Chapter Eighteen 12 July 2023
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Once I was in, my heart steadied and my blood seemed to cool, and I rolled onto my back and drifted towards the centre of the pond.
My new protection officer, Rita, lingered on the deck with her thermos of tea.
Scotland Yard had been slightly annoyed by my recent ritual because it meant they had to find a female officer to come with me.
But they managed to rustle up Rita, who didn’t seem to mind the assignment too much.
“Beautiful day,” I heard a voice say behind me.
I turned to see a woman paddling by, her white hair tied in a knot at the crown of her head. She had blue eyes and a marvellously lined face. She was radiant in the way only older women could be. Age enriched her beauty.
“It’s perfect, isn’t it,” I said.
Like all women-only spaces, the pond had a convivial atmosphere, and it wasn’t unusual for people to chat to me. With wet hair and no makeup, I was barely recognisable anyway.
“I started coming here in 1978,” she said, treading water.
“That’s amazing. Has it changed much?”
She shook her head. “The trees are a bit taller, the swimming costumes are skimpier, the water’s not quite so cold in the winter, but not really.”
“I imagine that consistency is nice.”
She smiled at me like she had a secret. “You know, your mum used to come here now and then. I don’t think anyone realised it was her. You look so much like her, I got quite the shock the first time you swam past me, I must say.”
I looked at her in surprise. My memories of Mum were like papery flowers pressed in the pages of a book, and suddenly here was a decadently scented, dew-dropped rose picked fresh from the garden.
She must have come out here after the divorce, when she was occasionally forced by the custody arrangement to spend time without us.
She was still the little girl who’d wandered into the scullery of Kilchurn Castle and charmed the kitchen staff into letting her sit by the warm oven and chat to them.
“Thank you,” I said, as I always did when someone told me something I had never heard about Mum before.
The woman winked at me. “Don’t worry. I never told anyone about your mum coming here, and I won’t tell them about you.”
I smiled at her, and then she kicked her legs through the water with the grace of a frog and was gone.
I floated for a bit longer, feeling the sun on my face.
The pond was formed by the headwater springs of the River Fleet, a secret waterway that flows underneath the city.
The water that had buoyed Mum was long gone, seeping into the River Thames and out to the raging North Sea.
But I couldn’t stop imagining that the same water she had swum in now cradled me too.
Then I remembered how she had died. Stinking, rotting sargassum had wound through her hair like a crown, while scavenging sea creatures nibbled on her hands and feet.
The springwater surrounding me suddenly gave way to the stinging brine of the Ligurian Sea.
My skin was no longer clean gooseflesh, but swollen and blood-flecked from a thousand sandfly bites.
The friendly mallards weren’t ducks at all, but gulls prepared to pluck out my vacant eyes.
I was overcome by the desperate urge to get out of the pond, and I made my way back to the deck with efficient strokes.
“Are you alright, ma’am?” asked Rita as I climbed the ladder.
“Yep, fine! I’ve just got a busy day.”
It was the Wimbledon women’s semifinals and I was due in the Royal Box to watch the match at noon.
If I was late for the makeup artist, who was likely arriving at the house within the hour, Mary would be annoyed at me.
But Rita’s father had been a cabbie for forty years, so she knew how to get us anywhere in London in thirty minutes.
When I opened the door at Cumberland 1, I was greeted only by Chino’s galloping paws and the whirr of Amira’s hairdryer coming from her bedroom.
Mary was leaning over the kitchen island, tapping on her phone, and hardly looked up.
“You’re late, Your Highness,” she said mildly.
“I beat the makeup artist, didn’t I?” I called from the floor where Chino had me pinned so he could nuzzle my face.
“You’ve got pond hair,” she said, typing away. “Go shower and I’ll have the makeup artist attend to the Dowager Duchess first.”
I managed to wrestle free from the dog’s frenzied attention so I could make my way upstairs.
“Oh, and congratulations,” Mary added. “We cracked fifty.”
I stopped and turned. She was still tapping at her screen, trying to keep a neutral expression on her face, although I could see that grin of hers tugging at the corners of her mouth while she tried not to gloat about my improving likeability score.
