Chapter Six
Now
The palace machine did not sleep that night, so neither did James.
By midnight, the small meeting room off the press office corridor had become his command post. Someone had brought in a pot of coffee and a plate of biscuits that he didn’t touch, and someone else had hung a whiteboard on the wall with a timeline of the next forty-eight hours blocked out in Marina’s neat, colour-coded handwriting.
James sat at the head of the table with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled to the forearm, working through the call list that Cecil had drawn up in order of constitutional priority.
The Archbishop of Canterbury took it well; he had spent decades receiving news that required him to say something profound and spiritually sound at short notice.
The Prime Minister was brisk and kind and told him the government would not be commenting on this private matter.
The Leader of the Opposition said roughly the same thing, but with enough warmth in her voice that James suspected she was already calculating the polling advantage of a monarch who made the Conservative Party’s position on same-sex marriage look thirty years behind the Crown.
He went into a side office for the call to Abigail, shutting the door and turning his back to the window. She picked up on the second ring. They exchanged the usual niceties, then James got to the point.
“Abigail, I need to tell you something before it becomes public. There’s a recording. A voicemail I accidentally left for a person who should never have received it. It’s very personal, and it’s going to be published tomorrow.”
“What sort of recording is that, James?” Abigail asked.
“The sort where I’m drunk and confessing to being in love with a man before I went up to your room to be with you.”
“Ah,” she said.
“I left the voicemail the night we slept together at Balmoral. It runs tomorrow morning. I don’t name you, and we’ll do everything in our power to make sure that your name, at least, never leaks.
But I talk about going to a woman’s room, and anyone who was there that weekend will be able to work out who I mean.
I want you to know that I like you, and value our friendship.
And that I had a genuinely good time that night.
But the voicemail makes it clear that my head was on someone else, and I’m sorry that you’re going to be caught in the middle of the whole mess. ”
“James, I’m fine,” Abigail said. “Truly. We had one night together. It was perfectly nice, and I have absolutely no complaints about your performance, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”
“It wasn’t, but thank you. I’m always open to feedback.”
“You’re welcome. I thought you should know, in case it helps you get through the next few hours.
It’ll pass, you know. There’ll be a frenzy, and it’ll be unseemly, and then they’ll move on to speculating about who you were calling.
Though I think, because of the circumstances, you could allow me one guess. ”
“All right, then.”
“Is it Barnaby, James?”
He closed his eyes. “No, Abigail.”
“Are you sure? Because I’ve seen the two of you together, and I always thought—”
“It’s not Barnaby. Not any more.” He pressed his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose. “Barnaby is married. Happily. To a very large boxer who would take a dim view of that.”
“Well,” she said. “Whoever it is, I hope he’s worth the fuss.”
“Thank you, Abigail.”
“Go and be brave, James,” she said, and rang off.
With the call done, he breathed in through the nose, out through the mouth, the way his therapist had taught him when he was fifteen and the panic attacks had started in earnest. He did it until his hands were steady, and then he picked up his mobile and typed out a text message to Barnaby and Vidal.
He kept the two messages identical and short. Anything longer, and they’d read the nerves between the lines. Anything different, and they’d compare notes and be through the palace gates inside the hour.
I’m about to be outed by The Sun. Cecil and Marina have it in hand. Don’t come. I mean it. I’ll ring you both in the morning. I’m going to be fine.
Barnaby’s reply arrived in eleven seconds. Understood. I’m here when you need me.
Vidal’s reply took longer to arrive. I have cancelled my plans and am sitting by the phone like a war bride. You must call me first thing, James. I will not survive it. I am FRAGILE.
James locked his mobile, set it face-down on the desk, and went back to work.
? ? ?
The statement went through four drafts. Marina’s was too corporate. Cecil rewrote it into something too constitutional. James rewrote Cecil’s, and at two in the morning the four of them sat round the conference table and assembled a final version from the surviving sentences.
His Majesty The King wishes to address the personal recording that will appear in tomorrow’s edition of The Sun. The recording is genuine. It was a private voicemail, intended for one person, and misdirected to another. Its contents are personal in nature, and His Majesty does not dispute them.
His Majesty does not intend to name the private individual referred to in the recording.
The King remains committed to his duties and to the service of the people of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.
James read it one final time.
He had spent his whole life inside an institution that was older than the language it operated in.
His father had carried it, and his grandfather before him, and every monarch stretching back through the centuries had passed the thing on intact.
Now the slip of paper in his hand felt capable of shattering the whole lot.
His father had always known what to do, even when the right thing and the easy thing were in completely different postcodes.
James wanted him there so badly his throat closed around it.
He wanted to be in the study at Highgrove, with the smell of woodsmoke and dog in the air, and his father’s voice saying something so certain that it would make the ground stop moving under his feet.
He signed the statement and Marina took it from him before the ink from his fountain pen had dried.
James stayed at the table once everyone else had left and looked at the whiteboard. Marina’s timeline stretched across it in blue and red and green, every hour of the next two days accounted for. At nine o’clock, he had a scheduled visit to a community garden in Wandsworth.
The door opened behind him. Caroline sat on the arm of his chair. She pressed herself against his side, and kissed his cheek. He leaned into her.
“I’m quite proud of you,” she said. Then she fixed his parting, smoothing the hair back from his forehead with her fingers the way she’d done since they were children.
“Now. I think you’ll find that the way you’ve kept things very tidy with your closed Order of the Bedchamber is about to pay off.
Those gentlemen will remain proper gentlemen, or risk losing their lot in life. ”
James looked at her. “You’re really giving me a strategic debrief right now?”
“Yes, James. We’re Arundels. We do whatever we need to, to keep the Firm going.
” She folded her hands in her lap. “This is good for you, James. This opens a door, a real one. For you to start something with a future, with someone who actually matters, instead of you having to resort to your little arrangements.” She paused.
“I know you’re shitting yourself. But once that passes, you’ll be glad of this. This is exciting.”
She kissed his forehead, then drew back. “Now go to sleep. You’ve got engagements in a few hours.”
James turned back to the whiteboard. Right there, still on schedule, was the visit to the community garden.
No changes made, other than the addition of a few extra protection officers.
He would spend the morning as planned, shaking hands, asking the right questions, and admiring the vegetables brought to him for inspection.
There would be no retreating to his rooms to wait for the news cycle to pass. There was nothing shameful about loving a man, and he did not intend to behave as though there were.