Chapter 15 #2
who protests our monarch every single Christmas, and when you saw him there last year, and when he yelled your name out loud,
you didn’t think to tell anyone. Do I have that straight?”
“He would never hurt anyone,” Lauren started to say, but Eugene held up a hand.
“That is absolutely not the point right now,” he said, still eerily calm.
“What is the point is that now we have our acting director of communications, an American who worked at the White House, about to be pilloried across every single UK newspaper just days before a state visit by the American president.”
Lauren was too scared to say anything.
“Well, you’re wrong about one thing, Lauren. Actually many things, but one thing in particular. The people your father chooses
to associate himself with could absolutely hurt someone, and his actions are about to hurt many people. Mostly you.”
Then he started to laugh as he turned to James, who didn’t look like he found any of this funny. “I told you,” Eugene said,
giggling maniacally to himself. “I told you, didn’t I? That we shouldn’t hire her, that she’d never fit into a place like
this. But everyone else wanted something ‘new’ and ‘different’ and now look where we are. Right in a pile of shit!”
“Eugene, please,” James started to say, but Eugene held up his hand.
“No,” he said, then turned back to Lauren. “Lauren, you are literally—this is not an exaggeration—our director of communications.
That means that you are supposed to communicate. Things about the Palace, the Queen, the family, or perhaps things about your own family that could complicate matters here!”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” James said to her. Eugene was furious, but James didn’t seem mad, just disappointed, which, after
the compliment he had given her last night on the train, made her feel ten times worse.
“Because, like I told you, I haven’t talked to my dad in twenty years. Our only connection is biological. I barely know what
he does. I’m not responsible for him or his actions.”
“Of course you’re not, but that is not the point!
” Eugene said. “You knew about his actions! We could have cut this off at the knees if you had just said something. We could have issued a letter to editors through the Press Standards Organisation and gotten ahead of it with a statement, and why am I even saying any of this to you? All of this is your job! And quite frankly, you’re really rather incompetent at it. ”
Lauren sat back in her seat, stunned. “If I had told you,” she said, “and we had gotten ahead of it, as you said, then that
means every single newspaper in the UK would be camped outside of my parents’ front doors. Getting ahead of it would just
mean sacrificing my parents to the tabloids so you didn’t have to worry about any of it.”
Eugene turned to James. “This is why,” he said, pointing at Lauren, “she doesn’t get it. She never will.”
“What don’t I get, Eugene?” she cried.
“That this job means not prioritizing anything—not even our own families—over the Crown. Something you know absolutely nothing
about and never will.”
“Should she be taken off the state visit?” James murmured, like Lauren wasn’t in the room.
“No, because there’s no one to take over at this late stage,” Eugene said, now starting to pace back and forth in the small
office. “She’s been overseeing the bulk of the comms strategy, plus it might look suspicious.”
“I’m sitting right here,” Lauren said. “You can speak directly to me.”
“Trust me, you don’t want me to do that right now,” Eugene said, glowering at her, then took a deep breath and ran a hand
over his hair. It had gotten slightly thinner since she started back in October, and Lauren wondered if that was because of
her.
“All right, here’s what we’ll do for now,” Eugene said.
“You’ll stay on the state visit since that’s already too far in motion, but Harriet will take over communications with the White House comms team.
James and I are going to work together and try to find a solution to this problem.
You’re going to send us Oscar’s contact information so someone can stay in touch with him directly in case there are any developments.
And also, you are off any other work for now.
Harriet will take over the press briefing next Friday and the engagements following. ”
Lauren watched as James’s eyebrow twitched at that last sentence. She tried to imagine Harriet, sweet, innocent Harriet, wrangling
the press pack, and it made her think of those nature documentaries that showed a limping gazelle on the savanna.
“Okay,” was all Lauren said, though.
“Is there anything else we need to know?” James said, and he sounded marginally kinder than Eugene, which made her feel even
worse.
Well, she was dating the journalist whose paper was about to break the story, kissed the Duke of Exeter in a heated moment,
ruined the best friendship she had ever had, and was about to deal with a slew of Americans arriving for the state visit.
One thing at a time, she told herself.
“No,” she replied, standing up. “You’ve been very clear.”
