Page 58 of The Spare

Selena

Acouple of weeks ago, Xavier and Ivy shocked everyone by quietly getting married at Chelsea Town Hall. Ben, Flora, and Ivy’s sisters were apparently the only witnesses. While I was nominally invited, I read the room and stayed well clear. The whole thing feels strange as fuck, but I can find it in my heart to be happy for Ben that he got to stand by his brother’s side. I know how odd it was for him to marry me without Xavier as his best man.

Supper at the dower house this evening is the last thing I feel like ahead of a society party the four of us are attending at a neighbouring estate, but, according to my husband, popping round to your in-laws’ to share meals is what families do.

Especially when they live no more than three hundred metres from you (depending on which end of your house you’re standing in).

Never mind that brother-in-law is a woefully inadequate term for my relationship with Xavier, nor that I try to avoid Ivy as much as possible, despite having warmed to her a little—despite my reservations—the evening we watched the Grosvenor finale a few weeks ago.

That said, I admit I’m curious to see Xavier and Ivy in the natural habitat of their new love nest, especially now that they’ve made things official. It’s an itch I have to keep scratching, seeing them together. This reality, where he’s with her and I’m with Ben, is like an odd wrinkle in our time/space continuum, and while I’m enjoying my new reality immensely, it’s still very fucking strange.

Fine. So maybe supper at theirs isn’t the absolute last thing I feel like doing.

The house, when we walk in, is welcoming. It’s an elegantly symmetrical Georgian structure with a square hallway that, although far smaller than the main house’s version, is nicely lit and very warm. Xavier leads us through to the open-plan kitchen, a good-sized room whose main feature is the navy-blue AGA built into the niche where the hearth would once have been. The mouthwatering smell of what has to be roast chicken fills the air.

Ivy is at the sink. She turns. Above her half-apron, I see she’s wearing a designer take on the slutty black dress she had on when I first met her at Harry’s twenty-first. But, honestly, it’s a hell of an upgrade. Her indecently good boobs are still on a platter, but the dress is as well cut as it is low cut, and the gold Versace discs between the thick straps and the skimpy bodice are a nice anchor. By Versace’s standards, this little number is positively restrained, and I give her a mental tick for understanding the assignment tonight.

Ben and I greet her with a kiss on both cheeks—effusive on his part and cautious on mine—and Xavier gets to work opening the chilled bottle of Krug we’ve brought over. The deal was that they cook and we bring the booze from the family cellar.

How cosy.

We stand around the kitchen island while Ivy makes a salad and Xavier clears up after her. It’s warm in here, which suits me, given I also have skin on show in silver Ralph Lauren, and it’s more sociable than Ben and I sitting alone in the drawing room while these guys prep dinner.

Watching the two of them is like watching a nature documentary: a fascinating insight behind the scenes. Xavier, who’s pretty useless in the kitchen—growing up in the modern equivalent of Downton Abbey will do that—has relegated himself to kitchen porter, emptying scraps into the compost bin and stacking the dishwasher, but clearly Ivy is handy, judging by the deft way she peels cucumber and chops chives and composes a dressing in a jar by sight alone. I know from Flora that one of Ivy’s jobs as her companion of sorts in London was to teach Flora how to cook as well as how to navigate the city and generally fend for herself.

Which reminds me that I never got to the bottom of how Xavier and Ivy actually met.

Hmm.

I bide my time until we’re all sitting at the large wooden kitchen table. I would have expected them to serve supper in the dining room, but I’ll admit this is nicer. Ivy has indeed roasted a chicken: a plump, perfectly golden bird that Xavier carves with aplomb, because apparently that’s the only culinary skill you learn as a duke-in-waiting.

‘Can you believe the butcher charged me thirty quid for this chicken?’ she asks us as he carves. ‘It’s daylight robbery! You can get a whole chicken at Lidl for three pounds fifty.’

I can’t hide my grimace. ‘I’m pretty sure cost and quality are directly correlated when it comes to meat. You get what you pay for.’ Thank God she’s no longer required to use her husbandry skills. I can put this chicken in my mouth without wondering what the hell its provenance is.

‘So,’ I say when Xavier has poured us all a glass of Meursault (by mutual agreement, we’ve forgone a bottle of red to ensure we don’t all fall fast asleep on the way to the party). ‘I’ve never quite worked it out. How on earth did you two meet?’

In any other circumstance, it would be an inauspicious question. But Ivy and Xavier’s meeting was the catalyst for blowing my entire life’s plan apart, and, much as I’m enjoying the warm pressure of my husband’s hand on my thigh under the table, I’m incapable of letting stuff like this go. It’s like a mental scrap of peeling wallpaper—I can’t not pick it.

Ben snorts right as Xavier and Ivy turn to each other with wide-eyed looks of alarm worthy of a comic strip.

Busted, mates.

‘I’m sure they’d love to tell you their story,’ my husband says, settling back in his chair, his fingers an anchoring touch on my thigh. ‘After all, we’re all family together, aren’t we? Well, nearly. And you can’t have secrets from family.’

Xavier glares at him as Ivy looks down at her plate. ‘I don’t know why you’re being so cavalier. You don’t exactly come out of this story smelling of roses.’

I sit up straighter and turn to my husband. ‘What does he mean?’ It’s the most isolating feeling, knowing everyone around you has a secret you’re not privy to. Humiliating, too.

‘All I meant to say,’ Ben says in a more sombre voice, ‘is that no one has anything to be embarrassed about, okay? Everything’s turned out for the best, and everyone’s ecstatically happy. I know I am, anyway.’ He massages my thigh, but he’s looking across the table at Ivy. ‘Ivy, love, I’m sorry if I’m being an insensitive twat.’ He forks up a mound of salad and stuffs it in his mouth.

‘What do you mean?’ I ask again, more plaintively. I feel like a small child whose head the grown-ups are talking over.

‘Ben introduced me and Ivy,’ Xavier says in a clipped voice. ‘At my thirtieth.’

He lets the implication drop between us. I was his date that night.

‘Right, but how did Ben know you?’ I ask Ivy, hating the slight tremor in my voice. What I’m really asking is How the hell did you score an invitation to a party like that?