The yelling, jostling, and flashing lights are not something I think I'd ever get used to.

"Belle, how was your evening?!" yells George – he's be tailing me, and me exclusively, I swear, for the last six months. I know because I paid for an extensive background check when I noticed the same BMW parked outside my home two days in a row.

I throw up my hand to block his camera flash specifically. I'm pretty sure it was him who took the pictures of us last week. And I'm almost certain he got a good price for them. Screw him. Focus on walking.

"We love you Belle!", "Please can I get a picture?", "Sign my arm I'm gonna get it tattooed!"

I duck my head, I'm at my car finally. The longest 10 yards are always the ones from the venue to the car after an event. I'm wiped out and I haven't been able to check my phone in an hour.

Into the back seat, the door slams shut behind me. The clamor quiets to a hum, and the breath I'd been holding escapes out in a loud sigh.

"You ok, B?" Caroline, my manager, doesn't glance up from her phone, so I don't bother responding, and instead dig in my clutch for my mobile.

"Home, please, Jeeves!" I shout to the driver.

"As you wish madam" Lawrence winks at me in the rear view mirror, and quickly pulls out into traffic towards home – anticipating Caroline's rebuttal.

"Uh-uh, no, Lawrence, turn around, we've been invited to an afterparty – that thirty-something nepo baby singer or actor? I can't remember her name – but I have the address here…"

I've found my phone. No missed calls. One new message: a photo of them cuddled up on the sofa, captioned 'busy day'.

I carry a weight in my stomach. It begins growing the second I leave home, and is alleviated with each reassuring text message or phone call. It won't completely go away until I step through the threshold again.

"No Caroline, I'm going home." I state firmly, and finally.

"Do you even-"

"It's not an argument," I tuck my phone away, so I can give her the full power of my glare, "I was on shoot for twelve hours yesterday, I spent five hours getting ready today, and another five mingling and making friends as you wished. This evening is mine."

"Your nanny can hold on for another two hours – she'll be in bed by now anyway."

I turn up the threat level on my face.

"That's my home life, and that is not your remit."

She shrinks into her seat a little, turning her focus to her phone. She is a bold, powerful woman. She has my back, and I trust her with my career. But there is a line and she's pushing it today. Caroline built her career on organic talent and I think sometimes she forgets I'm not a normal, partying twenty year old seeking fame.

The silence is punctuated by the texting haptics on her phone as her attention is gradually stolen by someone else.

Ugh. I hate acting like this.

"I'm sorry, Caroline. It's been a long night. I'm tired, and still not used to this. I know you have my best interests at heart. But I do have other priorities."

She looks up from her phone, her face softens and she gives a gentle nod.

"Perhaps an early night isn't a bad idea…" she acquiesces (it's ten PM), "I need to see you in my office tomorrow morning at 9, I have a few propositions to run through."

I wait by the front door as the gates to the drive fall closed, and the black car that brought me disappears down the road. My senses adjust. It's warm and dry tonight, and although the cicadas are loud, I can still hear the subtle creaking of the house as the materials contract, and the call of a bird several hundred meters away. Set on an acre, the imposing residence is set back from the road, hidden by tall fences and foliage – secluded, private, serene. Everything feels unchanged and I begin to relax, the stone is shrinking.

I push open the large, ornate front door. It swings to reveal a cool, modernly furnished and mostly empty hall.

We've only lived here for a few months. I wonder if it'll ever feel like home.

"Hey," I call out, "how was your day?"

Leah turns to look at me from the TV with a tired expression on her face, "chuck me a beer?"

"That bad?" I chuckle, reaching into the fridge for a cerveza for her and a beet juice for me.

"She's simultaneously the best and worst thing to ever happen to me." I sit down next to her and pass over the drink. She peeks at the one I'm sipping from: "living in Calabasas has changed you."

It's high in iron! I want to protest, but reroute the conversation "What did you guys do today?"

She cracks the beer and takes a big swig before beginning - "First, it was the breakfast thing, you gave her breakfast, right?"

I nod. "scrambled eggs and strawberries"

"Right? Ok, well, she insisted she didn't have any, and that it was a B-day."

"Oh no…"

"Anyway I argued my way out of that one – argued! With a baby! And next came the wardrobe drama. God knows where she gets it from, the little diva, but she insisted on wearing her party dress to go to the park. I let her win that one."

I smirk. I have an inkling where she got it from, but Leah doesn't view them the way I do. If anything the thought of them only makes her angry.

"She's had worse days?" I barter.

"I wasn't finished." Leah takes another sip of her beer. "There were other kids at the park, who she played with, and I thought to myself 'this is wonderful, exactly what she needs' and I left them to their devices. Do you know how long it has been since it last rained here?"

"A few weeks?"

"Thirty-eight days. And these monsters managed to find the only muddy puddle left in this dry-ass city to roll in, Bella, they rolled in the mud! Like dogs! And yes, don't come for me on the irony with my having a problem with that.

