If a woman, an individual woman multiplied by billions, does not believe in her own discrete existence and therefore cannot credit the authenticity of her own suffering, she is erased, canceled out, and the meaning of her life, whatever it is, whatever it might have been, is lost. This loss cannot be calculated or comprehended. It is vast and awful, and nothing will ever make up for it.
I never met Nigella Lawson, not yet. She is still relevant. She is the battered wife. The super woman who drowned her sorrows in cocaine as her former husband lay dying of cancer and her ex husband allegedly emotionally brutalized her.
I only meet women like Nigella when they become irrelevant.
In my distant social orbit, light years from the warming sun of acceptability, circle the flotsam and jetsam of international society. Isolated by ignominy, the ex wives of current politicians, media titans and corporate mega moguls float in and out of the rooms of AA, expensive treatment centers in the Arizona desert, The San Fernando Valley and Malibu.
Aping the lives they once had with limitless funds, they buy a few stems of bruised tuba rose* from the same florist who once filled their many mansions with exotic blooms. Sumptuous bouquets placed on valuable escritoire, on silvered night stands, on grand dining tables.
She stands briefly on the threshold, looking at her guilty feet, apologising for the frugal fist of sweet smelling flowers. The florist looks on piteously knowing that her younger, more glamorous successor can spend whatever she pleases.
The lonely ex-wife arranges a slim vase in her well-appointed but humble apartment in Pimlico moments from where she and her spouse once lived on Eaton Square.
These frosty, cast off ex-wives, their faces wet with angry tears, looking to half-baked sober life coaches in first-rate treatment centers to recalibrate their lives. Drinking away their sorrows, dumped by men whose power they loved and whose money they spent. Yoga, sobriety, macrobiotics, spending, using, crying… nothing seems to work because all these women want is the sweet taste of revenge.
This week, one very lucky ex-wife gets her dues. She waited patiently on the sidelines of her ex-husband’s life to witness the crushing downfall of her Nemesis. Today, American born, Kay Saatchi is not only back in Charles’s life but has had the delicious pleasure of helping dispense the woman who caused Kay pain beyond description: Nigella Lawson.
Kay is delightful. I’ve met her on numerous occasions in Los Angeles. Of course she’s delightful! A man like Charles Saatchi wouldn’t marry an idiot. Kay is everything a powerful man would want, she is elegant, super smart, she has exquisite taste. Kay, nowadays, is sober. Yet, when Kay was drinking, she had an unpleasant habit of blacking out and talking gibberish about Charles. She couldn’t and wouldn’t stop. Even her best friend wouldn’t know how to stem the tirade. Her life, it seemed, could only be nothing… without Charles.
She would disintegrate into a seething mess of Charles Saatchi resentment.
The only hook Kay had in her ex as she watched in increasing horror as Nigella used Charles as a spring-board into her own rock solid career as international domestic goddess… was her/their daughter Phoebe who Kay moaned constantly was ignored by her father. When I asked Phoebe if her father ignored her over Christmas dinner a few years ago… she denied it, looked sadly at her drunk mother and told me that the only problem parent… was Kay.
Now, things are different. Kay is sober (unlike Nigella) and Kay’s undying love and loyalty for her ex husband has been rewarded by his begging Kay to help oust Nigella. Kay will never be Mrs Charles Saatchi ever again but she has made herself indispensable to him during his time of need… once again firmly cementing herself back into his life.
It is hard to explain to ordinary people the intoxicating effect of unlimited cash, how women like Kay, Nigella and now Trinny Woodall would willingly get involved with brooding Charles Saatchi. A man who throttled his ex wife in public. A man so ruthless he recruits his vulnerable ex-wife to destroy his current wife.
Do yourself a favor and read Andrea Dworkin’s Right Wing Women: the politics of domesticated females. Money and power are everything to some women. It defies logic and rationale. The patriarch, the provider, the batterer… do what ever you will to me and for me… I am yours forever.
Today the harsh glare of media scrutiny lights up every dark corner of Charles Saatchi’s famously private life. Appearing every day at the trial of his former employees, The Grillo Sisters. It must be a painful time for secretive Charles. During the trial there was constant mention of the grown women (who were no more that indentured servants) as ‘family’ yet, as Deborah Orr points out in the only pro Grillo piece on offer this week…
“You cannot insist that someone is in your family, then cry fraud when they behave as if they are.”
The rich are different. They like to live beyond scrutiny, they operate without care for consequence. Partially, this week, on a micro and macro level justice was done. For servants like the Grillo sisters and for ex wives who crave revenge.
* Princess Diana‘s favorite flower.