Chapter 7 #3
Lauren followed Harriet and James, one hand shaking and the other clasped tightly around the handle of her large weekend bag as they got in a car and headed down a narrow private road toward a cluster of tiny guest cottages on the giant estate, all the while thinking of her dad’s face and trying to figure out how, with all the places in all the world, her father wound up ten yards away from her in front of a literal castle?
Fuck my life, she thought to herself.
“—and, Lauren, you’ll be sharing with Harriet and Violet, who came in yesterday.”
“What?” Lauren’s head shot up to look at James, who was definitely avoiding eye contact with her as they left the car.
“Oh this is lovely,” Harriet cooed as she walked toward the front door of a gray-stoned cottage. It had two bedrooms—one twin and the other
with two double beds. “I have the best travel humidifier, Lauren. You’ll sleep like a baby tonight.”
Lauren very much doubted that spending the night with a person who had such an ominous nickname was going to usher her off
into dreamland, but James was already moving on to his own cottage, so she stuffed her complaints down and started to unpack
her things in the room. Harriet was fluttering around, setting up all sorts of gadgets by her bed, spritzing some lavender
essential oils onto her pillow. Violet briefly poked her head out of her room to say hello before shutting her door again.
Lauren sat down on her bed, gripped her phone, and frantically texted her mom:
DAD IS HERE.
DID YOU KNOW HE’S A PROTESTER???
I REPEAT, DAD IS HERE. AT BALMORAL. HE SAW ME.
After waiting for a response, Lauren closed her eyes for a moment. She didn’t want to text Joy, she absolutely couldn’t tell
Oscar, and, Lauren realized with a thud, those were her only two friends. Or, in Oscar’s case, friends, maybe more, or maybe
not.
“Now, I’ve been told I snore, but I feel that’s been greatly exaggerated,” Harriet started to say, but Lauren tuned her out and opened Safari.
If ever there was a time to manage a crisis, it was now.
And Lauren was good at her job.
There was definitely a buzz in the air that Christmas morning at Crathie Kirk, the small Scottish parish church a stone’s
throw away from Balmoral Castle, and that buzz had very little to do with celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. A few dozen
members of the public, who had lined up since 5:00 a.m., all cheered as the Queen and other senior royals made their way into
the small granite-walled place of worship. Though she stood alongside members of the public—and still hadn’t actually been
introduced to the monarch—Lauren felt some nerves being in the presence of the Queen for the first time, who looked much taller
than her photos suggested. But the real buzz that morning, and the man the photographers were all hoping would provide their
money shot for the day, was only just about to arrive.
When the Duke of Exeter—now looking very much like royalty in an immaculately tailored tartan suit—stepped out of the car
and waved toward the watching crowds, Lauren could almost see the ripple in the air. Older people who remembered him as a
child with his parents, younger people who were seeing him for the first time, they all seemed excited and curious about having
a fresh face on the royal scene.
At the end of the line stood a young girl holding a bouquet, reaching it out to a royal who didn’t quite see her. She had one arm wrapped around her mother’s legs, and when her mother encouraged her to try again, she just hid her face against her mother’s coat.
Lauren wasn’t the only one watching. The duke quickly approached, a gentle smile on his face as he knelt down to the girl.
He spoke with her for a minute, gesturing toward the intended royal, almost seeming to confirm the little girl’s wishes, and
then took the bouquet before speaking with her for another minute. When he was done, he quickly ran the bouquet over to the
Princess of Strathearn, then turned back and bowed to the girl as if to say, “As you wish.”
Lauren could tell that this wasn’t the average walkabout conversation. She had been around presidents, politicians, diplomats,
and at least two war criminals, and she could tell when someone was really listening instead of just mindlessly nodding. The duke was genuinely connecting with them, if the slight blush on one woman’s cheeks was anything to go by.
The children’s hospital hadn’t been a one-off. This was true star power, she realized. And the Palace needed all the star
power they could get.
It also didn’t hurt that against the gray, cloudy skies and austere setting, Jasper’s smile was dazzling. It was as if he ate Crest Whitestrips for breakfast.
Harriet and Violet were strangely silent behind her, and when Lauren turned to look at them, she saw that they were staring
as well, the same fond smiles on their faces. “He really is handsome,” Violet said, filming his walk up to the church on her
phone. “People are going to be obsessed.”