"So we come home, and on the journey home she's soaked her car seat AND my jeep's interior with mud – I'm putting a valet on your credit card by the way – and I decided to get her undressed in the hall to limit the spread."

"Oh no, Leah, you know since she's been able to walk-"

"Butt. Ass. Naked. Through the whole house. She's gotten fast. Like, fast enough that I was putting in some effort to catch her!"

I'm giggling because I've been there "It's normal, Charlie said I used to be obsessed with rampaging the house naked as a toddler."

"Speaking of, he called again today." Leah shares a sympathetic look at me. She knows that I'm struggling to keep him at arm's length.

"I'll sort it." Suddenly the large lounge feels small, dominated by the elephant in the room.

"Anyway…" Leah segues, changing the mood, "After the gardener got an eyeful, she got embarrassed and I took her up for her bath."

"There were people here?!"

"They didn't see anything inexplicable Bella - just a woman chasing a cheeky, naked toddler."

"You're sure? Maybe we shouldn't have people come to the house… it's the only place Ren can be herself…"

"Bella please, you already don't let anyone in the house, and you know, I can handle that. The shopping, cooking, cleaning, fine. But I've never had to tend a xeriscape yard. I'm used to Forks where shit just grows! Please let's keep the gardener?"

I mull it over, she's right. The gardener is very discrete, never comes in the house, and isn't that bothered about our lives. And Leah already does so much for us it's only fair.

"Yes, of course. I'm sorry, I'm being overbearing again."

"It's cool. You're raising a wonderful kid. I love her with my whole life, Bella. You know, I think she cottoned on during bathtime that she was being a bit too unruly, and when I was swaddling her up in her towel, she told me – with words – that she was sorry for being naughty."

My sweet little Ren, with her odd little abilities, doesn't talk much. She prefers to show you what she wants to say by touching you and sharing her mind. It's special when she talks to you.

"We settled down for our afternoon nap – which we both needed at this point, mind you – and she fell asleep with her hand on my arm, thinking how wonderful it was to have two mommas, rather than just one."

My heart wrenches. I haven't been up to see her yet. Even though I can hear her peacefully sleeping from downstairs, the urgency to see her is too much.

"Thank you, Leah. I'm so thankful she has you. That we have you. I don't know what I'd do if…."

"All part of the service, B. She's a part of me too now. Go see her. I'll probably finish my show, check the perimeter, and go to bed myself."

"Thanks Leah."

I take the stairs two at a time. I haven't seen her since breakfast, twelve hours ago. How much has she grown since I last saw her?

I peek around her bedroom door, and there she is. In the shallow light of her dimmed lamp, her milky pale face is the only visible part of her, as she's swaddled herself in her blanket. Gently, I crawl in beside her, breathing in her still-baby smell. My sweet, tiny baby. I can't see a difference in her height or features, although the blanket is obscuring a lot of her.

I run my fingers gently across her warm forehead, and gently move the blanket out of the way, revealing her gorgeous copper locks.

Her hair has grown eight millimeters today. And overnight it'll probably grow another eight.

But six months ago it was faster, ten millimeters in twelve hours. It's slowing down, I hope. I hope but I don't know for sure.

Somewhat satisfied with this conclusion, I sit further up in the bed and pull out the laptop I stowed beneath it – anxious to check the search results next to my name. Never, ever google yourself, was the first piece of advice Caroline gave me when I gained some notoriety – but I just can't help myself.

A quick google brings up mostly older results, a week ago a ton of stories were published in the wake of George's photos of me, Leah, and Ren out for a walk in the hills. Luckily, he'd only managed to capture the pictures after I'd noticed him, so the photographs, taken at a distance, consist of me holding Ren, my shawl draped her whole body so only her outline is visible.

'Up-and-coming model/actress Belle and baby out for a stroll' one of the old headlines read, accompanied by the pictures. 'Belle on a walk with rarely seen daughter and nanny', 'Beautiful Belle on hike with family, impresses with athletic figure', 'Out and about: Belle and her baby taking in nature', same pictures, same pointless headlines, ad nauseam.

The same pictures accompany another result: 'California's most secretive mom – is this the future of celebrity parents?' – an opinion piece. I get a lot of these. Although California has a rule about protecting the identity of minors from paparazzi, they seem hellbent on getting these pictures, and then use them to criticize how I'm raising Ren. I try to keep her out of the spotlight as much as possible. I don't want photos of her in the public domain - she's growing too fast, and one day there'll be an unavoidable point where her growth outstrips what can be reasonably expected from a human child. People will notice and speculate, and I will not allow her to become a scientific curiosity or talking point.

I want so badly to protect her from the world that I constantly question if following this career was really worth the risk.

