Page 75 of The Spare

That’s right.

As early as the Sunday papers, Ivy Fever breaks out across Britain and beyond. She’s the anti-me, the normal girl who’s had to endure the unendurable in her life, the Cinderella archetype who selflessly toiled for years on behalf of her late stepmother and her poor little sisters until Xav rode in on his white steed and swept her off into the sunset.

They don’t find out about Alchemy, thank fuck. But they do find out infinite details about her father’s early death and her stepmother’s Lewy body dementia (I’m sure those helpful nurses over at the care home saw to it that they had all the information they needed), about the full guardianship she had of the twins on top of the years of being her stepmum’s primary caregiver and holding down multiple (non-hookerish) jobs: some greasy-spoon caff she worked at in London while also running an Etsy shop for her paintings and illustrations.

They’ve trawled public tags of her on social media, including the one that appears on most of the front pages. It’s from the caff’s Instagram, apparently, and it shows her smiling behind the counter. Her very pretty hair is piled on top of her head, she’s wearing a red bandana of all things, and she’s in dungarees and a tank top, a combination that should be outlawed but in fact just makes her look sexy and approachable.

The worst part? They’ve put that photo next to one of mine that they found at a charity gala from a few years back. I’m wearing Valentino and my unfortunate but frequent resting bitch face.

The pairing is devastating.

XAVIER BACKED THE RIGHT HORSE, the headline reads. Subheading: The ice queen vs the girl next door.

Within hours, the online editions of the other tabloids follow suit:

LOVE AGAINST THE ODDS: How a young carer won the heart of a duke—while his fiancée planned their wedding

She nursed her dying mum while Selena posed for Tatler: the real woman behind the Groom Swap

The public loves a false binary, an easy contrast, mainly because it’s too fucking stupid to hold nuance well. But I get it, because the contrast between me and Ivy is so blatant as to make it delicious. If Ivy is every plucky Disney heroine come to life, I’m the worst kind of Disney villain. If she embodies authenticity, then I’m inauthentic to the core. (Case in point: jumping between brothers to save face.)

I’m seen, of course, as the rich bitch who’s never wanted for anything, while Ivy has struggled for every single thing. That’s fair. My struggles have always been mental; they’re all of my own making, and that’s not anyone else’s problem but mine. Ivy’s never had agency like I have. She’s been let down by the system; she’s spent her whole life until now moving through a kind of justice vacuum with grace and humility, so of course they’re going to back her. Of course she deserves the happy ending so much more than I do.

I don’t blame Ivy anymore. I haven’t for a long while. And I don’t even resent the nation’s fawning over her, because I get it. She’s great.

The problem is that every article, every op-ed, every comment says the same thing, and each one is a vicious little paper cut to the insides of my already bruised and wounded wrists.

No wonder he chose her over that phony, uptight bitch.

When Xavier showed up that morning and walked away from our engagement, it was the confirmation of everything awful I’ve always known about myself.

Now the entire world knows it, too.

That’s what makes this so awful. It’s not just having thousands of people assassinating your character online—although that on its own feels like open heart surgery without anaesthesia. It’s that every single comment is additional evidence for that confirmation Xav already gave me.

It’s more than plain old humiliation.

It’s proof.

I worked so hard on every bloody front: the education, the looks, the social polish. For so long, I thought they were all positive attributes, assets that credentialised me to marry Xav, but the press and the public have condemned them as liabilities, every trapping rendering me phonier and phonier. And phony is the cruellest, most reductive descriptor of all, because I can’t argue with it, even if it’s a take on my personality that I didn’t intend.

I can’t deny that I make myself into what I believe people want from me—my parents, my teachers, my friends, my fiancé, even my husband. But it’s not supposed to be a form of deception. I find it hard to explain, but to me, it feels more like safety. If I know what they want, and I give them what they want, they’ll have to hold me in esteem, surely? I’ll admit my frosty persona doesn’t lead everyone to like me, but they respect me, and that’s more important to me. I’ve never been a people-pleaser—I’m too prickly for that—but I’ve spent every waking minute of my life striving to be valued, and apparently, that’s a social crime.

Until I learnt that Xav had chosen Ivy, a woman who couldn’t compete against me on any of the metrics I’ve valued and cultivated (except for beauty, obviously; she’s bloody gorgeous), I hadn’t understood that there might be another game on a whole other chessboard, one I didn’t know any of the rules to, or worse—that some people don’t play games at all.

As far as I can tell, Ivy was too busy surviving to play any games, and that makes her more genuine than me. It legitimises her in a way that negates every single facet of my personality that I was taught to care about. I was taught that life is a meritocracy: if you work hard enough, and perform well enough, and present a perfect enough version of yourself, you’ll be rewarded.

I thought that by being flawless, I’d be chosen. I’d be safe.

Now I don’t know what’s real, and I don’t know what to do with the person—or persona, if the public is to be believed—that I am. I’m cornered, trapped in a sticky web of deceit of my own making, and everything I’ve always valued and admired about myself has been twisted into a source of shame and humiliation.

I ignore every plea from Ben and Ewan and I rabbit-hole with the best of them, unable to stop myself from scrolling and scrolling through the sea of hate in the comments sections of the news sites.

not selena wentworth trying to rebrand being dumped as a love story. girl we have EYES

the funniest part is that selena’s whole brand is literally “aspirational lifestyle” like babe the aspiration is to NOT be you right now

ivy cooper in dungarees and a bandana outsold selena in couture valentino and i think that tells you everything you need to know