Chapter 40
Selena
If infamy comes in physical form, it’s making the cover of Hello! or OK! magazines, and you’d better believe Ben, Xav, Ivy, and me have been regular fixtures in recent months.
The tabloids never got what they were so desperate for: formal clarification by anyone in the de Vere clan as to what the hell really went down inside The Great Groom Swap.
The tabloids have also been able to photograph us to their nasty little hearts’ content as we’ve tentatively made our way beyond the wrought-iron gates of Belvedere and back into society.
We’ve done Ascot and Queens, and they got their money shot when the four of us sat courtside at the Wimbledon Men’s Final as guests of Ralph Lauren.
And get this: the Sun actually paid a body language expert to sit across from us and watch me and Ben for the entire five-set match.
Apparently, its readers were that desperate to know if our marriage was real or a sham.
The definitive conclusion this expert reached was that Ben and I are likely fucking like rabbits.
The Sun’s take?
GAME, SET AND LOVE MATCH: We paid a body language expert to observe the Duke and Duchess of Oxford at a tennis match.
Her verdict after four hours of Wimbledon surveillance: ‘However murky the details behind their wedding remain, their chemistry is off the charts. This couple is well and truly besotted with each other—and likely to be having phenomenal sex.’
I was beyond mortified.
I was also absolutely thrilled.
Ben has framed the front page in the downstairs loo.
It’s six o’clock on a still-hot July evening, and the heat is radiating off Belvedere’s tennis court, where Ben and I are attempting to play mixed doubles with Xav and Ivy.
Ben has the dance version of ‘Le temps d’amour’ pumping out from a free-standing speaker at the edge of the court, and it’s giving South of France.
The holiday vibes are real—the boys and I have all taken the week off work—and the ice-cold rosé is flowing.
Battling with Francoise Hardy’s dulcet tones are the less dulcet shrieks of delight coming from the pool next to the court, where the twins are hosting some friends for a couple of nights.
Xav has bought all manner of tacky pool toys for ‘his’ girls—think flamingo rings and gigantic sunbathing floaties with holders for their Stanleys—and, judging by their screams, they’re having a ball.
The Wentworth-de Vere offensive on Hartwell House worked, and Rose and Lily apparently made some genuinely non-bitchy friends over the course of the summer term, which is a greater accomplishment than I managed at Le Rosey, that’s for sure.
I don't speak to Annabel or Minty any more. Technically, they cut off contact with me after Wedding-gate, but let’s face it: they did me a favour.
My new therapist, Lynne—referred by Soph—says I need to guard my energy more fiercely.
When your brain is convinced that everyone thinks you’re a failure, a handy first step to mental tranquillity is ditching the spiteful little bitches who do actually want you to fail (only she put it more professionally than that).
I adjust my visor. The sweat is making it slippy.
Xav has been relentlessly taking the piss out of me for wearing full tennis whites when the boys are playing in nothing but swim shorts and running shoes, while Ivy’s in a very unsupportive string bikini top and denim cut-offs.
At some point, she’ll give her husband a black eye with one of her unshackled boobs, but I doubt he’ll mind.
He can’t take his eyes off her, which is proving problematic for his game, but the disadvantage is equalised by the fact that my little white minidress is having the exact same effect on Ben.
Tennis coaches have been a regular fixture at Belvedere these past couple of months.
I adore tennis, having captained the girls’ tennis team during the summer term at school.
The boys are both excellent players, and twice-weekly coaching has really brought Ivy’s game up.
She’s naturally sporty and, more importantly, scrappy.
She won’t cede a point without expending every ounce of energy available to chase the ball.
‘Out!’ Xav shouts as my serve lands perfectly on the line.
The ball is not out. This is definitely a case of human error, or, more specifically, of Xav being overly focused on his wife’s tits.
‘No fucking way was my wife’s serve out,’ Ben retorts.
‘Let’s check,’ Xav says, and the four of us run over to the smart net post.
A little backdrop: back in May, when I was having my extended meltdown and Ben was hiding out with me, he and Xav hatched a plan to install at vast expense a smart court system called Zenniz. The reason? They are competitive bastards with far too much money.
Ben taps the ‘shot replay’ button on the Zenniz machine’s touch screen and we watch as it confirms what we already knew: my serve was in.
‘Suck it, bitches,’ he says to Xav and Ivy as we high-five each other.
‘Fifteen-love. Try to keep your eyes on the ball,’ I tell Xav with a self-satisfied smirk.
‘She’s not wrong,’ Ivy mutters.
As we walk back to the serving line, Ben slaps my bottom. ‘Fuck me, you’re so sexy. I cannot with this prim little schoolgirl thing.’ He leans in. ‘I’m going to fuck you so hard later.’
‘Er, try keeping it PG, please,’ Xav calls. ‘There’s family around.’
I swivel around and bounce the ball a few times as I prepare to serve. ‘People in glasshouses shouldn’t throw stones,’ I yell at Xav. ‘Or should I say orangeries?’
Xav instantly goes beetroot. Ivy honks out a laugh, and my husband doubles over. ‘Dead. Oh my fucking God.’
‘Just tell me when you’re ready,’ I tell Ivy sweetly as I prepare to throw the ball upwards for the next serve.
We win the game without ceding a single point.
An hour or so later, I’m feeling extremely relaxed. It’s partly due to the fact that Ivy and I are lolling in the pool on the twins’ abandoned floaties, and partly due to the thorough seeing-to my husband gave me after we won our tennis match.
