Audacity (Seraph)

Tonight is New Year’s Eve. We’re planning on ringing in the new year by eating nachos and listening to Madison Beer and Olivia Rodrigo and Gracie Abrams, because when one of you is eight years old, you’re not letting anyone else dictate the playlist.

I was supposed to be hosting, but instead we’re hanging at my best friend Marlowe’s tiny flat. Her daughter Tabby is usually the first to accept an invitation for a sleepover at mine, but not this Christmas.

The reason: last week, Father Christmas delivered the most spectacularly girly tent mankind has ever seen to Marlowe’s living room, and there’s no way Tabby is leaving it, even for one night.

The tent, bedecked and bedazzled way beyond anything Tabby asked for in her letter to Father Christmas, mysteriously showed up in their living area on Christmas morning. (In reality, I’d paid through the nose for a handyman to dress up as Father Christmas—just in case Tabby woke up—and put the tent up late on Christmas Eve). It’s now sitting pretty where it belongs, in Tabby’s bedroom, as are we. Marlowe and I are shoehorned into the tent alongside Tabby, a can of Sprite, two glasses of champagne, and a bowl of seriously tasty cheese and onion crisps. Good times.

When Marlowe mentioned that Tabby had asked Father Christmas for a tent and she was stumped as to how to make it super magical, I may have hijacked the operation slightly. Tabby had, to be clear, requested “a tent as cool as the one from The Holiday” which I, naturally, sniffed at.

Don’t get me wrong—it’s a cute tent and a stunningly well crafted scene, but why think small when you can create something extraordinary? Marlowe is far too linear, God bless her. Too constrained. She’s also skint, with every last penny of her savings ring-fenced for a cause far more critical than a tent.

Which is where godmothers come in.

I immediately contacted the personal shoppers at Harrods, who were happy to commission and furnish a bespoke four-sided but compact tent for Tabs. When Marlowe hit the roof which, predictably enough, she did, I had one rejoinder.

‘This isn’t about a tent, you realise. You could have gone to IKEA for that.’ Like everything else in her flat. ‘This is about ramming home a very important message to a sick little girl—that sometimes, in a world full of shitty disappointments, sometimes, just sometimes, life not only delivers but blows your fucking mind. It’s always worth believing. If nothing else, I want to help you teach her that.’

She hugged me then, and we both cried a little.

I know I can be overbearing, and I know a part of Marlowe disapproves of my irresponsible spending habits—especially when it comes to Tabby—but whatever I can do to help drum an abundance mindset into that fiercely intelligent little brain I’ll consider time and money well spent.

Not to mention, the tent is fucking amazing. It’s been crafted from a double layer of ivory cotton embroidered with gold stars. The fabric of its ceiling is gathered into a central point from which hangs a battery operated rotating disco ball (no cutout paper stars for us). There’s even a beautifully carved, hot pink lacquered cabinet housing Tabby’s medication. It comes with a sturdy heart-shaped padlock, the key to which Marlowe is wearing around her neck.

But my favourite part of the whole setup is the child-sized sleeping bag-slash-camp bed inside the tent, made from palest pink faux fur with an integrated memory foam mattress, so she can camp out here in grand style.

‘Go into the living room,’ she orders now with an imperious wave of her hand. ‘I want to play doctors and nurses and you’re taking up all the space.’

‘Right you are,’ Marlowe tells her with a kiss to her forehead. ‘Call us on the walkie talkie if you want company.’

‘Don’t forget to take her temperature,’ I say, nodding at the doll who’s supposed to be incapacitated.

I clamber inelegantly out on my hands and knees and blow Tabs a kiss before following Marlowe through to the small kitchen-cum-living room. To her credit, she’s done as good a job as she can with the place. It’s pretty and homely and, most importantly, safe. Or as safe as it can be in New Cross, which is a total shithole.

Because I spent Christmas with my parents in Cologne and thence took a cheeky couple of days to myself at Baden-Baden, today’s been my first in-situ experience of the tent. I’m absolutely thrilled at how delirious Tabby is with her new home. All little girls deserve to dream big, especially the ones who’ve already had to endure shit most adults can’t imagine.

Hopefully, that tent will be a refuge for Tabs. She can dream big in there, but she can also make herself small and secure when she feels the need. She can rest there when she’s exhausted but she still feels like playing. It’s an investment in her joy, essentially, and I can’t think of a better way to spend my excess cash.