In fact, the only person who seemed not so into spending his Christmas Day working was Oscar, who had his head down, tapping away at his phone, those two little frown lines fully activated again. When he looked up, he was scowling a bit, but his face relaxed a little once he saw her and he smiled.
Lauren looked away. She wasn’t so friendly with Harriet and Violet that they could see she was rattled, but she suspected
Oscar would notice. Joy definitely would have, too. She was with her own family that Christmas morning, hundreds of miles
away and probably surrounded by wrapping paper and new sets of Pokémon cards.
“It’s like looking right at the sun,” Lauren agreed with Violet, then took a deep breath. “Come on, ladies, let’s do our jobs.”
Once the service was over and the royals were en route back to the castle for their Christmas lunch, Lauren filed her final
briefing notes of the day to a list of reporters from her phone and then called a local cab company, providing an address
she had found online the night before.
Twenty minutes later, the car pulled up, and Lauren walked away from the church to meet it. She had absolutely no idea what
she was doing and no one to talk to about it, which was probably for the best. If she did, they probably would have tried
to talk her out of seeing her father. But right now, Lauren felt like her entire bloodstream was coursing with anger and hurt.
“Lauren!” someone called behind her, and she turned to see Oscar jogging toward her. “Are you free later to go for a walk,
once I’ve filed my articles?”
“I, uh, I can’t,” she said, trying her best to ignore the cabbie waving over to her at the end of the driveway. “I . . . I
have some distant relatives nearby, I said I’d try to come for Christmas lunch.”
“Your dad’s family?” Oscar said, and Lauren froze. “Just the whole Bearnas thing, you said it was from your dad’s side.”
“Yeah,” Lauren said, and tried to turn so he couldn’t see her face. “On my dad’s side.”
Oscar put his hand on her arm. “Lauren,” he said. “Are you all right? You look . . . a little off.”
She pretended to scoff. “Thanks. What every girl wants to hear on Christmas Day.”
“No, sorry, I didn’t mean you look bad. You look lovely, as always. It’s just . . . Did something happen?”
“I really am fine,” Lauren said again, this time walking over to the cab. “The holidays are just stressful, you know? I’m
fine.”
Oscar paused, waiting for her to get into the cab, then, before she shut the door, said, “Text me if you need anything?”
“Will do!” she replied, and made sure not to look behind her as the cab drove away.
As much as she hated to admit it, Lauren had often imagined her reunion with her dad, especially when she was a child and
still convinced that his absence had all been a huge misunderstanding. She had imagined that he would be sweet and apologetic,
regretful over missing all the Father’s Days and daddy-daughter dances at school, dozens of holidays and birthdays. As Lauren
got older and realized the truth behind his disappearance, that it had been purposeful and intended, she had instead started
imagining the only thing she wanted to say to his face, and wow, did it feel good to say it now.
“Are you fucking kidding me!”
Her dad stood in the doorway of his small terraced house, which was about an hour away from Balmoral in the city of Aberdeen.
He looked somehow both older and younger than she remembered him—his graying beard throwing off her memory of the clean-shaven father she once lived with.
Even just seeing him with a beard now made that small recollection feel like a lie.
“Lauren.” He stood back and held the door open, looking at her. “It was you.”
“It was me,” she said. “Amazing that you remember me after all this time. Dad of the Year right here.”
Callum winced. “Care to come in?”
“Absolutely not,” Lauren said, even as she marched inside. It smelled faintly of stale cigarettes and more strongly of a roast
in the oven. “So you throw rocks at the celebrity climate criminals and then come back and do a full six-course meal for people
other than your family. That’s a better life to you than sticking around to be a father and husband?”
Callum looked smaller and shorter than she remembered. How was this really the man who used to toss her into the air after
work? He had seemed so strong back then, like he would never have let her fall.
He shrugged. “I, um, I’m not sure what to say. I’ve made mistakes, Lauren, I won’t lie. You look beautiful, though. Your mum
did a great job, it seems.”
“She did an amazing job,” Lauren said, and just thinking about her mom working nights, eating off the dollar menu, making sure Lauren had everything
so it would never feel like she was missing something, someone, made tears come to her eyes. “Don’t talk about Mom. You don’t get that privilege.”
Callum held up his hands, calloused and red. “Fair enough, fair enough. I apologize.”