Chapter 2
Two
Lauren had to admit that she had been just a smidge dramatic about her grand announcement. In the moment, she had felt powerful! Independent! Free!
The reality was a little bit different.
For starters, she had accepted on a Friday afternoon, which meant that she would be starting on Monday, which left her with
only two days to start moving her entire life across the Atlantic Ocean. Lauren had begged her landlord to let her break her
lease. It was equally surprising and depressing how a call and an exorbitant payment to a relocation company could remove
her DC life in a single weekend. They had promised she’d have her belongings in six to eight long weeks and apparently that
was the good news. “One guy who didn’t fill out his customs forms properly had to wait for six months!” the manager told her.
Lauren hoped that in those weeks she could find a place of her own in London, though the Palace had agreed to pay for her
hotel room until she did.
On Monday morning, Lauren skipped the rush hour metro crush (tube, she kept reminding herself), and the ridiculous surge prices on Uber, and walked twenty-five minutes from her temporary
Marble Arch digs to Buckingham Palace, ready to begin the next chapter of her life. The October air was crisp, and thanks
to more comfortable shoes, she practically skipped through her Hyde Park detour feeling both anxious and excited about the
journey ahead.
And bonus! She had brought a giant box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts to break the ice with her new colleagues.
“Good morning!” she said to the security officers at the side entrance, who seemed as thrilled to see her as they had the
last time. Inside she picked up her new staff pass from the security desk.
“Oh, I was wondering if I could have one with just my middle name and last—”
The security officer at the reception desk interrupted, his patience as thin as the strands of hair on his shiny head. “We
can’t reprint them.” He slid it back across the tall reception desk, her awkward webcam photo staring back at her. She reluctantly
hung it around her neck and flipped it around.
“Well, please just call me Lauren,” she said, smiling. “No formalities here!”
The man chuckled dryly. “I think you’ll find here, there are.”
As Lauren shuffled through the two glass security doors holding a dozen doughnuts in one hand and her bag in the other, she
felt herself get flustered. She was nervous, damn it. She hadn’t felt anxious at work in a long time.
“You have two minutes before your very first meeting,” James greeted her as she stepped into the office.
“Thanks for the welcome. Great to see you, too, James,” she said, heading to the empty office that James pointed to without looking up from his laptop.
Nobody else seemed to pay any attention to her, which was fine.
She was fine. No big deal. She set down the doughnuts and shrugged out of her long overcoat.
“Do I have to do any intake paperwork or anything?” she asked.
James looked up and blinked at her. “We’ve already done a thorough background check.”
“Oh,” Lauren said, then wondered how thorough thorough was. “What about anti–sexual harassment training? Do I have to do a webinar?”
She hadn’t thought it was possible for James to look even more puzzled, but she was wrong. “Do you plan on sexually harassing
anyone?” he asked.
“Of course not.”
“Good, then you’ve passed. Congratulations.” James stood and gathered up his laptop and several folders before gesturing to
her. “No sitting, we’re moving. I assume you brought your— What is that?”
Lauren looked at her empty desk. The only things on it were her new work laptop and phone, her purse, and the green-and-white
doughnut box. “Oh, I brought doughnuts for everyone,” she said. “A little first-day treat. Look, they’re Halloween-themed!”
James looked at the box as if it contained snakes instead of baked goods. “Doughnuts,” he repeated. “You really like to lean
into that wholesome-American experience, don’t you.” It was not a question.
“I think liking fried sugar is a near-universal experience, regardless of one’s country of origin,” Lauren said, picking up
the box and scooping up her own laptop and a yellow legal pad out of her purse, along with her lucky pen. “But if this is
your way of declining, I understand.” She smiled at him. “Which way to the conference room?”
Even more drab than the main office, the “conference room” was just four desks pushed together, surrounded by chairs that looked like they were straight out of a classroom.
The fluorescent lights overhead gave the blank, dingy walls a sterile glare that made Lauren think of a hospital’s emergency room.
On one wall was a framed portrait of the current reigning monarch of thirty years, Queen Rowena, staring serenely down upon them, and Lauren nodded her head as she walked past it. James laughed at her gesture.
