Smooth out the rough edges

“Smooth out the rough edges” is the phrase Jasmine Hadley uses to brush aside concern about her drinking; Sephy later adopts the same language to describe what alcohol does for her. The refrain links mother and daughter through a shared explanation for drinking, while its movement from wry excuse to Sephy’s account of emotional numbness reveals the cost hidden beneath its promise of comfort.

The family refrain

When Sephy tells Minerva that their mother’s drinking is getting worse, Minerva answers with Jasmine’s familiar line: “She’s just smoothing out the rough edges.” Her wry smile makes the repetition sound knowingly evasive: rather than dispute Sephy’s concern, Minerva reaches for the explanation their mother routinely gives whenever the subject comes up. The phrase turns drinking into a minor adjustment to life’s discomforts, and its repeated use helps the family avoid naming the problem directly.

Sephy’s drinking

Sephy takes up the same phrase while describing her own drinking. She limits herself to one glass a night after learning from her first experience that drinking too much leaves her with severe headaches; she insists that she is not like her mother. Yet she admits that she dislikes the taste and still drinks because it makes her feel warm and careless. The language of smoothing rough edges translates that effect into a gentle, almost practical remedy, even as Sephy’s own account makes clear that the relief is temporary and purchased at a physical cost.

Relief and avoidance

The phrase’s emotional force becomes sharper when Sephy explains what, specifically, she no longer minds after a couple of drinks: not her mother, and not Callum. Alcohol does not resolve either source of distress; it makes her feel that she can disregard them. Her unfinished explanation of why she drinks, followed by the claim that a couple of drinks make her mind about nothing, exposes the gap between the neat family euphemism and the pain it covers. The refrain therefore marks not only an inherited justification but a shift in Sephy’s own coping: she repeats her mother’s words while using alcohol to withdraw from worries she cannot otherwise set aside.

Narrative significance

Across the two scenes, “smoothing out the rough edges” moves from Minerva’s wry repetition of Jasmine’s defense to Sephy’s inward account of alcohol’s numbing effect. The phrase binds their experiences without making them identical: Jasmine’s recurring explanation is reported through her daughters, while Sephy describes her own nightly limit, headache, and emotional detachment directly. That contrast gives the refrain its irony. What sounds like a modest act of self-care names an increasingly consequential form of avoidance.