Chapter Twenty-Eight 28 December 2023 #3
“He won’t,” she said and crossed her arms across her chest. “He won’t. People are reluctant to give up their traditions. He’ll be the one who stayed, and you’ll be the one who left. You’ll be shocked by how they cling to him.”
I shook my head. “You think that little of them?”
She held her hands open, palms up, nothing left for me. “Quite the opposite. I just know them better than they know themselves.”
I saw then that she would always choose the crown over her family.
It was the pact you made for the honour of wearing it, and it was not a weight I could bear.
I looked back towards the house again. A servant was turning on the lights one by one, making the manor glow in the winter dusk.
Inside, Richard stalked the halls. He had spent his life methodically removing every obstacle until, finally, it was only the Queen standing in his way.
“I should get you inside,” I said to my grandmother. “It’s getting cold.”
When we reached a snowy street in Brixton, Charlie parked his van and led me to a narrow terrace with a red door.
Mary, unfamiliar in jeans and a sweatshirt, pulled us into the claustrophobic hallway.
She and Charlie wore identical pinched expressions as Chino pushed past their legs and ran into the house.
“How did it go?” she asked.
“Yeah, fine,” I said in a breathy voice that failed to sound cheerful. “Thanks to Charlie.”
“It was pretty cool, actually.” He laughed. “But now I need a pint to take the edge off.”
I’d seen how his hands had trembled on the steering wheel for the entire journey home.
“I’m just at the pub on the corner if you need me,” he told Mary, then gave me a nod. “Good luck, ma’am.”
As he slipped through the front door, Mary led me down the hall to a kitchen overlooking an empty courtyard.
Everything about the terrace was small. A rooster-themed wallpaper border curled at its edges.
Faded curtains hung limply in the window.
This was a woman’s space, once carefully curated, but since abandoned.
At the table, Jenny Walsh and a man I didn’t recognise sat together sipping tea.
They rose from their chairs when I came into the room, and I knew this was the last time anyone would do this for me.
“Your Highness,” Jenny said. “Did it all go to plan?”
A month earlier, when I had reached forward to shake Jenny’s hand at the palace reception, I had pressed a note into her palm.
“I need your help,” it read. She had called me the next morning, and when I told her I wished to leave, she had engaged the services of Emmanuel Mensah, a constitutional scholar she knew from law school.
He had quietly agreed to represent me as I relinquished my claim to the throne.
When Mary and I sat down, he pulled a piece of paper and a fountain pen from his bag and placed them on the scratched table.
After long and careful consideration, I have decided to renounce my claim as heir apparent, it began, though I didn’t bother to read the rest. I knew how it went.
I would ask parliament to strip me of my titles, withdraw me from the line of succession and bar any of my future descendants from a claim to the throne.
“Are we sure this will work?” I asked, the pen poised over the page. “The Queen doesn’t need to be here to make it legal?”
“Quite the opposite,” Emmanuel said. “Only parliament can bring an act to remove you from the line. Everything they’ve planned for next week is just theatre.”
I had left the manila envelope containing Stewart’s letter on the dining table in Cumberland 1.
In his version, I claimed to be temperamentally unfit to wear the crown and that I therefore had no choice but to pass it to my beloved uncle.
Granny and Richard were supposed to stand behind me while a palace photographer captured the moment I signed everything away.
There had been talk of an interview with the BBC, but someone had clearly baulked at the idea, no longer trusting me in front of cameras.
By the time I was meant to board the jet at Northolt a week from now, the Queen would be giving a televised address, reassuring her subjects that while the line had curved in recent years, it would never be broken.
I would give Richard the crown, but I was not willing to say he was worthy of wearing it.
I had told the world enough lies as it was.
With my passport hidden somewhere in Stewart’s apartment, and my security detail under strict instruction to follow my every move, it had been Mary’s idea to slip me out in the back of a van.
I lowered the heavy fountain pen to the letter and signed my name.
Ink dripped from the nib and left a constellation around my signature.
Mary fanned the wet spatter with her hand and then signed the document as my witness.
Gingerly, she passed it to Emmanuel. Everyone was very quiet as we watched the ink dry.
“So that’s it?” I asked.
“Once everything’s public, I’ll ask the opposition leader to join me in bringing an act to parliament that recognises and ratifies your decision and passes succession to your uncle,” Jenny said.
Emmanuel left with the letter and a promise to stay in touch.
Jenny, Mary and I sat back down at the table in silence and listened to the monotonous ticking of a rooster clock wedged into a pine hutch.
Chino draped himself across my lap and fell asleep with one hindleg still balancing on the linoleum floor.
After no one made a move to leave, Mary went to the kitchen and returned with a small white box.
Inside was one cupcake lathered in pink icing.
She stuck a candle in it and lit it with a match.
“Happy birthday, ma’am,” she said.
We stared as the candle started to dribble, until finally I leaned forward and blew it out. Mary took over, cutting the cake into quarters and handing a piece to each of us.
“I know the risks you’re taking to help me,” I started.
“Don’t,” Mary said sharply, and Jenny looked up from her cake. “You don’t have to say that.”
“I just wanted to say how grateful I am.”
Jenny popped a piece of cake into her mouth. “It shouldn’t have been this way.”
“Still,” I said, eating icing and a smatter of candle wax, the taste of childhood. “I don’t know where I’d be without you both.”
