Page 35 of The Heir Apparent
“Must be a hookup. I just want to get my coat and go to bed,” she whined.
We crept through the tangling, shifting branches of a willow tree, still bare and yellow from winter. I stumbled on my heel and nearly crashed through the underbrush, but Amira graspedmy elbow to steady me. When I looked back at her, she was staring straight ahead, her mouth agape.
“What?” I whispered, but she kept her gaze ahead of us.
When I finally looked through the willow’s tendrils, I was struck by how beautiful they were. I had always been slightly repulsed by the pawing and open want of teenage couples. But as they swayed to the music in each other’s arms, Kris and Louis were only tender. Louis’s cheek rested on Kris’s shoulder, his eyes closed, his face more peaceful than I had ever seen it. Kris, who was usually brash and bold, stroked his back gently as they turned. I knew our lives were all about to change, but in that moment, as he cradled this boy to him, I could only feel happy for my brother.
“We should go,” I whispered, and Amira nodded.
We tiptoed down the path, Amira’s coat forgotten. We were silent as we walked back to our boarding house and scaled an ivy-covered trellis to get through the open window of our suite. We sloughed off the dresses we thought made us look like women. We said nothing as we pulled on the brightly coloured pyjamas that transformed us back into the girls we truly were. We went our separate ways into sleep, wondering what tomorrow would bring.
When our brothers died fourteen years later, most of Kris’s ashes would be spread at the family’s hunting lodge in South Africa. The tiniest scoop of him was saved for a trio of gold pendants that Vikki, Amira and Madhav would wear for the rest of their lives. But if you were to unscrew the top of the gold heart that hung from Amira’s neck, you would find it empty. Before the funeral, she had been allowed one final private moment with her husband. When no one was looking, she slipped the real necklace containing Kris’s ashes into the breast pocket of Louis’s suit so the two men she loved could finally be together.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
10 January 2023
I woke up to the familiar wail of Granny’s piper, who stood below her bedroom window and played for her every day at 7 a.m. I was fairly certain Granny was up hours before the bagpipes sounded, but it signified the official start of the morning in whichever home she was staying. Maids began bustling in the halls, phones rang, breakfast trays for the late sleepers were delivered. I looked out the window and found it was the first glorious day since I had arrived in London. Mists were rolling across the vast green lawns as the sun’s rays burned off the slick.
We all preferred Watford Castle over the main palace, which was far too grand and required we be grand inside it. At Watford, we kept a kitchen garden and said things like “I’m off to potter in the potager.” There were rosebuds in tiny glass vases on every available surface. We drank wine on mediaeval stone steps and watched the sun disappear behind the horizon.
I still had a few hours before the reading of Papa’s will, so I got out of bed and crept downstairs. I found an old waxed coat and some wellies in my size and walked to the East Terrace, which led to a vast lawn, carved hedges and slumbering rose bushes that would explode in colour by spring. The garden was amathematical marvel, all right angles and discipline. But beyond it were the wild, untamed oak groves where deer are allowed to roam. That’s where I wanted to be.
Just as I was about to set off, a springer spaniel emerged from the hall and ran loops around my ankles, looking for love. It was Granny’s dog Pudding, followed by the servant sent to walk off some of the dog’s frantic energy. He started when he saw me, and then bowed.
“Morning,” I said. “I can walk Pud if you like.”
“If it pleases you, Your Royal Highness.”
I trudged across the grass as Pud raced ahead of me. The sun and chilled air felt wonderful, even with the heaviness of the funeral still lingering. I had spent the few hours I was able to sleep dreaming of the crypt in which Papa and Louis were now sealed forever. Surely they would wander across the heath at any moment, back from an early-morning ride, Louis’s cheeks blooming in the cold, Papa demanding his coffee tray.
When we reached the grove, Pud chased squirrels while I nestled myself in the giant smooth roots of an oak tree, as safe and strong as a parent’s arms. I pulled my phone from my pocket and made the call I had been putting off in thirty-minute increments since the day I arrived.
Ben answered on the sixth ring when I was about to give up.
“Well, hello,” my boss at the hospital said. “I was wondering when I’d hear from you.”
“Sorry.”
“Nah, don’t be. Sorry about your dad and your brother. How you holding up?”
“Fine,” I lied. I imagined him in his oxford shirt and navy trousers, at odds with the shaggy blond hair he refused to cut. His stethoscope would be slung around his neck as he leaned against the nurses’ station and read a few charts while we spoke. “I have to ask you a couple of logistics questions.”
There was a long pause, and I heard the bustle of the hospital taper off to silence. He was moving to an empty room wherethe nurses wouldn’t piece together the bits of our conversation and draw their conclusions.
“You’re dropping out, aren’t you,” he said.
“What? No.” I felt suddenly flushed. “All I want to know at this stage is how much leave a resident can take.”
“Five weeks a year, and you’re already down two,” he said, not giving me one inch, as usual.
“What happens if a resident loses their entire family and maybe needs time to sort things out?”
He was silent for a while. “Lexi, you know we don’t make exceptions. Even for you. You’d have to take the rest of the year off and then start your third year next January.”
“Has anyone ever done that before?”
“Sure they have. Usually it’s because they get pregnant or have a mental breakdown, but yeah.”
