Epilogue
TWO YEARS LATER
‘You’re so amazing with her,’ Soph tells Jamie as he bounces his six-month-old sister, Lola, on his lap, holding her under her arms. ‘Look! She adores you.’
Lola’s gummy beam is dazzling as she stares, bewitched, at her brother. Her tiny hands make grabby fists as she attempts to reach for his hair, his ears—whatever she can get hold of—but every time he bumps her on his thighs, her tiny bare feet flail, and she cackles her deep belly laugh.
The sound of my baby daughter’s laugh may just be the best thing in the world. I have videos and voice notes full of it. I’ll never, ever get over it.
Lola is her mother through and through—a ray of sunshine, genuinely captivated by everyone she meets, and determined to seize the maximum pleasure from every moment.
She’s already a wonderful teacher.
My son tears his eyes from her for a second to glance up at me. ‘She’s so sweet. And it’s good that she can sit up now.’
‘It’s very good,’ I agree. Now, Soph and I can prop her up on a rug without constantly worrying that she’ll keel over sideways. It makes entertaining her far easier—and lower maintenance.
‘Can you take her for a sec? I want to grab another pizza.’
‘Of course, mate. It’s your party. Go for it.
’ I hold out my arms, but instead of handing her over immediately, he buries his face in her soft golden neck and lets out a loud raspberry.
Her little body freezes as her mouth goes comically wide with delight and she lets out her signature fishwife cackle.
Jamie comes up for air, grinning like he’s just won an Olympic one-hundred metres. I know how he feels, because I could blow raspberries on Lola’s skin all day long for the rest of my life and never get bored.
‘Just one more.’ Banding one arm securely around her middle, he holds out her tiny arm and goes for a raspberry right in the crook of her elbow. Right on cue, Lola honks.
‘Her laugh is as classy as her mother’s,’ I observe drily to my wife.
‘Sounds about right.’ Soph bends down to take our daughter, but I beat her to it, grabbing Lola and pulling her tightly into my arms so I can smother her soft cheeks and shock of black hair in kisses as my wife sings Obsessed by Mariah Carey under her breath.
She may have a point.
‘Go and give your mum a hug,’ I tell Jamie with an affectionate slap on the shoulder as he attempts to shoot off. ‘She’s barely seen you this afternoon.’
Elena is here with her newish husband, Raphael, a UN colleague she started dating just after I met Soph.
I’m thrilled my ex has found happiness. I always knew she was a wonderful person, and far too good for me, a fact she underscored when she dropped by a couple of weeks after our return from Australia to tell me she’d had our custody agreement amended to a flexible fifty-fifty.
The generosity of her actions could have knocked me down with a feather.
After the four of us had met up for a surreal and slightly excruciating dinner, I asked Soph what she thought of Elena’s new bloke.
She shrugged. ‘I mean, some people like that whole adoring and indecently hot French nerd who speaks five languages and could feasibly model Swiss timepieces thing. It’s overrated, if you ask me.’
I raised an eyebrow then, fairly certain that she was fucking with me, and she planted a kiss on my cheek. ‘Girl traded up. Deal with it, Eight. Anyway, you got me.’
I certainly did.
Also, it turned out she and all her friends had been secretly referring to me as Eight the entire time she was working for me. I’m glad I was such an instant open book to her, because I certainly mystified the fuck out of myself for a long time.
Today is the official family and friends celebration of Jamie’s sixteenth birthday.
He turned sixteen in the middle of his GCSE exams, which was pretty shit for him.
We found a compromise—he and his mates did an epic day out at Thorpe Park before the exams kicked off, going on all the most terrifying rides over and over, and we agreed that we’d celebrate with our loved ones and some of his friends in slightly classier style once the exams were over, so here we are.
He and I also have Centre Court tickets to far too many matches when Wimbledon starts next week.
The contrast between the contented, well-adjusted young man my son is today and the dejected, emotionally closed-off kid he was when I met Soph is pronounced.