He bent me over the sturdy vanity in the pool house bathroom, flipped up my flirty little tennis dress, dragged the built-in shorts aside, and fucked me like the world was ending as he growled a steady stream of filth in my ear.
It was completely inappropriate and extremely disturbing, and I came so hard I’m surprised I’m not still seeing stars.
I have no reason to doubt the depth of Ben’s feelings for me these days, physically or emotionally, because he tells me—and shows me—in great detail, every hour of every day.
But do you know what’s even more romantic than getting a random text from him in the middle of the day saying, I love you?
It’s getting a random text from him in the middle of the day saying, Can we have a chat later, but don’t worry, nothing’s wrong. I just want to find a date for us to meet up with Pieter in Knokke-Heist.
Because my husband is an RSD king now, and he is all too aware that, for a brain like mine, an out-of-context Can we chat? is like lobbing an emotional hand grenade at me. He’s my brain’s biggest cheerleader and most anxious helicopter parent. It’s his love language, and I adore him for it.
‘I have something to tell you,’ Ivy says now, pulling me out of my post-orgasmic fog and into the present. We’re alone, the girls having gone inside to get changed and our menfolk stoking the barbecue out in the summer kitchen that serves as their tiny manosphere.
I turn my head towards her. She looks pretty dreamy herself, and I wonder if she didn’t get the same treatment as I did after the match. Like the rest of us, she has an epic tan from hanging out at Belvedere. She looks golden and glorious and glowing with health and—
‘Oh my God,’ I say, scrambling up onto my elbows as the floatie lurches beneath me.
Her smile is radiant. ‘Yep.’
‘Oh my God. That’s amazing! Fuck, I’m so happy for you!’
‘Thanks.’ She’s grinning so widely it’s almost splitting her face in two. ‘It’s early days, but I wanted to tell you.’
‘How early?’
‘About eight weeks. So keep it under wraps, okay? There was no way I couldn’t tell you.’ I can’t see her eyes behind her sunglasses, but her voice is shaking. ‘You’re the closest thing I have to a best friend, apart from Flora.’
Oh, Jesus. The tears come out of nowhere, and I press my lips together for a moment, trying to steady myself. ‘Yeah. Same,’ I say eventually, because it’s true. ‘Eight weeks, wow! How are you feeling? Hang on—haven’t you been on the rosé all afternoon?’
‘Nope. Elderflower cordial. I’m sick of it already.’
I stare at her completely flat stomach in awe. ‘My God. There’s a baby in there. That’s crazy. Is Xav delirious?’
‘He’s beside himself,’ she says softly, and my tear ducts pour forth again. Jesus. Thank fuck it all worked out. Thank fuck Xav found Ivy and I found Ben.
‘I’ll bet. I thought your boobs were looking particularly good.’
She reaches up and cups them. ‘They’re growing even faster than the baby. They’re fucking sore, though. But weirdly erogenous? I don’t know. The whole thing is super strange.’
‘Well, they look great. So the line of succession is secured. Does Charlotte know?’
‘No, and we’re going to hold off a few more weeks, so keep it under your hat. I can’t bear to have her stressing about it all. Can you imagine what she’ll be like?’
I giggle. ‘Maybe the baby will mellow her. You are carrying Xav’s ancient seed, after all.’
‘Ew. That’s so upsetting. And you’ll have to get Ben to knock you up soon—you don’t want my and Xav’s grubby little bloodline getting the title, do you?’
‘Tell me about it,’ I groan. ‘I just want a few more months of being married and actually being happy, now that the media circus is finally dying down. Is that too much to ask?’
She pulls up her sunglasses, and I see that her eyes are wet, too.
‘No,’ she says. ‘None of us would ever begrudge you that. You take your time. And in the meantime, Xav and I will give the tabloids their next headline.’ She pats her stomach, and I muse that the papers will surely have a great deal to say about the fallen heir knocking up his not-remotely-blue-blooded wife before the actual duke knocks me up.
‘Whatever headlines you can generate,’ I say, lying back down, ‘I’ll be exceedingly grateful.’
My therapist says (yes, I have become one of those dreadful people who start too many of my sentences this way) that it’s harmful to compare ourselves to others with different personality types.
She says it’s like comparing apples with oranges.
But in my search for that elusive holy grail of authenticity, whatever that is, I find myself holding my sister-in-law up time and time again.
Ivy doesn’t wear a mask. She doesn’t understand the concept of performing.
She’s only ever been herself. And perhaps that’s all there is to it, really.
As I rebuild my confidence, shard by shard, from the debris at my feet, I gradually widen the circle of people I feel safe showing my true self to: the self whose nervous system can’t tell a nasty social media comment from an actual lion, whose brain never, ever turns off, who overthinks absolutely everything.
And, the more I understand my special, exhausting brain, the more I grow to appreciate it.
A different type of brain may not have been able to build a business empire, to juggle a million projects, to make connections between seemingly random aesthetic references in her work, to dream up great, escapist creative visions in the name of relentless dissociation.
These days, I spend less time cursing my brain and more time trying to extend it some grace.
It’s striking how often said brain comes back to that old housemistress of mine, the one who marvelled at how good I was at going after what I think I want and how staggeringly poor I was at knowing what it actually was that I wanted.
These days, I know exactly what I want:
The unconditional love of the green-eyed man I could never look away from for all those years. Not across a tennis court. Not across a crowded ballroom.
He wasn’t the brother I was told to want.
He wasn’t the brother I was told to marry.
But he was, and always will be, the brother for me.