God knows, I understand better than a lot of people the power of having a sanctuary that’s all yours, a restorative haven where you can shut the door and heal from all the craziness.

As I told Tabby earlier, every princess needs her castle, and every great warrior needs her retreat.

‘Okay,’ Marlowe says, fiddling with her walkie talkie to ensure it won’t transmit anything indecent to her innocent, sleeping little girl, ‘spill the tea.’

We’re sitting curled up on her (IKEA) sofa, having eaten our body weight in nachos and switched to red wine. Tabby is out cold next door, so this is our window to have a good old gossip. Marlowe and I have been best friends since we met in the Sixth Form at Cheltenham Ladies’ College, to which she’d won a full choral scholarship.

I assess her with amusement. She’s perfectly lovely, a natural blonde thanks to her Dutch mother and who boasts what Anne Shirley would definitely have deemed an alabaster brow. Honestly, given the crap she eats, it’s completely unfair, but given the rest of her life is a steaming pile of horseshit, I’ll let her have her great skin and her amazing daughter.

‘On what?’ I ask innocently. ‘Baden-Baden? Yes, I had a colonic. Yes, it was life-giving. No, I did not befriend or even see Victoria Beckham.’

She sighs. ‘On the new gig. The new guy.’

Now I grin. ‘Marlowe Winters. You can’t handle the tea, and you know it.’

She screws up her face like she’s bracing for impact. ‘I can. You can tell me. I won’t freak out. Have you slept with him? You have, I assume?’

‘Yes, I’ve “slept with” him.’

‘Mmm-hmm. And how was it?’

‘It was excellent, thanks for asking. Very, very promising, especially considering the guy used to be a priest.’

She giggles bashfully. ‘God, it’s so weird. You just, I dunno, turn up for dinner and then go upstairs and shag him? Isn’t it awkward?’

‘You are ridiculous. I wouldn’t even get dinner out of them if I went on Tinder.’

‘True.’

‘And no, it wasn’t awkward, because we used the dinner to discuss our… expectations, and he is really fucking hot, so I was turned on way before we went upstairs.’ I pause. I’m mean, but she’s so easy to rile. ‘And then he made me strip and pose naked on a stool, holding my pussy open so he could go down on me. Then he fucked me from behind on the bed. So, two orgasms. That’s very respectable for a first time, you know.’

‘Oh my God.’ She sets her wine glass down on the floor so she can bury her face in her hands as she drums her socked feet on the floor. ‘That’s mortifying! I would literally die.’

I grab a cushion and swipe her with it. ‘It’s not mortifying! And it’s not even kinky. I’d say that’s a pretty vanilla night. It was hot, we both had a good time. What’s the issue?’

She raises her head, her face stained bright red. She has second hand embarrassment, and it’s adorable and hilarious in equal measure. ‘I just can’t imagine it! Like, standing there and stripping on demand for some guy you don’t know from Adam, and then letting him stick all his… body parts inside you!’

‘That’s generally how sex works, babes,’ I remind her gently. It’s been a while for Marlowe. She, who was the best of all the good girls at school, got totally fucking seduced by her professor in her first year of uni. Seduced and knocked up. That’ll quash your faith in men just as quickly as it’ll quash your career prospects, and once you find out your newborn daughter has a rare congenital heart defect?

Well, that’s the death knell to any kind of social life more exciting than evenings on the sofa with me or the occasional event I drag her to.

It’s not her fault she’s severely out of practice.

It’s not her fault she’s only slept with two or three guys.

And it’s definitely not her fault that she’s been dealt blow after blow by the universe. If she were a Bible character, Marlowe would be Job—with smaller pores.

‘I know.’ She grimaces again. ‘It just sounds so… confronting.’

I reach down and hand her back her glass. ‘Lucky you’re not a hooker, then.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ she says, and she does. ‘So, you’re excited about this gig, then?’

‘I am, actually.’ I’m counting down the days until I finish with poor old Steve, in fact.

‘Because it’s a new sector? Or a new dick?’

I nearly spit out my wine. ‘Marlowe! You dirty little slut.’

‘I am not the dirty little slut in this room.’

‘Fair. And it’s both, if you must know. I’ve been reading up on the estate. It’s fascinating. They’re one of the highest value landowners in the UK. And there’s so much shit to clear up. I’m absolutely itching to get to work.’