She’ll deny it a million times over, but she saved me.
Jamie. Us. Our family. She saw me, and she believed in me, and that belief, that incredible compassion and insight and lack of judgement she demonstrated when I had done little to earn it, transformed my life.
She and Philip have shown me that healing is possible from the darkest and most hopeless circumstances, and they’ve taught me another secret, too.
Healing yourself has a ripple effect. Being in the orbit of someone like Soph gave me the courage to do the work, meaning I in turn was able to support my son in getting the help he needed to heal from my failings.
I rid myself of toxic relationships—namely Richard Kingsley—and I instead invested in the relationships that fed my soul.
My son. My wife. Even my ex-wife. Mates like Bren and Aide and Miles and, though I hate to admit it, his annoying younger brother.
I even consider their father a friend and mentor these days.
They’re all here today with their other halves.
Marlowe can now just about look me in the eye.
Saoirse, Lotta and Nora I get on famously with.
We are, in fact, celebrating today on the beautiful terrace of the Montague Knightsbridge, the very same grande dame hotel I was once so desperate to get my grubby little mitts on.
Miles insisted on making it available for our little shindig, and Saoirse, who is a hugely talented events planner for the Montague and Sorrel Farm joint venture, has made the space look magical without it being a turn-off for teenage boys.
She’s even procured a wood-fired pizza oven, which is going down a storm with Jamie and his mates.
I adjust my beautiful little girl in my arms and take a step towards my equally gorgeous wife.
She’s radiant in a long flowing sunshine-yellow dress.
Its huge slit shows off her long, tanned legs, and it puts her spectacular tits on a platter.
Lola’s not the only one who has a thing for them.
Far more importantly, she’s smiling up at me with more love, more adoration, than I could ever have hoped to elicit in a fellow human.
‘Come over here.’ I take her hand, steering her over to the north edge of the terrace to where Hyde Park is laid out below us in a heavenly early-summer sprawl of green.
Cupping Lola’s soft little head for support, I bend and kiss my wife on her plump crimson mouth.
Her long dark eyelashes flutter shut, and the familiar awe hits me once again.
That I get to spend my life with her. That I make her happy.
That, together, we’re raising a beautiful little girl and an almost-man, the very sight of whom makes me burst with pride and love.
‘I love you,’ I whisper. When she opens her eyes, they’re filled with so much emotion.
‘I love you. So much. I’m a puddle on the floor for you. And this’—she smooths a palm down the front of my new ice-blue shirt—‘is making me horny.’
‘Feel free to act on that when we get home.’
‘Oh, believe me, I will.’
‘Home’ is unrecognisable now. With hindsight, giving Soph full creative control over the interior overhaul was hasty.
She wasted no time in commissioning the Kit Kemp Design Studio to fill every last inch with colour and print and studs and tassels and triple-framed artwork and fuck knows what else.
It’s an over-furnished nightmare and a migraine waiting to happen, but I have to admit I love it. It feels warm and friendly and welcoming, just like my wife.
It feels like home, which is a good thing, because I spend most of my time working from there on getting our app off the ground while Soph attempts to finish her doctorate in between popping out humans.
In homage to the incredible brain of the woman who inspired it, we furnished it with all sorts of personality profiling tools for both clients and professionals, enabling them to match on a variety of measures before they meet.
The Enneagram, naturally, is one of them.
We called it Lynx, and this summer, Jamie will complete two weeks of work experience on the team ahead of kicking off his Computer Science A Level qualification.
My fleeting tryst with my wife is broken in the most raucous way by the Montague brothers descending on us. The middle brother in their trio, Stephen, is a thoroughly nice bloke and not here today. Meanwhile, Miles and I have become fast friends.
We spent a lot of time together once I was done gallivanting around Australia, brainstorming on the future of the new-look Montague Group once he hired me as a consultant.
Turns out, he may not have wanted the Kingsleys calling the shots, but he did value my input—greatly so.
