Page 62 of The Spare

And the clouds part.

I’m actually standing next to Benedict an hour or two later when Ivy shows up. My husband’s arm is draped lazily over my shoulder, even though we’re both carrying on entirely separate conversations with our hosts, Jack and Lydia. He draws absent-minded doodles on my upper arm, and I tell myself that’s a good sign. It’s not disinterest; it’s a sign of intimacy. Affectionate familiarity.

‘Can you show me where the toilets are, please?’ she asks me.

I flinch inwardly—there’s no quicker route to social Siberia than using words the upper classes simply don’t tolerate, like toilet instead of loo—but keep my thoughts to myself. If it were me, I’d be trying to assimilate, swapping out my toilets and serviettes and dinners for loos and napkins and suppers, but it strikes me, the pitch-perfect Versace aside, that Ivy gives far fewer shits about this stuff than I do.

‘Of course,’ I say. ‘Excuse us a moment,’ I add to Lydia.

I lead Ivy out of the main drawing room and across the hall. There’s a powder room near the front door, but two women are already standing outside it. I’ve been here a few times before with Minty, so I know there’s another loo out the back of the kitchen, off the ample utility.

The kitchen is filled with catering and waiting staff. On the large island stand trays upon trays of bowl food, ready to be carried out and handed around in the hope of lining stomachs. I trill a smooth ‘Excuse us!’ as we weave through the mayhem and through the utility room. One person has beaten us to it—the loo door is locked—but it feels good to have a breather from the party.

It seems Ivy feels the same, because she slumps against the wall and lets out a huge breath, her entire frame deflating. ‘Oh my God,’ she says. ‘These people are exhausting.’

I turn to her, considering. If I think people are observing me and Ben, then I can’t imagine how scrutinised Ivy must be feeling. And they aren’t even her people. I may not love the MO of most of the women in this room, but by God, I know the script well enough that this party could be my opening night in a West End play.

‘If you feel like you’re in a goldfish bowl,’ I say, ‘then you’re not the only one. But yes, exhausting is a fair descriptor.’

It’s not that the people are exhausting, per se—it’s that being around them is exhausting. Staying polished. Socially adroit. Balancing warmth with being reserved. Making an effort but not being too, you know, extra. Constantly pulling rank, but in a classy way; reminding people of your social status without namedropping too openly—or eagerly. And if you think that’s just me, you’d be wrong, because the jungle has nothing on the social hierarchy at parties like this one.

‘They’re so nosy,’ she says, pushing her fringe out of her eyes. ‘But they ask questions in this really, like, strident way? Like, it’s so in your face that you forget that answering them is optional.’

‘It’s called blinkered entitlement, darling, and it’s been bred into them so hard that they’d never dream that someone would actually call them out on it. What did you do?’

‘Xav mainly rescued me,’ she confesses. ‘He’s good with them. He has this kind of quiet confidence that puts them in their place, but without being rude, if you know what I mean?’

I nod approvingly. ‘Glad to hear it.’ I do know what she means, and I’m relieved. Xavier’s entitlement, his social accreditation, is precisely the kind of indisputable, Teflon-coated armour he and Ivy could use right now. I realise as I’m saying it that, while I don’t exactly like Ivy, she was by far the person around tonight’s supper table with whom I was least pissed off, so there’s a warmish kind of… goodwill building in my heart towards her. ‘The useful thing about people like that,’ I find myself confiding, without really meaning to, ‘is that they’re so thick-skinned that you can actually be quite rude back without their realising it. You kind of have to brazen it out.’

She grins at me, and I understand all over again what it is about her that drew Xavier to her: the Versace-encased breasts aside, that is. She really is very pretty and very natural. Sincere, I suppose.

‘I’ll try that,’ she says, then her face grows serious. ‘I hope you don’t mind my asking, but are you okay? After dinner, I mean.’

I frown. ‘I’m fine.’

‘It’s only… speaking of thick-skinned, I thought Benedict was a bit dickish earlier. Everything seems to roll off him like water off a duck’s back, so I genuinely think he doesn’t realise when he’s trampling all over other people’s feelings.’

Her psychoanalysis of my husband is as unwelcome as it is accurate. ‘I didn’t realise you knew him so well,’ I say stiffly.

‘I don’t at all. I just felt like—the way they were telling the story about how Xav and I met, it all felt so deceptive, like it was this big cover-up, and it really wasn’t. It just kind of happened. But I don’t think they were very diplomatic this evening, and I wasn’t very impressed.’

I blow out a breath. ‘Thank you,’ I say ungraciously.

‘If he upset you, you should say something. He needs to know.’

‘No. Absolutely not,’ I insist. The very thought of confronting Ben is horrifying. ‘It’s early days. I don’t want to rock the boat.’

She scoffs. ‘I wouldn’t worry about that. I had a massive go at Xav even before we got together, because I thought they were both being ridiculously overprotective of Flora to the point of being really toxic. You have to call them out on this shit. Also, you guys were forced together so quickly. You haven’t had time to rub each other’s corners off yet. That happens now.’

Easy for her to say. Clearly, she doesn’t have the misfortune of reacting to every confrontation as though it’s a near-death experience. Anyway, I am absolutely not taking relationship advice from a twenty-four-year-old former hooker. I’m viewing these first few months of marriage as a massive PR exercise. A giant sales pitch. Rather than bossing Ben around or trying to rub his corners off, I’m trying desperately to persuade him he made the right decision.

No one is out of the woods yet.

‘Not happening,’ I tell her with a tight smile. ‘I’m far too busy trying to make sure he doesn’t run for the hills.’

Her mouth drops open. ‘Selena! That’s an awful thing to say. Of course he won’t run.’

‘You’re one of the very few people who knows the truth,’ I say, ‘which is that he didn’t plan this. So forgive me if I’m not willing to nag him until he throws in the towel. It’s easy for you to say. You’re in a love match. Xavier clearly adores your feistiness, whereas Benedict mainly knows me as an uptight pain in the arse.’