When we were done, Jenny packed up her bag and we walked to the front door. Outside, she signalled to her officer, who was loitering further up the street. She smiled and then reached into her pocket and handed me a navy-blue passport.
“Fresh from the printers,” she said.
I opened it to the photo page and saw for the first time my new name. No HRH, no title. Only Alexandrina Anne Barbara Mary Villiers. It was grand by any measure—overstuffed with Christian names and far too many syllables. But to me it felt as stark as the snow that blanketed the road.
I looked up at Jenny. “Are you going to get into trouble for all this?”
She smiled at me wearily. “Privately? Probably a little bit. Publicly? No. I don’t think they’ll want it out there that I had to help you slip out of the country like a fugitive.”
We hugged for a long time, and then I watched as she walked briskly down the street towards her waiting car. When they drove away, I stood under a foggy streetlight and breathed in the cold night air.
Inside, I found Mary at the kitchen sink, Chino lying at her feet.
“Is it just you and Charlie living here?” I asked.
She nodded as she scraped the cupcake liner and the melted candle into the bin. Mary was one of those people who seemed a different creature outside her professional environment. She was softer in her own domain. “Our mum left when we were kids and our dad’s in care. Alzheimer’s. Early onset.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.” She picked up the folder I had brought with me from the van. “So, this is all of Chino’s stuff?”
“Yes,” I said. “Louis brought him over from Bulgaria last year, so his vaccinations were already up to date. I’ve done the paperwork, so you just need to take him to that address in a few days, and they’ll fly him to Australia. I’ll be there to collect him when his quarantine is done.”
She nodded.
“He might be a bit of a terror,” I said, looking around at their slight home.
She smiled again. “Chino was actually a gift from Prince Frederick to Prince Louis. Your brother was always talking about how much he loved your dog in Australia, so your father decided to get him a pointer for his birthday. I helped pick him out from the breeder’s website and I went to fetch him when he landed at Heathrow.
It’ll be nice to spend time with him again. ”
The rooster clock crowed to herald the new hour. Mary and I smiled awkwardly at each other.
“Did we ever meet at Astley, Mary?” I asked.
She wiped down the counters with a sponge. “A few times. The Dowager Duchess of Somerset would occasionally let me into your suite while she was getting ready for dances. I’d help pick her shoes. You were pretty quiet.”
“I’m sorry I don’t remember,” I said. “I was a bit of a zombie then.”
She shrugged. “You won three prizes that year. Chemistry, biology and maths—the most of any upperclassman. And at the ceremony, I came onto the stage and gave you three bunches of flowers from the student body.”
The blue delphiniums, the gerbera daisies and the white lilies wrapped in squeaky cellophane. Two small arms struggling around the arrangements. A swell of applause. Papa was in the audience, although he left before the ceremony was over.
“Of course,” I said. “I remember you.”
Her smile quickly faded. “I’m sorry I didn’t mention it sooner.
The Queen asked me not to. And I was worried you’d think I was some kind of stalker.
But it’s not like that. I just always looked up to you.
The royal family used to give me so much hope when I was a kid.
And that’s how it should be. The institution just needs to address its past so it can move forward.
I thought leaving the way you did was amazing.
It was the shock they needed. So when you came back, I jumped at the chance to work for you. ”
I shook my head. “I’m just sorry I’ve made it impossible for you to keep working at the palace.”
She tossed the sponge into the sink and leaned against the counter. “It’s fine. You’re right. I’m too smart for all that.”
“Yes, you are.”
Her eyes flicked towards the rooster clock. “We should get going. Your flight leaves in a few hours.”
“Oh, wait,” I said and pulled the envelope from the pocket of my hoodie. I handed it to her. “This is for you.”
She used two fingers to spread open the envelope, looked at the cheque inside and then snapped it shut. “Your Highness, no.”
“Firstly,” I said gently, “it’s Lexi. And secondly, yes. Buy a house. Turn Williams Carpet Cleaning into a franchise. Use it to get your father into a nicer place. Personally, I think you should start your own crisis communications firm or something. But it’s your money to do with as you please.”
Her eyes brimmed and she shook her head until she finally stopped and clutched the envelope to her chest. She smiled through her tears. “I’ll need my first client.”
“Well, I’m about to blow up my life and turn everyone against me, so I’m in desperate need of help.”
We embraced in the dim light of her mother’s kitchen.
Then we went out into the street with Chino and hopped into the van.
I held the solid weight of him in my lap as we cruised towards Heathrow, wondering if I would ever return to the seat of my family’s power.
Three centuries ago, my ancestor Barbara Villiers had transformed herself from impoverished noblewoman to concubine to de facto monarch.
Her line had looped and whirled through decades of war and advancement, through pandemics and famines, through weak monarchs and towering ones.
As London rippled outwards and its buildings grew taller, the crown had been slowly, slowly inching towards me.
I did not expect it; I did not desire it.
And when it spun into view and hovered above my hands, I found that I couldn’t do what needed to be done for it to be mine.
My name could have been Alexandrina, by the Grace of God of Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, Queen, Defender of the Faith.
I could have worn gold and had my face etched into coins and believed myself to be divine.
But it would have been a lie. What made me special was that I was Isla and Frederick’s daughter and Louis’s twin.
It was time for me to become Lexi Villiers.