Chapter 53
Ivy
Isit with Dawn in a cosy corner of the living room area of her care home.
In front of me sits an excellent, and mostly uneaten, slice of homemade lemon drizzle cake, and in front of her a plastic sippy cup filled with a revolting, if sweet, thickened tea.
The Lewy body dementia affects her swallow so much that she can only safely take liquids by mouth if they’re thickened.
She’s quietish today, having gone somewhere unreachable inside her brain, but she seems peaceful.
I’ve been trying to read The Thursday Murder Club to her, but I’m antsy as fuck.
I should be relieved that the wedding isn’t being televised.
I know for a fact that, if it was, I wouldn’t be strong enough to stay away.
I’d be live-streaming with the best of them and bawling my eyes out.
There is media coverage of the arrivals, though.
I’ve been glued to my BBC News app all afternoon, where the presenters have been filling a slow news day with lengthy speculation about the future marriage of Xav and Selena.
Given that the world and his wife have known about the arrangement since long before Xav made the engagement official at his twenty-first, most of the speculation is around their likely feelings for each other.
The unanimous conclusion?
They’re both so objectively hot that, arranged or not, they’re likely to be shagging each other’s brains out (the BBC put it more delicately, but still). It seems their movie-star looks have captured the nation’s collective (and fertile) imagination.
At five to four, the BBC shows live footage of a convoy arriving: Selena and her entourage.
I haven’t caught sight of Xav, despite my obsessive watching (I’ve long since abandoned the book and am glued to my phone).
He’s probably tucked away in the bowels of the church.
The bridesmaids unfold themselves from the cars, and ahh, Flora looks absolutely gorgeous in pale blue.
Gorgeous but nervous, bless her. I know how unconvinced she is about this marriage, but let’s say I’m not putting stock in her standing up and objecting on my behalf.
I walked out of her life, and now she’s Team Selena.
I totally get it. But will Selena be Team Flora?
Will she be a confidante for her? An advocate?
Will she teach her to own her sexuality?
Or will she just throw lots of fashion samples her way and not give a shit about what goes on under the surface?
A dapper man I assume is Selena’s dad surfaces next, and he helps her out of the car.
brEAKING NEWS, the ticker tape reads. SELENA WENTWORTH ARRIVES AT CHRISTCHURCH CATHEDRAL FOR HER WEDDING TO LORD XAVIER DE VERE, THE FUTURE DUKE OF OXFORD.
Thanks, BBC, for the reminder. Very fucking helpful.
I hold my breath.
She steps out, and oh my God. She’s beautiful.
Stunning. Every little girl’s dream, with her enormous veil flowing behind her and her perfect, shiny brown hair tied elegantly back, and her dress a huge confection of lace and silk that somehow looks stately and not poufy.
I can’t fault her, except to say that she looks even less relaxed than Flora and a million times less happy and grateful than she should be to know that Xav is waiting for her inside.
Surely he’ll fall in love with her eventually.
How could he not? She’s so perfect. As the BBC so wisely pointed out, she’s far too hot for him not to seriously enjoy the business of procreation with her, no matter what lingering feelings he may have claimed he had for me.
She looks less like a fairytale princess and more like a full-wattage celebrity, polished to perfection.
brEAKING NEWS: SOURCES CONFIRM SELENA WENTWORTH IS WEARING DIOR COUTURE FOR HER WEDDING TO LORD XAVIER DE VERE.
Her bridesmaids flutter around her, fixing her skirt and train and veil, which are all bloody enormous, while her dad looks on proudly, and another tear rips through my heart. She has everything I’ll never have, but there are only two things I’d actually kill for.
One, to be walking down the aisle towards Xav.
And two, to have Dad around to give me away. To have him look at me with all that pride and love, just one more time.
Maybe these arranged marriages aren’t such an awful idea, after all.
Maybe the best I can hope for is to say yes to some sex-drunk finance bro at Alchemy and marry him.
I’m not even twenty-five yet, and I’ve already given up on my own future.
Better to knuckle down and secure some semblance of a future for the twins, instead.
Even if the mere thought of going back to Alchemy on Monday makes me sick to my stomach.
On my (silent) phone screen, Selena floats gracefully up the steps of the cathedral on the arm of her father, her bridesmaids holding her train. She disappears through the massive doors, and a moment later, they shut behind her.
I lock my phone and throw it into my bag. My heart feels like a dead, heavy thing that’s somehow still pulsing in my chest. It’s not that I ever allowed myself to think there’d be another outcome. It’s more, I think, that my brain couldn’t physically compute the reality of Xav ending up with her.
