My eyes flick to Honor as I reply. ‘I’ve got you. We’ve got this. Okay?’ God knows, I mean it, and not just in a professional sense. I will use whatever tools are at my disposal to help this incredible woman through the pain that lies ahead for her and her family. If she’ll allow me, being a source of support for Honor Chapman is my new mission.
CHAPTER 9
Honor
Ieventually make it into the office. It’s gone midday, and I’m filled with frustration at the vastly different directions my life is pulling me in lately. Thank God for Di and the car. It would be far more time efficient to take the tube into our offices in Soho, but obviously that’s out of the question. I haven’t been on public transport for years.
So I sit in the car, and put up the glass screen, and pick at some sashimi Di’s picked up for me, and dictate yet more interview questions for Harper’s Bazaar into my phone, and have a catch-up call with Lydia, my executive assistant.
The afternoon passes in a tightly scheduled flurry where there is no margin for error. I approve sample packaging for a new concealer we’re launching later in the year, sit down with my Finance Director to go through the numbers for the first half of the year, and sign off on the proposed media spend and split for the upcoming illuminating primer launch.
It was inefficient to come in, but I get in there whenever humanly possible. The office has a wonderful pulse about it, thanks to the young and insanely enthusiastic team I’ve built around me, that being at home on Zoom just doesn’t deliver.
On the way home, I do a video interview with a new senior candidate for the marketing team, which means that by the time Di delivers me back home to The Boltons in South Kensington, I’ve had almost no opportunity to think about what I’m going to say to Jackson. The press is still running a loop of stories on us both. There were shots of me arriving at Elaine’s house last night in this morning’s papers, juxtaposed with photos of Jackson and Leila cosying up on their press junket up north yesterday.
I arrive home to a scene of domestic bliss, and for a moment I have a wobble, an out-of-body experience where my brain can’t quite process whether what I’m looking at is real or a carefully crafted scene. So much of our family life is curated at worst, fake at best. But no, this is real. My husband is sitting at the vast white marble island that dominates the kitchen, his shaven head bent close to Rollo’s curly mop.
‘Count it out in fives,’ he tells Rollo. ‘Or use your key numbers.’ Rollo was diagnosed with dyslexia a couple of years back, and since then Jackson’s publicly embraced his own long battle with dyslexia to the point that he’s now an ambassador of the British Dyslexia Association. He’s also endlessly patient with Rollo, in a way that I often fail to be, because he understands far better how the little guy’s mind works.
I pause a moment before interrupting this gorgeous little tableau. I’m suddenly nervous in the pit of my stomach. God knows, we’ve had enough arguments over the years, but I never relish confrontation.
‘Hi, boys,’ I say finally, swinging my tote bag onto a bar stool and approaching them.
‘Mummy!’ Rollo swings around in his stool and jumps off at the same time as Jackson pushes his back and stands up.
‘There’s my gorgeous girl,’ he says, and throws his arms open. I stumble into them. The reality of him is always soimpactful, such a relief. He wraps those immense, rock-hard arms around my upper back and squeezes me as Rollo wraps his reed-thin arms around my waist in delight and I close my eyes.
Home. Jackson either has zero shame or is the world’s best actor, because right now he’s acting like he has nothing to be nervous about or guilty for, as if his face hasn’t been plastered all over the papers next to that of his twenty-something co-star.
It’s definitely that he has no shame. He has such an extraordinarily well-cultivated sense of entitlement that he quite honestly believes he can move through life doing whatever (and whomever) the fuck he wants. It must be wonderful to have such all-encompassing self confidence.
I shift my head so I can bury my nose between Jackson’s pecs and inhale as hard as I can while edging one arm around his back. My other hand is on the back of Rollo’s curly head, pulling him into me. Jackson smells like he always does: great, and expensive, and masculine. Excitement and home. Refined and untamed.
And I have that moment, as my nose brushes the fresh cotton of his polo shirt, that I always have. It’s equal parts relief and smugness and wonder that I have him, still. That at the end of the day, he always comes home to Rollo and Serena and me. So it’s with a lighter, fonder tone than I’ve intended that I whisperwe need to have a talkbefore disentangling myself so I can stoop down to hug my beautiful, astonishing little boy, who elicits feelings in me that are completely uncomplicated: pure adoration.
Shortly afterwards, while our housekeeper gives Rollo his supper and Di goes over to Serena’s school to pick her up from a netball fixture, I head upstairs with Jackson to our bedroom. My body and mind are tired and I need a shower and a changeof clothes into something more comfortable. Time to shed the armour I’ve been wearing all day.
I love this room—it’s my retreat, with its lacquered wood floors and stunning bay window and huge white bed. There’s a massive Rococo nude on the wall that Jackson bought me a few years ago at Christie’s. He got into a mega bidding war, but it was worth it. It’s glorious.
‘Unzip me?’ My tone is practical, not coquettish. I turn my back to Jackson and dip my head, and he brushes my hair over one shoulder and pulls down my zip, kissing the nape of the neck.
‘Hi, beautiful.’ He slaps me on the arse. ‘You’re all good.’
I turn around, rolling my bare feet over the soft white rug. Those sandals bloody kill me. But they’re worth it.
I pull the dress off and step out of it, throw it on the bed. Jackson’s taken off his polo shirt, and he stands before me in just a pair of beige linen trousers. He is… a knockout. He always makes me catch my breath, though I’ve done enough work on myself to know that that caught breath is seventy-five percent appreciation and desire, and twenty-five percent knowledge of how many other women wouldkillto be in my shoes in those moments.
That’s why it’s so much more complicated with him than Ally or anyone else will ever understand. That he is so universally desired is a turn-on. That he has other women, and yet he always comes home to me, is a turn-on, if I’m completely honest with myself. Jackson is what he is. He’s never going to be the most profound guy out there; he’s no tortured genius. He’s a very masculine man who has a lot to give and has very healthy sexual appetites in return. He loves women. He loves sex.
And he loves the thrill of the chase, a thrill which, by definition, I can’t really give him. We can play games, of course, but I can’t give him that thrill on a grand scale. I get that. Andgiven that sex is way, way more important to him than to me, I’ve made peace with it.
What I do not like, what is not acceptable, is being made a fool of. The irony of his infidelity is that it adds a frisson to our marriage. It makes it less comfortable, and therefore less predictable. He’s never one hundred percent sure that I won’t have changed the locks when he returns from his philandering, and I’m never one hundred percent sure that he’ll come back. It keeps things fresh. Pathetic, but true.
He comes towards me, grinning that grin that has earned his studios billions of dollars over the years. He’s a sight for sore eyes—perfectly defined pecs above an abdomen that tapers right into those linen trousers. The caps of his shoulders are perfection, as are the sculpted curves of his arms. Those arms slide around my waist and he unclips my bra.
‘Nice lingerie.’ He brushes his lips down the side of my neck. ‘New?’
‘No. Jackson. Stop. I’m not doing this. I want to talk about the fact that you’re screwing your co-star. According to the daily press, anyway.’
