas hers was firmly rooted in reality.

And more work was definitely reality.

Did she want to do it? Money was important up to a point, but so was work-life balance. Even though she mostly worked from home, she set clear boundaries. The first half of the week, she focused on her advice column. Thursdays were set aside for her freelance work. Friday mornings were spent catching up on admin, and then at two o’clock precisely she switched off her work laptop and went swimming. She swam exactly a hundred lengths, loosening up her muscles and washing away the tension of the week. After that, she walked to the local market and picked up fresh fruit and veg for the weekend.

Saturday and Sunday were entirely her own. She intended to keep it that way.

And maybe her life wasn’t exciting, exactly, but it was steady and predictable and that was the way she liked it.

Did she have time to expand the column? Yes. Did she want to expand the column? Maybe.

“I’d want full editorial control.” She bent down and tested the moisture of the soil in one of the planters. “I don’t want my answers edited.”

“As long as you keep the page within the word count, that won’t be a problem.”

“I choose the letters I answer.”

“Goes without saying.”

“I’ll think about it. Thank you. Have a good weekend, Erin.”

She ended the call and finally faced the only letter that mattered to her right now.

She picked it up and opened the envelope carefully. In these days of emails and messaging, only her mother still wrote to her. Adeline pictured her seated at her glass-top desk in the villa, reaching for her favorite pen. The ink had to be exactly the right shade of blue.

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