Chapter 25
Eleven months later, the ponies were wearing glitter.
This had been Florence's idea. Florence, who approached most things in life with the measured precision of a future monarch, had decided that the joint ninth birthday party required the ponies to look festive, and she had spent three weeks planning the decorations with the focus and determination of a child who understood that details mattered.
Percy was wearing a garland of silver ribbons around his neck and a glitter-dusted rosette pinned to his bridle.
Bramble had been decorated with gold streamers that hung from her mane like tinsel.
Captain, Frank's pony, had tolerated a crown of plastic flowers for approximately four minutes before eating it, which Frank had declared the best thing that had ever happened at a birthday party. Jazz, who was Hyzenthlay’s new pony with a coat in sleek black had silver glitter adorning her haunches.
The stables had been transformed. Bunting stretched between the beams, homemade, painted by the children in the castle schoolroom, each flag a different colour with birthday messages scrawled in paint that ranged from Matilda's careful calligraphy to Frank's enthusiastic but largely illegible contribution.
A table had been set up in the yard with a cake in the shape of a horse: chocolate sponge, commissioned from the bakery in the village, with buttercream mane and fondant hooves and candy eyes that stared out with an expression of mild alarm.
Balloons were tied to fence posts. A sound system played music that the children had chosen, which meant the playlist oscillated between pop songs and the kind of folk music that Hyzenthlay preferred, creating a listening experience that was eclectic and occasionally jarring.
The children were in fancy dress. Florence was a show jumper: proper breeches, a velvet-covered helmet, and a jacket she'd borrowed from Vic that reached her knees.
Frank had come as a knight, which had nothing to do with ponies but everything to do with the plastic sword he'd been given for Christmas and refused to leave behind.
Matilda was a unicorn. The horn was cardboard, wrapped in aluminium foil, and it listed slightly to the left, giving her the appearance of a magical creature that had had a long evening.
Hyzenthlay usually considered fancy dress to be beneath her but had been persuaded by Vic with the promise of choosing the cake flavour, was dressed as a veterinarian, complete with a toy stethoscope and a clipboard on which she had written detailed medical histories for each pony.
Charlotte Langford arrived at eleven, stepping out of the black car with the practised ease of someone who had spent her political career getting in and out of vehicles while photographers watched.
She was not, today, the Prime Minister. She was wearing jeans and a striped shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and her hair was loose around her shoulders, and the focused intelligence that characterised her public face had softened into the warm, relaxed expression of a woman attending a children's birthday party with her family.
Hunter James stepped out behind her. Tall, broad-shouldered, with close-cropped hair and steady eyes and the kind of quiet presence that made people feel safe without knowing why.
She moved with the controlled economy of someone who liked to assess environments before entering them, and her eyes swept the stable yard.
Hunter was a human rights lawyer who had fallen in love with Charlotte in a way that neither of them had expected and both of them had initially resisted, Charlotte because she was the Prime Minister and had a husband and Hunter because of Charlotte’s politics, and both of them because the timing was impossible, which had made absolutely no difference to the outcome. They had ended up married anyway.
Between them, holding Hunter's hand, was Grace.
Grace was eight years old. She had been adopted months ago from a children's home and she had brown hair and serious eyes and a face that held an intelligence so sharp it occasionally made adults uncomfortable.
She was small for her age and quiet in the way that children were quiet when they had learned that silence was safer than sound, but in the seven months since Charlotte and Hunter had brought her home, the silence had been gradually giving way to something else: curiosity, engagement, the cautious opening of a child who was beginning to believe that the people around her were staying.
She looked at the stables with the wide-eyed assessment of a child who had not grown up around horses and was not entirely sure what to make of them.
"They're wearing sparkles," Grace said. Her voice was precise and slightly formal, the voice of a child who had taught herself to speak carefully.
"They are," Hunter said. “I believe the triplets have decorated them."
"Why?"
"Because it's a birthday party."
Grace considered this with the seriousness of someone evaluating a philosophical proposition. "Horses don't know it's a birthday."
"No. But the children do. And the children wanted sparkly horses."
"That's logical," Grace said, in a tone that suggested she wasn't entirely convinced but was willing to suspend judgement.
Florence appeared from behind Percy, her show-jumping jacket flapping, her braid undone on one side.
She saw Grace and her face lit up with the uncomplicated delight of a child meeting a potential friend.
"Grace! Come and meet Percy. He's very gentle and he'll let you stroke his nose. Do you like horses?"
"I've never met one," Grace said.
"Then today is a very good day," Florence said, with the certainty of a child who believed that meeting a horse was one of the best things that could happen to a person.
She held out her hand, and Grace looked at it for a moment, the offered hand, the open smile, the invitation, and then took it, and the two girls walked together toward Percy, Florence talking and Grace listening with the focused attention of a child who was absorbing everything.
The adults gathered at the fence. Alexandra and Erin stood together, their shoulders touching in the automatic, unconscious way they always stood, side by side, hip to hip, the physical proximity that years of marriage had made as natural as breathing.
Alexandra was wearing a summer dress and flat sandals and looked, for once, not like a queen but like a mother at a birthday party, and the ordinariness of it, the wind in her hair, the champagne in her hand, the sun on her face, was a kind of freedom that she wore more naturally now than she had a year ago, as though shedding Cecilia had shed a layer of formality with it.
Vic was beside them, her long hair blowing in the wind, her eyes bright, her riding boots muddy because she'd been helping the grooms all morning and considered birthday-party preparation to be a contact sport.
She'd spent the last eleven months rebuilding something too, not with the help of a therapist but in her own way, through the steady, daily work of being present and useful and unshakeably loyal.
The guilt of the kidnapping still surfaced sometimes, in quiet moments, in the way she watched Florence with an attention that was protective beyond the ordinary.
But it was fading. The children had forgiven her instantly, because children did, and Victoria Grey-Hughes-Wilding had slowly, grudgingly forgiven herself too.
Julia stood with her arm linked through Vic's, her dark hair neat despite the wind, her phone in her free hand because Julia's phone was an extension of her body that could not be removed without surgery.
She was wearing a linen blazer and pearl studs and an expression of warm containment that suggested she was managing at least three logistical operations simultaneously while appearing to enjoy the party.
Charlotte and Hunter had joined the group, Charlotte accepting a glass of champagne from Julia with the grateful nod of a woman who had been running a country all week and was ready to stop.
"Happy birthday to them," Charlotte said, raising her glass toward the stable yard where the four children were now gathered around Percy. Florence was showing Grace how to stroke his nose, Frank was attempting to get Captain to bow on command, Matilda was feeding Bramble carrot sticks with the precision of a surgeon, and Hyzenthlay was listening to Jazz’s heartbeat with her toy stethoscope and recording the results on her clipboard.
"They look well, Alexandra. All of them. "
"They are well." Alexandra's voice carried the quiet conviction of a woman who had fought for the truth of that statement and won.
"Florence is seeing a therapist once a week.
She's processed more than I expected and less than I feared.
She still has nightmares sometimes, not often, but they come.
She wakes up and she checks that her door is unlocked. And then she goes back to sleep."
"And you?" Charlotte said. Her brown eyes were gentle. "How are you?"
The question was not a formality. Charlotte asked it the way a friend asked it, with genuine interest, with the willingness to hear a real answer, with the patient attention of a woman who understood that recovery was not a straight line.