Chapter Twenty-One 10 October 2023 #2
He shook it absently, his mind already back on the dozen tasks he had to complete in the next ten minutes, my insipid chat only slowing him down. “Yes, uh, thank you, ma’am.”
I tapped down the hall in my ridiculous shoes, surrounded by my entourage of handlers and security guards.
“Oh, hey, Your, um, Highness,” Dr. Lee called, and I stopped and turned back to look at him. A strip of fluorescent lights overhead blurred his edges and bathed him in a synthetic glow. “You were right about Arlo—the baby. Just a bit of gas.”
When I got home, Cumberland 1 was empty, except for Chino.
I closed the door behind me, and he put his heavy paws on my shoulders—a bad habit we were trying to break—but I pretended he was trying to embrace me and wrapped my arms around his solid trunk while he squirmed and sniffed.
In the bedroom, I stripped off my pink outfit, pulled on Jack’s t-shirt and crawled under the covers. Chino slipped in beside me.
I was getting very good at pushing all thoughts of Jack from my mind, even if I did sleep in his shirt every night.
When the maid washed it, I’d been devastated and sent a lengthy text to Finn explaining why I needed him to go into Jack’s laundry and pilfer me a new one, and that while this might seem like worrying behaviour, it was entirely reasonable.
Honey, he wrote back. That wouldn’t be a good idea. You get that, right?
Finn was still texting me daily as if none of it had ever happened.
He told me about the wounds he was treating at the hospital.
He updated me on Hobart gossip and told me what Ragu was doing.
But he refused to talk about Jack, insisting a no-contact rule was essential so that we could both move on.
He’s okay, he wrote after I spent an hour trying to steer our text conversation towards Jack. But that’s all you get xxxxx
If I could have ripped my heart out of my chest to cure me of this ache, I would have done it.
I knew I needed to cry at some point, but no tears would come.
The only relief I could find was in sleep.
For the first time since I was seventeen, I couldn’t seem to get enough of it.
I’d been more alert when I worked hundred-hour weeks at the hospital.
But now I trudged through each day under the impossible weight of exhaustion.
As soon as I pressed my head into the pillow, I succumbed gratefully to the darkness that would erase me for a while.
The bedroom was cast in late-afternoon shadows by the time Amira put a cool hand on my forehead.
“Hey,” she whispered. She was dressed in her Pilates gear. “You alright?”
“Yeah, just tired.”
She picked up a takeaway cup from the side table and handed it to me. “I got you one of those smoothies you like from that place.”
“I don’t know if I’m hungry,” I said. I was beginning to like the self-flagellation of emptiness again.
She pushed the cup into my hands and smiled. “If I have to eat, you have to eat. Drink as much as you can, and I’ll finish it.”
I took a sip while Amira crawled into the bed.
Thrilled by this development, Chino curled himself between us and sighed deeply.
The smoothie felt cloying on my tongue. Eventually I gave up and passed the cup to Amira.
I could hear the familiar sounds of the house staff in the kitchen, the clicking of the gas hob, the fridge sucking closed.
“We’ll be too full for dinner after that,” I said.
“No,” Amira said firmly. “They’re making roast chicken.”
She finished the smoothie with a slurp and put the cup on the side table.
“So do you want to, like, talk about it?” she asked.
“When do we ever want to talk about it?”
She put her face in Chino’s neck while I stared at the ceiling. “I know, it would be very middle class of us. But it’s just… I hate seeing you like this. Maybe you’d feel better if you told someone what happened.”
What had happened? I would tell someone if I knew.
I thought of those first few days of Jack and Finn’s trip to the estate, when everything had seemed so perfect.
Jack and I had woken up together, naked and no longer just friends.
We kissed behind the trees while everyone was fishing.
At dinner, he reached under the table and ran his finger along the delicate skin behind my knee.
I liked planing my hands along his chest. I became greedy for the new rendition of my name that I could elicit from his lips, his look of intense concentration when I climbed onto his lap.
There were broken buttons on my shirt and a bloom of colour on his collarbone.
And we would always lie there in the aftermath, both of us stripped bare, Jack’s hand skimming over my skin.
I would watch his face while he did this, curled on my side and unafraid.
