The Runaway Princess, Page 36

  I can’t tell you how blank my mind went every time someone asked me a question. Utterly blank. The more they stared at me, waiting for some witticism to fall from my lips, the louder my nerves jangled in my head, and the more I sipped from the drink in my hand to fill the silence. For once, it wasn’t Party Paralysis to blame—it was so much more complicated than that.

  I knew Leo was glancing at me, but he filled in my silences manfully, and I carried on smiling, more and more glassily as the panic took hold. Was it always going to be like this? His family tripping me up? Him mainly on my side … but not quite?

  I was relieved when a trumpet sounded and chamberlains appeared to gather the top-table stars to one side, for their separate entrance. But the second the relief hit me, it was drained away by the thought that my grace was now minutes away.

  *

  Leo, Rolf, and I were taken to an anteroom behind the main hall where Liza and Boris were being tidied by assistants while Pavlos and his family looked on. Pavlos seemed happy not to have the fuss, but his wife, Mathilde, was wearing a lemon-sucking expression and what I assumed was the number-four tiara. The boys, I noted, looked very hungover.

  If Liza had been incredible before, now she was like a queen multiplied by the power of international supermodel. Her angular face was flawless, and her spun-gold hair was held in place by a dazzling tiara that put anything I’d seen on the British royals to shame. Next to her, Sofia was also having her eyeliner retouched by two artists, while her clinging black gown was spot-checked for dust. The photographer I’d seen before was snapping away, getting “behind-the-scenes” shots, but Liza had left nothing to chance: they were already perfect.

  Boris, meanwhile, wasn’t wearing his plastic crown, but his jacket was covered with a rainbow of medals, and another assistant was pressing powder onto his forehead. When he saw us, he grinned amiably.

  “Ah, there you are,” he said. “All set?”

  I nodded dumbly and tightened my grip on my evening bag.

  “Your Highness, if you’re ready …” murmured a chamberlain, and suddenly everything began to move very fast.

  I heard a muted trumpet sound in the hall; then Liza and Boris disappeared through a doorway, triggering a distant wave of applause in the hall.

  Leo, Rolf, and I glanced at each other. I wondered if I looked as sick as I felt. Sofia dismissed her makeup artist with a wave, and I cast a thinly veiled glare in her direction, but she didn’t respond; and then we were being lined up and marched in a line through the opposite door.

  It was like stepping onto a West End stage. The lights were focused on the top table, and I blinked as the sea of faces turned toward us, watching, whispering, assessing. We sat, and the toasts began in Italian, more trumpeting, a speech from Boris in three languages, and then, far too soon, my name was announced and an expectant silence fell in the hall.

  I pushed back my chair and stood up, sure that the microphone would pick up the thudding in my chest. My heart was beating so hard I was surprised my pushed-up cleavage wasn’t wobbling like a jelly.

  My hand shook, and the Latin words on the paper in my hand blurred.

  I made myself think of Leo. And of my mum and dad.

  But I couldn’t read them. The letters jumbled up before my eyes, and I felt light-headed.

  “Benedic …” I started from memory, but my voice croaked.

  I could feel Leo beside me, willing me to get it right. I knew he’d stand up and read it too, if I asked him, but I didn’t want to. I really didn’t want him to.

  The silence stretched out, and I heard some nervous coughing and rattling of china below.

  From the depths of my memory, Mum’s voice popped up in my head, saying grace before our Sunday roast round at Gran’s. Roast beef, Yorkshire puddings, cabbage, the grace she said the nuns had taught her at school. …

  “Without thy presence, naught, O Lord, is sweet,” said a voice somewhere miles above me. It was my voice, but it sounded very Yorkshire in the hall. It also sounded very loud. “No pleasure to our lips can aught supply, whether this wine we drink or food we eat, till Grace divine and Faith shall sanctify.”

  And then I sat down, only just making my chair, which a steward had pulled out for me.

  There was a brief pause, and then Leo on one side and Rolf on the other began their pistol-shot clapping, and soon everyone in the hall followed suit, until a trumpet blew again, and everyone dived into their starters.

  I grabbed the glass of water with a trembling hand and tried to quell the rising sickness in my stomach. I’d done it. But I felt as if I’d just walked a tightrope.

  “Well done.” Rolf leaned over. “What language was that? Did you learn it on your gap year or something?”

  Under the table, Leo squeezed my knee, and as I glanced at him with a mixture of crossness and relief, I saw the photographer capture our private moment.

