Chapter 27
S o long as I remain here as a burden to my friends, and all those I love, there will be no way for me to prove my sincerity. There won’t be enough room for me to change. The one clear thought that has plagued my waking moments and my restless sleep is that I must leave Balmoral.
Stuck here for so long, waiting for my parents to approve my return, I have simply accepted my own lack of agency, convinced that being allowed to make my own decisions will only bring great humiliation to my name. And yet, all that has been done to prevent me making a mistake has caused the greatest of all. In yearning for control over myself, I looked for it in others instead. If I had no choice in my own life, at least I could make choices for others, play the author, play fairy godmother.
If I want to truly be a person worthy of Sophie’s friendship, of Fraser’s love, I have to take the reins of my own life. So far, my identity has been one long, censored, pre-written speech, which has had me thirsting to go off script. I must take responsibility. I must stop trying to rebel against the prescriptive tracks, and just rewire them completely. I must write my own story.
‘Are you sure about this? Isn’t it a wee bit hasty?’ Mrs Buchanan stands at the door of the castle, holding my last bag as I load up Jimmy’s car. ‘Why don’t you come back in and let me make us breakfast? Give yourself another half an hour to think about it. You can’t make a good decision on an empty stomach.’
Smiling sadly, I lean down to kiss her on her soft cheek and she wafts me away with a blush. ‘If I don’t make this decision now, I never will.’
She places my bag down and takes me by the hands.
I need to prove myself. No, not just for a boy. I need to prove to myself that I am more than what everyone else has told me I am, or should be.
‘You’re a good girl, Alice. Even if you can be a little madam.’ She pinches my cheek like a grandmother and I smile against her touch. ‘You’re welcome back any time – you know that.’
‘I’ll be back for the wedding,’ I reply with a cheeky grin, looking between her and the groundskeeper as he fusses about the car. Mrs Buchanan hushes me with another deepening blush and waves me off into the car.
‘Can I ask one more favour?’ Buckling my seatbelt, I turn to her, with all playfulness stripped from my countenance. The housekeeper nods. ‘Make sure he takes that job in Edinburgh.’
‘Of course, lass.’ She looks at the castle, then to me again. Her usually stern facade has melted away for soft, sloped brows and eyes brimming with affection. ‘You just look after yourself. You deserve to be happy.’ Before I can leap from the car to embrace her, she closes the door and returns to the castle without looking back.
‘Ready, ma’am?’ Jimmy says, getting into the driver’s seat and striking up the ignition. Unable to tear my gaze from the ivy-covered stone, and the worn-out patch of gravel beneath my window that the piper stood to attention upon each day, I nod wordlessly, knowing if I had to speak, I’d only change my mind.
‘He’ll forgive you, you know?’ Jimmy says after we trundle through the countryside in mostly silence. He doesn’t look at me, nor I him.
‘I know. That’s why I need to leave.’ Everyone knows that Fraser Bell is a person better than the rest of us. Not for one second have I doubted his love for me. But he needs to start being selfish. If I stay, so will he. If I stay, he will resent me for all of the opportunities he missed out on because of me. If I leave, he has a shot at a happier life, and how could I say I love him if I didn’t let him try?
I only allow Jimmy to drive me as far as Inverness train station, and he leaves a departing kiss on my forehead and wishes me luck. Waving him off, I know there really is no turning back. Marching through the station, I decide that the change starts right now. I walk into the little platform shop, pick up a notebook with the words ‘I 3 Edinburgh’ on the front, and, after panicking I’m in the wrong city for a few moments, I take it to the checkout.
* * *
When my train eventually arrives after a few delays and one sneaky platform change, I squeeze down the carriage and find a spare seat on a table of businessmen, clearly on their way back to London from some meeting or other. They look me up and down as I take a seat, but I quickly force my headphones into my ears and block out their narcissism with a little classical music. Okay, it might be the Bridgerton soundtrack cover of that one Pitbull song but it’s mostly piano so I’m saying that counts. Small steps, small steps.
Opening the notebook to the first page, I scrawl in rushed handwriting:
How I can become a better person.
How to be more Sophie.
Step 1:
Staring at the already messy paper occupies my mind for much of the journey. By the time the train pulls into London, I have crossed out most ideas, torn out most pages, but I keep coming back to one in particular: the community centre.
If I can somehow use this position that I’m in to help Sophie with the community centre – and all of the people in places just like Braemar who need a place to go for a coffee and a chat – surely that’s a step in the right direction? If people of all ages, all backgrounds, have a place to meet, a place to be comfortable, warm, and safe with their neighbours, then perhaps a few of us wouldn’t be so lonely.
