Page 6 of The Heir Apparent
Papa would ordinarily relish such isolation. He adored his second wife, but I don’t think he was ever happier than when he had his Norfolk estate, Elton Park, all to himself. He would tend to his orchids, read academic papers on organic farming and write memos that government officials would politely ignore.
But for some reason, he instead decided to join his 29-year-old son, his daughter-in-law and her brother on a ski trip to Switzerland. Papa was a decent skier, but he’d grown finicky in his later years. He rarely did anything so reckless as book a last-minuteholiday at a resort he’d never visited, run by staff he had not yet terrorised over decades with his whims and demands.
This was a man who travelled with a portable leather toilet seat, even when spending the weekend at the White House. Two personal attendants helped him dress every morning. He expected the butter with his breakfast to be served in three—not two, not four, but three—perfectly scooped little balls. It’s not so much that he was a diva. But every day since he was able to eat toast, it had arrived on a tray alongside a bowl of three creamy pearls of butter. He simply couldn’t bear to have it any other way.
So the idea that he’d spontaneously tag along on Louis, Kris and Amira’s ski holiday was weird. I knew why the palace would have approved it—they would have been positively panting over the potential photos of the heir and his son on the crisp white slopes together. The masculine action shots, the fatherly arm slung over Louis’s shoulder. How nice for a man to remain so close to his adult son, even after everything they’d been through. Kris would be discreetly cropped out of every shot. Amira never skied, but her absence from the photos would be enough to leave the tabloids speculating that she was pregnant.
On 29 December, they had a long day on the slopes. Papa was getting his legs under him again. Everyone was getting on. By midafternoon, Kris was ready to head back to the chalet, but Louis suggested one final run. An instructor had promised to take him down backcountry that was closed to the public. Kris was tired but agreed to one last run. Papa, confoundingly, wanted to come too.
It wasn’t the instructor’s fault. The conditions seemed fine that day. The trail was available to those who could afford it. The royal protection officers broke protocol by allowing two senior members of the family to ski off-piste together. But most of Papa’s regular security team was on leave for the holidays, and the men filling in weren’t sure how to handle him—and Louis’s extracurriculars verged on suicidal at the best of times.Worn down by years of bungee jumping and ultramarathons, his protection officers thought this ski run would be as simple as a walk in Hyde Park. They didn’t have an inkling of danger until the snowbank shattered like glass.
They were descending difficult terrain at 2,730 feet. Kris and Louis, both light and nimble skiers, glided over the top of the bank without destabilising things too much. But the instructor, who was further down the trail, said Papa was lumbering along at a slower pace. He didn’t notice the jagged faultline appearing behind him as he manoeuvred down the mountain.
All around him, the snow seemed to turn into liquid, and he lost his balance. Gravity no longer made sense. A white cloud was building up at the front of the sliding snowbank, but Louis and Kris coasted just ahead, oblivious to the force gaining momentum behind them.
The instructor said it was at this point he shouted out. For what purpose, he wasn’t sure. The tumbling snowbank was at least ten metres wide, and even the best skier would have struggled to avoid it. He grabbed onto a tree trunk and held his breath.
The officers, who had been trailing Papa, slowed to a stop and watched the scene unfold below them. It didn’t seem that serious in the first moments—Papa sliding through a powdery sea on his backside, his poles waving in the air. They were mostly worried that he’d be embarrassed once he slowed to a stop.
It was when Kris was engulfed by the snow that they realised how bad this was. The slushy mess that had tripped up the ageing prince had transformed into something powerful and terrifying.
Papa vanished, then Kris.
Louis must have heard a shout, because he looked over his shoulder and saw it coming for him next. The guards said he maintained his grace in the second before he disappeared too. That was the last image of my brother—strong and elegant as he flew, looking over his shoulder for Kris.
Then he too was swallowed by that pristine monster.
