Page 85 of The Spare

I clap a horrified hand over my mouth. ‘Noooo.’

‘Yep.’

‘Poor Gabe! And poor you,’ I add hurriedly.

‘Right?’

‘How do you come back from that?’ I ask her.

‘I’m so glad you asked,’ Soph says, squeezing me against her. She smells incredible. ‘Our friend Athena here needed to learn a valuable life lesson: that, with the right person, vulnerability is not a failure. It’s a beautiful state that can allow you to connect more deeply. You can’t have true love without it, babes, no matter how much all of us would like to. Just ask my husband.’

‘Thank you for that pop psychology interlude,’ Athena says crisply.

‘Welcome, babes. Now, Selena, repeat after me. You can’t have love without vulnerability.’

‘You can’t have love without vulnerability,’ I mutter, feeling intensely stupid.

‘My issue was the money,’ Athena admits. ‘The fact that I was, in theory, so expensive for these men to buy made me believe I had value. And when you took that away, I felt like nothing at all.’ She lets out a big sigh. ‘It’s a good thing I’m married to a man whose worldview is eminently less fucked up than mine is.’

‘The thing you need to allow yourself to believe,’ Soph says, rubbing my upper arm briskly, ‘is that Benedict loves you for you. Whatever went down with that marriage proposal is irrelevant, just like Athena and Gabe’s origin story became irrelevant. He loves you now. Don’t let some stupid shites in the tabloids who can barely string a sentence together tell you what your marriage is.’

I’m not sure what it is about these two, but their double act of compassion and clarity is immensely effective. I barely know them, but I’ve had a more real conversation with them in the past thirty minutes than I’ve ever had with any of my so-called school friends.

‘It was a pity proposal,’ I admit, looking down at my wineglass because I can’t look at them, not even with my sunglasses on. ‘Xav dumped me five days before the wedding, and I thought I was going to die from the shame of it. Like, I didn’t love him at all, but the thought of everyone finding out that I’d spent my entire life in training to be the perfect duchess and wasn’t actually enough was so unbearable.’

I begin to physically shake at the memory. ‘So when Ben turned up the next morning and proposed, I was so fucking panicked that I said yes. He’s always been the one I wanted, at the end of the day.’

‘That’s so romantic,’ Soph coos.

‘Not really, because I knew, deep down, that he was only doing it out of duty. But I said yes anyway. So everything the papers are saying is true. No one actually wanted me, and I whored myself out because I’m a manipulative bitch who was so desperate to keep up appearances that I married whichever brother would have me.’

I slump in my seat, defeated, until Athena drawls, ‘Nice try, bitch. You can’t out-whore us.’

‘Pathetic attempt,’ Soph says, and I giggle a little. They’re so sweet.

‘You were opportunistic,’ Athena says. ‘You made the smart move, and you were intuitive, because you already knew Benedict was the guy for you. And the system doesn’t like it when women are smart, or opportunistic, or intuitive, because it makes these little pricks feel threatened. So fuck them all. You get the happy-ever-after, and they have to suck that up, despite their best efforts to derail you. And it’s all out in the open now, so the only way forward is upwards, my friend. You’ve been busted, so they’ve got nothing to hold over your head now.’

‘I think they’ll hold this over my head for the rest of my life,’ I admit.

‘And that scares you?’ Soph asks gently. ‘How does it make you feel? And, before Athena comes for me, you should know I’m two years into my clinical psychology qualification and I’m very good at this stuff. I totally sorted my husband out, after all.’

‘Er, his therapist did that,’ Athena says.

‘I made him go to therapy, and I introduced him to his therapist. And I used sex as leverage to ensure he stayed in therapy, so all of that qualifies me to take full credit. So tell Aunt Sophia how you feel, babes. Share. This is a safe space.’

Oddly, it does actually feel like a safe space. Admittedly, I was horrified to come downstairs looking like a dog’s dinner and find these two queens standing in my hallway, but the rosé and this weird tag-teaming thing they’ve got going on have lulled me into something approaching security. To be honest, the mere fact of them being here is… validating, if I can ignore the fact that Ben emotionally blackmailed Athena into stepping in. Ben’s here because he has to be, because he’s tied his fate to mine. But having two women who I think so highly of deem me worthy of their time and energy and generosity, at a time when literally the entire world has declared me a pathetic waste of space, is giving me the beginnings of a warm glow of feeling held and accepted.

That, and the rosé we’re chugging.

And so I talk, haltingly and inarticulately and self-consciously. I attempt to paint a picture of the horror and terror these attacks on my character have brought on, of the physical agony they’ve caused. I describe being so traumatised that I can’t imagine ever being able to forget this sensation for the rest of my life. I recount feeling as if I want to hide under a blanket under a table in a dark room where no one can find me because I am so terrified of them ‘coming for me’. It’s that Marie Antoinette metaphor again, and it’s a good—if melodramatic—one, because that’s how it feels. Belvedere may as well be Versailles, and they may as well be standing outside the gates, baying for my head.

All the while, Soph hugs me against her side and rubs my arm while Athena nods and smiles encouragingly at me from across the table.

‘You know,’ Soph says when I’ve paused to raise my wineglass to my weirdly dry mouth with a shaky hand, ‘that’s all so helpful, because it’s really specific, and that makes it good data.’

‘How do you mean?’ I ask. The D-word has my ears pricking instantly up. I adore data, and in this context, I’ll take any of it.

‘Well, she says slowly, ‘I don’t want to slap any labels on you.’