Chapter 33
Selena
For five wonderful months, the harebrained stunt Benedict and I cooked up alongside Xav and Ivy has held up in the face of global scrutiny.
The first sign that something is amiss comes from an unlikely source: an email from an intern called Laura in Wentworth’s PR team.
I don’t know Laura, but the headline of her email grabs my attention: Reddit article about your wedding - Maggie asked me to share this.
Maggie is the head of the team. If that isn’t enough, she’s flagged it as important with a red exclamation mark.
The only times I’ve ever braved the cesspits of Reddit have been when I’m rabbit-holing on something (usually characters in whatever TV show I’m bingeing) and a search engine has served its threads up.
I’ve never gone looking for anything on it.
Still, I click on the link that Laura has shared with the churning mixture of curiosity and dread that was so familiar in the aftermath of the Great Groom Swap and which has faded over the past couple of months.
I click on the link.
The headline reads, THAT de Vere wedding: timeline doesn't add up. Here's what I found.
Fuck. Instantly, my pulse kicks up.
As for the thread itself, it was posted four days ago in the r/UKCelebGossip subreddit. I begin to read, my horror mounting with every word.
TL;DR: I think the de Vere groom switch was a cover-up and I have receipts.
I took these pics when I was on holiday in Venice back in December. I’m a bit of a simp for the de Vere brothers (IYKYK) and I was sure this was Xavier. I followed these guys around for a while (awkward but they were too loved-up to care).
What follows are five dim, grainy photos of Xav and Ivy in Piazza San Marco, both in big puffer coats. He has his arm around her in three of them, and in two, they’re kissing passionately, right there in the middle of the square.
I’ve been sitting on these photos for months but my boyfriend said I should post them here or take them to the press.
I was confused because I was so excited for his wedding to Selena on New Year’s Eve, but then I couldn’t believe it when they announced that she would be marrying Benedict instead, and I was even more confused when he announced that he’d begged his brother to stand down, because as far as I could see, Xavier did not need much persuading.
As a reminder, here is the official quote from the press release:
‘I have been in love with Selena Wentworth for as long as I can remember.
For years, I have attempted, wholly unsuccessfully, to get my feelings under control.
However, as her wedding to my brother Xavier grew more imminent, I accepted that I would have to act urgently or forever live in abject misery.
‘Last week, I threw myself on Xavier’s mercy and begged him to walk away, freeing up the woman I love to marry me. Not only did he acquiesce, but he relinquished his right to the Dukedom of Oxford. We both agreed, after all, that Selena was born and bred to be a duchess.’
I don’t know what to do with these. It feels weird, no? Like they didn’t tell us the whole story. So what are we supposed to believe? That Benedict really was in love with her all along, or Xavier was already with someone else? I’m so confused
EDIT 1:
I took these photos myself on the 13th December. They are legit
EDIT 2:
Thank you to @notannhsworker for the identification of the woman in the pics with Xavier.
If you missed her comment below, she said: ‘This woman is called Ivy Cooper. I work at the care home where her mum was living. Her mum died in Feb but Xavier was there with her a LOT last autumn.’ I don’t exactly know what this means but I do know that he was close with this woman before he was supposed to marry Selena.
I stare at the article in horror. In four days, it’s already had over ten thousand upvotes.
Right here is an exposé of the entire web of lies underpinning the stunt I thought we had all pulled off at New Year’s.
It’s like a time bomb, buried for now in the shallow ground of some Reddit sub-thread, quietly ticking along until it explodes.
I should close my browser and step away from my desk. I should do that right now. But I don’t, of course. Instead, I dig into the comments, my fingers literally splayed over my left eye.
burneraccountlol - 4 days ago: this is everything. ill bring popcorn lol
aristobrat_ - 4 days ago: I fukin new something was up. Xavier totally called it off. Do we think Benedict took one 4 the team?
It’s speculation. Pure speculation. They can’t know anything.
aristobrat_ - 4 days ago: I mean theirs taking one for the team and theirs marrying someone with a cricket bat up her arse lmao
That familiar punch of emotion hits me right in the heart. It’s shame and outrage and actual sickness. And even while I’m plummeting, there’s a voice in my head judging me for giving the remotest shit what some trashy little wannabe with no perceivable grasp of spelling or grammar thinks of me.
spare_me_the_details - 4 days ago: The tabloids would pay excellent money for these. I wd take the pics down and make them pay up or theyll just take em anyway
receipts_or_it_didnt_happen - 4 days ago: The Daily Mail editor: hold my beer
I keep scrolling. I can’t help it. It’s some twisted, toxic addiction, where I’m doing the exact thing I don’t actually want.
