Audacity (Seraph)

FOUR YEARS LATER

Nat and her team are magicians.

The green Gossamer dress that’s hung in my wardrobe all these years, taunting me with its perfection, its expense, its memories, is getting a second shot at glory tonight.

The only snag?

After growing and delivering two babies, I’ve gone up at least a dress size.

Enter the magicians. They’ve somehow reengineered it, expanding those endless rows of tasseled chevrons horizontally so that it skims my curves just as beautifully as it did that night.

That night.

I have mixed feelings about it now as I look back. I was so happy, and then so shattered. I truly believed I’d overreached. Dreamt too big. Dared too greatly.

For a few days, a few years ago, I was almost stricken enough to believe that audacity was a bad thing, a character flaw that was both unseemly and bound to bite you in the arse.

To that version of myself I say:

Look at me now.

Once my hair and makeup team have left, I take a final look in the full-length mirror in my and Gabe’s bedroom. Before we got married, we rented out the Manchester Square townhouse and instead bought a gorgeous Georgian pile in Ham, near Richmond, whose old walled garden had us both falling at first sight. It’s less convenient for town, but it gives us more space to dream.

As I walk down the corridor towards Gaia’s nursery, I’m struck by the sheer volume of photos on the walls. I’m only thirty, but my life is so rich with memories already. There’s our safari in the Kruger. Gus’s birth. Gaia’s birth. Multiple shots of my bump. And, of course, my favourite selfie of us bathed in a pink sunset at Cape Sounion, seconds after Gabe proposed. Behind us stand the stunning ruins of the Temple of Athena Sounias and the rose-hued Aegean Sea.

When he asked me to marry him, he said he wanted to pay homage to the most incredible goddess he’d ever met in front of an ancient temple honouring her glory.

Pretty romantic for a guy who only believes in one true God.

I creep into the nursery, which is lit by a rotating nightlight that casts an endless cascade of stars across the walls. Our nanny, Agnes, gives me and my dress an approving thumbs-up from the rocking chair in which she’s sitting, and I grin at her as I make my way across the room to peer into my daughter’s cot.

We named our son Gus for St Augustine, and our daughter Gaia for the goddess of the earth. (It’s called compromise.) The six months of data we have for her have confirmed unequivocally that the goddess energy is strong with this one. But you wouldn’t know it right now. She’s flat on her back in her white embroidered gro-bag, mouth pursed and arms raised cactus-style and eyelashes feathery arcs against her pink cheeks.

She’s simply the most exquisite sight I’ve ever seen.

I blow her a kiss and mouth goodbye to Agnes before descending the wide staircase and locating my boys in the den where they’re snuggled up watching some show about diggers together. My husband is looking dangerously hot in his tuxedo, our two-and-a-half-year-old son in his favourite pair of brushed cotton fire engine pyjamas. His dark hair is fluffy and his thumb is in his mouth, his index finger stroking his cheek: a dead giveaway that he’s knackered. Agnes will have no problems getting him down tonight.

They both look up as I enter the room. My husband’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘Holy… cow. Doesn’t Mummy look every inch the goddess tonight, Gus?’

He’s so charming. And he looks like he wants to eat me for dinner. I smile at him and smooth my hands over my hips. I’m thrilled to be getting another chance to give this dress a whirl. I couldn’t care less that I’m still carrying a little baby weight—I didn’t build my appeal by being the thinnest woman in the room, and I’m not about to start now. ‘Thank you, darling.’

‘So. Fucking. Hot,’ Gabe mouths silently over Gus’s head, and my smile turns seductive.

‘So pretty, Mummy,’ Gus chirps, having unplugged his thumb. My heart melts again.

‘Merci, mon coeur.’ I bend and cup his little face in my hands as we gaze at each other. ‘T’as fait pipi? T’as bien brossé tes quenottes?’ Have you done a wee-wee? Have you brushed your teeth properly?

‘Oui, Maman.’

‘C’est bien mon petit loup.’ That’s my good little wolf.

I speak French and German around Gus whenever I can. I’ll leave Italian for another couple of years. Gabe accuses me of being a tiger mother, but this is the best age for him to learn. He’s like a sponge.

Gabe extracts his arm from behind Gus’s warm little body and plants a kiss on the crown of his head. ‘Night, little man. I love you, but we’ve got to head out. Mummy has an award to accept.’

The ballroom at The Dorchester is even more resplendent than usual. The botanical gardens at Kew have helped to create a greenhouse air with the loan of a staggering amount of stunning potted trees and plants for the evening.

I should know. I’m on the organising committee for this event, for my sins.

The Audacity Foundation has taken its usual two tables near the front of the room, which is handy, given I’m a keynote speaker again this year. Notably absent is Giles Harrington. While the mere thought of him makes me shudder, his dirty money is doing very nicely. I ploughed it all into starting up that platform I designed back at business school for matching female entrepreneurs with female angel investors.