‘Lady Alice.’ My father meets me personally from King’s Cross Station. He stands, leaning up against the sleek car, which of course he didn’t drive here himself, with his arms folded like some mob boss coming to pick up his new hit.
‘Father.’ I nod to him, opening the car boot and tossing in my bags by myself. ‘You really didn’t have to go to such effort for me. I could have made my own way to the house’
‘Your mother wanted me to make sure you didn’t stop off anywhere on the way.’ He grimaces at the thought of what I could possibly get up to if left to get a taxi alone. ‘Plus, I was over at the British Library for some ambassadors’ event so was in the area.’
‘Lucky me,’ I grumble under my breath.
‘Now,’ he starts as we settle into the drive, stopping and starting every two feet in London traffic, ‘if you are coming home, we must set some ground rules, Alice. We can’t be having any repeats from the last few months …’
Zoning out almost as soon as he begins, I watch the population from the tinted windows and formulate my strategy in my head. How can I make this work? How will I get the funding? Would Father approve this as a business venture? Even then does it really matter? Thinking back to Sophie, how she set aside her own money to rebuild the hall, I realise don’t have to use someone else’s cash to get what I want. All of my inheritance from my grandmother is sat corroding in a bank vault somewhere ready to pay for my grand royal wedding …
‘Are you listening, Alice?’ Father’s voice pierces through my thoughts and I nod absently. ‘Make haste, your mother is waiting.’ He opens the door and strides out of the car and I realise for the first time that we are outside of the house, with its cold brick, its overly manicured garden, its clinical atmosphere, and my mother stood on the steps in full glam like a mistress turning up at a funeral. Dread surrounds this house. It is no home.
‘Mother,’ I acknowledge her as I take my bags from the car.
‘We never sent for you,’ is her welcome.
‘Funny that. I realised that I have my own legs, and own mind, and decided to come of my own accord. I have work to do,’ I reply, standing up to her.
‘Work?’ Mother only scoffs. ‘I hope you don’t mean the same “work” you were doing before you went away that just about gave your father a heart attack?’
‘You’ll be pleased to know it is not.’ My desire to remove myself from her only mounts and mounts the more she snipes.
‘Did you learn your lesson in Balmoral?’ She follows me inside.
‘I learnt many lessons, Mother. I learnt a lot about you too. That was rather illuminating.’
Her face matches the shade of her lipstick. ‘Such as?’
‘That you weren’t always like this. That I could almost pity you.’
She gabbles, trying to regain control of her composure.
‘Oh,’ I add, ‘and that once upon a time, you knew how to smile. And it was beautiful.’
She doesn’t follow me up the stairs, she doesn’t find me in my room to call me down for dinner, and I am left in isolation to flesh out my plans.
* * *
By the time the house wakes for breakfast, they find me already sprawled out on the dining table, with papers and plans scattered about the place. With one glance at the ‘mad lady’ they each decide to take their tea and toast in one of the reception rooms instead.
Just after lunchtime passes, Kitty sashays into the room without knocking. I haven’t seen her since I left, nor have I heard from her since I was publicly humiliated by Atticus Beaumont. Such a turn of events can’t be good for the image, I suppose.
‘Alice, Alice, Alice!’ she croons and, placing both of her hands on my shoulders, leans over to kiss me on the cheek.
‘Hi, Kitty,’ I reply absentmindedly, still furiously scribbling away at my notepad.
‘ The fairy-tale community ?’ she reads from the page. ‘ Increase funding to community centres across deprived areas and start a reading initiative, led by both elderly members of society and young people. ’ Kitty lets out a forced giggle. ‘Community centres?’
‘Aye,’ is all I reply, still writing away.
‘Eye? What’s wrong with my eye?’ She whips a spoolie out of her handbag and combs through her eyelash extensions somewhat neurotically.
‘No, aye , as in yes.’ Covering the bored tone in my voice is becoming such a struggle that I hardly even try.
‘Oh, he he.’ Kitty pops her little eyelash wand away. ‘How very … quaint .’
‘I’m a little busy at the moment, Kitty. Is there something I can do for you?’
‘A few of us are off to Hugo’s mummy’s estate in the Cotswolds for a little knees-up. We were wondering if you’d like to come and regale us with your tales from that lovely mythical place you’ve been roughing it these few weeks.’ She fiddles with the things on my desk, and fingers the collar of my woollen cardigan. ‘My, my, how you’ve gotten into character. Such fun.’
‘I have a lot of work to do. I hope you can manage to find some alternative entertainment so last minute.’ Scribbling down another list of things to do, I smile as I imagine Sophie running rings around Kitty and her ignorance.
