Chapter 39
Selena
‘That sounds very optimistic,’ I say with a shaky laugh, but I don’t feel like laughing. I feel like crying. I feel flayed open, as though this woman can see into my ugly, pathetic soul.
‘It isn’t,’ she says. ‘It’s hard, and it’s painful, but no one would ever accuse me of being an optimist.’
‘Facts,’ Soph sighs from beside her. Athena ignores her.
‘You’ll come out swinging, and you know why?
’ She points in the direction of the house.
‘Because that man is so in love with you he can’t see straight, and it’s only when all the bullshit gets stripped away that you’re forced to confront the truth in the mirror—and that is that he loves you and not all the fancy shit you wrapped yourself up in like armour. ’
I’m so glad I’m wearing my dark glasses now, because my eyes have welled up. She’s gone straight for the bullseye, the bullseye being the secret terror I harbour that, the press having shattered my mask, Ben won’t love what he sees underneath. I suspect my big sniff gives the game away, though.
‘This is excellent motivational stuff, babes,’ Soph tells Athena as she leans forward to scoop up some hummus from the spread between us onto a slice of pita.
‘She’s right, you know,’ she says to me.
‘Do you have any idea what that would have taken for a man like Benedict to admit he was in over his head and call a woman to come and help? It’s incredible. ’
‘I think he just doesn’t know what to do with me,’ I say with a shaky smile I’m sure fools no one.
‘Maybe not,’ Soph says, ‘but that doesn’t make it an act of giving up. It makes it an act of love. He’s set his ego aside and called in the big guns. It’s the sexiest thing ever.’
I cast my mind back to Ben’s saying There’s no fucking way you’re getting out of this marriage unless it’s in a body bag and allow myself a little smile.
God, I love him so much. And I hate that I’m causing him all this distress on top of everything else. ‘Maybe,’ I demur.
‘Not maybe,’ Soph says. ‘Definitely. Alpha guys like Benedict don’t admit they’re out of their depth.
Take it from someone who’s married to a guy who almost blew up his own life because he was so terrified of admitting he needed help.
Benedict could have bought you a nice piece of jewellery or whisked you off for a nice mini-break, because that’s what most guys do.
They throw money and clichés at the problem.
Distraction, right? But he didn’t do that—he called in help because he loves you more than he needs to be your hero.
And that, my friend, is what we call a keeper. ’
I press my lips into a line as I attempt to hold my shit together, but the tears are coming fast now. I want to believe them both so much. I want so much to be enough for Ben, to be a wife he can be proud to love and not a total basket case.
‘Oh dear,’ Soph cries, getting up and scurrying around the table.
She plonks herself down next to me and gets me in a tight sideways hug.
‘Let it all out, you poor little sweetie. Athena, tell her about the safe-word stuff. Honestly, hon, if you think you’re losing the plot, Athena’s story will make you feel better. ’
‘Oh, God,’ Athena says. ‘It was so horrifying. Basically, I was deep in the self-pity party after I got outed. My self-esteem was in absolute tatters. So I go into work, and I just want to die, and Gabe’s so sweet.
He sits me down on the sofa in his office and he starts kissing me.
And I can’t handle the kissing at all, because I feel so undeserving.
And then’—she makes a face—‘I say my safe word for the first time ever right as he tells me he loves me for the first time.’
I clap a horrified hand over my mouth. ‘Noooo.’
‘Yep.’
‘Poor Gabe! And poor you,’ I add hurriedly.
‘Right?’
‘How do you come back from that?’ I ask her.
‘I’m so glad you asked,’ Soph says, squeezing me against her.
She smells incredible. ‘Our friend Athena here needed to learn a valuable life lesson: that, with the right person, vulnerability is not a failure. It’s a beautiful state that can allow you to connect more deeply.
You can’t have true love without it, babes, no matter how much all of us would like to. Just ask my husband.’
‘Thank you for that pop psychology interlude,’ Athena says crisply.
‘Welcome, babes. Now, Selena, repeat after me. You can’t have love without vulnerability.’
‘You can’t have love without vulnerability,’ I mutter, feeling intensely stupid.
‘My issue was the money,’ Athena admits.
‘The fact that I was, in theory, so expensive for these men to buy made me believe I had value. And when you took that away, I felt like nothing at all.’ She lets out a big sigh.