And I found I enjoyed the strategic aspect of the endless post-takeover planning discussions far more when I wasn’t the one having to implement them all.
Spoiler: he didn’t cut nearly enough jobs. I called him a spineless cunt and he called me a cutthroat bastard, and then we went merrily on our way together, establishing what is undeniably the premier luxury hotel group in the UK.
I value his friendship enormously. Underneath it all, we’re actually quite similar: intense, understated guys who feel the weight of our responsibilities all too much but have a real passion for business.
He and Saoirse have been regulars at our colourful home for dinner, and the weekends we’ve spent at their Cotswolds pad have been some of Jamie’s—and our—favourites.
Theo, however is the one who’s done the biggest one-eighty, a fact I’m thrilled about, as I came pretty close to avoiding a punch to the nose from him at times.
Not one to hold grudges, it appears, he embraced me like a long-lost brother after I handed the Kingsley empire over to his family on a plate.
Apparently, it was the most legendary fucking move he’d ever seen.
‘Here they are,’ he sing-songs, ruffling my hair. ‘The gold-standard parents. I swear, Jamie is the most pleasant teen I’ve ever encountered. It makes me really, really hopeful for the twins.’
I grimace. ‘I wouldn’t be too optimistic.’ Theo and Nora’s twins are feral.
His face falls. ‘Yeah. You might be right. Glad you guys won the teen lottery, though. Hey, gorgeous.’
This to my wife, whom he kisses dangerously close to her lovely mouth. I’d punch him, but this is Theo. I’ve long since learnt that it’s all bluster, that he’s as in love with Nora as a man can be.
Out of nowhere, Aide and Bren rock up behind us, and the four of them encircle me and Soph and Lola.
‘We were just chatting about godparents.’ Bren scoops Lola out of my arms with ease and she goes shamelessly, grabbing at his face with her tiny hands.
His and Marlowe’s baby boy, Paddy, is about the same age as her.
Bren is a great big softie these days. ‘Because the pressure is on. There’s a lot of money riding on this.
You’ve got to make the call sometime, Kingsley. ’
I grin at him. He, Miles, Theo and Aide have been going on about being Lola’s godfathers since the day she was born.
‘Soph, have we made any decision yet?’ I ask my wife, feigning ignorance.
‘Hmm.’ She pretends to think. ‘Don’t think so. We’ll probably just flip a coin.’
There is immediate outrage.
‘I’ve known you the longest,’ Bren says.
‘No, that’s probably me.’ This from Miles. ‘I just didn’t like him for most of it.’
‘I’d be by far the most fun,’ Theo says, and Bren glares at him. Those two are far too similar.
‘Look, you want your kid to have some proper guidance in life,’ Aide points out. ‘And I’m by far the most down-to-earth. I’ll introduce her to manual labour and show her how to use a hammer. Don’t foist some posh twat on her.’
Beside him, Bren’s brother Gabe, who’s married to Athena, just smiles in quiet amusement. As a former Catholic priest, he’s probably the best placed of all of them to offer spiritual guidance to Lola, but he’s not the kind of person to throw his hat in the ring like that.
Soph sighs. ‘Okay, we did actually make a decision. And it might sound a little OTT, but we’d like all of you to be godparents. And your other halves. May as well share the love, eh?’
Because here’s the thing.
You can’t choose your family of origin. My parents are notably absent today—my father because I’ve rightly given up on him, and my mother because she has too much fear and trauma and whatever else to cross my dad.
And that’s tragic for her, but her reactions aren’t my responsibility. Neither are his. I’ve learnt that much.
You can, however, choose the family you move through life with, and you can choose the humans with whom you surround your children.
Even better, you can choose that one special person who makes it all worthwhile, who decides to love you in all your chaotic, imperfect glory.
I lock eyes with my wife as, around us, our friends celebrate their joint win.
There was a time when I believed that nobody and nothing was perfect up close.
And I was wrong.
Because Soph is.
THE END