Chapter Twenty-Two
Lady Phoebe
It’s a photo of Astrid and Arthur from that debutante ball we attended a few weeks back. He looks happy, I realise, although, it is for the camera so who can really say if he is or not? I don’t think he is, not properly. The smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes the way it used to.
But then, I do want him to be happy. I want his smile to reach his eyes when he’s with her otherwise, it never will. I need the reassurance that he’ll be okay without me.
Digby walks into the room holding up a bag from Laudurée .
“Croissants, macarons, lattes and a ispahan.”
I smile, grab the bag from him and tear it open.
He sits on the foot of the bed, unties his running trainers, faces me. “You should do something today, go shopping or something.”
I frown, my mouth occupied by a raspberry macaron.
“Come on,” he smiles, nudges my foot under the duvet. “You haven’t left the house in two days.”
That isn’t a lot, I think. I know someone who once spent almost four weeks chained to their bed because it was the only comfort they felt in a world where comfort is essentially nonexistent.
It’s me, I’m the person I knew. But to somebody like Digby who is now finished with their exams and believes the world is their oyster, spending two days in bed feels more like two years.
“I’m going to the gym in a minute, why don’t you come? Go to the spa?” He offers with a sorry look on his face.
I don’t know if he feels sorry for me because I haven’t left the house or if he feels sorry because of the reason why I haven’t left the house. He’s the sort of person that if his entire world crashed around him, he still wouldn’t just lay in bed all day.
I shake my head. “I’d rather go shopping than step foot in a gym.”
His lips twist up for a moment and then he jumps back on the bed—in his sweaty outdoor clothes—grabs the TV remote and then nicks one of the croissants from the bag on my lap.
“What are you doing?” I ask him.
He shrugs. “Staying in bed.”
“Why?”
“Because you are,” he says mindlessly, flicking through the channels.
You’re probably reading into this, thinking it’s something sweet and something Arthur would do and that Digby has most definitely done mindless things like this before but he hasn’t.
He’s never done anything like this and if he was the type of person to do things like this anyway, I’d be feeling differently.
But the fact of the matter is, he's just been observing Arthur—or rather observing the way that every feeling I feel and every word I speak and every move I make and every thought I think is about Arthur.
Digby is holding one side of the rope while Arthur holds the other and they’re playing a very rough game of tug of war, ignoring the fact that I’m a screwed up knot in the middle.
I lose my appetite, push the bag of my favourite things away from me and sink further under the covers.
“You should go to the gym,” I tell him, voice muffled.
“One day won’t hurt.”
I realise nothing that I say will deter his mind to leave me. He’s adamant on winning this game of tug of war.
I turn on my side, pull the duvet up to my chin and close my eyes, pray he takes it as a hint that I’d quite like him to leave because the only boy I want to spend all day in bed with isn’t him.
I wake up a few hours later to an empty bed and an article on my phone with the headline ‘The Lady With No Ring’.
I read through it while brushing my teeth, surprised to see people are angry with the fact that Digby hasn’t proposed yet even though they were rooting for Arthur and I at the start of the year.
I really don’t take much mind to these silly articles anymore—I used to, especially in school because other than Arthur, I didn’t really have anything else important to protect.
Digby didn’t text to let me know where he went off to. He could be at the pub with friends, at the gym on his own or in Berkshire visiting his parents.
I’ve only ever met his parents once, for dinner, when we first became ‘official’. They weren’t really anything spectacular. They own a private auction company. Bit like Sotheby’s but more discrete.
I think about all my other friends and what they’re doing right now.
Athena is probably with Lottie and Lottie undoubtedly has her daughter there so I don’t want to spend my day with them.
Spencer’s most likely nose deep in a book written in a language she doesn’t speak.
The twins aren’t really the type to spend all day dilly-dallying.
Connie is with Arthur (because when is he not?) so I don’t want to be with him because then I’ll want to spend tomorrow with Arthur and the day after that and the day after that—leaving him now reminds me of leaving my mother at the school gates when I was six.
I realise I don’t actually have that many friends at all. I don’t count Zara because whatever she’s doing on a Friday afternoon will one hundred percent be something that I have absolutely no interest in participating in.