But he has.
So that’s that, then.
I make a valiant effort with the book, I really do, but I can barely get the words out, let alone inject a hint of personality into my voice. And if Dawn was to come to and quiz me about the clues our senior sleuths have gathered so far, I’d quite literally be clue-less.
Still, I push on. I’ll do an hour with Dawn and then I’ll get back to the girls.
They’re desperate to stay up till midnight, and I’ve told them they can, but whether I make it that long before collapsing into bed in a soggy pile of tears and snot is anyone’s guess.
I’m stammering my way through my current page when I hear, ‘There she is!’
It’s Lily’s voice.
Or Rose’s.
What the actual fuck?
I look up sharply and find a sight I can’t process, not in the slightest, because Xav, the very same Xav who is right now getting married in Oxford, is coming towards me, flanked by my sisters in their flamingo-pink onesies, and he’s smiling at me like I’m the mirage here, which I’m categorically not.
Is this place catching? Have I come down with a bad bout of dementia just from being here?
Has my poor, broken brain decided to cart me off to some fantasy universe because it’s decided, once and for all, to take a hard pass on the real world?
Or is that lemon drizzle cake stuffed full of psychedelics as some sort of add-on therapy that I’m blissfully unaware of?
I can’t afford to have a breakdown. I can’t. I can’t. But I think I am. I begin to cry, because it’s too much, too cruel, too overwhelming.
But then he’s speaking. ‘There she is,’ he says in his beautiful, kind Xav voice, and he picks up his pace, striding through the clusters of armchairs full of old men and women and their carers until he’s standing right in front of me.
‘Don’t cry, sweetheart. Please don’t cry,’ he says, tugging me into his arms, and I go, bawling silently into his lovely jacket as he hugs me and hugs me.
‘You’re not real,’ I wail.
‘Oh, but I am.’
‘But the wedding. You’re getting married. I just saw Selena on TV, and there was the church, and she— I saw Flora, and—’
He releases me and cups my face, stroking my tears away with his thumbs. He’s smiling at me as if I’m sweet and amusing and ridiculous. ‘Did you stick around for the press release, by any chance?’
‘No? What—the?’ My eyes are racing over his face, taking in every perfect detail even as my brain short-circuits.
‘Did you—did you run away?’ It’s the only solution my addled brain can come up with, but he’s not even dressed like a groom.
He’s wearing jeans and a sweater under that jacket.
And Oxford is like, eighty miles away, isn’t it?
Did he teleport? It’s either that, or my sanity has officially vacated the room.
‘She’s marrying his brother!’ Rose—I think it’s Rose—shouts next to me, and I screw my face up, trying desperately to understand.
‘You missed the best part, my love,’ Xav says, dropping his forehead to mine. His hands are still cupping my face, as if he’s trying to anchor me.
‘What part? What brother?’
His grin turns sheepish. I can just about make it out at this short distance if I cross my eyes. ‘It’s been a hell of a week. We released a statement shortly after the wedding started. I pulled out of the wedding on Boxing Day, tried to cancel the whole thing, and—’
I gasp and pull away so I can gape at him.
‘You what?’
‘I pulled out. I couldn’t do it.’
The tears are still falling, but my thoughts—not to mention my emotions—are whirring around like a washing machine on a spin cycle.
‘You pulled out? This week?’
‘Well, last week, but yeah. And then, a day later, Benedict stepped up, God love him. Said he’d marry Selena and, fuck knows how, got her to agree to it, too.’
The fog is beginning to thin out enough that the facts are dropping into place.
‘So that wedding is…’
‘Ben and Selena. Yes.’
I start to laugh, and even I can hear that it sounds totally unhinged. I guess the residents of this place may judge me less for that than other people might. In my defence, his story is equally unhinged.
‘Who dat?’ Dawn asks from behind me, her voice plaintive. ‘Who dat?’
‘It’s Xav,’ one of the twins tells her kindly. ‘He’s basically Ivy’s boyfriend. He was ’sposed to get married to someone else, but he didn’t.’
Meanwhile, I’m still reeling. ‘So Selena’s marrying your brother. And he’s marrying her. But the BBC didn’t know?’
‘Got it in one.’
He smiles proudly, but I’m moving on.
‘So you didn’t choose her.’
He screws up his face as if his nose is stinging. ‘Sweetheart, how could I ever choose someone else when you exist in the world?’
I clap my mouth over my hand.
His words.
His face.
All of it.