‘It’s a good thing I’m married to a man whose worldview is eminently less fucked up than mine is. ’
‘The thing you need to allow yourself to believe,’ Soph says, rubbing my upper arm briskly, ‘is that Benedict loves you for you. Whatever went down with that marriage proposal is irrelevant, just like Athena and Gabe’s origin story became irrelevant.
He loves you now. Don’t let some stupid shites in the tabloids who can barely string a sentence together tell you what your marriage is. ’
I’m not sure what it is about these two, but their double act of compassion and clarity is immensely effective. I barely know them, but I’ve had a more real conversation with them in the past thirty minutes than I’ve ever had with any of my so-called school friends.
‘It was a pity proposal,’ I admit, looking down at my wineglass because I can’t look at them, not even with my sunglasses on.
‘Xav dumped me five days before the wedding, and I thought I was going to die from the shame of it. Like, I didn’t love him at all, but the thought of everyone finding out that I’d spent my entire life in training to be the perfect duchess and wasn’t actually enough was so unbearable. ’
I begin to physically shake at the memory. ‘So when Ben turned up the next morning and proposed, I was so fucking panicked that I said yes. He’s always been the one I wanted, at the end of the day.’
‘That’s so romantic,’ Soph coos.
‘Not really, because I knew, deep down, that he was only doing it out of duty. But I said yes anyway. So everything the papers are saying is true. No one actually wanted me, and I whored myself out because I’m a manipulative bitch who was so desperate to keep up appearances that I married whichever brother would have me. ’
I slump in my seat, defeated, until Athena drawls, ‘Nice try, bitch. You can’t out-whore us.’
‘Pathetic attempt,’ Soph says, and I giggle a little. They’re so sweet.
‘You were opportunistic,’ Athena says. ‘You made the smart move, and you were intuitive, because you already knew Benedict was the guy for you. And the system doesn’t like it when women are smart, or opportunistic, or intuitive, because it makes these little pricks feel threatened.
So fuck them all. You get the happy-ever-after, and they have to suck that up, despite their best efforts to derail you.
And it’s all out in the open now, so the only way forward is upwards, my friend.
You’ve been busted, so they’ve got nothing to hold over your head now. ’
‘I think they’ll hold this over my head for the rest of my life,’ I admit.
‘And that scares you?’ Soph asks gently. ‘How does it make you feel? And, before Athena comes for me, you should know I’m two years into my clinical psychology qualification and I’m very good at this stuff. I totally sorted my husband out, after all.’
‘Er, his therapist did that,’ Athena says.
‘I made him go to therapy, and I introduced him to his therapist. And I used sex as leverage to ensure he stayed in therapy, so all of that qualifies me to take full credit. So tell Aunt Sophia how you feel, babes. Share. This is a safe space.’
Oddly, it does actually feel like a safe space.
Admittedly, I was horrified to come downstairs looking like a dog’s dinner and find these two queens standing in my hallway, but the rosé and this weird tag-teaming thing they’ve got going on have lulled me into something approaching security.
To be honest, the mere fact of them being here is…
validating, if I can ignore the fact that Ben emotionally blackmailed Athena into stepping in.
Ben’s here because he has to be, because he’s tied his fate to mine.
But having two women who I think so highly of deem me worthy of their time and energy and generosity, at a time when literally the entire world has declared me a pathetic waste of space, is giving me the beginnings of a warm glow of feeling held and accepted.
That, and the rosé we’re chugging.
And so I talk, haltingly and inarticulately and self-consciously.
I attempt to paint a picture of the horror and terror these attacks on my character have brought on, of the physical agony they’ve caused.
I describe being so traumatised that I can’t imagine ever being able to forget this sensation for the rest of my life.
I recount feeling as if I want to hide under a blanket under a table in a dark room where no one can find me because I am so terrified of them ‘coming for me’.
It’s that Marie Antoinette metaphor again, and it’s a good—if melodramatic—one, because that’s how it feels.
Belvedere may as well be Versailles, and they may as well be standing outside the gates, baying for my head.
All the while, Soph hugs me against her side and rubs my arm while Athena nods and smiles encouragingly at me from across the table.
‘You know,’ Soph says when I’ve paused to raise my wineglass to my weirdly dry mouth with a shaky hand, ‘that’s all so helpful, because it’s really specific, and that makes it good data.’
‘How do you mean?’ I ask. The D-word has my ears pricking instantly up. I adore data, and in this context, I’ll take any of it.