‘And the guy?’ she asks slyly.

‘Well, he told me he was going to spend these few weeks thinking about how to put me to work, and I don’t think he meant pulling reports, so that’s a big fat Happy New Year to me.’

‘Oh my God,’ she whispers. ‘Would you have guessed he used to be a priest?’

I take a sip of my excellent St Emilion as I consider her question. Marlowe and I operate on a silent understanding that I bring the wine when we hang out so she doesn’t have to overextend herself and I don’t have to drink cheap vinegar.

‘Not necessarily. If anything, he was less priest-like than I expected.’ Especially in the hotel suite. Especially when he was ordering me to make a mess of the stool’s fabric. ‘But there was something… contemplative about him. He’s a lovely guy, but I suspect he overthinks everything.’

‘Did you find out why he left the priesthood? It’s weird, no? Going from being a priest to paying someone like you to shag him at work?’

It absolutely is. ‘Only the official line—that his dad was retiring and he basically swapped one sense of duty for another and picked up the baton of the investment vehicle. They were adamant about keeping it in the family, apparently. And he claims he’s hired me as a pragmatic measure, so he can fulfil his needs without burning the candle at both ends.’

For some reason, a visual of him waking up, naked and disoriented, in the bowels of a sex club tugs at my heart a little. Poor fucker. At least there’ll be no need for any of that when I’m around. I’ll take care of all his needs and then some.

‘But you think there’s more to it than meets the eye,’ she insists, her eyes wide with the promise of salacious gossip.

I waggle my eyebrows at her over-dramatically. ‘I’d put money on it. Not that I’ll be able to tell you any of it. NDA, remember? Now, I have something for you while I’ve got you to myself.’ I reach down and pull a large envelope out of my handbag. ‘Just keep an open mind, okay? That’s all I ask.’

Marlowe’s scarcity mindset may be completely understandable, justifiable even, but it’s a vicious circle. She needs to start thinking big if she’s to conquer the next round of challenges that face her and Tabby.

She slides the brochure out of the envelope and stares down at it. ‘No.’

‘Babes, it’s not impossible. Please.’

When she glances up at me, her blue eyes are limpid with tears. ‘It is impossible.’

It is a glossy brochure for the paediatric cardiology services at Duke Children’s Hospital in North Carolina, one of the best hospitals in the world at treating conditions like Tabby’s and, as it’s becoming alarmingly clear, her greatest hope right now. Far greater than the wonderful but limited capabilities of our National Health Service, anyhow.

‘I can pay,’ I insist. ‘We’ve been over this.’

‘A single operation would cost a hundred grand,’ she hisses. ‘It’s not an option! The doctors at Great Ormond Street have told us they’re doing their best to put her forward as a research case. That’s honestly all we can hope for.’

But it’s not enough.

‘It’s not,’ I say evenly, ‘because I can pay. Jesus Christ, babes, what the fuck else is a better use of my money than my goddaughter’s life?’

Tabby, who was born with a congenital heart defect called Tetralogy of Fallot, has already survived two open heart surgeries in her short life: one at birth and one when she was three. Unfortunately, she’s on the brink of outgrowing the valve inserted during her last surgery, and her medical team at Great Ormond Street—London’s preeminent children’s hospital—has recently grown concerned that her heart function is deteriorating more quickly than they would have expected.

Long story short, it’s a fucking nightmare—a ticking time bomb, more like—and one we could get in front of if Marlowe would set aside her fucking pride and let me help.

‘You earn that money with your body,’ she says with gritted teeth, tears sparkling on her lashes. ‘You let men do unthinkable things to you, and honestly? I admire the hell out of you for doing it. But you earn every penny of that money, and there’s no way I’m taking any of it.

‘We both know US medical expenses are a black hole, honey, especially for the kind of surgery Tabs needs. It wouldn’t just be one surgery, you know that. It would be a bottomless pit. There’s got to be another way, we just have to find it.’

I shoot her a glare to communicate that this conversation isn’t over, but she looks away to stuff the brochure back into the envelope.

There will be another way.

There always is.

Marlowe might just have to stop thinking like the good, rule-playing girl she is and assume Athena Davenport levels of Machiavellian strategising to pull this particular rabbit out of a hat.