Chapter Thirteen 13 March 2023 #2
I gave into my worst instincts and checked the news sites that were analysing my high-stakes performance of walking into a church, sitting through a service and walking out again.
The outfit Mary had constructed for me seemed to have done the trick in shifting the conversation away from my paternity.
Rather than the ubiquitous floral dresses favoured by royal women, she had pulled for me a menswear-inspired cream suit by Vivienne Westwood.
We were a bit daring in using the waistcoat as a shirt, but, once paired with the oversized blazer and wide-leg trousers, no one could argue it was inappropriate for church.
It was just weird enough to confuse the tabloids, while sending Vogue and the blogs into a spin.
I closed my phone. I was slightly embarrassed that, only months ago, I’d been diagnosing heart attacks and ordering MRIs, and now I seemed to spend all my time telegraphing secret messages through my outfits and staring at polling numbers that suggested Britons were still sceptical of me.
Since January, my popularity had risen five points to forty per cent, but Mary seemed most preoccupied with winning over the swathe of people who described themselves as “neutral” on my existence.
“The trouble is, no one really knows you,” she explained. “You’ve been gone eleven years, and now we need to reintroduce you so we can build your support back up.”
Richard knew Granny had given me a year to make my decision and it wasn’t long before the tabloids knew as well.
There was an entire page on the Daily Post website called Lexi’s Choice, filled with speculation about whether I would stay or go.
There was even a timer in the corner, counting down the number of days I had left before my dithering must finally end.
Lexi’s Choice tracked my approval rating against Richard, who maintained a far more respectable figure of sixty-eight per cent.
It also kept a tally of our public appearances, sending us both on separate charity binges so we could top the leaderboard.
Even as I dismissed the whole thing as ridiculous, I could feel myself longing to see my name edge above his in the rankings, the triumph that came when a lunch I hosted for International Women’s Day briefly put me on top, the frustration when he packed his itinerary during a trip to Northern Ireland so that I slid back down again.
We were gamifying charity and I was horrified to admit that I was becoming rapidly addicted.
Though we had successfully avoided seeing each other for weeks at a time, Richard’s tabloid campaign against me was relentless.
Last month, the Daily Post reported that I was self-prescribing semaglutide injections in a desperate attempt to be as slender as Demelza.
There were rumours that the palace had quashed multiple malpractice suits against me in Australia, that I planned to evict Amira from Cumberland 1, that Granny’s secret, ardent hope was that I would give up my place in the line.
But I didn’t have the heart to retaliate.
Louis and I had a pact to always keep each other’s secrets, even as our own father leaked against us.
Once I got down in the mud with Richard, I would never be able to get out again, something Mary couldn’t seem to understand.
We’d had an argument two weeks before when I refused to let her leak to the press that Richard had crashed the function I’d hosted for NHS care home staff.
“But he’s doing it to us,” she had insisted.
“I don’t give a shit,” I said. “I don’t do that. I never have, not once.”
She shook her head. “I know you want to change things, but you can’t do that until you have everyone playing by the same rules.
The Duke of Clarence’s office is briefing the media against you, and right now you’re not giving them anything in return.
You need to build relationships with reporters—you need to have a few of them in your corner.
The media narrative is there to be shaped, and unless you grab onto it, you’re letting Prince Richard chisel it into whatever he wants. ”
She stopped and looked down both ends of the long hall to make sure no one was listening.
“This was your biggest mistake when you were in Australia,” she whispered.
“The Prince of Scotland painted you as some sort of deserter, and I was always astounded that you never fought back against us. You could have easily won over the public, if only you’d tried to bring a few sympathetic journalists onto your side. ”
She had finally taken a breath and seen my face.
I thought of all those stories that had flooded the front pages after I left.
The jokes they had made as my body healed itself after years of deprivation.
The way they had whispered about my state of mind, speculating about involuntary psychiatric holds and conservatorships.
The unnamed Wolseley House aides who gave quotes to the tabloids about how selfish and spoilt I was, how much I had broken Papa’s heart.
“Mary,” I said, “when you worked for my father, did you brief the press against me?”
“No, of course not. I was a junior aide, I was there for social media only.”
“But you were there for those conversations.”
She hesitated. “No.”
“It’s okay if you were. That was the job. I’m just curious.”
In the three months Mary had worked for me, she seemed to have grown taller. She stood straighter, adding length to her spine, taking up more space in rooms where she was now the boss. But she shrank back down as I watched her.
“No,” she said meekly. “I swear to you.”
I wasn’t sure I believed her, and I thought briefly of what Annabelle had said to me at Watford Castle.
Watch out for Mary. She’s not what you think.
But if I had to choose between the word of my stepmother, who had briefed the press against me whenever she needed to divert attention from herself, and the word of the junior aide who had sat in the room while these instructions were given, I would choose Mary every time.
