Chapter 38
Selena
‘In around, ooh, ten minutes,’ Ben says, ‘you’ll have a visitor. So I’m giving you fair warning because I know you don’t like being blindsided, and I’m scared you’ll yell at me.’
I sit bolt upright on the den’s sofa, where I’ve been pretending to catch up on correspondence with our interior designer but am actually watching ancient reruns of Project Runway (the shame of it). ‘Who?’ I ask in a panic.
‘You’ll see,’ he says far too cheerfully.
‘Ivy?’ I ask hopefully. She’s the only person I know who wouldn’t judge this… situation.
‘Nope. Go on. Ten minutes. What are you waiting for?’
‘I’ll kill you,’ I say, leaping to my feet and raking my hands through my hair. I’m showered, but I left my hair to dry naturally this morning, and it probably looks like a bird’s nest.
‘Go for it. It’s the only way you’ll get rid of me, remember?
’ He’s been saying that constantly since our deep-and-meaningful a couple of days ago, and it’s very sweet, but right now he’s at risk of putting himself in danger, because I really will kill him.
Who the actual fuck is coming to visit? Aside from Ewan, Xav, and Ivy, we’ve had no visitors at all.
The gates of Belvedere are closed, and literally no one is welcome.
‘I mean it. Who’s coming?’
‘You’ll find out in about nine minutes, sweetheart.’
I shoot him a death stare and race up the stairs two at a time.
My bathroom mirror confirms that I do indeed look a total mess.
I grab my hairbrush and slick back my hair as much as I can before tying it back in a bun.
My face is almost beyond redemption, but I whack on some coral-coloured cream blush and a sweep of bronzer.
The under-eye situation can in no way be salvaged in the time I have, so I ignore it.
I spritz on some perfume as a distraction tactic and am giving thanks that the quality of my athleisure wardrobe (I’m in head-to-toe Alo) elevates my look from couch potato to vaguely respectable when Ben calls my name from downstairs.
Once again: when I’ve dispatched whoever the hell this is in a timely fashion, I’m going to kill him.
I descend the grand staircase like a mutinous child and stop dead halfway down.
Because, standing in the middle of Belvedere’s hallway and looking like a spring fashion shoot come to life, are Athena and Sophia.
‘I was only expecting Athena,’ Ben says sheepishly.
As if that makes a curveball of this magnitude acceptable.
‘You can clear off now, babes,’ Soph tells my husband with a dazzling smile as she brandishes the bottle of Domaines Ott that the butler has brought out in a silver ice bucket featuring the de Vere crest. ‘We’ve got her.’
I eye her and Athena warily from my spot on the sofa.
We’re out on the terrace, the sun is shining (a fact I hadn’t appreciated for the duration of my blinds-down Project Runway marathon), and a spread has appeared before us on the coffee table.
Clearly, Ben prepped the staff more fully than he prepped me.
More importantly, Sophia and Athena are sitting opposite me on the other sofa.
Athena is pristine in an off-white linen jumpsuit, while Soph is a vision in a full-skirted Dolce sundress abundant with lemons.
I’m mortified beyond belief that they’re seeing me at my most grim and exceedingly grateful for my oversized sunglasses, even if the gratitude is based less on protecting my optic lenses and more on protecting my paper-thin ego.
I’m the small child covering her eyes and hoping no one can see her.
My girl crush on Athena never really waned after that gala, and I may or may not have reached out to connect with her on LinkedIn the next day.
I read everything she posts with a mixture of awe and envy.
I haven’t had a crush like this since my schooldays, but Athena’s combination of society polish, spectacular beauty, and head-girl energy is undeniably potent.
(I’m even low-key jealous of my husband for having had a sexual experience with her, although I’ll take that secret to my grave.) Soph is fabulous too, in a flamboyant way I assume requires the kind of unshakeable self-belief that I can’t even conceive of, and together they positively radiate star power.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I mumble into my glass of chilled rosé as soon as Soph has sent Ben packing. ‘I look a total mess.’
‘Lesson number one of the day,’ Sophia chirps. ‘We’re here to see you, not your wardrobe. We couldn’t give a shit what you look like. Got it?’
I nod, chastened if not convinced.
