Page 5 of The Spare

‘You know, Xavier, I really don’t need you preaching at me just to make yourself feel better,’ I tell him. ‘You’ve well and truly fucked me over. I’ve worked my arse off my whole life to be taken seriously, and you’re going to make a mockery of all of it just because you can’t tell the difference between your brains and your dick. I’ll always be the woman Xavier de Vere as good as jilted at the altar, so you can fuck right off. Go find my parents and then get the hell out of here.’

I pull the ring off my finger, the beautiful, massive, flawless diamond that symbolises the entire sum of my life’s hopes and dreams, and throw it straight at his stupid chest. ‘And take your stupid fucking heirloom with you. I’m sure you’ll be needing it for your precious Ivy.’

I barely make it up to my childhood bedroom. I’m vaguely aware of stumbling blindly up the stairs, of shutting the door quietly behind me so as not to alert Mum or Dad—or indeed give Xavier any extra reasons to pity me. He’s already moved on emotionally; he’s made that very clear. He’s left me for dust.

As soon as I’m alone, I pretty much collapse, sinking very quietly onto the rug that surrounds my bed. The pressure of holding myself together for Xavier was so much that I thought it would finish me off, literally. My entire system was bursting. I was sure my brain would explode and my eardrums would pop. And I still can’t let go in the way I want to, not really, because Xavier is one floor down, explaining to my parents, in words I’m sure he hopes will cushion the blow, that their daughter isn’t good enough. That he chose someone else, someone I could never have competed with.

I turn towards my bed and stuff some of the duvet cover in my mouth: a gag against the horrible, relentless pain coursing through my body. I want to scream; I need an outlet, but I don’t have one. I refuse to cry or scream, and the discomfort of my gag acts as a physical reminder not to do either.

So uncivilised, Selena, the disdainful voice in my head tells me. Seriously. You don’t even love him. We’re better than this.

But we’re not, though, because I feel as though I’ve been hijacked, brain and body, by some terrible illness. The pain is physical. Everything aches with tension. My lungs are strangled; every breath hurts. There’s a clamp around my heart and throat and stomach. My insides are roaring at it, roaring, at the injustice and shame and helplessness, because here’s the thing that my brain won’t stop playing on repeat.

I did everything I could. Everything. I’m a good girl. A follower of rules. This was a game, and I played the game perfectly. I didn’t just follow the rules; I studied them. Pored over them. Practically had a doctorate in them. I made myself into every single thing Xavier could possibly want in a wife and a future duchess:

Polished.

Accomplished.

As perfect-looking as I could be.

Impeccably behaved.

Socially adroit.

Intelligent.

Successful but not too successful.

And he’s taken everything I’ve worked on, my life’s work, and thrown it back in my face, because none of it’s enough.

But here’s the worst part of it: he changed the rules without telling me. The woman he’s rejected me for isn’t better than me on any of those fronts—she’s not—she’s somehow better on fronts I didn’t know I needed to cultivate. She’s playing some game I’ve never even heard of, let alone know the rules to. And I can’t handle it, because it’s not fair.

It’s not fair it’s not fair it’s not fair.

I feel about twelve years old.

I bite down harder on my cotton gag. I can barely breathe through my nose, but it’s not safe to let any of this out. Is this what a panic attack feels like? Like actually dying? Like your organs simply can’t take the toll of your emotions?

I can’t bear it. I can’t bear it. Everyone will laugh. Everyone. They’ll be so snide and smug and superior. Look what the tabloids did to Kate in those years when she was waiting for Wills to step up and put a ring on her finger. They crucified her, over and over. Waity Katy. But this will be a million times worse, because I had the bloody ring, and I was so close, and he’s taken it back. He’s unilaterally quit the game, and the whole world will know I wasn’t good enough. I had one task, and I didn’t do a good enough job of it, and everyone will know I failed.

And—oh God—there’s this enormous wedding to unwind, a great big octopus of a wedding, with tentacles waving in every direction. The wedding lives on this spreadsheet that Marie, our planner, and I manage jointly. It’s a thing of beauty, this spreadsheet, and it’s the only thing that allows me to make sense of it all, to wrangle the behemoth into some semblance of a structure that can actually be executed on.

But there are so many line items on there, hundreds and hundreds, and we’re so far along, and it may as well be a gigantic ball of yarn for how daunting it feels to conceive of disentangling all its threads.

This feeling coursing over me, through me is just overwhelm, I suppose, although it feels like drowning, as if it’s flooded my system so completely that there’s no space in which to function. No room left to breathe. Which is ridiculous. I need to get a grip. I overreact to things like this, I know I do, and it’s very childish. I can tell, even from somewhere deep within my panic, that I’m spiralling, blowing this out of all proportion, and I don’t know why it’s hitting me so fucking hard.

I don’t know why I’m like this; I honestly don’t. I should give myself a good shake, and get up, and find my laptop, and crack open that spreadsheet. I can’t make the logistical nightmare go away through sheer force of will.

But I don’t. I can’t. I just sit here in this stupid puddle on my bedroom floor, clamping my teeth down onto this wad of duvet as if someone’s sawing off my arm without anaesthesia. I sit here, and the words go round and round inside my head, reverberating off every organ in my body.

I’m broken.

I’m too much.

I’m not enough.

No wonder he didn’t want me.