Chapter 15 #3
“Guilty,” he replied. “I prefer being outdoors. Too cooped up indoors, especially at this place.”
“Do you regret it?” Lauren asked him. “Coming here, moving back?”
He looked surprised by the question. “I don’t think so,” he said. “At least not yet. Maybe ask again later.” He smiled, trying
to make her smile, too, but his own faded when he saw her somber face.
“Do you want to walk with me for a bit?” he said. “Fresh air does you good.”
She glanced back at her office, at the job that no longer needed her, no longer wanted her. “Okay,” she said. She knew it
was risky to be alone with him, especially when she was feeling so low, but the risk felt less awful than the loneliness and
anxiety that had been consuming her. “That would be nice. I’ve never actually been out here.”
They strolled in silence for a while, past the freshly cut lawn and toward the gardens. In the distance, she could hear frogs
at the pond. “This was always my favorite place when I was a boy,” Jasper said. “Lots of places to hide out here, avoid everyone
and everything.”
“You’re not avoiding me,” Lauren pointed out.
“Well, you’re not a pinch-faced nanny who always made us eat boiled vegetables,” he replied. “And I’m very glad about that.”
Lauren smiled.
“Any reason you’re back at work so late?” he asked.
“Oh, just the . . . the state visit next week,” she stammered.
“That’s all?” He was teasing her again, but Lauren kept looking down, suddenly feeling the weight of her day crash over her.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just been a terrible day. I’m sorry, I should get back to work—”
She started to turn around, but Jasper caught her arm, holding it so lightly in his hand.
“Hey,” he said. “Don’t go back. Talk to me.”
Lauren hesitated, then thought of all the times she should have talked to someone: She should have told Oscar about her dad.
She should have told James and Eugene about his sudden reappearance. She should have told Joy about kissing Jasper sooner.
Maybe it was time for her to finally start talking.
“I screwed everything up today,” she whispered. “I thought I was good at my job, and now I don’t even know if I have a job anymore.”
“Wait, all right, just a minute.” Jasper stopped walking and came to stand in front of her. “What are you talking about, you
don’t have a job?”
“I used to be so good at this, too,” she said, ignoring his question. “And ever since I landed at Heathrow almost five months
ago, it’s like I can’t do it anymore. I don’t know if it’s this place or me, but I can’t . . . actually, no. It’s me. It’s
because of me.”
And then she started to cry.
Jasper paused, then took her arm again and led her over to a bench under a willow tree. “Someone very royal and important
probably once sat and cried on this very bench,” he told her gently. “So you’re in good company.”
“I am in good company,” she sniffled, and started to wipe at her eyes before he put a handkerchief in her hands. “Thank you.”
“Well, here’s another fun fact for you,” he said. “I have been carrying a handkerchief around for at least fifteen years now,
and this is the first time I’ve been able to give it to a crying woman.” He pretended to sigh with relief. “Thank you for
letting me cross that off my bucket list. I mean, I know you’re sad, but this is quite the victory for me personally.”
This time, Lauren did laugh a bit. “Was it worth the wait?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” he murmured, then nudged her leg with his. “C’mon, tell me what’s wrong.”
She gave him the broad strokes of her week, mentioning her fight with Joy (and even though she left out the details about
what it was over, it still made her cry again), her conversation with Oscar, and the video of her dad. “Eugene’s furious,”
she said.
“Well, it doesn’t take much to get Eugene going,” Jasper pointed out. His hand was on her back now, and it was as warm and strong as she remembered it being in Singapore.
“But this story is going to come out, Oscar can’t stop it, and it’s all going to implode right before the state visit, and
I’ll never get hired anywhere again.”
“Well, that’s definitely not true,” Jasper said, moving his hand up and down her spine in long, slow strokes. “I happen to
know a sheep farm in New Zealand that is in desperate need of a house manager. Are you allergic to wool, by any chance?”
She gave him a brief, shaky smile. “I don’t know how it’s possible I lost the respect of my best friend and potentially my
job all in the same week.” She wiped at her eyes again, letting out a sigh.
“Okay,” Jasper said. “Do you want advice or just for me to listen?”
“Wow,” Lauren replied. “Nobody has ever asked me that before.”
“Well, look, yes, it did end in divorce, but I was married for a good amount of time. I learned a few things about women, and trust me, unsolicited advice is not something
that is always appreciated. Or telling them to calm down when they’re upset. Also a catastrophic thing to do.”
“That’s the worst,” she agreed.
“Okay, so, dealer’s choice.”
“Advice,” she said. “Because clearly the one thing that I’m not good at fixing is myself.”
“Everybody’s family is fucked-up,” he said.
“Are you allowed to swear?”
“I never said that word, and you couldn’t prove it anyway. But it’s true. Everybody’s family is fucked, and everybody screws
up at work a few times in their lives. Look at me.
