Page 72 of The Thing About My Prince
“Leave it.” I reach for her leg again, this time touching it only enough to get her attention. Yet still the contact with her sends a shiver up my arm and across my chest. “Can we leave it off?”
She looks at me over her shoulder. “Why?”
“It feels less wrong to tell you things in the dark.” I’m notsure I would ever have said as much about my mother last night if it had been daylight.
“Of course.” She settles back on the pillows. “Telling me things is what I need you to do, so whatever makes you most comfortable.”
Silence falls on us like a favorite old blanket as I slide lower and tip my head back into the pillow to stare up at the folds in the swags of fabric on the underside of the bed’s canopy.
“Sooo,” she says, breaking the silence, “are you going to tell me a happy story?”
“I’m still trying to think of something.” Instantly I realize how pathetic that sounds. How sad is it if someone has to try this hard to come up with a happy story from their childhood? “I don’t mean to sound all woe-is-me, everyone please feel sorry for the poor little rich prince.”
“Good. Because there’s a limit to how sorry I, or anyone who reads this book, is going to feel. We’re supposed to be making them understand you, not make more of them think you’re an indulged whiner.”
“I don’t doubt that. And I don’t need that. And it’s really not how it was. It didn’t feel like a miserable childhood. Sofia and I had great summer days playing in the gardens and hiding and refusing to come in when it got dark and our parents were roaming around calling for us.”
“You were a bad influence on your sister?”
I shift onto my side to face her. The lines and curves of her profile are like something from one of the priceless works of art hanging downstairs—poised, determined, almost regal.
“You might have noticed my sister has a perfectly good mind of her own, so no.” Truth be told, it was Sofia who started the hiding game, but I’m not going to throw her under the bus. “And I had fun times in college. And occasionally when I was running the business. And I’ve definitely been happy in New York. Particularly since meeting Chase, Miller,and Leo and buying the Boston Commoners with them. That place brings me more joy than anything.”
“Okay, but I’m looking for something that specifically happenedhere. When you were growing up. Take all the time you need.” Her voice is filled with more concern than you would expect from a journalist carrying out an interview. Or is that a well-practiced technique? “The book needs a good childhood memory to balance all the not-so-good stuff or you really will be Prince Whiner.”
I know exactly the moment I should tell her about. It’s one I’ve never wanted to share with anyone, but I promised myself this book would tell the truth so it would explain that I’m not the arsehole such a large section of the public thinks I am.
If I’m going to rip off that Band-Aid, I’m certain there’ll never be anyone I’m more comfortable telling the story to than Lexi, even if putting me this much at ease is one of her professional skills.
“I might have one.” I roll onto my back again so I don’t have to look at her while I tell it. “I was really upset one day after primary school. Think I was nine.”
Lexi immediately starts tapping on her keyboard.
“These two bigger kids had been bullying me for months, and on this day, they grabbed me. One held me while the other undid my tie and took it off.”
At the sound of Lexi’s short, sharp breath, I sneak a look at her and find her beautiful face wincing as her fingers fly over the keyboard.
I turn my gaze back to an uneven fold in the canopy fabric I’d never noticed before.
“When they let me go, the one who’d taken the tie climbed on the other one’s shoulders and put it on top of a high cabinet. Then they ran off, laughing.”
The same fear I felt then twists my stomach all over again. “You get into trouble if you’re not wearing full uniform. So, ofcourse I got into trouble. But I was too scared to tell the teacher the truth. So I said I’d lost my tie.”
Relating this story in therapy didn’t even remotely upset me the way it’s affecting me now, telling it to Lexi. Then, it was like I was telling someone else’s story, like it hadn’t really happened to me. Now, it’s like I’m handing over a part of myself that I’ve never let anyone have before.
“The teacher was furious. And he called my parents. And then they were furious when I got home. But I didn’t feel like I could tell them I’d been bullied, or they’d have been furious about that too. Furious with me, I mean. For allowing it to happen. So I stood there and took the telling-off, then ran to my room.”
This time I roll my head across the pillow to fully look at Lexi, who is the picture of silent concentration. “That was when my room was at the back of the house. The one that looks over the flower flag. Not this one.”
She nods and continues to type.
I open my mouth to carry on with the story, but for some reason looking at her prevents any words from coming out. So I return my focus to the canopy’s uneven fold. “Later, our nanny, Wendy, found me crying in there.”
“I hate to interrupt, but are you sure this is a happy story?”
“Getting to that bit. Wendy said she had an idea for how to cheer me up. She told me to change into shorts and a T-shirt. It was a really nice warm day, right before the summer holidays. I remember thinking there was only a few days to go before I wouldn’t have to see those bullies again until September. And Wendy told me to meet her by the back door to the kitchen.”
Now I can’t help but smile to myself. “It felt like a secret mission. I crept downstairs, past Dad in the library and Mum in the living room, and scurried through the kitchen to the back door. The cook thought I was there because I’d smelledher baking biscuits, so she gave me a few wrapped in paper towels. They were still warm.”
