Page 69 of The Spare

I think about the massage he gave me. How incredibly sweet he was.

‘Yeah. He is, actually.’ And he’d probably be far more sensitive if I could bring myself to share more of my weird, unfathomable interiority with him from time to time.

‘Good.’ She nods for emphasis. ‘I’m really glad to hear it. Did you hear Flora broke it off with Harry for good? She texted me yesterday.’

‘Shit, no, I didn’t. Is she okay?’

‘She’s sad, and I think she feels guilty,’ Ivy says as, by silent mutual agreement, we turn onto the path that leads through a copse of trees to the estate’s fine Palladian orangery. It really is an architectural triumph. Thank God Walter, the eighth duke, recognised that fact when he tore the main house down in the late 1800s.

‘Why guilty?’

‘Because he’s lovely, and she cares about him, and she feels like she doesn’t have a good enough reason to break up with him. But, like she hinted at that night when we were watching Grosvenor, the sex was basically not good.’

I don’t know what to say to that. I can, obviously, totally relate to Flora. Before Ben, sex was pretty underwhelming for me, too. ‘Do you think she made the right decision?’ I ask her. It’s still surreal as hell to think Ivy used to be a sex worker. Today she’s in boyfriend jeans, a white blouse with a pie-crust collar, and a soft but shapeless sherbet-lemon cardi. Her hair is back in a floral scrunchie. It’s most definitely not giving hooker vibes, even if she looks dumbfoundingly sexy despite it all.

Before us, the orangery looms up in symmetrical splendour, the morning sun bouncing brilliantly off its long line of windows.

‘I think life’s too short for bad sex, yeah,’ she says. ‘If their chemistry’s off, they’re better off as friends. Or not. But why fuck someone your body’s ambivalent to?’

‘You must have had to do a lot of that.’ I can feel my face heating. ‘Is that okay to say?’

She smiles, looking amused by my awkwardness. ‘Yeah, it’s totally fair. But I loved Alchemy. It was kinky as fuck, which worked for me. And, at the end of the day, it kept a roof over my head. I’m sure there are plenty of accountants who feel just as violated after a day in the office as I used to do after a gang bang.’

I shout out a surprised laugh. That’s a hilarious take, and possibly not wrong. ‘Possibly. Still, I couldn’t do it.’

‘Lucky you married a billionaire, then, eh?’ she says as she pulls the door of the orangery open and holds it for me. The air is far warmer in here, and it smells of that earthy mix of plants and fertiliser.

I laugh again. Touché. ‘Please don’t tell me you’re going to suggest poor little Flora signs up for Alchemy, though?’ I take a sip of my delicious coffee to hide my discomfort.

‘Jesus, can you imagine? Her brothers would hit the roof. But here’s the problem: you all think of her as “poor little Flora”, when she’s a young woman who has the right to explore her sexuality. Honestly, Ben and Xav are such fucking cockblockers. That’s what Xav and I had our fight about, actually—we were in here, that first weekend, and I laid into him. They’d been treating her like some Victorian spinster, and it made me so bloody furious. He yelled back and then we ended up making each other come over there.’ She points at one of the stone ledges that run around the edge of the space, bearing various potted plants. ‘Good, solid ledge, that is.’

I almost choke on my coffee. ‘Oh my God. Are you serious?’ I’m not sure which is harder to imagine: Xavier fighting with anyone, or his behaving so lewdly in a semi-public glass structure. I think I’m more tickled than outraged, but I’m definitely clutching my pearls. Ivy’s ability to shock me, it seems, is limitless.

Also, I can totally see Ben being up for shagging in here.

It would be nice and warm, too.

‘Deadly.’ She winks. ‘He’s a lot of fun when you get him riled.’

‘Well, I’m sure he had a far better time with you in here than he did with me,’ is all I can say to that. ‘I made him do a Christmas shoot in here for Tatler last July. It was absolutely sweltering. They had to bring so many fans in.’

The memory of that shoot is bittersweet for me. It felt at the time like such an enormous win, a vision of future that was still to come for us after so many years of waiting. THE FUTURE DUCHESS OF OXFORD ON HOW TO CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS IN STYLE, the headline went.

God, I was so fucking smug. Smug—but also insecure and terrified, holding on so tightly to this dream, trying to manifest the two of us over the finish line by sheer force of will. Knowing what came later, knowing how uninvested Xavier must have been even then, albeit subconsciously, makes me cringe.

I loved that shoot, though. The aesthetics of it; playing dress-up in designer gowns; seeing this fantastic space covered in Christmas decorations by Wentworth Home and transformed into a (very humid) winter wonderland. I felt like a princess. Still, thinking about it feels physically agonising, like I’m being flayed alive.

And to think Ivy’s memories of this place are vastly different. It’s so strange to stand in a space and think about layer upon layer of ghosts flitting about here over the years, from the nineteenth-century dukes and duchesses admiring their treasured imported lemon and orange trees, to me and Xavier playing Christmas.

She breaks my reverie. ‘I saw the article. It was absolutely gorgeous.’

‘Did you?’ She doesn’t strike me as a Tatler reader.

‘I found it in the London house. Flora had put it in the bin to hide it from me, but I dug it out and cried my eyes out over it. It was lovely, though,’ she adds quickly.

It is so strange having the chronology of my and Xavier’s engagement falling apart narrated from Ivy’s point of view. While Mum and I were buying up copies of Tatler and I was enjoying the (mainly fake) validation from my social circle, Ivy was in the wings, already in love with Xavier—and none of us knew our fate.

The thought of it is even spookier than that of all the aristocratic ghosts who’ve sought refuge in this orangery for as long as it’s been standing.