Chapter Twenty-Four
Back then
Tristan woke up warm, under a wool throw tucked to his chin. He stayed where he was, letting his headache settle behind his right eye. Then he rolled over and hit an unfamiliar rug with the throw still wrapped round his shins.
He lay there, blinking up at a ceiling that was a very long way away. Cornices ran round the edges, and a chandelier hung off the middle. The walls were covered in gilt-framed paintings stacked three high, and a marble bust of somebody very important-looking sat on a plinth by the window.
This place, he thought, looks like a fucking art gallery.
Then the memory of last night came to him in pieces. He was lying on the floor of Clarence House, having spent the night on the Princess Royal’s sofa.
Tristan freed his legs from the throw and folded it over the sofa back.
Voices were drifting up the passage. He stood, found his reflection in the nearest mirror and did what he could with his flattened fringe and a crease on his cheek from where it had been pressed to the cushion, before he followed the smell of coffee.
A full spread of pastries, eggs, and toast had been laid out in the breakfast nook. James stood over it in yesterday’s shirt, loading a plate, while Caroline sat at the scrubbed pine table with her hands wrapped round a mug.
Tristan read the staging from the doorway, and his part in the scene loaded itself into him. He set a hand on Caroline’s shoulder and kissed her on the lips: the gesture pitched to the family in the room.
“Morning,” he said.
James snorted into his coffee. “You can drop the act, Tristan. I know.”
“What act?” Tristan asked, widening his eyes.
He drew closer to Caroline. She was a stunningly beautiful woman.
Over the last few months she had also become the nearest thing he had to a sister, which made snogging her in front of her actual brother before nine in the morning an upsetting professional requirement.
The job was the job, though. So Tristan licked his lips, because you couldn’t kiss a princess with a dry mouth, and committed.
Caroline laid her hand flat against his face and pushed him away to arm’s length. “Tristan, love. He knows about Benton and me. You can proceed as normal.”
“Oh,” Tristan said, into her palm.
He edged round towards a chair, keeping James in view. His cover was blown. There would be no more puzzle nights, no more reason for Caroline to keep him close.
James loaded up a second plate and held it out.
“Sit down, Tristan. Try the preserves first. The blackberries are from Highgrove, and Caroline hoards jars of these whenever the house does up a batch.”
Tristan sat, took the plate, and did as he was told. The preserves were ridiculously good, dark and sharp under the sweetness, nothing like what came off a supermarket shelf. He loaded a second piece of toast with the stuff before he’d even finished the first.
“How’d you find out?” he asked James.
“Mercè stole a puzzle piece and went to ground under Caroline’s bed. I crawled in after her on my stomach, and found a pair of Benton’s brogues instead.” James spooned more blackberry onto his own toast.
“Huh.” Tristan looked over at Caroline. She was entirely unrepentant. “Taken down by a dog, after the better part of a year of operational security.”
Caroline sipped from her mug. “What can you do?”
Tristan turned to James. “You’re taking this very well.”
“I don’t know why the pair of them thought hiding it was the better approach, frankly.
Benton is the best-case scenario for Caroline.
He’s discreet, he’s solvent, he’s the only man in England capable of managing her diary and her temper at the same time.
” James gestured at his sister with the jam spoon.
“You weren’t here for her early twenties, Tristan.
She came perilously close to going the brain-dead rugby player route.
His name was Dev, he was a flanker from Bath who once asked me whether Balmoral was abroad. ”
“I was twenty-two,” Caroline said. “I wasn’t thinking about the long term. I was only thinking that he was so very, very—”
“Don’t finish that thought, Caroline.” James scowled. “I’ve learned as much about your love life in the past twelve hours as I can stomach for the remainder of my life. We’re settled on Benton, and that’s the end of it.”
“I’m not settling for anything.” Caroline wrapped both hands round her mug and smiled into it. “I’ve found the absolute winner.”
James groaned, but he was smiling.
“Right. Tristan, here’s where you come in, I’m afraid.
You’re conscripted for the next few months.
We go on exactly as we have been. Nobody confirms anything, nobody addresses anything directly, and the pair of you just carry on being photographed at a tasteful distance from one another.
