Audacity: Chapter 51

‘So you’re really not going to fight for the foundation?’ Marlowe asks, a couple of glasses of wine after our little role play. The takeaway has been decimated, and my stomach is uncomfortably bloated. Alas, heartbreak and humiliation haven’t hurt my appetite. If anything, I’ve spent this weekend eating and drinking my feelings.

‘No. It was a glimpse of the kind of thing I can set my mind to, if I think outside that very corporate box I’ve been in. I don’t ever want my role to be dependent on other people’s goodwill, though.’

‘The good thing is that you’ve got the freedom to choose your next move,’ Sophia muses. ‘Whatever you do next will come from a position of strength. Hopefully you feel like you still have autonomy.’

I nod. ‘I do. I definitely felt like it had been taken from me the other night, and it was the most terrifying feeling in the world. I don’t ever want to feel like that again.’ Everything I’ve done in my career at Seraph has been about creating agency. About building a career on my terms. I won’t jeopardise that again.

‘And you really won’t give Gabe a chance?’

‘It’s not about giving him a chance.’ I run my fingertip along what’s left of the creamy hummus and suck it. ‘It’s about walking away to save him.’

This is something I’ve gained enormous clarity on over the course of my navel-gazing this weekend. Walking away from Gabe isn’t cowardly—it’s noble. It reminds me so poignantly of the most heartbreaking line from one of my all-time favourite books, Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. In it, Ellen Olenska—a woman as fallen and scandalous as me—tells her own good man, Newland Archer: ‘I can’t love you unless I let you go’.

In her case, it alludes to his engagement to her cousin. If he broke it off and eloped with her, he wouldn’t be the man of integrity she loved. In my case, it’s about bowing out gracefully so that Gabe can step into his own destiny.

This is a man who gave up everything to be deemed good, only to admit defeat when he couldn’t believe that God’s grace extended to him. I sincerely believe that the priesthood was the dress rehearsal for Gabe: it was the laboratory in which he explored his altruism and the gym in which he exercised his pastoral muscles.

Now he’s in the big leagues, and he can go forth to win back, in his eyes, the respect of his family and the grace of God. I can see, probably more clearly than he can, how intrinsic the foundation will be to him finding his sense of purpose.

He’s finally finding his path, stepping into his power, and I won’t let him feel unworthy all over again. I refuse to sully this shining future he has in any way.

If anything, we came into each other’s lives at the perfect time. He modelled for me a relationship that transcended the transactional, and his professional faith in me was the kindling that inflamed my imagination, allowing me to scale new heights of ambition.

If I can walk away knowing that I, in some small way, set him on a path that is good and right and true, that is worthy of his hopes and dreams, then I’ll consider it an honour.

‘So,’ I ask Marlowe an hour later. ‘What’s the latest on Tabs?’

I have to brace myself for her answer. My losing out on a job and love is… whatever. A gut punch. But this is a little girl’s life we’re talking about.

‘She has a heart condition, is that right?’ Sophia asks. I can see the reticence on her face, too. Talking about sick children is a whole other level of traumatic.

Marlowe nods slowly. ‘Yeah, she was born with it. It’s called Tetralogy of Fallot, which is a bit of a mouthful, but it means that the pulmonary valve, or the valve leading from her right ventricle to her lungs, was too narrow when she was born, so she couldn’t get enough blood flow to the lungs. She had open heart surgery to insert a new valve when she was born, and another one at three, but she’s outgrown that one now.’

The colour has drained from Soph’s face. ‘Jesus Christ. I’m so, so sorry. That is the absolute worst.’

‘Thanks. And yep. It’s shit.’

‘How do they know she’s outgrown it?’

‘They have various markers they follow—her ECGs are showing strain across the valve, and her oxygen sats aren’t great, especially when she exercises. Which is even more shitty because she really likes sports.’