‘What she said,’ Athena says. ‘God, this place is divine. I’ve been dying for a snoop.’
‘It’s definitely the real deal,’ Soph agrees. ‘Why the fuck we live in London, I don’t know.’
‘Er, thank you,’ I say. I suppose Belvedere is imposing the first time you see it.
At least my home is looking fabulous, even if I’m not.
I clear my throat as I ask the question that’s been ricocheting around my head like a ball around a squash court since I came downstairs. ‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’
They glance at each other. ‘Your lovely husband called me yesterday,’ Athena said. ‘He’s worried about you.’
I stiffen, aghast on so many levels. I barely know these women. ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry. Jesus, that’s embarrassing. And he asked you to come up here?’ I can’t believe Ben would overstep like that.
‘He asked me if I’d give you a call and have a chat with you,’ Athena clarifies.
‘Which I was delighted to do, naturally. But I know it’s been a tough few weeks, and I thought a little face-to-face might not hurt.
I very much enjoyed meeting you at the gala.
Besides.’ She smiles, catlike, and I’m transfixed.
‘Like I said, I was dying to see the ancestral pad. Gabe’s family may be minted, but no amount of construction money buys this.
’ She shrugs prettily and jerks her head in the direction of the house.
‘Oh, and I asked Soph to come because she has her uses, believe it or not, in ways that will become clear when we chat.’
‘But…’ My mind is racing. ‘Why on earth would Ben ask you to come? We barely know each other. I’m so sorry for the inconvenience.
’ I may be asking the question, but my brain is already filling in the blanks for me.
Because you have no friends. Because he was desperate.
He was at his wits’ end, and he had to call some random acquaintance for help because he didn’t know what to do with his broken wife.
‘Not an inconvenience at all.’ She raises her glass of chilled rosé as if in evidence. ‘And he asked me to talk to you because I narrowly managed to avoid a similar fate to yours a few years ago—except that it would have been far worse for me, had it got out.’
I narrowly avoid scoffing. ‘Right. So Gabe married you to protect your reputation, did he?’
Another glance between them that I can’t decipher.
‘No,’ she says slowly, ‘but he did pay me for sex, and some old twat tried to make that public knowledge. So at least you’re not a hooker.’
It takes a moment for her words to land. ‘Not a—’ I splutter. ‘What?’
Athena looks quietly triumphant. ‘Told you it was worse.’
I look between them, searching for an explanation for this insanity. ‘I don’t understand.’
Soph sighs and leans forward. ‘We both worked for an agency, very discreet, that pairs extremely highly educated executive assistants with powerful guys who don’t have the time or inclination to have relationships or go looking for sex.
And when I tell you we bent over backwards for these guys, we bent over. ’
She winks at me, but it does nothing to halt the scorching-hot tide of red that’s creeping up my neck. I’m so embarrassed, and I don’t know what to do with this information—or with my own face. But they don’t look anything other than quietly amused.
‘We’ve shocked you,’ Athena says, cocking her head as she surveys me.
She’s so cool, so collected: the epitome of class in her linen jumpsuit.
There’s no way! How could she be a—Julia Roberts looked the epitome of class at the polo, my brain screams at me.
Doesn’t mean she didn’t sell her goods on Hollywood Boulevard.
But both of them? Both of them were prostitutes?
I mean, getting my head around Ivy having been a sex worker was one thing, but these women are every single thing I aspire to be.
And I know from my (prolonged) LinkedIn stalking of Athena that she went to Cheltenham Ladies’ College. Cheltenham Ladies’ now breeds hookers?
Nothing has ever shocked me more in my entire life. Even when Ben went down on one knee, it was less sensational than this.
‘No,’ I protest, my good breeding kicking in a beat too late. ‘Of course not. I—’ I hold a finger up as I drink desperately from my wineglass, and Athena chuckles. ‘So, Gabe—’ I begin, and then find I don’t have the cognitive wherewithal to complete that sentence.
‘Was struggling with returning to secular life after leaving the priesthood and hired me at vast expense to fuck his brains out at work, yes,’ Athena completes without missing a beat.
‘And Ethan hired me so he could spend his time fucking rather than working on his unresolved trauma,’ Soph adds.
I grow aware that I am gaping, which is as ill-mannered as it must be unflattering, and close my mouth.
