[Scribus] facing pages

[linuxlingam]

waah! am trying an 8-page features layout for a magazine. i wish to use
the first available facing pages of the feature for a nice, background
image that goes across both pages, full-bleed. yet strangely, scribus
shows the left and right pages discretely, with a gap between them. i
can't really do exact placement and cropping of the background image,
nor can i do exact typographic composition of a headline that goes
across both pages, with this.

sure, i could use a new document with a faux double-spread size and
place it, but that's inelegant. my page numbering goes for a toss, the
documents wouldn't have text that flows from page-to-page, and so on.
any real workflow solution to this?

:-(
LL