Any experienced off-piste skier knows you really have only ten minutes to rescue someone trapped by an avalanche. After that, their chances of survival drop precipitously, to twenty per cent. The instructor knew what he was doing and had attached a beacon to every skier before they set out in the chopper. But he had brought only one probe and one shovel. He didn’t have the heart to make royalty carry their own gear. By the time the officers made it down the trail, the instructor was already digging in the snow.
“There’s someone here at three metres,” he shouted.
“We need to find the princes first. Where did the princes end up?” the guards asked.
But the instructor shook his head and kept shovelling. “I dig as soon as I find a burial victim.” He threw them the probe. “Hover this over the snow. Quickly. Call me if the beeps intensify and then one of you will take over here.”
By then, six minutes had elapsed since Papa, Louis and Kris were entombed in ice. The mountain was silent except for the intermittent beeps of the probe and the harsh breaths of the officers. The instructor had already sent an SOS to the resort, and he ached for the distant buzz of the rescue chopper. He was twenty-four years old. He had thought he’d end the day with €400 and a story to tell his friends. For the first time in his life, he prayed.
Twelve minutes after the avalanche, another group of skiers happened on the scene. Experts in backcountry skiing, they brought with them shovels, probes and a surge of hope. The thing about a crisis is this: you don’t really know who you’re going to be until you’re standing in the wreckage of your daily life. Royal protection officers are trained over years to look out for stalkers and cream pies being hurled at their assets. They can shoot pistols and pack a gunshot wound. But on that mountain, with two members of the House of Villiers buried somewhere underneath their feet, they were at a loss.
Most disasters in our lives are so sudden, so quick, it’s as if we can stomp back to the Before and undo what was just done. Thatcar accident, that aneurysm. Just for one strange moment, time feels like a rope that can be gathered back up in your hands. But it doesn’t stop—not if your toes lose traction on a yacht’s swim step, not if five hundred kilograms per cubic metre of snow is squeezing your body. Time ticks on, a ruthless metronome, on and on and on and on.
The instructor had been silently sinking into a deep panic as he dug and dug and found only more glinting piles of snow. Every minute was agony. But as the skiers began searching the area and shouting instructions in French, the bumbling guards gratefully submitted to their leadership. Before the skiers coasted into their obliterated world, they’d been quietly adjusting their expectations for the future. If they saved the princes, everything might be alright. If they saved one of them, they would probably still lose their jobs, but their lives wouldn’t be over. If they just kept digging, maybe the world wouldn’t hate them.
Fourteen minutes after the avalanche, the probe found Papa beneath the snow. Two minutes later, they had Louis’s location as well. The rescuers split into teams and dug frenziedly. Those who didn’t have shovels used their hands. People who have survived avalanches say it’s like being trapped in cement. It’s completely dark in your tomb. You cannot wiggle your fingers; you cannot expand your lungs. Suspended in ice, you have no way of knowing which way is up and which way is down. As the search entered its seventeenth and then eighteenth minute, everyone knew the air was getting thin down there.
At minute twenty, the instructor’s shovel hit something hard. He began to dig with his bare hands and uncovered Kris’s frozen face. The shovel had nicked his cheek, but his eyes were glazed and unseeing. His lips were a frightful purple. The instructor cleared the packed snow from his chest, but Kris took no breath.
“He’s gone. Come and help us, we’ve got the future bloody kings of England down here,” one of the officers hissed.
The instructor looked down at Kris, suspended in his snowy grave as if only a prince’s kiss would revive him. In a decisionthat would earn him the ire of the British tabloids and threats from the darkest corners of the internet, he stayed with Kris. He pumped his chest and breathed air into his lungs until the rescue chopper landed.
He did not give up on him when the rescuers found Papa with a fractured skull and a mouth full of snow. He did not stop when Louis was prised from the ice just one metre from Kris, the flutter of a pulse beneath his skin like water under a frozen pond. He stopped when a rescuer laid a hand on his shoulder and offered to take over.
Papa was taken off the mountain in a body bag. Louis and Kris never woke up again.
CHAPTER FOUR
2 January 2023