But on the last day—the terrible day—the mood had shifted. He and Finn were flying from Aberdeen to London the next day, and then onwards to Australia. Our looming separation didn’t seem real to either of us. Jack was quiet at the breakfast table, and I eyed him warily over my teacup.
“So Amira and I are going into town today to go shopping, just the two of us,” Finn said.
He and Amira were now bosom buddies—phone numbers and Instagram handles exchanged, the past forgotten.
“Okay,” I said. “We might go for a drive. There’s something I want to show Jack.”
We borrowed a Range Rover and drove to the outer edge of the estate.
There was a cliff out there that had been Mum’s favourite place, her retreat from the family as summer dragged on, and old grudges and jealousies started to surface.
I would often come along, bouncing in the back of the car as she drove over rough terrain.
The cliff was the highest point of the estate, and the view was incomparable.
It was a starker beauty out there than the plush pastures along the river. It reminded me of Tasmania.
After a long, wordless drive, I parked the car and we walked among the rocky outcrop to the cliff’s edge.
Mist had pooled in the valleys and the wind brought more vapour than air.
But it was clear enough to see the abundance of my family’s lands.
Those green hills that rolled all the way to the horizon belonged to us.
Jack looked out over everything I would one day own and his eyebrows stitched together.
“This was my mum’s favourite place,” I said, my heart uneasy. “I wanted you to see it.”
He nodded. He was wearing a Barbour jacket bought for him with Mary’s palace credit card and he wore it well.
“Lex,” he said finally, “are you going to be the queen?”
He asked it so freely, so casually. But I could see in his eyes that this question had been humming inside him for as long and as intensely as it had been in me.
“I… have until the end of the year to decide,” I said weakly.
He squinted at me, confused. “Yeah, but you’re meant to be on holiday this month, and Amira said you’ll be spending most of it travelling around Scotland to shore up your support here.
And she said you’re about to shift your office’s agenda so it’s in line with your philanthropic goals instead of your dad’s.
It sounds to me like you’ve already decided and just haven’t told anyone. Me included.”
I looked down at my feet. He was right, of course. I had been telling myself that I could go back to Australia at any moment, but as each week passed, I was planting my roots further and further into the familiar soil here.
“I know it’s difficult to understand, but I was born into this family, and that means I’m meant to serve. It’s just the way it works. The crown is landing on my head and—”
“Lexi, I don’t give a shit if you want to be the queen,” he said sharply, running his hands through his hair the way he did when he was stressed.
“I knew you’d made up your mind when we talked about the reception for the African hospital.
And I was happy for you. If this is what you want, you should do it. ”
“It’s not about what I want,” I insisted. “It’s a duty. People find it hard to understand, but—”
“I don’t find it hard to understand. I really don’t.
I may not have all this,” he said, throwing his arm towards the hills around us, “but I know what family loyalty is. I know what it is to have a legacy. Fixing up the vineyard was all my dad wanted to do, and then he died, and it became mine. I’m keeping those vines alive for him. I get it, Lex, I do.”
“So what are you asking me?”
I could see that I had hurt him then. He looked out at the same timeworn valleys and breathed the same air that used to cleanse my mother.
“I’m asking where I fit in,” he said. “I haven’t wanted to ask for eight months because I didn’t want to push you, but I’m here now.
I’m wearing the clothes you picked out for me and I’m trying to impress your family.
I need to know what you want. Because everyone thinks you’re undecided about the crown, but I think maybe you’re just undecided about me. ”
The wind was starting to pick up and I was grateful for the gusts that gave cover for the tears forming in my eyes.
“Jack,” I said, “what am I going to do? Ask you to move here? So you can be my consort and follow me around—a few paces behind—for the rest of your life? You know what it would be like for you here, don’t you?
You’d be shadowed by servants, hosting tea parties and cutting ribbons.
The press would be awful to you. You would hate it here.
Eventually you’d hate me too. I know you hate the monarchy—”
“I don’t hate it, Lex,” he said. “I think it’s got some things to answer for, like, I don’t know, slavery? And causing so much pain for so many people? But you agree with me on that. I know you do.”
“I still have to do this,” I snapped. “It was meant to be Louis, but now he’s gone, and I have to do it for him.”