Page 37 of The Heir Apparent
“I thought you were in the highlands,” I said.
Jack was silent for a moment, his eyes moving from the almost forty-year-old man in an unbuttoned shirt over to me. “Uh, we all got arrested. So we had to leave early.”
I nodded, clearing my throat, absolutely dying to wrap this up before Ragu trotted around the corner and unleashed the almighty bark he reserved for men he didn’t know.
Ben shuffled towards Jack with his hand outstretched. “Hey. Ben. Lexi and I work together at the hospital.”
Jack nodded absently, taking his hand. “Hi.”
I walked Ben to his car in silence along the dusty road. I wondered what Jack would make of it all. Would he think of me differently? Would he think less of me for sleeping with my boss? Jack’s breakup with Georgia was still fresh, and as I plodded up the road in my pyjamas, I grew angry at him because he could go out with anyone he liked. Everything I did had to remain clandestine because all the details of my life had price tags dangling from them. I’d had to listen to him and Georgia through the wall between our bedrooms for four years, and I hadn’t complained, not once.
“That wasn’t your boyfriend, was it?” Ben asked when we got to the car, interrupting the silent nuclear fission of my thoughts.
“What?”
“That guy. You both were acting weird just now.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I said irritably.
Back at the cottage, and for the three years that followed, Jack and I said nothing of that morning on the verandah. If I left the house, headed towards a destination I kept deliberately vague, I was sure Jack knew exactly where I was going. If he had any thoughts about that, he never voiced them. Occasionally, a pretty girl would emerge from Jack’s room, her shoes dangling from her hand. I would nod politely at her until, finally, a few weeks later, she seemed to vanish. Through it all, Jack and I remained unlikely, determined friends. I might have slept in Ben’s bed, but Jack was still the one who picked me up after I had my wisdom teeth out. He knew which brand of tea bags I liked. He called me late at night so we could share the silence. I kept things this way so I’d never have to lose him.
Thinking about it all now, I hugged myself closer to the roots of the old oak tree. I thought about Jack and the vineyard he loved. He should open it up to the public and do wine tastings. He should host weddings in the gloriously rundown shed that had stood on the property for a hundred years. But he couldn’t do either because I lived there like an exotic, endangered bird that must be protected at all costs. I thought about my medical career. All those ninety-hour weeks, the orifices I’d stuck my fingers in, the first time I saved a life, the first time I watched someone die. I thought about Kris and Louis, who deserved an apology from me, and would never get it. I thought about Amira and her boxes of pills. I thought about the snow cloud swallowing Papa whole. I thought about Mum, the love of my life.
It all felt like a tangle I had no hope of ever undoing. I could only try pulling things straight and living with the knots that remained.
At the castle, I found Amira’s room already empty. She must have returned to London early. I walked back to my own room, which Mary had filled with racks of clothing and a suitcase of heels.
“Good morning, Your Royal Highness,” she said, bobbing into a distracted curtsy. “I’m just pulling together an outfit for the reading of the will. The funeral went very well, I think. Would you like to see the papers? Or perhaps I could provide a summation of your coverage?”
“I’ll pass.”
“Well, suffice it to say you were very well received—even a few of your more strident critics praised you, and your ensemble in particular.”
“Mary,” I said, sharper than I intended. “Please. Don’t.”
Her little face tightened. “I’m sorry, ma’am, forgive me.”
I looked at the garments strewn across the bed, the piles of impossible shoes. This is what it would be like. Garden parties. Investitures. The endless race to be declared the hardest working royal by stuffing my calendar with engagements towards the end of the year. Winning over tabloid reporters with off-the-record cocktail parties. Strategic leaks to keep them fed and watered. Louis had woken up every day and pushed this boulder up the hill without complaint. Now it had rolled to my feet.
“Mary…” I sat down on the bed. “Do you think there’s a different way to do this? A better way?”
She eyed me cautiously. “I’m not sure I follow.”
“If I were maybe to give this a go, do you think there’s a way to do it so it’s not just… clothes and obsessing over theDaily Post?”
She went still. When I looked up, her eyes were blazing as she clutched a stiletto.
“I do, very much,” she breathed. “Do you remember when your mum—Princess Isla, I mean—went to Darfur and she stood in that camp with her hair covered by the scarf? And shedemanded the West go look into the faces of the children before they chose to ignore their pain? Everyone slammed her, but that was the moment everything should have changed.”
I did remember. When she got home from her unapproved trip to Sudan, Papa refused to speak to her for a month. TheDaily Postcalled her the “Darfur Ditz.” Even the American president implied that she was too much of a bimbo to understand the complexities of the situation.
“You could do it,” Mary said fiercely. “You’ve been out in the world. You’re a doctor. It should be you to finish what Princess Isla started. Who says the monarchy can’t be a force for change? If it sits at the centre of British life, it should earn its place there. It should apologise for the past and be a moral leader of the future. Why not?”
I couldn’t ignore the little swell of my heart, the heat rising in my face. Mum used to talk this way when we were alone. She had never dared say these things in front of Papa, especially when she was still trying to please him. But when it was just us, she would lean forwards and murmur in my ear: “Can you imagine where we’d be if your father had one splinter of Barbara Villiers’ backbone?”
Could I imagine a truly modern queen, who took all the nostalgia, all the love, all the unity that Britain felt for the crown and did something with it? Could I be the monarch my mother once longed for? Mary seemed to sense my thoughts, and she smiled at me.
“I could help you,” she said. “If you decided to stay.”
