Chapter Seven 2012 #2
But when the sun finally melted over the horizon, James would return, and I’d sit at the kitchen table while he chopped things for our dinner.
For the first time in a long time, I ate.
And I swallowed. And with each meal that James prepared, I thought less and less about the food inside me.
It took me years to realise that he must have recognised this problem of mine, approaching it like a skittish lamb in one of his fields, quietly shooing it away before it imprinted on me and followed me around for the rest of my days.
I wasn’t sure how he knew this about me, but I suppose he watched his own sister stalked by the very same shadow.
Once she became a royal, the full face of her youth receded until her cheekbones pushed up like colliding tectonic plates.
All her softness was replaced with right angles and a fine down that grew over her pale limbs, fluffing up against the cold so she looked like a little nestling.
Everyone agreed she looked sick, but also sensational. Everyone wanted to be her.
But James and I had both read the autopsy report, and we knew she died with the skeleton of an eighty-year-old, with wrecked teeth and a listless heart.
Worse, she died with a near-empty stomach, having almost forgotten what it was like to sit down and eat a full meal, to enjoy it and let it remain inside her.
“Ma’am, it has been a very trying few years, and you are entitled to a break,” Stewart had said, clearly delivering the lines he and Papa had agreed upon. “But you have a duty to your family, and privilege entails responsibility.”
It was smart of Papa to send him. The speech James and I had agreed upon suddenly left me.
“I’m sorry, Stewart,” I said.
He had looked down at his hands for a long moment and then returned his gaze to my face. He had the soft golden eyes of a Saxon merino. I wondered if this might be the last time we ever saw each other.
“Ma’am,” he began. “Prince Frederick cannot support this; he refuses to pay for this.”
The kettle on the stove took its breath and emitted a low whistle that escalated into an almighty wail. James shuffled across the kitchen and took it off the hob. Taking his time, he had prepared the tea, following the steps just as Mum had. A scoop for each person and one for the pot.
“It never seemed right to me that I got everything when our father died, and Isla got nothing,” James said with his back turned to us.
“It’s the way things have always been done, I know.
But it seems wrong to send a girl out into the world with nothing—especially a girl who’s never been taught how to take care of herself. ”
He placed the pot on the table between us and laid out the cups and saucers. He sat down and made himself comfortable.
“I would like to pay for Lexi’s education,” he said.
Stewart kept his gaze downward.
“I should have done more for Isla, and I didn’t. Our father rarely spoke to us, but when he did, he would say to Isla, ‘Be careful, your face is your future.’ She always wanted to get away from him, but in the end, she married a man just like him,” James said, slowly preparing his own tea.
Our cups steamed untouched in front of Stewart and me.
“Your Grace, your dedication to your niece is admirable,” Stewart said. “But I fear significant decisions are being made in the fog of grief.”
“Lexi is free to choose,” James said. “I am simply facilitating her choice to have a different kind of life than the one to which she was born.”
Stewart turned to me. “Once you head down this path, it will be enormously difficult to turn back.”
I began to cry, not because I was particularly scared, but because James had warned me they would try to coerce me back with an ultimatum. Stewart looked pained, but forged ahead.
“Prince Frederick wishes me to inform you that as executor of your trust, he has enacted a variance so that you will only be able to access your inheritance at age thirty, rather than twenty-five,” he said.
I nodded, hot tears and snot streaming down my chin.
Stewart handed me a handkerchief, which I blindly accepted.
Louis and I had been surprised to find that Mum had a will prepared before she died, though we couldn’t understand why she made Papa the executor of the trust. I suppose she had no one else to ask.
She was almost broke by the last few months of her life—not that I particularly cared about the money.
But I was also set to inherit her jewellery, including her engagement ring, which I yearned to hold in my fist until it dug into my flesh.
I wanted that ring the same way I would have treasured her discarded apple cores, her pencils delicately marked by her teeth, a water glass with the ghost of her lipstick on the rim.
“Probably best you go now, don’t you think?” James said calmly and Stewart nodded.
Six months later, I was living in a two-bedroom flat in Sandy Bay and ready to begin my new life as a science student.
I was surprised to find that apartment living was not dissimilar from boarding school life.
There were popular tenants and outcasts, villains and shut-ins.
The block was filled with wealthy retirees who had downsized from the sagging mansions along the beachfront.
Most seemed to fear the moment their adult children would find out about a fall or an accidental attempt to microwave a metal saucepan and move them into nursing homes.
All disapproved of my presence since I came with a horde of photographers and 24/7 security guards who sat outside the block in their cars with the engines running.
James paid for my rent and school fees and gave me a credit card with a monthly limit for expenses.
For the first three months, I was terrified by the concept of finite resources and lived on nothing but pasta and balsamic vinegar.
Once James encouraged me to live normally, I blew it all in ten days.
Over time, I slowly worked out what things cost, mostly by imitating my fellow students on their purchases.
I learned that I could live on packets of Indomie Nasi Goreng noodles on the last days of the month, and that the most dreaded expense of all was university textbooks.
I floated the idea of getting a job, but my security detail deemed it too dangerous.
I got better over time, but I still had the stink of a rich girl pretending to be normal, scouring the Chemist Warehouse catalogue for bargains, and then dropping $350 on Miu Miu sunglasses because I forgot to ask the saleswoman the price before having her wrap them up.
The palace told the tabloids that Granny and Papa were thrilled by my choice and had counselled me by phone as I considered changing my long-held plans.
“She’s always had such a love of Australia.
Prince Frederick was not at all surprised she wanted to stay there after finally having the chance to visit.
She’s truly a daddy’s girl and he was there every step of the way as she rethought her plans to study at St. Andrews with her brother,” a “friend” told the Daily Post.
“Alexandrina still intends to be a working royal, but her dream is to focus her future philanthropic efforts on health and medical research. She’ll simply be the most educated princess in British history.”
I met Finn in my first week of classes. At first, no one dared approach me.
It was a phenomenon I had seen only occur around Granny: when she walked into a room, she was like a shark swimming into a school of fish.
Hordes of guests stepped back in unison, eyes averted, the path before her magically cleared.
For lower-ranked royals it was quite the opposite.
The socially ambitious swam alongside us like suckerfish.
I had expected to be accosted at university, but instead I found myself friendless.
Finn was the most popular boy in Hobart.
His family dated back to the first penal colony—the ultimate status symbol in the state—and the Vanderville name was on street signs and buildings across the city.
No one knew he was smart until he graduated at the top of his class and decided to study chemistry.
Everywhere he went on campus, he was trailed by a swarm of recent grads from Hobart’s private schools.
With his blond curls and flushed cheeks, he had been a cherubic child who drew gasps everywhere he went, and he still had the confidence of a little boy who believed himself truly beautiful.
On our first day of organic chemistry, our lecturer paired everyone off as lab partners by going down the class list alphabetically.
Vanderville and Villiers were assigned to Bench 5.
When I approached him, he quirked a brow and grinned at me. “I’ve been waiting for us to meet.”
And that was it. I had made my first friend outside the gates of palaces and boarding schools.
I was aware that Finn initially saw me as a novelty prize from a circus sideshow.
He displayed me at nightclubs and gay bars and family gatherings.
He casually captured me in the background of his Instagram stories, which were so abundant that they looked more like tiny grains of rice than dashes at the top of his page.
I was useful to him and I allowed myself to be used because he was fun and I was lonely.