Chapter 15
Fifteen
Lauren was knee-deep in final plans for the fast-approaching American state visit. She had coordinated last-minute press accreditation
requests, finalized all remaining press releases with their relevant embargo details, and even had her first interactions
on their diplomatic priorities.
Today her first duty was to join a Zoom call with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office for a briefing on political
sensitivities, relations between the US and UK, and any global issues that could come up over the days ahead. Her phone had
been buzzing regularly throughout the call, nothing too important, but when she saw Oscar’s name pop up on the screen, she
briefly turned off her Zoom camera to read it.
Right away, she knew it was bad.
“Need to talk to you in person. Can we meet at Canada Gate?”
“I’m in a meeting,” she texted back. “What is it?”
“Can’t say over text but it’s urgent.”
Lauren sighed and glanced at her schedule. “I can be there in 30,” she wrote back.
She had barely sent the message before he responded “20,” and then his notifications turned off.
And for some reason, she suddenly felt frightened.
“What is it?” Lauren asked the second she saw him standing across the street from the front of Buckingham Palace. She had
left so fast that she had forgotten to grab her coat, and she pulled her cropped cardigan around herself to stay warm.
“Aren’t you cold?” Oscar asked.
Lauren stopped in her tracks. “You just sent me a text making it sound like I had to flee the building ASAP. Are you serious
right now!”
“All right, all right, sorry,” he said, touching her arm. “C’mon, let me get you a hot coffee.”
“I have, like, barely ten minutes,” she replied, letting herself be pulled into Green Park, which was an unfortunate name
for early March, given the mostly bare tree branches.
“That’s fine,” he said, somewhat abruptly. Despite the park being busy, there wasn’t a line at the wooden coffee kiosk, and
Oscar quickly ordered two lattes.
“Will you please just tell me what’s going on?” she said as they walked to the side of the coffee hut. “You’re freaking me
out.”
“Sorry,” he said, looking at her, and all that rumpled softness that she remembered from their night together last weekend was gone. Oscar the Royal Reporter was back in place, and her heart started to beat even faster. “I’m sorry, I just . . . There’s something going on at the paper.”
Lauren waited for him to continue.
“Something about you.”
“Are you running a piece on me?” Lauren paused for a second. “You said back at our first lunch that that was just a joke!
We slept together and now you’re doing a story on me?!”
“No, no, nothing like that. It’s . . .” Oscar paused again.
“Oh my God, Oscar, please. Just spit it out.”
“I’m trying.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket, swiped a few times, then showed her a video. “Here,” he said, turning the sound
up.
Lauren recognized the scene immediately: Balmoral Castle at Christmas. She watched as the comms team’s helicopter touched
down on the ground as the protesters waved their signs and shouted.
Her blood went cold.
“Lauren!” one of the protesters shouted, and the camera saw her head whip around, her face going from surprised to shocked
to horrified before she and the rest of her team went through the castle gates.
Lauren paused the video and looked directly at Oscar. “Every single thing I say from here on out is absolutely off the record.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m not here as a reporter, I’m here as . . . well, whatever we are.”
“How much do you know?” Lauren asked him. “Is this going online?”
“Not yet,” Oscar said. “But the paper has it as an exclusive, and my editor wants to run it on Sunday. We have a new investigative
reporter on staff, and he’s aggressive. He’s been watching all the B-roll from recent engagements for weeks, and well, he
found this and put it together.”
Lauren nodded and bit the inside of her cheek. “So you know that . . .”
“It’s your father,” he said, sounding almost regretful. “Callum McConnell. He and your mother lived together in the States
and divorced more than twenty years ago, which is when he moved back to Scotland. He has a hard time keeping a job but always
pays his rent on time. And he protests around the country, including every single Christmas at Balmoral Castle, rain or shine.”
“So who cares about that?” Lauren said, even though she knew that many people would, in fact, care. “He shows up once a year
and waves a sad little homemade sign.”
“It goes beyond that,” Oscar said, and Lauren could tell from his tone of voice that he was trying to cushion the blow for
her. “He’s been involved with Extinction Rebellion to protest climate change. Not a bad cause, but that group instigated chaos
in the UK for a while,” he added when Lauren just looked at him blankly. “He’s also protested against Big Oil, against Brexit
many years ago, against Britain funding wars in various countries, and so on. Again, none of these are bad things, but given
where you work . . . The press is going to love, and twist, every single detail.” He stopped and looked at her.
