Chapter 16
Selena
Three years ago, we launched Wentworth Home, with me assuming the role of its creative director at the ripe old age of twenty-six.
It’s been a success on every metric. Privately, I’m pleased, although I’m not one to rest on my laurels.
Every KPI achieved is just another rung on the ladder, another objective checked off my list; every goal is dead to me as soon as I’ve achieved it.
The subsequent goals get loftier and loftier, and I push myself harder and harder to hit them.
Take our current project: bringing the Wentworth dream to life in the most aspirational of settings.
We’ve leased a bijoux Georgian manor on the outskirts of Oxford and are filling it with our spring/summer home collection.
Tomorrow the concept store opens to the press, billed as an opportunity to walk through a fantasy of our making, and every last detail has to be perfect.
Frankly, it’s a welcome escape from all the real stuff (you know, last-minute groom swaps and the like).
And it’s just so pretty: visual crack for my eyeballs, a balm for my frazzled nerves.
I thrive in situations like this, as long as I can lock in and focus on the project itself rather than the implications.
I mentally cast my father’s voice out of my head. Failure to hit the KPIs for this project is not an option.
‘At the risk of jinxing everything,’ Ewan says, strolling into the house’s kitchen, his arms full of bed linen, ‘I think the master bedroom looks chef’s kiss.’
‘Good.’ I blow out a breath.
‘Come and see it.’ He dumps the linen on the kitchen island and looks around. ‘This is looking fab. Nice work, Mills.’
‘Thanks.’ Milly, who works on our visual merchandising, or VM, team, looks over from where she’s stacking a glass-fronted cabinet with our hand-blown tumblers. She’s red in the face from the exertion of unpacking dozens of boxes of china and glassware.
‘Leave that there at your peril,’ I warn, pointing at the messy pile of linen Ewan’s dumped on the immaculate white island.
‘Yeah, yeah. I’ll grab it on my way back. C’mon. Then you’re sitting down and having some lunch. I’ve sent Andy out for some sandwiches.’
‘It’s too early for lunch,’ I say absent-mindedly, screwing up my eyes to take in the console in the hall, now dressed by the VM team.
It’s too—what? Cluttered? A pair of our large lily-of-the-valley candles in milky-white votives stand just inside the pair of lamps with their gratifying sea-green-coloured cracked glaze bases.
I tilt my head as I drift over, trying to identify the problem.
Something’s off, but… ‘Take this for a sec.’ I pick up one of the candles and hand it to Ewan.
‘It’s two forty-five.’
‘What the hell? Shit.’ It can’t be that late; it just can’t. I’ve lost all sense of time. I slide the remaining votive to the middle of the console. Yes, that’s better. Having two of these was just too much.
‘Exactly. In ten minutes, you’re going to sit down and have a cup of tea and a sarnie, and you’re not going to argue. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ I say meekly. If it weren’t for Ewan, I’d probably be a skeleton—or at least malnourished.
He sets the redundant votive down near the front door, where a lacklustre gaggle of other rejects has accumulated. ‘You’re spot-on about the candle, by the way.’
I nod my satisfaction as I head upstairs, Ewan traipsing behind me.
This house is truly gorgeous. It’s even more fun than a real home, because we’ll be able to change it up with the seasons.
I’ve already decided that the pale green-grey on the hallway walls, for example, will be transformed for the autumn/winter collection with a few coats of Wentworth’s Classic Maroon.
The master bedroom is beautiful. We’ve gone for light and airy, with a few pastel-coloured nods to spring. The roman blinds look perfect, the four-poster from our new bed collection doesn’t overpower the room, as I’ve been worrying it might, and the linens are all perfect, except—
‘You know what I’m going to say.’
He groans behind me. ‘The pillows.’
‘Yep. Sad, sad, sad. No one wants sad pillows. Ramp it up.’
‘No one wants to sleep with ten pillows,’ he argues.
‘That’s completely beside the point. It’s a showroom, not a hotel room.