When things like this happen—when people come for me online, in any context—it feels physical. It feels like they’re standing outside my front door with pitchforks and there’s a huge red flashing light going off continuously in my head while a sound like an air raid siren blares.
DANGER, DANGER, DANGER!
As far as I can tell, there are only two feasible courses of action: hide under my desk right this moment or jump into action.
Because I am a lifelong over-functioner, I choose the latter, the impulse to act, to do, to undo.
The catalysts: that sense of injustice, the jet fuel that is this isn’t fair, no one was supposed to find out, and, even more potent, primal fucking fear.
This is the monster under the bed, the beast I’ve been so terrified of, in its purest, basest form. It’s stretching those claws out from beneath the bed, and I’d better sprint for the door before I get a look at its teeth.
Feeling shaky and lightheaded, I fire off a WhatsApp to my group chat with Ben, Xav, and Ivy (yes, we have one mainly for practical, estate-related purposes—don’t judge me).
This is a problem for all of us, even if it feels like it’s mainly for me.
I had the most to lose if this wedding didn’t go through, the furthest to fall.
Besides, it feels as though I’m the one who gives the most shits about stuff like this: I’m the most image-obsessed, the most ridiculously oversensitive. I paste in the link.
Read this. Someone has outed you and Ivy on Reddit
Even as I’m writing that sentence, it sounds ridiculous, so overly Gen Z of me. I wait impatiently for them to read and respond. I’m wondering whether to just call Ben or whether it’s uncool to bother him with this when he’s at work, when Ivy responds.
Holy shit. Feel violated
That makes sense. Unlike me or the boys, she’s never been in the public eye before, having carried out her entire relationship with Xavier—I mean Xav—to date behind closed doors.
You and me both. But mainly I feel busted.
That sounds better, more casual, than I feel as though I’m going to die. Less hysterical.
Isn’t that a massive violation by the care home tho?
It certainly fucking is, and I’ll ensure Xav unleashes the full wrath of the De Vere Estate upon them.
Attack is the best form of defence. I’m a cornered animal, desperate to lash out even when I know it won’t help.
If some loose-lipped employee found that thread and felt the need to spill confidential information, then I’m sure he or she is on far too low a wage to give a shit.
And no matter how loudly we call for justice, the horse has well and truly bolted.
There’s no reply from Ben in the next five minutes, so I give him a call.
‘Hey, sweetheart.’ His chipper tone makes me feel marginally better.
‘Did you see my message?’ I ask, aware that I sound breathless.
‘Nope. What message?’
‘Someone on Reddit has photos of Ivy and Xav in Venice, and it’s launched this entire crazy thread about the wedding—like, they’re questioning whether you really instigated the switch when he was already in love with someone else, and someone from the nursing home even shared that he had visited her stepmother, and—’
‘Whoa. What the fuck?’
‘I know, right?’
‘That’s a massive betrayal of patient confidentiality.’
‘Thank you. And I’m worried that…’ I trail off. My worries are big and vague and cascading off in all directions, and I’m not sure how to sum them up to Ben. ‘That it’ll become a whole thing,’ I finish lamely.
‘Hang on. Putting my earbuds in.’ There’s a pause and some scrabbling sounds. ‘Okay. Reading it now. The de Vere groom switch was a cover-up—blah, blah—my boyfriend said I should share them. Nosy bastard.’ He mutters bits and pieces of the post aloud. ‘I work at the care home—fuck’s sake.’
I blow out a shuddery breath as he reads. ‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’
‘I dunno. It’s gossip, but there’s nothing here about cause and effect. Even if they can prove Ivy was in the picture, it doesn’t mean Xav was planning to break it off, and they can’t prove I wasn’t in love with you, either.’
‘Yeah, but it makes the whole thing look far more cynical,’ I argue. ‘That Christmas Tatler issue landed on the fourth of November. The optics of it look so awful.’
My worst nightmare was that people would find out Xav had jilted me days before the wedding. My worst-case scenario was that they’d pity me—poor, clueless Selena playing dress-up while her fiancé was falling in love with someone else.
But now another scenario is constructing itself, frame by high-definition frame in my unhelpfully vivid imagination, and it’s this: that all the machinations we undertook to save this wedding, all the pivots and deceptions and careful silence around the Great Groom Swap, will make me something far, far worse in the public’s eyes than being the victim.
And that’s being complicit.
That’s the monster that will swallow me whole.