Page 98 of Audacity

‘She and Jenny are on the case,’ I mumble, leading her through to the main living area.

‘As they should be, but you don’t just need lawyers at a time like this. You needfriends.Oh, hello.’

She stops in the doorway as she spots Marlowe.

‘Marlowe, Sophia. Soph, Marlowe. You’ve heard a lot about each other, obviously. I’m just sorry you’ve had to meet like this.’

‘Hi.’ Marlowe unfolds herself elegantly from the sofa and goes to give Sophia a hug. ‘It’s so nice to meet you finally.’

‘Likewise. She talking yet?’

‘Not really,’ Marlowe says, and I roll my eyes.

‘Thought so.’ Sophia sets the food down on my coffee table and looks around my home, taking in the trio of French doors overlooking a quiet, South Kensington garden square, the abstract art on the walls and the oversized furniture. ‘The pad’s looking great. Clearly that priest of yours is paying you far too much.’

‘Not any more.’

‘The only thing she’s been saying is that she feels like Icarus,’ my traitorous friend says, strolling over to the drinks cabinet to fetch Sophia a wine glass.

‘Oh, excellent. So we’ve reached the stage of conflating our experience with epic Greek tragedies, have we?’ Sophia asks, kneeling to unpack the Lebanese. She’s every inch the glamorous jetsetter in her clingy Skims maxi and white trainers. She looks at me pointedly. ‘“Never regret thy fall, O Icarus of the fearless flight, For the greatest tragedy of them all, Is never to feel the burning light.”Oscar Wilde, my love. Well, we think it was him. Can’t know for sure.’

I roll my eyes again. I see a lot of eye-rolling in my near future. ‘You make it so easy to forget you had a half-decent education.’

‘St Paul’s Girls and Stanford, baby. Don’t for a second think my tits are bigger than my brains.’ She cups her boobs to underscore this statement, and I catch Marlowe staring at her as if she’s some exotic yet incomprehensible creature in a zoo. ‘Anyway, the point is, youknowwe fly high. Youknowwe burn bright. We’re Seraphim! That’s what we do, remember? And when we fall, we may fall hard, but we get the fuck back up again and dust ourselves off and continue on our mission of world domination.’

‘You’re right, of course,’ I say stiffly. I’m not sure I have the emotional capacity for a heart-to-heart with Sophia today. She’ll delve too deeply.

‘What’s with the stunning dress?’ she asks. I may have hung the Gossamer dress off the top of a large oil painting in the middle of my living room. It makes my heart ecstatic and devastated all at once to look at it, but I can’t bear to put it away in my wardrobe. It’s the perfect visual reminder of all I’ve lost, of quite how fleeting my triumph was.

‘That’s the dress Gabe bought her,’ Marlowe offers unhelpfully. ‘The ten grand one.’

Sophia lets out a low whistle. ‘Wowzers. It seems we may have a few more emotions going on here than a certain someone is letting on. Okay, honey.’ She gets to her feet and steers me to the sofa gently. ‘This is where you tell us everything.’

I start with the status of my legal claim, telling her what Jenny told me. She squeals and claps her hands together in glee.

‘It’s poetic, isn’t it?’ Marlowe asks.

‘That this turd went full patriarchal bullshit on her, and now his patriarchal wealth will free her from more patriarchal control? Um, yes.’

Cue eye-roll number three.

She has a point, though. They both do. In trying to entrap me, to subjugate me, Harrington may just have set me free.

‘This is important,’ Sophia continues softly. ‘It may have felt like checkmate at the time, hon, but it’s not. Women like us always have agency. There’s always a countermove. We have power, and we have allies. Don’t forget that.’

‘Thanks,’ I mutter. I’m more touched than I’d like to admit, because one of my predominant emotions since the incident has been isolation.

‘Why don’t we talk about the touchy-feely stuff?’ Sophia suggests. ‘Have a sip of wine, vomit out the stuff that hurts, and then gorge yourself on kibbeh while Aunt Sophia lectures you on all the things you don’t want to hear but absolutely have to, okay?’

‘Good luck with that,’ Marlowe tells her.

‘Oh, I don’t need luck. I’m relentless. Now, drink—and purge.’

I drink. ‘There’s not much to tell. The foundation role isn’t on the table anymore, nor is my relationship with Gabe.’ The phraserelationship with Gabeshould be enough to make me giddy, but instead it cuts like a razorblade through my heart. ‘I misjudged the situation, and it cost me, so all there is to do is regroup.’

The other two share one ofthoselooks.

‘Honestly, don’t do that or I’ll kick you both out.’

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