“At least one of us has,” Eugene muttered, turning his back as she left the room.
Lauren had thought she wanted nothing more that night than to go home, take a shower, order food, and hide away in front of
her laptop with old episodes of Modern Family, but then once she was there, she only wanted to leave.
It didn’t even feel like a home, she realized, more like a hostel or hotel room.
She still had unpacked boxes lining one wall, some of them hastily yanked open so she could find one thing or another.
Even the couch felt uncomfortable once she sank down on it to eat the Thai food she had just ordered in, realizing that she actually hadn’t spent much time sitting on it.
Her days had been work, work, work, sleep, repeat, and now work was, at least for the moment, nearly gone.
If this was a home, it was certainly the loneliest one she had known in a while.
So she reached out to the one she did know.
“Lauren!” Her mom’s voice rang through the phone. “It’s late for you!”
Lauren glanced at the clock on her oven. “It’s barely eight o’clock.”
“Well, that’s definitely late for me! How are you?” She could hear sizzling in the background, her mom probably making a late
lunch. “How’s work?”
Lauren moved over to a dining chair, literally the only chair at her tiny bistro table. “Oh, you know. Work.”
“No, I don’t know.” Her mother laughed. “I haven’t ever worked at a palace. Tell me something good.”
Lauren’s long pause seemed to trigger something, because she could hear she was taken off speakerphone and her mom was now
speaking into the handset. “Laur?” her mom said. “What’s wrong?”
“Just . . .” Her voice trembled. “Just a really bad day, that’s all.”
“That’s all? A really bad day sounds like a lot.”
“I don’t know if this is going to work out,” Lauren replied, and it was the first time she had said it out loud. “I don’t
know if I’m going to last here.”
“Oh, honey,” her mom said. “Well, whatever happens, you can always come home. Your room is still here, just like you left
it.”
Lauren could picture her childhood bedroom in her mind, and what should have been a comforting image left her feeling cold.
It had been a wonderful room when she was twelve, but now that she was twenty-eight, the idea of going to sleep every night under the chintzy Target bedding, the faded Laura Ashley wallpaper, and her old One Direction posters just seemed . . .
Well, really fucking sad.
“Yeah, maybe,” Lauren said. “I don’t know.”
“Tomorrow is a fresh day,” her mom said. “Things can get better. They always do.”
Lauren had imagined a scenario where she could cry on the phone to her mom, finally let out her frustration and fear and annoyance
with herself, but hearing that made her retreat back inside herself. She couldn’t admit that her work had been less than wonderful,
that her life was currently feeling much, much less than wonderful, not to the one person who thought she was still great, still strong.
She wanted to be the person her mom believed her to be, so after they said goodbye and ended the call, she got dressed, put
her laptop in her bag, and grabbed her phone again.
Half an hour later, her Uber pulled up at Buckingham Palace, her now-boxed takeout in hand. Her job responsibilities may have
been put on hold, but there were always emails to organize, files to go through and shred, something that could make her feel
productive instead of just sad and angry at herself. And work was where she felt most comfortable.
She turned on her small desk lamp, in no mood for the bracing fluorescent light strip overhead, and sat down at her desk, pulling her laptop out of her bag. She had gotten through three emails and one-fourth of her reheated pad Thai when her work phone pinged.
“Everything all right? I saw you rush out of James’s office today. You seemed upset.”
It was Jasper. He had never texted her before.
Lauren dropped her iPhone like it had burned her, then picked it back up.
“All fine here thanks. Not something I’d like to discuss via text.”
She watched as the three bubbles appeared, then disappeared before the next sentence popped up. “Well, if you don’t want to
discuss via text, then you probably don’t want to discuss via phone either.”
Two minutes later, and for the first time, there was a gentle knock.
Lauren turned toward her office’s French doors, pushed back the drapes, and saw Jasper standing just outside.
“How did you even know I was here?” Lauren gasped, stepping outside and pulling the door shut behind her (and saying a quick
prayer that she hadn’t just locked herself out).
He gestured toward the doors, which were lit from the inside. “I saw your light on,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind, I was
out for a walk.”
“You tend to do that, don’t you,” she said. “Go for walks.”