I walked over and gave her a high five. She smirked, holding up her hand reluctantly, though I could see her eyes were sparkling.
“Thank you, Mary,” I said. “Only half the British population is suspicious of me, and that’s entirely due to your efforts.”
She smiled and turned back to her phone. “Actually, only twenty per cent are truly suspicious. The other thirty just aren’t sure yet. But we’ll get them in our column soon enough.”
Almost everyone wonders how much people like them, but very few have it quantified down to the decimal point.
It was hard not to become fixated on the number and the many ways it could be shifted.
I was not a politician who could simply enact good policies.
I couldn’t give charming interviews like a celebrity.
My job was only to be. Winning back the favour of the British public was a lengthy process that might take the rest of my life.
Focus groups suggested my critics could never forgive that I once shirked my duty to the family.
“Selfish” was a word that came up a lot.
I pointed out to Mary that people had used the same word to describe my mother, along with “vulnerable” and “hysterical.” Now she was revered, even by people who were too young to remember her when she was alive.
“There’s only one way to get numbers like Princess Isla, ma’am,” Mary said, unmoved.
It was true. In death, Papa finally got the one thing he had always wanted: the adoration of the British people.
He was easy to admire once they didn’t have to endure his lectures, his cantankerous nature or his devotion to the woman he loved instead of the woman they loved.
Louis, who had been cherished from the moment he was born, was well on his way to sainthood. Our young king who never was.
The Wimbledon match was part of Mary’s strategy to demonstrate that my family had welcomed me back.
When Amira and I were offered tickets, Mary had suggested that I invite Demelza and Birdie along as well.
The tabloids adored a “young royals” story, and we were guaranteed the Daily Post’s front page.
My relationship with the Clarence girls had thawed over the last few months, but I would hardly describe them as my friends.
And while Demelza now had enough information to cause some serious damage to my reputation, none ever emerged.
I could never decide whether that meant she could be trusted, or that she was smart enough to know I would be able to trace it back to her.
Once I was showered, dressed and made up, I met Amira in the car.
I was in a navy and white striped shirt, tucked into matching trousers that could almost pass for pyjamas.
But with a pair of stilettos, the outfit was effortless and tailored.
In every public appearance, Mary insisted that one element of my outfit read as slightly rebellious—a bending rather than breaking of convention.
This time, it was a vivid red lipstick, which had never been expressly forbidden for royal women but was rarely worn.
“How was the pond?” Amira asked. She was in a white sundress and a black YSL logo belt, sure to make Demelza curl her lip in disdain. Most royals preferred to buy a belt that looked like it came from Marks and Spencer but actually cost ￡1,000.
“Nice,” I said. “You should come with me one day.”
She guffawed. “Never.”
We set off down the gravel drive, beneath the old oak trees that formed a rustling canopy over the palace entrance in summer.
“You know who’ll be there today, don’t you?” Amira asked.
“No.”
She looked at me, something hard and gleaming in her gaze. “Colin.”
“How do you know?”
“He texted me this morning to ask if you were coming.”
I leaned back against the headrest and swallowed. We hadn’t seen each other since our disastrous visit to Colin’s country estate that ended with me making a mistake in a library and Birdie slipping over in her own blood. And now we would be reunited while the world’s media watched.
A few weeks earlier, Amira and I had driven up to Lincolnshire in her Range Rover to spend the weekend at Colin’s family seat.
I was used to lavish homes—I was Papa’s daughter after all—but Lutton Hall was unlike anything I had ever seen before.
It was twice the size of Elton Park, and the main home had been demolished and rebuilt several times since the fifteenth century to ensure its architectural lines remained fashionable.
The estate had its own chapel with a 55-metre clock tower; there were turrets, arched windows and an enormous two-storey library.
I had never been there before, but when I heard my footsteps echo through the cold stone cave they called a drawing room, I remembered that Papa had once described the Bellingham estate as “a garish mongrel that makes Versailles look chic.”
“It’s awful, isn’t it,” Colin said as he welcomed us into the house. Like Louis, he wore ￡250 Ralph Lauren knits with ratty holes in the sleeves and at the elbows.
“No,” I said. “It’s—”