Chapter Two 2 January 2023
CHAPTER TWO
Five decades later, Stewart was determined not to make the same mistake. The girl who did my nails flicked through a rack of black clothing, pulling out Erdem dresses and Reiss blazers, glancing at me appraisingly and popping them back.
“She can’t look too styled,” she whispered to Stewart as I stared out the window, lush green farmland giving way to sprawling suburbs. “It needs to look like it came from her own closet. But also… you know.”
My wardrobe no longer included British designers, A-line hems or headbands.
The only thing I’d really kept from my old life was Mum’s waxed Barbour jacket.
I rarely wore it, fearing I would disturb her last remaining essence still lurking in the fabric.
When I did wear it, the Daily Post would inevitably run a photo of me alongside an old picture of Mum from the eighties, looking gorgeous and windswept on the moors.
“Just keep it simple and appropriate,” Stewart whispered. “And nothing too flashy.”
We landed hard on the empty runway and I gripped my seat.
It was the first time I’d been in England in three years.
That last disastrous trip, I’d left two days early, booking a flight back to Australia on the train to Heathrow.
It took me twenty-eight hours, including a nine-hour layover in Seoul, to get home.
I wore sunglasses and a hoodie and dozed on airport carpets and no one gave me a second look.
Out the window, I saw the row of men in suits walking across the tarmac to meet the plane. It took a moment to realise one of the men was, in fact, a woman, dressed in a black pantsuit.
Stewart cleared his throat. “Ma’am, just to reiterate the plan: there are no photographers and we’ve strung tarps against the fence to safeguard your privacy. Once you’re in the car, we’ll take you to the palace so you can be with the Queen.”
In the end, they dressed me in an Alexander McQueen skirt suit.
“Black looks good on you. You’re a true winter,” the young female aide said as she rolled up the blazer’s sleeves.
She had the mousy look of most female palace aides.
They were all white; they were all rich.
With her featureless blonde face, she could have been pure aristocracy.
Her family must have been somewhere further down the food chain, but high enough that a ￡21,000 palace salary covered her tab at the Twenty Two hotel while she lived off a generous trust.
“Thank you,” I responded uneasily. “What’s your name again?”
She might have told me already, or I might have waited sixteen hours to ask—I couldn’t recall.
“Mary,” she said with a flush. “Mary Williams.”
“Right, yes, sorry. That’s my middle name.”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said warmly. Again, she glanced around us. “I’m a big admirer of yours.”
I looked at her, confused. No one ever said that. I was the one who had walked away. But before I had a chance to respond, Mary was standing back to admire her handiwork. Someone outside the plane opened the door. A mechanical thump, a whoosh of cold air and it was time.
Outside, I nodded my thanks to the Royal Navy pilot as he stood to attention at the top of the stairs, even though Stewart had reminded me to ignore him.
I looked out across the tarmac and realised that while tarps had been flung across the fences, a couple of photographers were standing on stepladders so they could stick their lenses over the top.
The images would be on the Daily Post’s website in moments. Very smart of Stewart, I thought.
I gripped the railing, suddenly terrified of falling, and eased myself slowly down the steps towards the line of faceless suits waiting for me below. They rippled like a black tide as they descended into deep bows. The woman was the prime minister, I realised.
“Your Royal Highness,” she said and took my hand between hers. “On behalf of the United Kingdom, may I express my deepest condolences for your loss.”
I didn’t know much about Jenny Walsh, except that Papa seemed to leak a lot of details of their conversations to his favourite reporter, trying to make himself look smart and her look feckless.
“Thank you,” I said breathlessly.
It hadn’t really occurred to me until this moment who I was to these people.
The prime minister had driven all the way to Northolt to meet my plane.
A photographer was balancing a long-range lens over a fence to get a blurry photo of me.
My hair had been straightened, re-curled and rendered lustrous.
I was meant to be back at the hospital on the third of January, but I didn’t even know what day it was or whether anyone had called to let them know I wouldn’t be coming in for a while.
Louis was gone forever, and I’d never told him how sorry I was.
“I’d like to sit down if that’s okay,” I whispered.
Jenny nodded and, displaying all the crisis-management prowess of a woman in politics who was also a single mother of two teenagers, took my elbow and guided me towards a waiting car.
Once I was inside, she went around and hopped in the other back passenger door.
Sweat was pricking the nape of my neck, and I had the distinct urge to vomit.
I rested my head back, closed my eyes and tried to breathe.
“Now, ma’am, if you think you’re going to be sick, they’ve got these little baggies back here waiting for you,” I heard her say.
I nodded but kept my eyes closed. We were rolling down the tarmac towards the gates.
I was pretty sure the windows were tinted, but if the flash hit the glass at the right angle, they’d have a vague sense that I was swooning in the back of the car with the prime minister.
I remembered something Mum used to do: three big breaths, in and out, holding the last intake of air until your lungs burned.
The hit of oxygen didn’t really help, but I felt like I was in control of myself again.
“Sorry,” I said. “Flying always makes me feel a bit sick.”
“Quite alright, ma’am.”
Jenny Walsh was different from the other PMs who’d traipsed through my grandmother’s study every few years.
Usually they got there by first passing through Eton, then Oxford, then some Mayfair hedge fund, before finally running for the seat of a retiring family friend.
Jenny Walsh, meanwhile, came from Essex.
She had made a name for herself in the union movement.
She wore navy kohl smeared on her waterline.
England, as far as I could tell, marvelled at her rise while quietly plotting to destroy her for it.
“We’ll drive over to the palace now, and you can finally see your granny—er, the Queen,” she said.
As we passed through the gates, she was going through the same schedule Stewart had run through five minutes earlier. But it gave me something to focus on as the camera flashes bounced off the windows.
The photos, uploaded to the Daily Post twenty minutes later, showed just a glimpse of my face through the underwater-like depths of the tinted glass.
My eyes were on Jenny Walsh, and I looked composed but appropriately mournful.
My black hair, usually free and wild, was a little too polished, and it would be obvious to anyone with a critical eye that I’d had a blow-dry.
The only question was whether they’d see this as proof of my preening, Isla-like narcissism or yet another piece of evidence that the monarchy was evil indeed.
Imagine forcing a young woman who’d just lost her brother, her father, and her friend, to endure a mid-flight glam squad.
I’d read the comments on the blogs later and see which version of reality prevailed.
“Prime Minister,” I said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
We were on the road to London then, the blue strobes of our police escort pulsing in the dreary afternoon sky.
“Could you tell me what happened on the mountain? Stewart won’t say. I haven’t looked at the news sites, and I’m not really sure I should.”
Jenny Walsh hesitated for a long moment. “I think the Queen might prefer to be the one.”
“I don’t want to ask her to do that.”
She’d applied a fresh line of kohl before she collected me from the airport, and it was starting to smudge. She looked bone-tired and steely. But somehow her eyes were still kind.
“Alright.”