Page 113 of The Heir Apparent
“I want to be a doctor, not a queen.”
“Good,” she said. There was something scrappy in her tone. It reminded me of when she was young and bold. “What else?”
“I don’t want to spend my life wondering when the past is coming back for me. I don’t want to cut deals and pay people off. I don’t want to live like that anymore.”
She felt around the blankets until she found my hand. “Then don’t.”
The next day, I called Davide Rossi and told him that I had no interest in buying his silence.
“I’m going to speak,” I said. “I’m going to tell people what I did, so I can finally be free of it.”
The line between us went very quiet.
“Maybe you’ll call Richard now, and tell him what I’m going to do,” I went on. “But I think the smarter option is to wait. Wait until I tell my story, because if you do, I’ll tell everyonethat a very kind security guard helped me when I needed him. I was a child out at sea alone, and you were a good man who shouldn’t be blamed for any of it. And then, if you wish, you can sell your own story to a tabloid. My father’s lawyers won’t take you to court, I’ll make sure of it. But this is the only way you’ll ever get money out of this family again.”
He was silent for so long that I wondered if he had hung up. Then he wheezed with laughter.
“You’re not a little girl anymore, are you,carina?”
Soon, everyone in the world would know my secret. They would know that I once woke in the middle of the night and chose the crown over my own mother. But most importantly, Richard’s power over me would evaporate. I would be the one who allowed him to be king. I would be the one who stepped out of the way so he could complete his relentless climb to the throne. But I had meant what I said to him on our walk through the snow on Christmas morning. My benevolence depended on his good behaviour, and he hadn’t even made it four days before he disappointed me.
A woman with a trolley came along and gathered up my empty bowl and teacup, and I pulled my hood up so she wouldn’t see my face. It was unlikely that I’d be recognised in Hong Kong, but all it would take was one sharp-eyed traveller or airport cleaner to take my photo, and weeks of careful planning would be ruined.
“I’ll get in touch with Annabelle and Amira and let them know we’re going with plan B,” Mary said. “You should go to the hotel now. The reporter is waiting for you.”
I got off my chair, slung my backpack over my shoulder and headed for the airport hotel, which was tucked away at the back of the terminal.
After deciding to speak, I had texted Annabelle to ask for her blessing. I was going to reveal something that would forever change the way Papa was perceived. No matter how staunchly I defended him, his legacy would suffer.
At first, Annabelle didn’t respond. But a few days later, my phone lit up my bedroom at 3 a.m.
You shouldn’t do this alone, she wrote.If you go with plan A, I will speak in support of you and your father. If you go with plan B, I will tell them everything I know, and everything Richard has done. Either way, I am with you.
I expected Amira to try to talk us out of it. She was the practical one; she would remind me of the dangers of turning powerful friends into enemies. Instead, something ferocious shone in her eyes.
“Me too,” she said. “I want to speak as well.”
We chose the newspaper in New York not just for its reputation, but because the American courts would never intervene on the palace’s behalf. If we exposed Richard, no injunction could stop us, no defamation suit was likely to succeed. The paper had a team of reporters travelling the world in pursuit of the story. One was heading to India to talk to Annabelle; another was going to South Africa to see Amira. And I was due to meet with Dee, a fearsome Pulitzer winner who knew little about the royal family but everything about secrets and power.
In the hotel lobby, I kept my hood pulled over my face as I walked past the bored-looking staff at the check-in desk. When we’d agreed to meet here for our interview, Dee sent me a list of instructions over Signal so I could slip into her room without being recognised. Between two elevators stood a plastic palm tree. I casually reached into the pot and found a key card taped to the inside, just as she’d said I would.
At room 1207, I knocked twice and swiped the card. Inside, I found a woman sitting at a table by the window with a voice recorder before her. She looked at me with shrewd, pale eyes, a leather jacket draped over her shoulders.
She rose to her feet and hesitated, unsure what to do next. How does one greet a soon-to-be-ex-royal who was briefly the heir to the British throne before tumbling back down to Earth?
“Hi,” I said. I reached out my hand. “I’m Lexi Villiers.”
“I’m Dee.”
We stood awkwardly for a moment in the rundown little room, stains on the carpet and the distant roar of a plane outside.
“I’m sorry about all the subterfuge involved in meeting up today,” I said. “I’m just trying to get through this without being recognised. My family still thinks I’m in London.”
She put a gentle hand on my arm, and I saw that she was used to being in charge of every space she occupied, a queen in her own right, who ruled over newsrooms and granted mercy to nervous interviewees.
“It’s fine. Come sit down,” she said.
I sank into a plastic chair and looked warily at the recorder before me. Once I spoke into it, there would be no going back.