So I had decided to leave it in the past, that strange territory that would probably always lie between us.
I had given Mary permission to issue on-the-record denials whenever a reporter called to inquire whether I was an alcoholic, or a bully, or secretly married.
But she was not to leak, and, if she did, she would be terminated as my private secretary.
“In a couple of years, when you have a proper power base, and the Queen starts giving you more duties, we can ban the family from leaking altogether,” Mary had promised.
At first, when she said these things, I would remind her that I was committed to one year only.
But the more Mary talked of the future, the less I reminded her that mine was yet to be determined.
As we planned out this new, modern monarchy that would require members of the family to be loyal and true, the more real it became in my mind.
When I came downstairs after the phone call with Jack, Amira was cooking in the kitchen with Vikki. Chino was getting underfoot, hoping someone would either throw him a scrap or kick the tennis ball he plopped down at strategic locations as they tried to move around him.
“Did Mary leave?” I asked.
“She said she’ll be back at 7 a.m. sharp tomorrow,” Amira said, cracking pepper over a bowl of foaming eggs. “Meticulous Mary.”
“She’s always been a strange girl, hasn’t she,” Vikki said absently. “But she does have a wonderful sense of style.”
She found me a spare glass and filled it up with a pinot from Alsace that was a little too sweet for my liking. I would need to ask Jack to send me a shipment of Jennings wine to get me through the year.
I looked at Vikki. “I didn’t know you knew Mary.”
“Mum,” Amira said sternly, gesturing at the eggs. “Where’s the salt? You’re meant to be helping.”
Vikki put her wineglass down and went in search of the Maldon.
“Mary used to occasionally help with my styling,” Amira said to me. “You know, if you’re visiting a school or going to a concert, you need that Gen Z perspective.”
Vikki tossed a pinch of salt over the eggs and then picked up her wineglass again. “You looked perfect today, Lexi darling, very chic, a little bit daring. This family mustn’t know what’s hit them.”
Clouds seemed to gather in Amira’s face as she bent over her frittata mixture.
I was conscious of two troublesome facts.
One was that Amira would never, ever be able to break with tradition and wear trousers to church.
Her missteps, even as mild as a skirt billowing in the wind, became week-long media catastrophes.
She did not have the luxury to experiment like I did.
If, like Birdie, she wore a hat shaped like a birdcage to church, it was not just meme fodder, but a symbol of her ill breeding.
Worse still was the knowledge that I had taken her place in the family, consigning her to the seat behind me, the next page in the tabloid.
She had once been part of the family’s shining future but was now part of its tragic past. A widow with no children, there was no modern precedent for what to do with Amira.
But Granny had always liked her, and she continued to invite her to family gatherings, which Amira dutifully attended.
As long as she was sanctioned by the sovereign, her place in the inner circle was assured.
“What was Richard saying to you?” Amira asked.
“He was saying they’re all coming to Scotland this summer.”
“Nightmare.”
Earlier that day at the Commonwealth service, when he sank down into the red chair between Demelza’s and mine, his body oozing into my space, I’d stiffened, but smiled brightly as Mary had instructed.
“Uncle Richard,” I crooned.
“Lovely little Lexi, aren’t you a knockout in that suit? Very KD Lang, I must say.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t know who that is, but I’ll assume it’s a great compliment,” I said, laughing for the cameras. “And where is Florence this morning?”
He grinned and unbuttoned his suit jacket. “Migraine, unfortunately.”
“Oh, dear, she does have a delicate constitution, doesn’t she?”
From the corner of my eye, I could see the BBC camera operator twist his lens towards us. As the final entrants to the church, we only had to make a minute or so of small talk before Granny arrived and the service would begin. But the seconds stretched out before me like an Olympic hurdling track.
“Hi, Lexi,” Demelza breathed, flicking her hair over her shoulder as she turned towards me. She was wearing a calf-skimming pastel coat dress. “Are you bored of us all yet?”
“Impossible,” I said, leaning across Richard like he didn’t exist. “Every morning brings a new surprise, doesn’t it?”
We spoke of the weather (finally turning), their plans for the summer (Mustique, followed by the Scottish estate), and the operas chosen for Glyndebourne’s upcoming autumn season (honestly, fucking kill me), and then finally the organist’s first notes rattled our rib cages and we could be quiet.
When the service was over, Richard, Demelza and Birdie glided past Amira without acknowledging her. Outside the Abbey, they walked by a Māori kapa haka performing, not even lingering to hear their song.
“That man is truly vile,” Vikki said as she rattled around in a utensil drawer. “You know when we went to Scotland that time, he called me a cart tart?”
Amira covered her mouth to swallow her laugh.
“I don’t think I can ever go back there again,” Vikki said mournfully. “And it’s such a shame, because I really loved it there.”