But if you can stomach being a bit of a light shield while Benton works out his exit over the next year or so, it would be very helpful to all of us. ”
Tristan had braced for a warm thanks for his service and a slow fade from everyone’s diaries. Getting the extension instead felt like one of his shows being picked up for another season.
“Happy to,” he said. His answer came out too eager, and he made himself tone it down. “I mean it. Caroline’s the best fake girlfriend I’ve ever had. The hours are great, the catering’s unreal, and I’ve a running bet going with you, James, that we still need to settle. Sign me up for the full tour.”
“Good man.” James reached across with the spoon and heaped a fresh dollop of blackberry onto Tristan’s plate. “Caroline, do ring down and have them bring a jar up for Tristan to take home. He’s earned it.”
“He’s earned two,” Caroline said, and dug out her mobile.
? ? ?
The rehearsal room sat on the second floor of a production office in Hammersmith, its grey floor taped out in coloured lines that marked out the kitchen they’d be filming in.
He was twenty minutes early, and the only other person there was a woman on a plastic chair with a ring binder open on her knee.
She was somewhere in her fifties, her grey hair cropped short to show off a chunky pair of bright red earrings.
“Tristan.” She rose to shake his hand. “I’m Micaela Campbell, the intimacy coordinator for this production. We’ve emailed.”
“Thanks for fitting me in before the read-through.”
“No worries at all,” she said. “While we’ve a minute to ourselves, let’s go over how we’ll be running today, so that nothing about it surprises you.”
She walked him through the rider attached to his contract, in plain language, confirming what he’d agreed to be filmed doing and how much of him the cameras would see.
Nothing in the room today would go past it.
They’d map the first intimate scene the way a stunt team planned out a fall, beat by beat, so that on the day it could be run take after take without anyone improvising a single move.
“And if at any point you want to stop, you say ‘stop,’ and we stop,” she said.
“It’s my job to make sure that you know that there’s no need for you to push through anything that makes you feel uncomfortable.
You’re allowed to say no for any reason at all.
You won’t have to explain it to me, and you certainly won’t have to explain it to Daniel, or anyone else involved in the production. ”
“Cool.” He flashed her a smile.
Daniel Birrell arrived at ten on the dot, wearing a fleece and carrying a Tesco meal deal, and the room shrank around him. He set the sandwich down on a windowsill, crossed the taped-out kitchen in three strides, and offered his hand.
“Tristan. Good to see you again.”
Today’s grip was warm and brief. So the bone-crusher in Soho had belonged to Jay.
“Daniel.” Micaela kissed his cheek in greeting. “Sit down, both of you.”
She arranged the three of them into a loose triangle of plastic chairs, and explained how their preliminary conversation would run.
Before anything was blocked out, she wanted them to talk to each other about how they each worked, what they each needed, and where their lines sat.
Nothing said here would go further than the three of them.
“Daniel, you’ve done this dance before. Why don’t you start us off.”
Birrell turned his chair a few degrees so that he was facing Tristan square on.
“You’ll have heard I don’t drop character,” he said.
“It’s mostly true. From the first day of the shoot, on set and around it, you’ll be getting a lot of Jay, because I’m no good at switching on and off between setups.
I should have warned you before the chemistry read, and I didn’t, and I’m sorry for it.
That handshake I gave you then was him taking your measure.
It wasn’t a kind thing to do right off the bat to someone who’s never met me. ”
“It got me the job,” Tristan said.
“Your read got you the job.” Birrell let that sit. “Here’s what I need from you. If you ever want the man instead of the character, you say my name. You say Daniel, and Jay goes in a drawer, and you get me. That’s the whole mechanism. It’s never failed yet.”
Micaela made a note. “And physically?”
“Hands are fine anywhere we’ve agreed in advance.
I’ll never improvise a grab, a restraint, or anything around your throat or face, even where it’d play well.
If a moment wants something we haven’t choreographed, I’ll break and we’ll choreograph it first with Micaela.
” He glanced at the taped floor. “I’m seventeen stone, son, and you’re what, ten, soaking wet?
Improvising on you isn’t acting, it’s negligence. ”
“Tristan,” Micaela said. “Your turn.”
He’d come in with talking points. He’d drafted them in the car, aiming for gracious, collaborative, and lightly self-deprecating. All of it built to make a veteran character actor feel respected. Now he binned the lot and answered Birrell in kind.