When Ren was barely 8 weeks old, I was poor as dirt, and a full-time, first-time mom in a new state. My paltry savings had dried up, and Leah was pulling doubles at a diner to afford the rent and utilities on our tiny but functional one-bed, one pull-out couch apartment in Red Bluff, CA. It was a trash place: loud construction between 8am and 4pm every weekday on the plot next door, a landlord that refused to fix anything, and an AC unit that worked on its own temperamental terms.

The first time I finally felt brave enough to venture out of that apartment, I took Ren to the grocery store. We'd finally pulled together enough cash to pay our bills with enough left over to buy fresh produce – a real novelty, considering we'd spent the last three weeks surviving on the reheated leftovers Leah snuck back from her chef job. It really was hand-to-mouth during this time.

I'd been weighing broccoli, checking the amount was inside our $40 budget, when Caroline approached me.

First, it was some low-level modelling gigs – a three-hour shoot for a small makeup brand, starting out of some middle-aged woman's garage, for which I was paid $100; some stock photos for a website, another $50; an extra with two speaking lines in a long-running crime TV series, $100; photos for a high-end fashion brand's new collection, $400 for the day. With each one, Caroline was getting more calls for the next, and managed to encourage me to go along to a few open calls. By the end of month two I brought home two grand. More groceries paid for, and some new toys – not secondhand – for Ren. For someone who really hates having their picture taken, I'm good at it, especially if it improves my daughter's life.

I got my big break at one of these open calls – it was for an indie film, they needed a young, girl-next-door type actress. At the time, I felt like it was a reasonable opportunity - $40,000 for 3 months of continuous shooting. The entire budget for the film was only $2 million, so I didn't expect it to take off – maybe grace a couple of niche theatres and fall into insignificance. It was enough money to get Leah out of that diner job, take on full time care for Ren, and break our lease so we could put a deposit down on a well-maintained 2-bed, 2-bath apartment in a family area. I couldn't say no, not for the impact it would've had on our quality of life.

Luckily (or unluckily, however you see it) the producers struck gold with the film, and it grossed over forty times its budget, becoming an icon of its genre and premiering at large theatres across the country. I was asked to come back for a full, three-film franchise. I warred with myself on this, suddenly people knew my name and magazines were printing articles about me as Hollywood newcomer. In the beginning though, the press was kinder, less scrutinizing and invasive – it was almost if, before success, they were cheering me on, but when I achieved fame and riches, they turned their back and changed their tune (how could I have known?).

At this time, our life was so much better, we replaced my old red truck with a reliable sedan, ate fresh home-cooked meals, and lived in a quiet area that felt safer than ever. I was able to enrich Ren's life miles beyond what we started with. I was a bit enchanted with it…. add to this that I was new to the world of acting (and I didn't realise so much of my paycheck would get garnished by management, accommodation on location, and travel) I opted in when more work was offered. I shouldn't have. I got greedy.

As of today I have two blockbuster films billing big numbers at the box office, another two in post-production, countless modelling shoots and appearances, and a paid marketing affiliation with a big soft drinks brand under my belt. My net-worth is in the millions, and Ren has all the opportunities money can bring. But I live with this constant anxiety. The anxiety that everyone has a microscope on my life, that my daughter will have the same, that one day my tangle of lies will fall apart and everything will be exposed.

I have a plan. See out the end of the marketing campaign for my contractual obligations, and then take the money and run. Maybe we'll go across the country, maybe abroad where we can live a more remote and humble life – somewhere no one knows my name, and I can be forgotten about. The media cycles move fast these days and if I'm not present to give fuel their speculation and commentary, I'll be easily remembered as 'that twenty-something actress with her fifteen minutes of fame who faded into obscurity'.

It's 9 more months of work. Just 9 months.

A few photos from this evening's gala – red carpet shots of glamorous celebrities, and me – have begun appearing on the web. Thankfully the narrative focusses on the winners and snubs of the evening, and I'm barely mentioned in the captions.

Leah's head pokes around Ren's bedroom door.

"Get off your computer and go to sleep, Bella," she whispers, "your haters will still be online tomorrow."

I smirk and gently close the lid to my laptop and restow it under the bed – as usual she's the voice of reason.

"Thanks Leah, goodnight." I whisper back, snuggling down closer to my daughter – I do have my own bed, but I rarely use it.

"Sweet dreams." And she disappears from the doorway, down the hall to her bedroom.

I lay perfectly still and close my eyes. As is routine before I can surrender to sleep I take in my surroundings – the gentle, even breaths of my dreaming girl; a very light breeze rustling the leaves on the trees outside; the hum of the refrigerator downstairs; three heartbeats – Leah's, Ren's, and my own.

Ren sighs in her sleep and rolls over to face me. I know there will be an age at which I'll need to begin asking for her permission, but for now, she is just a baby, pure and kind and honest and without the burden of secrets, so I cradle her small hand between mine, close my eyes, and sink into her warm dreams with her.