It’s been a real joy to watch an army of women thriving thanks to his misogyny.

Next to our table are the usual representatives from The Wolff Foundation. Having shamelessly copied our model over the past couple of years, Anton and Max are runners up for the award for British Philanthropist of the Year.

Sometimes bad girls do finish first.

‘Show me my grandbabies,’ Maeve demands almost as soon as we’ve sat down at the table. I pretend to sigh, when really, I love showing my kids off. If they weren’t the most accomplished, advanced children on the planet, I probably wouldn’t be so bothered, but they are. I hand over my phone to show her a video of Gus, in full fireman costume, singing Frère Jacques. Both his pronunciation and his pitch are perfect.

Since they made the decision to judge me on my merits and not on an arbitrary label that apparently put the fear of God into them, Maeve and Ronan and I have got on famously. I find it fascinating that we humans have such a ready fear response. We armour up so quickly when something or someone feels strange or unfamiliar or in any way unsafe. But when we take the time to get to know people, much as it irks me to admit it, most of us aren’t as awful as we seem.

‘I bloody love that you’re wearing that dress,’ Mairead tells me from across the table. ‘You make vindication look really, really great.’

‘You certainly do, love.’ Maeve lifts her glass to me, and I get a little misty-eyed until I remember I’m a badass businesswoman who has far better things to do than get weepy over a sentimentality or two.

Mairead and I have become firm allies. She had a gigantic fight with Brendan a few years ago over some land that his company had earmarked for a new mall. It will surprise no one to learn that Mairead won, and the result is a beautiful equestrian centre with stables, a decent-sized paddock for an urban area, and an indoor arena. The equine therapy it offers is spearheaded by some experts she knows and funded by us.

The Audacity Foundation is quite the family affair.

As the initial speeches drone on, my husband is happy to provide some entertainment of his own. His arm draped languorously over the back of my chair, he proceeds to pour a steady stream of love and filth into my ear.

‘The things I’m going to do to you when you get home.’ His fingertips brush my shoulder oh so lightly. ‘You’re a fucking vision, and I’ve never been more proud of what you’ve achieved.’

‘Tell me I’m a good person and I’ll stab you with my fork,’ I say under my breath while staring straight ahead. If this award paints me as some do-gooder, I’ll be furious. Happily, the foundation’s PR agency has enough interviews lined up with the broadsheets, financial press, and glossy magazines over the next month for me to set the record straight.

‘I’m not that foolhardy. But your competence has been my kink since I met you, and I’m going to show you just how much your talents turn me on as soon as we can get out of here.’

‘It was my competence you liked in that Seraph photo, was it?’

He groans against my jaw. He still has such a boner for that photo. There’s a reason we have a random bar stool in our bedroom. ‘You’re competent at everything.’

I turn my head and cup his face. ‘Don’t get too starstruck,’ I whisper in his ear. ‘I want you to treat me like a whore tonight and get me on my knees as soon as we get home.’

There was a time when I felt typecast by my background. Limited. I felt that the stars, in all their dazzling celestial glory, weren’t mine to reach for.

Now that I’m there, I enjoy nothing more than embracing my past. My unique, perverted, crazy past that led me to this man.

When my name is called, I find myself hoping I haven’t turned Gabe on too much. Given this is his award as much as mine, I’ve insisted that he join me on stage, and no one likes a philanthropist with a boner.

His grip is firm on my hand as we weave through the tables to thunderous applause. At the next table, Anton stands and shakes Gabe’s hand before planting a kiss on my cheek.

‘That’s my girl,’ he says with a wink.

Max, Dex and their wife Darcy are applauding, too. Darcy, who’s in a gold dress that’s definitely not appropriate for an event this formal and utterly fucking fantastic, puts her fingers in her mouth and wolf-whistles at me.

‘Thanks, babe,’ I mouth with a grin.

Gen looks disapprovingly at her sister before blowing me a kiss.

The Alchemy women are the best.

I have a short, punchy speech planned. It will remind the great and good of British philanthropy that running a successful non-profit doesn’t automatically arise from a desire to do good. Success comes from running it just like a business. From adhering religiously to KPIs. From obsessing over efficiencies as aggressively as any hedge fund and being as bold with your experiments as any self-respecting laboratory. And from being as shameless as possible when it comes to harnessing the incredible expertise of people far smarter, far more knowledgeable, than you are around the world.

I will remind them, most importantly, that every commercial shark like me will benefit from having someone of vision and decency and unwavering faith standing beside them.

Someone like Gabriel Sullivan.

As I ascend the stage, my husband’s hands linger lightly on my hips.

‘Up you get, sweetheart. Show them all what you’ve got.’