For most of her life, Estelle Salvatore had done everything right. But it was everything that everyone else considered right.
She had been the kind of student teachers remebered for years. The girl who sat in the front row, whose notebooks were perfectly neat, whose grades were the best in the class. Her parents expected a lot from her. She expected a lot of herself. Everyone used her as an example.
She delivered. Always.
She graduated from Westminster School. She got into the University of Oxford and completed a degree in Biomedical Sciences there. At such a young age, she became independent and more or less met expectations. She secured a well-paid job in London at a prestigious firm. Within two years, she was promoted. Within threee years, she was leading projects. Her salary was constantly increasing. She had the kind of career people dream about - stable, respected, impressive.
She felt like none of that was hers.
Every morning, she woke up with a strange heaviness in her chest. Every evening, she returned home exhausted. She would sit and stare at the wall while her untouched dinner grew cold. She was making excuses for why everything was the way it was. She just kept delivering.
It's Christmas time and Estelle is returning to her family home in Wales to spend the holidays with her parents.
It's the fifteenth of December.
It's morning, she's alone in the house and doesn't know what to do anymore because she's bored.
Estelle remembers her childhood, all those toys she replaced with textbooks. In the hallway, she sees a picture of her with a stuffed toy that was her favorite. She is looking for a toy in the living room, she has looked all over the living room, but the toy is nowhere to be found. She searches her room, too, looking in every corner of every closet. Estelle doesn't lose hope and doesn't give up because she really wants to find that teddy bear. The housekeeper Molly, who has been in the house since Estelle was born, arrives. Molly asks Estelle what she's looking for and offers her help. Estelle explains that she can't find the stuffed animal that was her favorite when she was little. Molly tells her that her old things and toys are in boxes in the attic, but that some of them have been donated.
It's already noon, Estelle hasn't noticed how much time she has spent searching for that teddy bear. But she decides to continue searching and go check the boxes in the attic. Estelle climbs to the top floor of the house and there is the door that leads to a large attic. She climbs up while Molly, calling out after her, asks whether she needs any help. Estelle answers that she doesn't, lifts her head, and finds herself staring at what seems like a sea of boxes spread across the attic. She walks up to the boxes, noticing that each one has a label scribbled across the front like ''old household stuff'', ''vases'', and a bunch of other random categories. Boxes look like they haven't been touched in years. She goes through the labels on each box, making her way toward the last few boxes all the way in the back of the attic. When she finally reaches them, she realizes that all boxes have the same label written across them: ''Estelle's room.''
Estelle starts opening the boxes. In the first box there is nothing that interests her, just some old clothes. In the next, a slightly larger box, she finds picture books and some old photo albums. The third box contains her old textbooks and encyclopedias. Estelle immediately closes it and continues her search. In the next box she finds stuffed toys, looks at them and memories come back, but none of those toys is the teddy bear she is looking for. As she opens the next box, she hears the voices of her mother and father.
Her father, Arthur Salvatore, is the kind of father many people think they want. He made time for her whenever he could. He always gave in when her mother was strict. He paid for every elite school her mother signed her in, paid for every hobby Estelle could barely convince her mother to allow her to have. Money was not a problem for him because when Estelle was little, he started a company that soon started making a lot of money.
Her mother , Lady Louisa Salvatore, came from the noble Perceval family. She graduated from elite schools, which she expected of her daughter, Estelle delivered, as well. She took good care of Estelle, she was a good mother. But she was always strict, choosing Estelle's chlotes, friends, hobbies... She chose a college for Estelle when she was only 9 years old. Estelle had been complaining for a long time, but finally, at the beginning of her education at Westminster School, she accepted the University of Oxford as her path. She told everyone how it was her dream, how lucky she was that her mother had recognized it at such an early age. Louisa was the happiest person when Estelle got into Oxford. Whenever Louisa met teachers, they would all tell her that she had an intelligent and well-behaved child.
Estelle ignored her mother and father's voices and continued opening the boxes. She opened all the boxes, finding nothing that interested her, and was left with only the last box. She finds the teddy bear in the box. She closes the box and heads for the door to go down to show her parents the teddy bear and ask them if they remember it. Still, she decides to go back and look trough that box to the end, hoping to find something interesting when she's already spent so much time in the attic. Estelle reaches the box, sees some old stuffed animals, framed pictures and takes them out. Suddenly she sees her old diary and, wishing to remember what she wrote in it, she takes it and the teddy bear back with her to the living room. In the living room, she sees her parents drinking tea, she shows them what she found. Estelle sits down on the couch and begins to read the diary aloud. The beginning of the diary talks about school, what they did there, and competitions in various subjects. Her father's phone rings and he goes to his office, and Molly approaches her mother and talks to her, asking her about dinner. Estelle just keeps reading, remembering old memories, friends, travels, sucesses. She almost reads the entire diary, but her mother invites her to dinner. She leaves the diary and goes to have dinner with her parents. At dinner, her mother mentions that Estelle should start her own company. Estelle just nods and says that she will wait a little longer because she has been tired lately. At that moment, her father asks her why she hasn't eaten anything, if she wants to move on to dessert. She just nods.
After dinner she starts reading the diary again. Her parents are there, too. She gets to the end of the diary where she reads that her mother did not fulfil her wish to sign her in a drama school. She writes that her mother did not even come to the school play in which she had the lead role.
After that page, all other pages are blank, Estelle closes the diary. She starts telling her mother how she only now remembered that her greatest wish when she was little was to become an actress. Her mother tells her that she is lucky that she chose the right path.
Has she chosen the right path? It is the question she kept repeating to herself as she fell silent for a while.
Her father tells her to hand him the diary so he can see it. A small letter filled with drawings falls out of the diary.
Her father is studying the diary, her mother is on her cell phone, and Estelle is reading a letter.
The letter begins with ''Dear Estelle, I hope you are happy and successful now. You must have fulfilled your greatest wish, which was to become an actress...'' Suddenly she remembered the day she wrote the letter to herself... All her unfulfilled wishes began to weigh on her. She went to the bathroom and couldn't hold back her tears, but no one noticed.
When she returned to the living room, no one was there. Only the diary and the teddy bear were on the table. She goes to bed early. She can't sleep. The question keeps repeating in her head. Has she chosen the right path? After staring at the ceiling for exactly an hour, she decides to quit her job. But not to start a company like her mother wants. She buys a one-way ticket to Los Angeles. She signs up into an acting school there. Then she falls asleep.
The next morning, she doesn't feel that tiredness and pressure.
It's the fifteenth of December.
It is the day Estelle celebrates as her birthday, the day she woke up from a dream, or rather a nightmare. The day that changed everything.
It's been 5 years since December 15th when everything changed.
She is now one of the most popular Hollywood actresses, winner of an Oscar and a Golden Globe. And the most important thing for her is that her parents are now her biggest fans, she is happy and she has made the little Estelle inside her happy.