Do it.’ I always argue with Ewan and the VM team over this stuff.
In this context, the bed needs to look stuffed to the max: layer after layer of pillows, all upright, stacked in front of each other, from large to small, square to scatter, every single one karate-chopped down the middle of the top edge to plump it up.
Anything less is plain underwhelming, and it will make onlookers feel sad, even if they don’t know why.
This is precisely my business: giving people what they don’t know they want, and serving it up so beautifully that they crave it like a drug.
‘You’re even more anal when you’re hungry.’
‘It’s called having a good eye, and you promised me a sandwich. Come on.’ I turn and march out. I’ve barely thought about my bodily functions all day, but all it took was a mention of the word sandwich and I’m salivating.
‘I feel like we’re in The Truman Show,’ he remarks, looking around as we sit at the island and eat our excellent cold roast beef and rocket ciabattas.
There’s nowhere else to sit. The long, pale wood table in the kitchen has been beautifully set with our forget-me-not china and vases of fresh greenery to suggest a spring luncheon.
‘I’ve been feeling like I’m in The Truman Show for weeks now,’ I bat back.
‘Fair. Though it’s not The Truman Show if you know the world is watching.’
I give that unhelpful reminder the snarky smirk it deserves and pull my phone out of my handbag, a sweet little cream-and-tan CHANEL 25 that my husband surprised me with last weekend, because apparently he’s a mindreader and an angel.
‘Shit.’
‘What?’ Ewan asks, refilling my glass from the bottle of Evian on the island. He takes my hydration levels seriously, does this one.
‘Ben messaged me… three hours ago.’ Fuck. I open WhatsApp to read it in full.
Hey princess. Hope it’s going well over there. Can I swing by the press event tomorrow? I’d like to support my wife xox
It is difficult to overstate the maelstrom of emotions that immediately sweeps me up.
‘Is there a problem?’ Ewan asks.
‘No, it’s not that; it’s just—’ I pause. What I want to say will sound unhinged, even to my best friend.
I don’t like that he got in touch and I didn’t realise for so long. It makes me feel anxious.
I’m worried that he doesn’t really want to come.
I’m worried that he’ll come and be bored or underwhelmed.
I’m worried that our sex life is the only real thing about our marriage and he’s just faking an interest because he thinks he should.
‘It’s just what?’
I read the message aloud.
‘Bloody hell,’ he says. ‘He’s just as perfect outside the bedroom as he is in it. Revolting.’
I stare down at my screen. ‘He really is.’
He sighs. ‘Spill it, Wentworth.’
‘It’s de Vere. And it’ll sound stupid.’ I’m already judging myself through Ewan’s eyes, and I haven’t even spilt.
‘The world is a more relatable place for the rest of us when you sound stupid for the occasional millisecond. Come on. I won’t judge.’
‘You’re literally the most judgmental person I know.’
‘Okay, well, then just assume I’m being me and shrug it off.’
I relent, but only because it might help me get the maelstrom out of my head if I say it out loud. ‘I left him hanging for, like, three hours. He’s going to think I’m a shitty wife.’
He barks out a laugh. ‘Jesus Christ, woman. Yesterday you were freaking out because he left you on read for an hour. Today you’re worried about bruising his ego.
I’m telling you, that guy’s ego is probably wrapped in rhino hide.
’ He’s possibly not wrong. Still, I glare at him.
He leans forward. ‘He doesn’t care. He doesn’t strike me as an overthinker. ’ Subtext: not like you.
‘I know, but—’
‘And he knows you’re busy today. He’s not expecting you to stand around, waiting for his call.’ He dabs at a fleck of French mustard at the side of his mouth with his finger.
‘That’s true. But what if he doesn’t actually want to come tomorrow? What if he’s just being nice?’ What if he gets bored, or finds it all a bit parochial, or…
Even my anxiety is running out of things to invent and spiral over.
‘He’s being your husband, love. That’s what spouses do. He’s making an effort, showing an interest. For fuck’s sake, let him and just enjoy it.’