‘Marlowe worked with us, too,’ Athena says, and my jaw promptly gives up the fight and drops agape once again.
‘To be fair, she only did it for a few weeks to raise money to save her daughter’s life,’ Soph adds. ‘Not like us dirty bitches.’
‘I did it for the power and the access,’ Athena tells me. ‘And the money. And the sex, obviously. I literally slept my way to the top. It’s by far the fastest and most efficient route.’
My brain is scrambling so hard to download and analyse this deluge of insane information that I forget to be self-conscious.
Maybe it’s a ploy on their part to do exactly that—if it is, it’s effective.
Athena is the most pristine, aloof individual on the surface, although there’s an undeniable warmth to her.
The idea that her past is so complex is too much to absorb.
‘Mmm-hmm, I see,’ I say, as if she’s giving me some advice on how to make our agapanthus flourish.
‘The point,’ she says, ‘is that I went to this gala with Gabe one night, and he’d asked me to be the head of his family’s foundation.
He’d bought me a new dress, and we were there with his whole family.
And I’d never been ashamed of what I did, but I’d started to want to be better for Gabe, you know?
He’s such a good man. So this was my chance to legitimise myself and have a fresh start.
I’d actually allowed myself to believe that I deserved it. ’
‘So what happened?’ I ask. She’s so magnetic that it’s impossible not to be drawn into her story, even if it’s equally impossible to imagine Athena as anything short of completely self-assured.
‘There was this guy at his family’s table,’ she says with a shudder.
‘He was a non-exec director of their construction business. Anyway, I’d interviewed with him in the past and walked away after the interview stage, because he was revolting.
He was hammered that night, but he knew exactly who I was, and he proceeded to blow my cover in front of the whole table, including Gabe’s parents, who are super Catholic.
I’ve never in my entire life felt so cheap and shitty as that slimy douche made me feel that night. ’
I lean forward. Okay, that’s horrifying on a level that my situation isn’t at all. My heart breaks for her. The noise around my scandal is deafening, but this is so confronting. ‘You might win,’ I say, and she and Soph laugh. ‘But—so you managed to keep it under wraps?’
‘Gabe stood up for me and made his family appoint me as CEO, bless him,’ she says.
‘We sued the dickhead for breaking his NDA, and he settled. He was personally on the hook for several million quid, which ruined his life.’ I suck in a breath.
Good. ‘And that money allowed me to start up a fintech company that matches angel investors to female entrepreneurs. It’s called karma, bitch. ’
‘It’s also called fucking over the patriarchy,’ Soph supplies.
‘Exactly. So all’s well that ends well. Can you guess why I’m telling you this, Selena?’
I straighten up like a pupil who’s been called on by the teacher and can only hope she’s been paying sufficient attention. ‘Um, because you know what it’s like to be at the centre of a scandal?’ I ask tentatively.
‘Partly. Obviously, I nipped mine in the bud, so I can’t begin to conceive of what you’ve been through.
The roasting the tabloids are giving you is fucking disgusting.
’ She pauses to take an elegant sip of her wine.
‘It’s a bit more than that, though. I don’t know what went down between you and Ben, but I suspect you and I are quite similar, if you don’t mind my saying so.
’ Mind? My ego launches into the cancan at the mere assertion.
‘I think we’re both very adept at putting on a performance, which isn’t a problem in itself.
I don’t know about you, but that performance is what’s always made me feel safe, and then when it gets blown apart, you feel like you’re actually nothing underneath it—as in, you have no intrinsic value. You just feel like this hollow shell.’
Slowly, I lower my wineglass as I stare at her. Is she a hot Yoda who wears the Row? Or are my deepest insecurities tattooed across my forehead?
‘You and I are performative,’ she continues.
‘I get it. It’s a great skill and a huge curse.
Our worst nightmare is being exposed, called out.
Our biggest fear is that someone will find out that, beneath all the polish and bravado and designer clothes, we don’t actually have a clue who we are, or what we want, or why anyone would actually want us for us, and that’s fucking terrifying, and it’s happening to you on a scale that is so bloody unfair.
’ She sits back. ‘And I’m here to tell you not only that you’ll survive it, but that it’ll be the making of you. ’