Page 71 of The Spare

You’re not the boss anymore.

I am.

It’s as true as it is inconvenient. Ben and I are now the heads of this family, and while our hierarchy isn’t as stark as it would have been a century or two ago, the truth is that the baton has passed. And, honestly, I’m not a monster. This woman has always been good to me. She’s cultivated a relationship with her future daughter-in-law far more conscientiously, far more enthusiastically, over the years than her eldest son has. Not to mention, she’s been recently bereaved. I’m not about to start pulling rank on her just to satisfy my own ego.

But I do need her to understand that, if Xav and Ivy are living in the dower house, it’s with my and Ben’s explicit blessing. And I need her to accept that, even if she doesn’t like it.

I don’t miss Flora’s little smile as she hastily looks down at her plate.

The conversation moves on.

‘How is school, darling?’ Charlotte asks Octavia, who flicks her hair.

‘Fine. Boring. I thought I’d come home and revise for my mocks. It’s too distracting at school.’

I love my sister, obviously, but there are many times when I think that a good slap wouldn’t go amiss. We’ve never been close. An eleven-year age gap will do that, but it’s more that our personalities are quite different. I suspect that, had I not been plagued with the seemingly endless sensitivity and insecurity I’ve struggled with all my life, I would have fallen into the personality type that Octavia embraces, which is that of an entitled little bitch.

(According to the world, I’m a stuck-up little bitch—key difference.)

My sister hasn’t had many struggles. She’s unconditionally loved with none of the quid pro quo with which my relationship with my parents has been so rife. I suspect they spent so much time and energy grooming me—for Xavier, for the brand—that, by the time she came along, they were content to let her be. This was a parenting strategy shared by the de Veres for their youngest daughter, but whereas Flora turned out delightful, Octavia can be spoilt and shallow. (Can be is my charitable concession here.) Hartwell House, unfortunately, caters to, humours, and even cultivates this particular type of girl.

‘Have you seen much of those girls—the twins?’ Charlotte continues. There’s a game plan here, and it’s a sound one: if Selena won’t play ball, then Octavia certainly will.

‘Oh, God,’ my mother scoffs, as if pained to be reminded of Ivy’s sisters’ mere existence. ‘I can’t believe they let them in so readily. And halfway through Year Ten, at that.’

I’m sorry; it’s simply too good an opportunity to let languish in unused darkness. ‘I’m sure the eye-watering donation the De Vere Estate made to the construction of their new music block helped grease the wheels,’ I say cheerfully.

Did Ben consult me when he made this donation on Xav’s account? About as much as he consulted me over Xav and Ivy moving into the dower house, which is to say not at all, but I’ve got over that now.

And my God, every second of feeling sidelined was worth it to see the look on Charlotte de Vere’s face now. She didn’t know, nor did Mum, and the beauty of it all is that Mum, who is on the school’s board of governors, was powerless to do anything. Because, as far as the world knows, Xav met Ivy after Ben ‘won me over’. As far as the world knows, the Wentworths would have no reason on earth to begrudge the twins any chance of an excellent education in light of what they’ve been through.

‘How thoughtful of you all,’ Charlotte mutters through clenched teeth.

‘Like Selena said, they’ll be family soon enough,’ Flora says, looking just as cheery as I feel.

‘I’ve seen them around,’ says Octavia, who seems to sense that the focus is slipping away from her. ‘I have to say, they look like dreadful little sluts. They’re all fake tan and inch-thick foundation and false eyelashes—but, like, the cheapo stripper ones you get from Superdrug, not the good kind. It’s, like, read the room, girls. Everyone’s giving them a wide berth, that’s for sure.’

I wish I could say I’m shocked—by my sister’s bitchiness as much as the bitchiness of the rest of her schoolmates—but sadly I’m not. I am, however, horrified. I’ve never done well with injustice. I like rules: I like knowing them, like playing by them. So when people break the rules of the game (hello, Xavier), I find it really hard to handle. But the most important rule of all is that you don’t kick someone when they’re already down.

And those poor little twins are down.

I’ve met them a couple of times, in passing on the estate and more recently when we had Xav, Ivy, and the twins over for brunch one Saturday. Octavia’s not wrong that their beauty routines could use a glow-up—their aesthetic is more Love Island than the sleek, clean-girl influencer look favoured by the posh girls of Hartwell House—but Jesus. Take a look at their life over the past few years. No money, no father, a seriously ill and now deceased mother, and a sister who was run ragged. Cut them some fucking slack.

What I manage not to say is, ‘Sounds like they’ll fit right in at Harlot House, then.’ (Let’s say the reputation of the girls at my sister’s school precedes them.) I’m too appalled for snark. Instead, I spit out, ‘Their mother has just died. What the hell is wrong with you?’

Octavia and Charlotte stare at me, while I feel my mother’s judgement radiating from where she’s sitting beside me. My sister’s far-too-pretty face turns mulish at having been called out.

‘Well?’ I insist. ‘You think it’s in any way acceptable to pile onto a couple of girls who’ve just lost their mum? You have no idea what that family has been through. None.’ An unwelcome memory snakes its way into my brain: Ben saying much the same thing to me and my claiming that Ivy’s problems weren’t mine. But this is different, because I was hurting. I was not in a place to extend empathy to the woman who’d just upended my lifelong engagement.

My sister, though? She and her stuck-up little cronies are in the business of blood sports—and you’d better believe Lily and Rose are their prey.

I press on. ‘Look, they may not be the usual Hartwell House demographic, but that doesn’t make them less than. As soon as Xavier’s adoption of the twins goes through, they’ll be de Veres.’ I glance over at Charlotte. ‘And if you think John and Charlotte, or any of their ancestors, have ever allowed anyone to mess with their family and get away with it, you’d be wrong. Isn’t that right, Charlotte?’

My mother-in-law’s expression has been growing almost as mulish as my sister’s at the reminder that she may soon be coming into some new granddaughters, but now she jerks guiltily. If the bullseye is ramming home the message that the de Vere family will stand behind Rose and Lily to a person, then I’ve just hit the bullseye. ‘That is correct,’ she says stiffly, a wholly unwilling recruit to my cause.

‘Absolutely,’ Flora says. ‘Nobody messes with the de Veres.’ She turns to Octavia, the bright-eyed role model to my grim-faced elder sister, and all the more lethal for it where getting through to my sister is concerned. ‘Is Lottie Spencer still head girl? She was in my house. I’ll send her a Snap, see if she can support them better.’

Octavia all but manages to avoid an eye roll. ‘Yeah.’ I’m sure she can smell the stench of defeat.