I share actual DNA with William the Conqueror, my marriage imploded, I went to Eton but still ended up running a farm and am basically bankrupt, to my family’s utter mortification.
Even without the royal duties for so long, there are still expectations.
And I can’t meet all of them. Neither can you.
” He paused and then continued. “I think that’s why it caught me so off guard at the children’s hospital, when you said I seemed like a person—”
“God, that was such a stupid thing to say.”
“No, it wasn’t, not at all. I’m sure you hear it all the time here, but it’s about duty, first and foremost. Which is a very
good value to have, but when it supersedes your humanity, that’s when things get dicey and tend to go off the rails. And what
are we if not human?”
“Have you considered maybe doing a TED Talk?” Lauren asked. “Because that was really good.”
Jasper chuckled. “Well, luckily I happen to know the director of communications at Buckingham Palace. Maybe she could put
in a good word for me.”
“Acting director. And maybe. If I don’t get fired after next week.” Lauren pressed the handkerchief against her eyes again. “You
know what I keep thinking about?”
“What?” His voice was softer now, closer.
“Eugene and James, they both said the same thing: Why didn’t I tell them things? Why didn’t I come to them with this information?
And I don’t know why I didn’t. I’m supposed to be a good communicator—it’s literally in my job title! I was trying to protect
my parents, but otherwise . . .” She shrugged. “I don’t know why I didn’t trust them when they’ve put so much trust in me.”
“Well,” Jasper said. “I’m not a psychiatrist, of course, but perhaps having a father who fucks off to Scotland for most of your life and an ex-boyfriend who cheated on you with your best friend would make it a little bit difficult to trust people.
Also, there’s plenty of people you shouldn’t trust around here. ”
Lauren looked up at him now. “Seriously. TED Talk.”
He smiled at her again, but this time it faded until they were both looking at each other. The trees rustled overhead, the
hum of London’s evening traffic floated through the air, and Lauren leaned into his side, grateful for the silence.
“I know I shouldn’t have,” Jasper said quietly, “but I don’t regret what happened in Singapore.”
“I don’t either,” Lauren admitted. “It can’t happen again, but I’m glad it happened once.”
“I’m sorry it can’t happen again. I’m sorry about so many things I can’t do for you, with you, Lauren.”
“I know,” she whispered back.
“I would never bring you into this kind of chaos. I couldn’t do that to you.”
“I know,” she said again. “But thank you for saying it anyway.”
They sat together on the bench for a while, Lauren’s head on his shoulder. “So what are you going to do?” he asked.
Lauren thought for a minute. “Probably hand in my notice,” she admitted. “See if I can get out of my lease, go back home,
and crash at my mom’s house. Figure out what’s next.”
“Well, that is the absolute worst plan I’ve heard in a very long time.”
She raised her head from his shoulder. “What?! I changed my mind. I don’t want advice, I only want you to listen now.”
“Sorry, no going back. Do you really want to go home? You’ve got too much grit. Anyone who can take on the snakes in that
press pack and James and Eugene and me has some fight in them. Get a plan together, one that doesn’t involve your mother’s house, for Godsakes.”
“It’s like you’ve been to my mother’s house,” she said.
“I’ve been to my mother’s house, and trust me, it is always enlightening and infantilizing.” He gave her the gentlest shove. “You’re in the
fight now, might as well try to win it.”
Lauren slowly nodded. To be honest, she was so tired from her day, her call with her mom, and crying that fighting sounded
like the last thing she wanted to do.
But Jasper wasn’t wrong.
He walked her back to her office, holding one of the French doors open for her as she stepped inside, the spring air creating
a cold draft. “Anytime you want to go for a walk,” he said, “you know where to find me.”
“Thank you. For everything. The good advice and the, well, you know.”
“Oh, I do know,” he said with a wink, but then his face grew solemn. “I meant what I said. If things were different than they
are now . . .”
She reached out and squeezed his hand, not trusting herself to say anything too serious. “See you around,” she replied.
“Without a doubt,” he said pointedly, before slipping away and shutting the door behind him.
Lauren looked at her office, at her now cold and limp pad Thai, and wondered how it could look so different from just an hour
or so earlier, when it had felt like her world was crumbling. Her laptop was still open, and Lauren sat down, opened a new
document, and got to work.
She stayed up all night at her desk, coming up with idea after idea of what stories the press could run instead of the video of her dad.
Once the sun rose, she went to the Palace’s pool house, quickly showered, and changed into the spare outfit she kept in her office, carefully avoiding the eyes of two of the Queen’s rather intimidating ladies-in-waiting who were swimming slow laps back and forth, circling like swim-capped sharks.
And as soon as she heard them come into the office, she went down the hall toward James and Eugene.