Lauren narrowed her eyes. “Well, congratulations. Now you know more about my dad than I do.”
“Did you know he would be at Balmoral?”
“Are you still asking as ‘whatever we are’?” she said, making finger quotes around the phrase.
“Yes.” His eyes looked so sad, which almost made her even angrier. How dare he look so upset when it was her family—her life—that seemed to be falling apart, all because of his paper.
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t know any of that. I hadn’t seen my dad in twenty years. My parents didn’t just divorce, he left us. You know this, Oscar. And I know even as I’m talking that nothing I say is going to matter, is it?”
“Probably not,” Oscar admitted. “I’m trying to kill it, Lauren, but this goes over my head. The editor in chief really wants
to run it.”
Her chin wobbled so she lifted her coffee and took a sip.
“Especially with the state visit from the US president next week,” Oscar added. “The timing isn’t good.”
“Well, not for me,” she said. “It’s great for you, though. And your paper. My God, I can’t believe you can’t kill this.”
“I told you, it’s not me!” he said. “I swear—”
“I laid in your bed, Oscar, and we talked. We talked. About our lives, our families!”
“No,” he said bluntly. “I talked about my family. You talked about your mom. That’s all. You never brought up your dad. You hid him from me.”
If she had been a cartoon character, Lauren’s head would have blown clear off her body and into orbit.
“Really!” she cried. “Hey, I wonder why! Maybe because telling a reporter about my ecoterrorist father who abandoned our family
before I could barely tie my shoes wouldn’t have been a great idea. And it looks like I was right because here you are, with
this.”
“Did you tell anyone about this?” Oscar shot back. “James? Eugene? Joy?”
“Joy and I aren’t exactly talking much right now.”
“What!” Oscar looked shocked. “Since when? You two are joined at the hip.”
“Look, I’ll decide who I talk to and what about,” Lauren said.
“Well, great,” Oscar said, “because that’s exactly how you got here. You kept all of this to yourself and now it’s about to
blow up, and you’re going to get hurt and I can’t stop it!”
“I am so sorry to inconvenience you,” she said, turning around to walk away. “My mistake. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“Lauren!” Oscar called after her, and she spun around on her heel and went back to him.
“The last boyfriend I had only stole my best friend,” she told him. “But you’re coming after my family. Guess I really know
how to pick them.”
This time when he called after her, she kept walking, her head held high even as she could feel tears gathering at the backs
of her eyes, her mind spinning with all the possibilities: Reporters showing up at her dad’s house, or worse, her mom’s duplex
in Atlanta, banging on the door for hours. Earlier that week Joy had put the fear of God into her about the tabloid news media,
and now Lauren was terrified for an entirely different reason.
And what made her so mad was that Oscar was right about one thing: She should have told someone about that day. There were
cameras everywhere, the press pack, and she had thought that she could just ignore it and it would go away.
She walked back through the side entrance into the Palace, showing her credentials for the millionth time, only this time
her hands were shaking. She bypassed her own office and went farther into the room toward James, who was sitting in his office
tapping away at his laptop.
“Hey,” Lauren said, hearing the wobble in her own voice, and James went from looking mildly interested to very concerned,
all in the space of three seconds.
“Are you okay?” he asked, and if it hadn’t been such a terrible moment, Lauren would have felt touched by his concern. They had come such a long way from their first meeting, and now she was about to blow it all to smithereens.
“Can you ask Eugene to come in here, too? It’s important,” she asked.
James raised an eyebrow but quickly sent a message, and a few minutes later Eugene arrived in the room. He took one look at
Lauren’s face and said, “What on earth is going on?”
She pressed her hands together so that they wouldn’t see them shaking.
“I need to tell you something,” she said. “And it’s not good.”
The conversation went about as well as Lauren thought it would go.
“So, yeah, the London Tribune has the video and every detail about my family,” Lauren said. “Oscar says they’re still working on it, that it’s not scheduled
to run—”
“Yet.” James filled in the last word for her.
“Exactly.”
Eugene slipped off his glasses and rubbed at his face for a second. “So let me make sure I have this straight,” he said in
the kind of calm voice that only meant yelling was about to commence. “Your father, your biological father, is an ecoterrorist