“Everyone else should be arriving momentarily,” he said. “Our alignment meetings take place once a week and are an opportunity
to make sure everybody is in sync with the work being done. We start on the dot whether or not everyone’s here, you should
know. It’s a tight ship because even a few minutes could cause a delay in the schedule and—”
“And Eugene would have an aneurysm?” Lauren interrupted, remembering the Queen’s private secretary all too well.
James cleared his throat and shuffled his stack of folders again. Who even brought folders to a meeting these days? Lauren
wondered. Wasn’t everything digital? Did the Palace not use Google Docs or at least an encrypted server?
“Yes, something like that,” James said, wiping at some invisible dust on his chair before sitting down. “Also, you should
know that we hired a different diversity czar over the weekend and she’s starting today as well. She was previously at Scotland
Yard, the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, and is familiar with the Palace and its, um, culture.” Unlike you were the unspoken words in the air.
“Wonderful,” was all Lauren said, desperately wanting to gloat that they had taken her advice about not hiring some blue blood whose father owned an African gold mine.
She sat down a few chairs away from James and watched as several staffers entered the room, along with Eugene, who seemed a little flustered and out of breath but recovered quickly under James’s frown.
“Thirty seconds to spare,” James told him as the rest of the chairs were quickly taken, and Lauren got that same feeling in
her stomach that she had had on the first day at a new elementary school after her mom moved them to a new neighborhood. Would
she have to say a few fun facts about herself like she had had to do when she started at the White House as an intern? She
did a quick mental roundup just in case: Her favorite karaoke song was “Party in the U.S.A.” by Miley Cyrus (what she lacked
in talent she made up for in enthusiasm), she had double-jointed elbows, she knew all the words to “Jabberwocky.”
“Thirty seconds?” Eugene replied to James as he sat down next to Lauren. “So I’m early, then.”
A woman sat across from Lauren at the table. She had on a maroon jacket and skirt with a silk blouse underneath that looked
as if it had been perfectly tailored to her body. Lauren was no slouch in the dressing department, especially on her first
day working at the Palace (in a Veronica Beard suit jacket and cropped pants that she had put on her credit card during an
emergency shopping trip at Selfridges over the weekend), but this woman seemed immaculate, down to her perfectly sleek long
bob.
“Well then,” James said as the eighth and final person scurried into the room. “Just under the wire, Harriet. Lucky for you.”
Harriet, a soft-faced older woman in a twinset and pearls blushed as she took her seat, and Lauren quickly set a mental reminder
to never, ever be late for any meeting from this point forward.
“Good morning. So first order of business, we have two new faces here,” James said.
“After Amelia decided to take a leave of absence to focus on, ahem, some personal issues, we have a new deputy director of communications, who will cover both positions in the meantime.” It was clear from the tone of his voice that James equated “focusing on personal issues” with “dealing with a termite infestation.” “This is Lauren Morgan; she comes to us straight from the White House press team, so rest assured she’s used to a good amount of chaos. ”
“Hi, everyone,” Lauren said, starting to stand up from her seat. “I’m Lauren, and—”
The new hire sitting across from Lauren gave a barely imperceptible shake of her head. Lauren got the message and immediately
sat back down. So much for fun facts. Not that it mattered anyway. It felt as if people were actively not looking in her direction,
afraid of paying too much attention.
“Lauren,” James added, “has brought us doughnuts.”
A few eyebrows went up, and Eugene hid a laugh behind his fist. Lauren shot him a glare and cleared her throat. “Just a little
hello gesture from the American,” she said.
Several people were already reaching for the box, including a young blond woman who had, so far, been glued to whatever was
happening on her phone screen. Lauren sat back in her chair and looked smugly at James, who mostly seemed annoyed that he
had had to introduce her in the first place.
“We have also filled our diversity role. As you may know, Lady Aspinal had to unfortunately turn down the position at the
last minute due to a scheduling conflict—”
The woman across from Lauren smirked a little.
“—so we are indeed very pleased to welcome Joy Hamilton to the position of diversity czar instead. We know that she already
has several plans in place to help with, uh, certain aspects of Palace life.”