Page 125 of Vivacity
‘Go and give your mum a hug,’ I tell Jamie with an affectionate slap on the shoulder as he attempts to shoot off. ‘She’s barely seen you this afternoon.’
Elena is here with her newish husband, Raphael, a UN colleague she started dating just after I met Soph. I’m thrilled my ex has found happiness. I always knew she was a wonderful person, and far too good for me, a fact she underscored when she dropped by a couple of weeks after our return from Australia totell me she’d had our custody agreement amended to a flexible fifty-fifty.
The generosity of her actions could have knocked me down with a feather.
After the four of us had met up for a surreal and slightly excruciating dinner, I asked Soph what she thought of Elena’s new bloke.
She shrugged. ‘I mean, some people like that wholeadoring and indecentlyhot French nerd who speaks five languages and could feasibly model Swiss timepiecesthing. It’s overrated, if you ask me.’
I raised an eyebrow then, fairly certain that she was fucking with me, and she planted a kiss on my cheek. ‘Girl traded up. Deal with it, Eight. Anyway, you got me.’
I certainly did.
Also, it turned out she and all her friends had been secretly referring to me as Eight the entire time she was working for me. I’m glad I was such an instant open book to her, because I certainly mystified the fuck out of myself for a long time.
Today isthe officialfamily and friendscelebration of Jamie’s sixteenth birthday. He turned sixteen in the middle of his GCSE exams, which was pretty shit for him. We found a compromise—he and his mates did an epic day out at Thorpe Park before the exams kicked off, going on all the most terrifying rides over and over, and we agreed that we’d celebrate with our loved ones and some of his friends in slightly classier style once the exams were over, so here we are. He and I also have Centre Court tickets to far too many matches when Wimbledon starts next week.
The contrast between the contented, well-adjusted young man my son is today and the dejected, emotionally closed-off kid he was when I met Soph is pronounced. She’ll deny it a million times over, but she saved me. Jamie. Us. Our family. She saw me, and she believed in me, and that belief, that incredible compassion and insight and lack of judgement she demonstrated when I had done little to earn it, transformed my life.
She and Philip have shown me that healing is possible from the darkest and most hopeless circumstances, and they’ve taught me another secret, too.
Healing yourself has a ripple effect. Being in the orbit of someone like Soph gave me the courage to do the work, meaning I in turn was able to support my son in getting the help he needed to heal from my failings. I rid myself of toxic relationships—namely Richard Kingsley—and I instead invested in the relationships that fed my soul. My son. My wife. Even myex-wife. Mates like Bren and Aide and Miles and, though I hate to admit it, his annoying younger brother. I even consider their father a friend and mentor these days. They’re all here today with their other halves. Marlowe can now just about look me in the eye. Saoirse, Lotta and Nora I get on famously with.
We are, in fact, celebrating today on the beautiful terrace of the Montague Knightsbridge, the very samegrande damehotel I was once so desperate to get my grubby little mitts on. Miles insisted on making it available for our little shindig, and Saoirse, who is a hugely talented events planner for the Montague and Sorrel Farm joint venture, has made the space look magical without it being a turn-off for teenage boys. She’s even procured a wood-fired pizza oven, which is going down a storm with Jamie and his mates.
I adjust my beautiful little girl in my arms and take a step towards my equally gorgeous wife. She’s radiant in along flowing sunshine-yellow dress. Its huge slit shows off her long, tanned legs, and it puts her spectacular tits on a platter. Lola’s not the only one who has a thing for them. Far more importantly, she’s smiling up at me with more love, more adoration, than I could ever have hoped to elicit in a fellow human.
‘Come over here.’ I take her hand, steering her over to the north edge of the terrace to where Hyde Park is laid out below us in a heavenly early-summer sprawl of green. Cupping Lola’s soft little head for support, I bend and kiss my wife on her plump crimson mouth. Her long dark eyelashes flutter shut, and the familiar awe hits me once again. That I get to spend my life with her. That I make her happy. That, together, we’re raising a beautiful little girl and an almost-man, the very sight of whom makes me burst with pride and love.
‘I love you,’ I whisper. When she opens her eyes, they’re filled with so much emotion.
‘I love you. So much. I’m a puddle on the floor for you. And this’—she smooths a palm down the front of my new ice-blue shirt—‘is making me horny.’
‘Feel free to act on that when we get home.’
‘Oh, believe me, I will.’
‘Home’ is unrecognisable now. With hindsight, giving Soph full creative control over the interior overhaul was hasty. She wasted no time in commissioning the Kit Kemp Design Studio to fill every last inch with colour and print and studs and tassels and triple-framed artwork and fuck knows what else.
It’s an over-furnished nightmare and a migraine waiting to happen, but I have to admit I love it. It feels warm and friendly and welcoming, just like my wife.
It feels like home, which is a good thing, because I spend most of my time working from there on getting our app off the ground while Soph attempts to finish her doctorate in betweenpopping out humans. In homage to the incredible brain of the woman who inspired it, we furnished it with all sorts of personality profiling tools for both clients and professionals, enabling them to match on a variety of measures before they meet. The Enneagram, naturally, is one of them.
We called it Lynx, and this summer, Jamie will complete two weeks of work experience on the team ahead of kicking off his Computer Science A Level qualification.
My fleeting tryst with my wife is broken in the most raucous way by the Montague brothers descending on us. The middle brother in their trio, Stephen, is a thoroughly nice bloke and not here today. Meanwhile, Miles and I have become fast friends.
We spent a lot of time together once I was done gallivanting around Australia, brainstorming on the future of the new-look Montague Group once he hired me as a consultant. Turns out, he may not have wanted the Kingsleys calling the shots, but he did value my input—greatly so. And I found I enjoyed the strategic aspect of the endless post-takeover planning discussions far more when I wasn’t the one having to implement them all.
Spoiler: he didn’t cut nearly enough jobs. I called him a spineless cunt and he called me a cutthroat bastard, and then we went merrily on our way together, establishing what is undeniably the premier luxury hotel group in the UK.
I value his friendship enormously. Underneath it all, we’re actually quite similar: intense, understated guys who feel the weight of our responsibilities all too much but have a real passion for business. He and Saoirse have been regulars at our colourful home for dinner, and the weekends we’ve spent at their Cotswolds pad have been some of Jamie’s—and our—favourites.
Theo, however is the one who’s done the biggest one-eighty, a fact I’m thrilled about, as I came pretty close to avoiding a punch to the nose from him at times. Not one to hold grudges, it appears, he embraced me like a long-lost brother after I handedthe Kingsley empire over to his family on a plate. Apparently, it wasthe most legendary fucking movehe’d ever seen.
‘Here they are,’ he sing-songs, ruffling my hair. ‘The gold-standard parents. I swear, Jamie is the most pleasant teen I’ve ever encountered. It makes me really, really hopeful for the twins.’
I grimace. ‘I wouldn’t be too optimistic.’ Theo and Nora’s twins are feral.
