Page 77 of The Spare

‘I mean there’s no use. There’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing anybody can do. They’ve decided. Ivy’s a saint, you and Xav are the dashing knights, and I’m the evil mastermind, the dangerous social climber, basically, who whored herself out to whichever brother would have her. They never liked me, and now they have the perfect reason to hate me.’

The Selena de Vere I know is fire and brimstone beneath that cool façade. She abhors a justice vacuum. She rails against wrongs. If this was happening to anyone else, she’d be filled with moral outrage, but from where I’m standing, she’s given up.

I’ve had numerous opportunities over the past few days to be reminded of that weirdly intimate conversation we had over lunch in Courchevel, where she talked about her inability to shake negative shit off. About the fact that it swelled up inside her brain and drowned out everything else. If I didn’t understand it then, I have a front-row seat to it now, at a scale neither of us could have conceived of when she was sharing those vulnerabilities with me. It’s as if this avalanche of articles and comments and posts has hijacked her brain and taken up residence, and I have no earthly clue how to exorcise these fucking demons.

We go inside for supper. Slinks picks out bits of perfectly charred asparagus to nibble on but doesn’t engage with the rest of her omelette. She shreds her slice of sourdough but doesn’t eat it, and she sits slumped in her chair at the dining table. While Ivy and Xav are family, and definitely no one to impress, I can’t help but suspect that Old Selena would be horrified by behaviour that in her eyes was so un-performative. Usually, she’s the consummate hostess at any cost, and it’s impossible to miss the concern in their eyes as they observe her over supper.

‘I’ve said it before,’ my brother says, setting his knife and fork together, ‘but I feel the need to say it again in light of the week we’ve all had, but especially you, Selena. I am unutterably sorry for the pain I’ve caused you. Absolutely all of this is my fault, and I’m horrified that you’ve borne the brunt of it with the press. It’s just… it’s unforgivable how I treated you. I wish I’d done things differently, I really do. I’ll always regret it.’ I’ll give him this much; he genuinely does look cut up about it all.

‘I feel awful too,’ Ivy says, squinting at her. ‘We were the ones who messed up, and you’re getting all the shit. It’s not fair.’

‘No one would argue that you two shouldn’t have ended up together,’ Slinks says, staring blankly down at her plate. ‘We all know Xav and I would have been miserable together.’

Silence. None of us can deny that.

She makes a face and pushes her plate away as if the sight of the uneaten food is turning her stomach. ‘I just wish—I don’t know what I wish. I suppose I wish I’d had the backbone to break it off years ago instead of hanging around like a stupid twat, or at least that I’d had the balls to have a frank conversation with you.’ She looks over at Xav, then turns to me. ‘And I definitely wish I’d had the balls to turn you down and cancel the wedding, because at least the whole thing would have died down by now. And at least everyone would just have laughed at me instead of hating me.’

I stare at her in horror. I get that she’s hurting, that she’s lashing out—and frankly, I wish she’d lashed out more over the past week—but wishing she hadn’t married me?

It’s devastating to hear.

Devastating.

‘You don’t mean that, sweetheart,’ I tell her, reaching out so I can touch her shoulder.

‘I do.’ She jerks her shoulder away, and I drop my hand. Message received. ‘It was such a stupid move, and so shortsighted. I can’t believe we didn’t think it would blow up in our faces.’

Ivy and Xav are staring at her in horror.

‘M-maybe we should have told the truth at the time,’ I stammer. ‘We should have said, hey, Xavier and Selena have decided their futures don’t lie together, blah, blah, and they’ve decided to go their separate ways. But I stand by us getting married.’ I dip my head, twisting it towards her, trying to get her to look at me. ‘I’ve never regretted it. Not for a single minute.’

‘I have regretted it every single minute for the past week,’ she whispers to the tablecloth.

‘But not before that. Look, I know it was a rash decision, but we’re good together, sweetheart. Really good. And we’ll get through this. Together.’

‘Have you seen what they’re saying about me?’ she asks. ‘It’s all true. It took you, what, five minutes to persuade me to marry you that day? I mean, what the fuck does that say about me? I knew you weren’t in love with me any more than Xav was, and I still said yes. How fucking desperate is that?’

‘Maybe I wasn’t in love with you then,’ I say hesitantly, because there are words I want very much to say to my wife, but now is not the time. I want them to be a declaration and a promise, not a platitude. I want my I love you to mean more than the empty, off-the-cuff wedding vows we made to each other in that cathedral.

My intonation has her glancing up at me briefly with what looks like the tiniest spark of hope in her eyes before she drops her head again.

I press on. ‘But I was very, very happy to marry you. I was fucking thrilled with myself, sweetheart. You and I have always had something, and you damn well know it.’ I’m not even embarrassed at saying this shit in front of Xav and Ivy. Slinks needs to hear it, and that’s all there is to it. Besides, the four of us have made too much history in the past few months for us to start making it awkward now.

‘For what it’s worth, I believe he’s right,’ Xav tells her. ‘I always thought there was something between you two. I could never work out what, exactly, but it was clear to anyone with a pair of eyes. Pieter asked me about it a few times, actually. “Are you sure Ben doesn’t want to marry Selena himself?” he said, more than once.’ I shoot him a grateful smile. Slinks thinks I’m fobbing her off, but perhaps she’ll be able to hear it when it comes from Xav. ‘Honestly,’ he continues, ‘I had my suspicions when he told me he was going to ask you to marry him. I could have sworn he had an ulterior motive. I knew it wasn’t just about the lake.’

Oh, shit.

My wife’s head jerks up. ‘What about the lake?’

CHAPTER 36

Selena

When Ben was six, he dived too deep into the lake at the back of the house and nearly drowned, except that Xavier, who was only seven, dived in after him and saved his life.

We all know this. It’s the stuff of urban legend in our social circle. Ben’s brush with death was brandished like a weapon throughout our childhoods. Don’t go near the lake. Remember what happened to Ben?

We all remembered.