Chapter 20
Aida
Igot the house.
When we divorced, that is.
Thank God.
It would’ve been different if we would have lived in one of the vast houses in Cadogan Square John’s family had owned for generations, thanks to some nebulous gifting arrangement involving a former Lord Russell and a former Duke of Westminster, but I put my foot down when I married him.
Those garden squares in Belgravia are stunning, but they’re stuffy as fuck, and there was no way I was living there. If I had, I would have gotten kicked out by the family estate as soon as I’d quit being Lord John Henry Russell’s wife.
Instead, thank God, I dug my heels in and we bought a nice little townhouse off High Street Kensington, which we upgraded to a spectacular villa in Notting Hill after Kit was born. I’ve been okay with the breakdown of my marriage, but I would not have been okay with losing this place.
This is my home. I’ve poured my heart and soul into it, far more than John has. He kept our country place in Norfolk, and rightly so. It’s a Russell family property, and God knows I have no need for a shooting estate. That house is etched onto his heart, and this house is etched onto mine.
It’s a classic pale pink stucco Notting Hill villa on a gorgeous crescent. It took me ages after we moved in not to feel like I was walking in Julia Roberts’ footprints in the movie every day. While this particular London village no longer feels otherworldly, it’ll always retain its magic for me.
I adore the artisanal cheese stores and chocolate stores and the fancy delis where you can ‘pop in’ for kombucha or homemade red lentil soup.
I love the people—the combination of well-heeled locals and wide-eyed tourists.
I love the pretty, colourful streets and the cafe society.
I love that even going out for a loaf of bread feels like a treat.
And, most of all, I adore coming home and shutting my glossy slate-grey front door behind me and feeling instantly cocooned in my carefully crafted sanctuary. It being Notting Hill, you pay a small fortune for a townhouse with a postage-stamp-sized backyard, but no matter.
There’s a private residents’ garden over the road—not dissimilar to the one in the movie—and the tiny courtyard out the back of our house features whitewashed walls and lots of trailing star of jasmine and a floor of the prettiest grey and white tiles.
It’s more like an outdoor room than a backyard.
Up one flight of stairs are our formal reception rooms, papered in a green-and-white leaf print and lined with bookshelves that heave with a mixture of political biographies and romances.
John’s Cold War thrillers are gone from the shelves, but you’d hardly notice given the shit-tonne of books I have.
Down here in the kitchen, however, is where I spend most of my time, sitting at our island with a cup of tea or coffee.
No matter that the island is cluttered with unopened mail and the boys’ pencil cases and a pile of cook books that I leafed through and bookmarked earlier this week in a fit of productivity that hasn’t actually resulted in any recipe-based cooking on my part.
Yet.
None of it matters, because the clutter is a sign of a happy, if messy, life, and I value that, I cling to that, even more now that I have a failed marriage behind me.
I sit on my favourite barstool, and I swirl a ginger and turmeric tea bag around in my mug as the boys dash around the island. If someone were to take a slow lens shot of us right now, I’d be the sole identifiable subject, Pip and Kit nothing more substantive than a blur of colour and movement.
‘Did you pack your cricket whites?’ I ask.
With these two, it’s always a matter of walking the tightrope between ensuring they have the basics while trying not to foster total helplessness.
It would be cruel to send them off for a weekend in Norfolk without checking they at least had clean underwear and their plush cuddly toys, but I’m conscious that the more I pick up after them, the less independent they’ll be.
And, given they have a father who’s intent on them following in the Russell family tradition of attending Eton when they hit thirteen, that gives Pip and Kit two and four years respectively to get their shit together before they hit boarding school.
‘It’s not cricket season anymore, Mum,’ Kit points out. ‘It’s football.’ At nine, he’s pure lean muscle, slim and wiry and perpetually in motion. He’s correct, technically, but while the new academic year has started at school, this September is still mild enough for cricket.
‘Daddy told me to tell you he’ll get the wickets out given the weather,’ I tell him now, wincing as they emit a delighted roar in unison. They’re still little boys, but they’re so male sometimes, and it’s as unnerving as it is endearing. ‘Go get your whites. He’s bringing your pads and helmets.’
‘Did you pack my Alex Rider book?’ Pip wants to know. He’s more bookish, less naturally athletic than his little brother, but God does he try with every fibre of his being. It breaks my heart a little.
I give him a mom-like eyebrow wiggle. ‘I did not. Basics only, remember? Did you pack Alex Rider?’
He huffs and rolls his eyes like I’m a giant pain in his backside, and I laugh. ‘Go on. Go get your stuff.’
They race upstairs. My little British boys.
Whatever his faults as a husband, John’s a great dad, even if his idea of fathering is a little more old-school British than might be healthy.
You know, the whole Eton thing. Being intent on ensuring they can hunt and fish and ride a horse and bowl a cricket ball and nail all those activities that made his exclusive English upbringing so fun for him.
To be fair to him, the upper classes in this country haven’t exactly moved on from those pursuits, so maybe he’s got a point. I knew how traditional he was when I married him.
I just forgot that one of the English nobility’s favourite time-honoured traditions was keeping a bunch of mistresses.
The doorbell rings.
Speak of the devil.