‘Oh dear.’ She sits down beside me at the dining table and places her hand over mine, ceasing my writing. ‘This is worse than I thought.’
‘What now?’ I turn to her, already annoyed at what she’s about to say.
‘I have seen women driven to crazy things after being cheated on. My auntie pissed in my uncle’s mistress’s contact lens case once, and Beatrice Button’s grandmother killed her grandfather – though that was after he caught her cheating so who knows.’
‘Kitty, what are you going on about?’ I roll my eyes.
‘I have never seen a woman lose herself as much as you in her heartbreak. Cardigans? Messy hair? Work?’ The latter word almost dribbles from her tongue like something foreign that she fears is poisonous.
‘You have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Of course I do. Your beau.’ She winks. ‘Get it, beau, Beaumont? Anyway, your beau broke your heart in a horrendous fashion. I was so embarrassed for you that I couldn’t bear to even think of you for at least a week. And now you’re trying to be someone you’re not because you’re too humiliated to be you.’
She strokes my hair out of my face and I slap her hand away.
Biting my lip to prevent myself from saying what I truly want to, I slam my pen onto the table and she jumps back with a gasp. ‘Look, Kitty, thanks for the invite and everything but I’m too busy to continue this conversation.’ Getting to my feet, I shepherd her to the door as politely as I can. ‘So unless there’s anything else …’ I gesture for her to leave and she lets out a series of mumbled vocalisations before stepping out of the door, still wide-eyed.
‘What about next week? Party at yours? Or Barty’s? He’s still single and could be convinced to forgive you.’ She keeps talking even as I close the door, and looks back and forth between myself and the mahogany as its slow drawing to casts a shadow over her face. The insolence of the action alone is just enough that I don’t have to go on some long and malicious rant to prove that I am over her arrogance and I would rather swallow every sword displayed in this house than attend another of the parties she so desperately desires.
Perhaps the old me, the one who left Atticus Beaumont crying for his mother, or the one who rudely called out of windows to tell certain pipers to shut up, would have thrived on this confrontation. But I’m not the old me.
Balmoral has changed me. Sophie, Mrs B, Fraser, have changed me. For the better.
I don’t need to humiliate Kitty in the way she so desires to humiliate me. My first step to being more Sophie is almost complete: just walk away with your head held high. Be the bigger person.
Just before I click the door shut, I push my head between the small gap. ‘I shall be busy for the foreseeable, so it’s probably best to just not bother inviting me to any of your shindigs in the future. Goodbye, Kitty.’ Fastening the door before she can think of any sort of response, I hear a squeal-like humph from the other side before moving back to the table, sinking back into the chair and resting my head against my open notebook.
What am I doing? I left behind the only people who have ever made me happy, and now I have just cut myself off from the only other part of society that ever welcomed me (whether it was mendacious or not). If I felt alone before, I am certainly alone now.
The buzzing of my phone against the wood of the table stirs me once again. Rushing to check it, my heart hoping to see one name in particular, I am sorely disappointed when it’s Kitty’s number that flashes up with a message.
You think that you’re so much better than us just because you got a bit too cosy with the staff over the summer? What you forget, Alice, is that you’re just like me. You’re one of us. And no matter how high and mighty you think you are, you always will be. You’re just a sad little rich girl, and spoilt just as much as I am. No amount of guilt about your own privilege will ever change that. Don’t expect to be welcomed back into society after this. You’re finished.
I read it once, then twice, and again a few more times. Maybe I am destined to end up like all of them. Maybe I can’t change. Maybe there’s not even any point in trying.
But I would rather lose everything trying to become a better person and be perpetually lonely than spend one more minute pretending that people like Kitty, or Hugo, or Atticus, improve my life in any way.
After reading the message one final time, I delete it from my inbox, slide my phone to the opposite end of the table and take a moment to reread the plans scrawled in front of me with the sort of pride that one gets when one finally feels like they’re heading in the right direction.
Though the urge to cross the border again, rush to the stables and stand in his company, persists. And though I know that such an interaction would motivate me to carry on for at least another century, I can’t. I can’t see him again. I won’t see him again.
I have made my bed, now I must lie in it. It isn’t a pea under my mattress that makes my sleep so restless; it is the great planet-sized ball of regret that forces me to toss and turn and wake more tired than when I fell in the first place.
Forcing myself to miss him is my penance. Penance for so many years of being too much like Kitty. For breaking a heart so pure, so good, I don’t deserve my happily ever after. Not yet at least.
Scribbling on the front cover of my notebook, I put my main goals into black and white: Make it up to Sophie. Work to help other people. Live a life where I can be with Fraser Bell.