Bliss would’ve been an option but she isn’t anymore so I physically shake my head to rid the thoughts of getting back in contact with her and get dressed.
I sit behind the wheel of my Bentley, unsure of where I’m going or what I’m doing.
It’s so funny. London is such a big city and yet here I am, all alone, wondering how to spend my day.
If I wanted to, I could book a flight and be in Australia this time tomorrow but even that doesn’t excite me.
I could be swayed into dropping a rather large fortune in Harrods but it feels flat. I don’t want to do that.
In fact, I don’t want to do anything.
I start driving in silence.
I think about calling my sister but I don’t know what the time is over there—not that it’d matter, she hasn’t picked up one of my calls in months—and I’m not really sure what I’d say to her, anyways.
Hampshire is where I find myself.
I say hello to my horses, fill up their water, give them some treats and then head for the house.
Apollo’s a beautiful black Friesian, a thick blanket of midnight hair flowing across his face.
Then we have Lady, an all white Thoroughbred who cost me an arm and a leg but she makes me more money so I love her quite a bit.
Vanna, a chestnut Icelandic who I’ve never entered into racing or dressage.
I’ve had her the longest. Seven years. I don’t leave my horses all on their own, by the way, there’s an entire team of people who take care of the house and the gardens when we’re not here.
I don’t know why I came here because the second I walk through the front door, everything hits me.
Walking in here is like walking through a museum dedicated solely to Arthur and I.
In every corner, on every table, on every step, in every crevice of the panelled walls, there’s a moment, a memory that takes me back to before—before it got all messy and sad and confusing and I sort of lost my place with him.
As I climb the stairs, the walls start speaking.
The time I had a huge pool party and Arthur ‘accidentally’ smashed a bottle on Connie’s head and he had to go to the hospital for five stitches.
But as we sat in A&E with him in trunks and trainers and me in denim shorts and a bikini top, he told me it wasn’t an accident at all.
Connie had pushed me off the conservatory roof and into the pool and Arthur knew how scared I’d been.
“How was that accident?” Connie grumbled several hours later as we left. “You purposely picked up the bottle and threw it against my head!”
”How was it an accident when you pushed Phoebe off the roof? You purposely got behind her and chucked her off!” He argued.
Connie rolled his eyes. “The way you two go on—” he shook his head. “It’s like an old married couple.”
I think we were fourteen and fifteen at the time. We weren’t dating. Just stealing kisses and finding the beauty in the mundane with each other.
The time I threw a camping themed sleepover in the garden to prove to everyone that I wasn’t a snob and Arthur caught me walking up the stairs with my pillow when everyone was asleep.
“Couldn’t do it, could you?” He smiled, head tilted, pyjama bottoms low on his waist.
“There’s spiders! Possibly snakes! Foxes! This was meant to be fun, not fucking I’m A Celebrity!”
He joined me in my bed and when the sun shone through my windows, our lips were still locked without promise of finding the key to unlock them.
The time we played Charades until four o’clock in the morning because no one guessed that Spencer was acting out the fucking Spanish Tradgery.
That day in the summer when we were in Prep school, having a picnic and my parents started arguing so I hid under the sink in the kitchen and Arthur was the only one to find me.
When Theo dared us to slide down the stairs on a mattress but we came flying off so he bribed us with Jammie Dodgers and Party Rings to not tell our parents.
Freddy showing us The Scary Maze game and I got so scared that I pissed myself on the cream sofas and Arthur blamed it on himself.
Everything from my first orgasm to seeing Arthur so utterly broken for the first time.
That end of summer party before year twelve, when he showed up and Connie tried hiding me from it.
No one could’ve hid me from it. When I saw him that night, something deep inside of me knew—maybe it wasn’t the forefront thought but it was there, tucked away in my subconscious—I knew that was the beginning of the end for us.
I sit on the chaise lounge beneath the huge glass stained window that looks out onto the garden and the stables.
From here you can see the spot where Arthur taught me how to shoot a rifle.
The very chaise I’m sitting on was the spot where he calmed me down from a panic attack at a party where I thought I drank too much and was going to be sick.