Page 32 of Winter With You

‘Good. So, tonight, make sure Ms Felix goes on Zeeta Friedmann feeling confident in what she’s wearing and ensure that no one has anything but good things to say about La Façon. No surprises, Mr Manning.’

She whisked away from him and he was left with a weight on his shoulders – about Zeeta Friedmann’s talk show and his mother’s birthday dinner. But, the good news was, it couldn’t get any worse, right?

21

THE ZEETA FRIEDMANN TONIGHT SHOW

It was a Reese’s peanut butter bar and Gabriella was stuffing it in her mouth in the toilet of her dressing room while, behind the door, in the main body of the room, Cheyenne talked incessantly to Luca, Phoebe and mostly herself. She needed five minutes. Just five minutes alone, distanced from this intense media circus of apparent opportunity. She needed her sister…

Gabriella closed her eyes, concentrated on the chocolate in her mouth and tried to silence everything else, letting her thoughts breathe. Nothing.

‘Are you OK in there, Gabriella?’

Cheyenne’s voice. Frustration burned in her chest and the chocolate sugar rush she should have been getting wasn’t happening.

‘Gabriella?’

‘Yes,’ she answered fast, mouth stuffed with chocolate. ‘I’m fine.’

‘We have twenty minutes before they’re coming for us to head to get mic-ed up and meet the other guests in the green room.’

‘I know. Just… you know… peeing.’ She turned the tap on, a slow trickle she hoped would emulate urination. And then she closed her eyes again and mentally reached. Hoped.

The green room. Like the silly green cover. It looks like parsley. That’s what I thought when I saw it. Do you remember that dreadful parsley sauce Mummy used to make?

‘Like it was yesterday,’ Gabriella whispered, eyes shut tight, popping another piece of chocolate into her mouth and leaning into the bowl of the sink as a prop.

I always thought it looked like cum with green confetti.

‘You said that once. At the dinner table.’

I remember. I was sent to my room and locked in. Not for the first time.

Gabriella shook her head. She didn’t want those kinds of memories. She was about to go out in front of a live audience and speak nothing but positive affirmations…

You should tell the truth.

She definitely didn’t want to hear that. She screwed up her eyes, longed for the light side of Lulu, the happy side, the almost-ballerina who had danced like an angel…

Life isn’t all rainbows, Ella-Bella. You know that.

‘No one wants to hear that.’

Sometimes they need to. Kindly. Otherwise, they might find out in a more brutal way and then they might never recover.

‘Lulu—’

Hiding reality isn’t dealing with it, Ella-Bella…

There was a tap on the door and it brought Gabriella back to the here and now and the fact that she needed to get herself together. ‘I said, I’m coming.’ She splashed water on her face, stuck her finger in her mouth and ‘brushed’ the chocolate from her teeth, checking her work in the mirror as she went.

‘Hey, it’s Luca. Just letting you know it’s only me here right now and I’d really like to check your outfit without Cheyenne doing more commentary than they do for baseball.’

Gabriella pulled the door open and stepped out of the bathroom. ‘Where’s Phoebe?’ Her eyes scanned the room like she might be seeking evidence of abduction.

‘Relax,’ Luca said. ‘She’s gone to get her seat in the audience. One of the girls from the studio went with her. And, hunched shoulders will not do this outfit justice.’

He came to her, fingers grazing her skin as he tweaked the leather bodice section. Suddenly, completely, she felt out of her depth in this situation. The book tour here in the US. This talk show. This fashion ensemble that felt too try-hard.