It sounds ominous when Marlowe says it, but the anecdotal symptoms are even worse. Tabs is getting more and more winded during any physical activity, even play, and she’s taking longer to recover. That lack of oxygen is manifesting as everything from headaches and dizziness to a horrible blue tinge around her mouth after exertion. The knowledge that Tabs’ little body is unable to provide her with enough oxygenated blood is fucking terrifying.

‘Fuck,’ Sophia says, pulling her feet up and crossing her legs. She twists sideways on the sofa so she can get a clear view across me to Marlowe. ‘So they need to upsize the valve?’

‘You’ve got it.’

‘And the NHS can do that?’

Marlowe and I exchange a look.

‘They can do it via open heart surgery,’ I butt in, ‘but some private hospitals in the US could do it laparoscopically at far less risk.’

‘And a six figure price tag,’ Marlowe points out. ‘Mid-six figures, all in.’

Soph sits back, realisation dawning. ‘And you don’t have that money.’

‘Nowhere near.’

‘I do,’ I point out. ‘And she’s my goddaughter.’

‘I’m not letting Athena fork out that kind of money when she’s done what she’s done to earn it,’ Marlowe insists.

Sophia blows out a breath. ‘I’m beginning to feel like a relationship counsellor here, but I have to admit I get that. I also get Athena’s frustration.’ She turns to Marlowe, looking her up and down. ‘There’s nothing stopping you from earning that money yourself.’

‘What do you mean?’ I ask.

She grins. ‘Just join Seraph. Easy. Look at you. You’re absolutely gorgeous.’

Marlowe takes a huge gulp of wine and promptly chokes on it.

‘She doesn’t do sex,’ I tell Soph.

‘I hate to be that person,’ she deadpans, ‘but the existence of a kid kind of suggests otherwise.’

‘She doesn’t do sex because of the kid.’ My stage whisper may be a little loud, but I’m at least a bottle of wine down.

‘I had a fling with my professor in my first year of uni,’ Marlowe tells Sophia. ‘He turned out to be an idiot with bad condom skills, but I got the best thing in my life out of it—Tabs. I don’t really do the sex thing anymore, though.’

‘Hmm.’ Soph sounds like Marlowe is a total conundrum, which, if your attitude to sex is as liberated as hers is, I can understand. I turn my head back to her. Sitting between them is beginning to feel like a tennis match.

‘How does the idea of what Athena and I do for a living make you feel?’

‘Absolutely physically ill,’ Marlowe says immediately.

‘Okay then. Not the most promising start. Do you find it morally problematic, or it just gives you the ick?’

‘It just gives me the ick,’ she insists.

‘Ever read spicy romance books?’ Soph wonders aloud.

‘I’m a single mum. What do you think? I have to get my kicks from somewhere.’

Sophia pounces. ‘Aha! So you do have a sex drive?’

‘Of course I do. I just don’t ever want to do any of those things in real life,’ Marlowe says, and Sophia cackles.

‘Look, babes, I get it. You got messed around and now you’ve got a sick little girl to look after. None of that would give me the horn, either. But look.’ She leans forward, and I sit back so she can have this moment of connection with Marlowe. ‘These roles pay like six figures a month. You get twenty-five grand for the first audition, and you get paid up front. You turn tricks for a month or two and then: boom. You’re done. Surgery paid for. You can quit.’

I shoot her a disapproving look. Much as I’m Team Marlowe, I don’t approve of anyone sullying the Seraph name by playing the system. Besides, there’s no way Marlowe would even last two months. She’d probably clutch her pearls and run out of the audition before letting a guy anywhere near her, bless her.

‘I think encouraging Marls to go out for a single date with a nice guy is a more appropriate next step for her love life than throwing her into the Seraph shark tank,’ I protest. Talk about a proposed baptism of fire.

But, to my horror, my gorgeous, prudish friend is staring at my gorgeous, sex-obsessed friend as though she holds the key to all the answers of the universe. When Marlowe speaks, her voice is shaky but determined, and I know Soph has somehow unleashed her fiercest inner mama bear. The one that would sell her own soul to save her cub.

‘You really think I could do it?’