We went to Monaco a few weeks ago. This was a bad idea, because now I have a secret plot to live there. J. says he doesn’t like the artifice of it, but then in the same breath he’s making fantastical plans to have parties on yachts.
If I ignore my reflection, I can pretend to be Princess Grace in Monaco. I am finally getting the hang of this French notion of coordinating one’s entire outfit. I have gone out and bought lots of fifties style tweed skirts and dresses and a white tweed coat. So far I am averaging one dog jumping up it per day. All I need now is a Burberry scarf and I will look like one of those young women I truly despise when I see them walking down the street towards me.
I want so much to be chic, like Grace Kelly, the Hitchcock blonde. I am planning to buy a headscarf to wear on the seafront. The main character in my novel is called Gabriel and her character is modelled on the princess. Perfect, composed, mysterious, beautiful.
These days I am more composed and calm. I am getting better at it, but there’s too much truth in me, constantly escaping attempts to cover it up. The truthsayer has always been my curse: I lost so many men before I had them by being honest. Parrhesia is always how I have been and will be, and my failure to veil gives my adversaries the advantage – for men, indeed, are adversaries.
