Page 30 of Untether

‘Look, do you want my advice or not?’ Annabel says. ‘Gracie, give that back to your brother.Now.’

‘Yeah,’ I say sheepishly. ‘Sorry.’ I take a swig of my protein shake and pause to admire myself in the large mirror in my living room. I’m sweaty as fuck after that Peloton arms and legs ride, but I’m looking good. Really good. I run a hand through my sweat-soaked hair, tousling it just the way I like it, and wink at myself for good measure.

Still got it.

I’m not sure how my younger sister manages to make me feel like a badly behaved child, but this little preen is enough to take the edge off it.

‘You might hate hearing about the fact that Giles and I have S-E-X,’ she tells me now in her Mummy Is Pissed Off voice, ‘but not as much as I hate knowing that you’re F-U-C-K-I-N-G everything that moves. Got it?’

‘Got it,’ I mumble.

‘Good. As I was saying,in response for your request for advice, massage is a lovely segue into intimacy. For me, anyway, but for a lot of women, I think. I can’t just go to bed and turn into an S-E-X goddess when I’ve still got bits of alphabet pasta in my hair, can I? The massage kind of relaxes me, I suppose. It gives me time to transition, and it brings my nervous system down, and it also feels like caregiving. Like Giles is making me feel so loved and cared for that I’m less likely to try to kick him in the P-E-N-I-S, you know?’

I do not know, but I can imagine that if someone had put two little humans inside my body, I might feel tempted to kick them in the D-I-C-K from time to time. I make a non-committal murmur that hopefully sounds vaguely sympathetic.

‘And it also allows me to get more present in my body,’ my sister muses. ‘Just having skin on skin. I’m sure there’s some magical nervous system explanation for it, but really, it’s nice. Relaxing. It feels so indulgent. So yeah, usually by the time he’s finished giving me a good rubdown, I’m more than ready for him to slip a hand—’

Yep.

We’re done here.

20

AIDA

Igot the house.

When we divorced, that is.

Thank God.

It would’ve been different if we would have lived in one of the vast houses in Cadogan Square John’s family had owned for generations, thanks to some nebulous gifting arrangement involving a former Lord Russell and a former Duke of Westminster, but I put my foot down when I married him.

Those garden squares in Belgravia are stunning, but they’re stuffy as fuck, and there was no way I was living there. If I had, I would have gotten kicked out by the family estate as soon as I’d quit being Lord John Henry Russell’s wife.

Instead, thank God, I dug my heels in and we bought a nice little townhouse off High Street Kensington, which we upgraded to a spectacular villa in Notting Hill after Kit was born. I’ve been okay with the breakdown of my marriage, but I would not have been okay with losing this place.

This is my home. I’ve poured my heart and soul into it,far more than John has. He kept our country place in Norfolk, and rightly so. It’s a Russell family property, and God knows I have no need for a shooting estate. That house is etched onto his heart, and this house is etched onto mine.

It’s a classic pale pink stucco Notting Hill villa on a gorgeous crescent. It took me ages after we moved in not to feel like I was walking in Julia Roberts’ footprints in the movie every day. While this particular London village no longer feels otherworldly, it’ll always retain its magic for me.

I adore the artisanal cheese stores and chocolate stores and the fancy delis where you can ‘pop in’ for kombucha or homemade red lentil soup. I love the people—the combination of well-heeled locals and wide-eyed tourists. I love the pretty, colourful streets and the cafe society. I love that even going out for a loaf of bread feels like a treat.

And, most of all, I adore coming home and shutting my glossy slate-grey front door behind me and feeling instantly cocooned in my carefully crafted sanctuary. It being Notting Hill, you pay a small fortune for a townhouse with a postage-stamp-sized backyard, but no matter.

There’s a private residents’ garden over the road—not dissimilar to the one in the movie—and the tiny courtyard out the back of our house features whitewashed walls and lots of trailing star of jasmine and a floor of the prettiest grey and white tiles. It’s more like an outdoor room than a backyard.

Up one flight of stairs are our formal reception rooms, papered in a green-and-white leaf print and lined with bookshelves that heave with a mixture of political biographies and romances. John’s Cold War thrillers are gone from the shelves, but you’d hardly notice given the shit-tonne of books I have.

Down here in the kitchen, however, is where I spend most of my time, sitting at our island with a cup of tea or coffee. No matter that the island is cluttered with unopened mail and the boys’ pencil cases and a pile of cook books that I leafed through and bookmarked earlier this week in a fit of productivity that hasn’t actually resulted in any recipe-based cooking on my part.

Yet.

None of it matters, because the clutter is a sign of a happy, if messy, life, and I value that, I cling to that, even more now that I have a failed marriage behind me.

I sit on my favourite barstool, and I swirl a ginger and turmeric tea bag around in my mug as the boys dash around the island. If someone were to take a slow lens shot of us right now, I’d be the sole identifiable subject, Pip and Kit nothing more substantive than a blur of colour and movement.

‘Did you pack your cricket whites?’ I ask. With these two, it’s always a matter of walking the tightrope between ensuring they have the basics while trying not to foster total helplessness. It would be cruel to send them off for a weekend in Norfolk without checking they at least had clean underwear and their plush cuddly toys, but I’m conscious that the more I pick up after them, the less independent they’ll be.

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