Chapter Twenty-Six 17 November 2023 #2
She walked deeper into the gallery until she was swallowed by the crowd.
And then it was time to give my toast in honour of Dr. Miloyo and her life’s work.
Mary passed me the cards onto which she had carefully written my speech.
We had drafted and submitted my toast to Stewart, who returned it with whole sections crossed out in red pen.
I was to make no references to Britain’s colonial history in Kenya, only celebrating our countries’ “strong bonds of friendship.” I was forbidden from pointing out that pregnancy was such a perilous endeavour for so many because of the legacy of empire.
And I could make no allusions to my own history in medicine.
We went back and forth, until I had conceded every point, and he finally permitted me to speak.
At the lectern, I looked into the faces of our guests.
Jenny stood with the Shankars. Granny was now seated in a gilt chair, Stewart forever keeping watch by her side.
Dr. Miloyo and her associates stood at the centre of the room, waiting.
So I gave the speech that Stewart had approved, but as I reached the last card, I glanced up one final time to look at Barbara over the mantel.
Her DNA might have spiralled down through her descendants so that part of her was still alive within me.
I might have had her name and the position she conspired to make mine.
But she was just a woman in a painting. She was old bones buried deep beneath the Abbey floor.
Her time had passed, and soon mine would too.
I put the card down on the lectern. “As many of you know, I once dreamed of being a doctor—specifically an obstetrician, after seeing the good work of Dr. Miloyo in action when I was a girl on a trip to Nairobi with my mother.”
I could sense more than I saw the lengthening of Mary’s spine as she stood in the shadows beside me.
“When choosing a cause for this event, I thought a lot about the good things my family can do with our position,” I went on.
“When we speak, the world sits up and pays attention. But if you choose to speak, you must be as truthful as you know how to be. Otherwise, no one will ever trust your words. And the truth is that the British empire’s historical actions in Kenya and elsewhere have a long and terrible legacy.
Until we can have a frank conversation about the past and make amends for our sins, we will be unable to move into the future. ”
I raised my glass and finished my toast, and when I was done, there was a brief lull before the crowd filled the room with their applause—some of it enthusiastic, some of it merely polite.
I noted the exchange of meaningful glances among the guests, the straight line Stewart made of his mouth as he pressed his lips together. But I had no regrets.
After I spent some time chatting to our guests, I slipped away for a moment to stand on the landing of the grand staircase alone.
When I looked up, I saw that Amira was sitting on one of the narrower flights of steps that curved up to the palace’s third floor.
I climbed up, sank down next to her and leaned against the gold-leaf banister.
In our silence, we could hear the laughter and voices from the other room.
“So I think we’ve both been holding out on each other,” I started.
“Colin texted me,” she said. “He’s furious.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about that?” I looked at her. She was staring into her empty hands. “I can’t imagine what it’s been like for you all these months.”
She twitched as if rejecting the notion that she could feel pain. “You two make sense. My feelings are irrelevant.”
“Amira,” I said. “You’re my friend. Your feelings are extremely relevant. You were in love with this man, and you had to keep it a secret when it ended, and then you just watched while he carried on with me.”
She brushed at the tears forming in her eyes. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Of course it does. Are we not friends? Because I’ve heard some things lately that make me wonder. You know Mary and you put her in my path? You have a history with Colin, and you kept pushing him on me to make me forget about Jack.”
She stared at me icily. “I was doing what I was told.”
“By who?”
“Who do you think?” she hissed. A servant carrying a tray of empty champagne flutes glided by and we watched quietly until he disappeared down the hall.
“She wanted to keep you here. And I went along with it because this is her family and her institution. And… I wanted you to stay as well. You have no idea what these years have been like for me.”
“Why don’t you tell me then?”
It wasn’t so much that Amira had wanted to marry Louis as it got to a point where turning back would have done more damage than forging on.
Before she knew it, she had been Louis’s girlfriend for seven years.
Louis and Kris still seemed deeply in love, although they would break up for months at a time when the pressure of their secret lives started to smother them, and Amira would wonder if, finally, she might be free.
She loved Louis dearly. He treated her better than most of her secondary school boyfriends, taking her to clubs and dinners and buying her gifts.
But she had started to wonder if that was enough for a life—even one as grand as theirs.
She hadn’t had sex in seven years. No one kissed her or touched her.
The tabloids had already started to mock her for her unending patience in waiting for a proposal.
At twenty-six, they could break up and it would be humiliating for a while, but then she might be able to start her life anew.
If she got any older than this, her prospects would be very grim indeed.
It was then that Louis had raided Mum’s safe deposit box for the emerald.
He and Vikki had urged her to consider it.
Kris refused to be involved. While Amira would be giving up the prospect of romantic love—at least, until they could figure out how to live their lives in private without being discovered—she would get to be the Queen of England.
The marriage would not depend on the longevity of Louis’s relationship with Kris.
This would be forever. And so, she did it.
She did it because her mother insisted that marriage was a ladder into the aristocracy.
She did it because she saw that Kris and Louis were unable to stay apart and she wanted them to be happy.
She did it because every girl in the world is told from the moment she’s born that there’s nothing finer than being queen.
A few days after his visit to Tasmania, Louis had confided in Amira about the encounter with Finn.
There had been others over the years, but never a stranger, never a regular man whose position did not depend on secrecy.
Things were too tense at the time for Louis to call and ask me if they could trust Finn.
But when Louis had gone to Frederick, wondering if perhaps they should offer to buy Finn’s silence, Papa had blamed me for all of it.
He had always privately hoped I’d return to London when I finished medical school.
After learning from Louis that I had chosen to work at a Tasmanian hospital instead, he was furious, hurt and looking for an excuse to punish me.
I was somehow behind this scheme, Papa had declared.
I must have got Louis drunk and pushed him and Finn together in the hope of breaking up the wedding.
There would be no payout. The only person who would be silenced was me.
Exhausted, Louis and Amira had walked down the aisle of Westminster Abbey as Kris and I watched on.
Everything had been fine at first. They had moved to Sherbourne House and found that in Norfolk they could finally breathe.
Kris bought a house down the road, and this really was Louis’s home.
But whether Amira was at a dinner party with Louis’s friends or attending an event as the Duchess of Somerset, she felt like she was walking underwater.
Everyone thought she was the luckiest girl in the world.
She had a large country estate, a handsome husband who was nice to her, and a dazzling future that felt like a life sentence.
She wasn’t even sure she liked Colin when he’d started stealing glances at her across the dinner table.
He had caused constant sexual drama in their circle, and she had watched with disdain as he dated women and then moved on to their sisters or childhood best friends.
She knew he was interested in her for the same reason Louis wanted to surf down a volcano.
But it had been so very long since she felt desirable.
During a drunken game of hide and seek, she and Colin had shared a delirious moment in a butler’s pantry.
Then he had repeatedly called her and declared that being away from her was agony.
Soon he had started coming over most nights that Louis wasn’t there.
Amira hadn’t really meant it when she’d told Colin she would leave her marriage for him.
By then she thought she loved him—or at least, she’d loved the way he made her feel.
The security of the House of Villiers rested entirely on her slim shoulders, and she’d wanted to imagine, just once, what it would be like to run away.
But a week later, Colin showed up to dinner at Sherbourne House with a bottle of whisky and the daughter of an earl.
Amira sat at the head of her own table and watched as Colin looked into this woman’s eyes and held her hand.
Amira had realised there would be many more nights like this, a lifetime of dizzying interludes followed by heartbreak, and then she must carry on as if nothing happened.