  I hoped he hadn’t caught Leo’s almost imperceptible flinch backward at my unexpectedly fierce response.

  *

  I barely ate any of the exquisite food placed in front of me, but at least being between Leo and Rolf meant that the conversation flowed without much effort required on my part.

  Plate after crested plate was swept away and replaced, and then the silver pots of coffee had been and gone; another steward arrived to lead us from the table and out to the ballroom where the dancing would commence in about fifteen minutes.

  I took advantage of the chaos to slip away to a quiet corner to retouch my makeup, but I lost sight of Leo in the crowd and panicked, because I wasn’t sure where I was supposed to be for the shoe ceremony. I’d assumed that such a formal ceremony would be rigidly organized, but everyone else seemed to know what they were doing, as if they’d done it so many times before.

  Time slithered past alarmingly as I struggled through the crowds of identical jackets and tanned skin, looking for a familiar face, but I seemed to be going round the corridors in circles. Panic began to creep over my chest, tightening my lungs, and I was sure people stopped talking as I approached. Were they discussing me? The tiara was pinching my head now, but I didn’t dare take it off in case I lost it too.

  I needed some space, I told myself. If I could just stop for a minute, I could recover.

  To my immense relief, I suddenly saw Leo and Liza up ahead of me; they were talking to some dignitaries, nodding and smiling as if this evening were just a normal gathering. As I watched, Leo tapped his Rolex and they moved away, presumably to get into position for the opening ceremony.

  I hurried after them; they were heading toward the anteroom between the ballroom and the main corridor, where I’d changed into my jeans for the engagement photo. They seemed to be deep in conversation, so I hung back, waiting for a natural break so I could butt in without looking rude. The surging crowds pushed me nearer; I lost them, and when I looked again they’d disappeared.

  They must have gone into the anteroom. I reached the door and slipped discreetly inside, and waited for the right moment to announce myself and ask if Liza’s shoe was ready for collection.

  *

  I wasn’t eavesdropping. I couldn’t help hearing. Liza wasn’t exactly keeping her voice down.

  “Leo,” she was saying, “you’ve got to speak to Amy about how she’s coming across. She’s very aloof. Infanta Elena of Spain told me she didn’t ask her a single question, not even who she was.”

  Who?

  “Amy’s shy, Mom. She’s not used to big events like this, but she’ll get used to it.”

  “Will she, though? I thought you were going to talk to her after my charity ball in London—did she even know she’d blanked Carla Bruni? You did talk to her about that, didn’t you, Leo?”

  I felt chilly. Carla Bruni? She’d been at the Make Up for Therapy Ball? I’d thought it was her, but hadn’t liked to say in case it wasn’t. And what were you supposed to say to Carla Bruni—“Do you mind wearing flats?”

  More to the point, what was Leo supp
osed to have said to me? Because he hadn’t said a thing.

  Then Liza spoke again, and she sounded exasperated. “This is the life she’s going to have to lead with you, Leo. She doesn’t seem to get any of it. Like tonight—that was supposed to be damage limitation, not more cannon fodder. All she had to do was read a simple grace. If Amy can’t handle public events, if she can’t give you the support you need, you’re going to have a rough time. Both of you.”

  I knew Leo would be pushing his hand into his thick hair. I knew he would be frowning, hunting for tactful words. “She’s great at talking to people individually, Mom. Just not at big events. Amy’s natural, she’s down-to-earth, I mean, I thought doing the grace in English was a clever—”

  Liza snapped, “So you’re going to abandon state dinners in favor of individual kitchen suppers? Don’t be ridiculous. Options, Leo. There are always options. You don’t have to dump her in front of the whole world. There are ways of managing this so both of you can have a good exit.”

  There was an even longer pause, and I felt sick.

  Say something, Leo! I thought fiercely. Say something!

  I wasn’t prepared for the resignation in Leo’s voice. “I don’t want to make her do something she doesn’t want to do. …”

  I didn’t catch any more because the door behind me opened and Boris appeared, rearranging the medals on his dinner jacket. When he saw me, a cheerful grin spread across his pink face.

  “Amy!” he said, doing his boxy-pointy thing. “Are you running away or hiding?”

  I swallowed my distress as best I could and tried to look normal.

  “I’m preparing for the shoe ceremony,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster. “I’m not running away, I’m early.”

  Boris’s smile intensified, and I realized he was, (a) a bit drunk, and (b) having the best night ever.

  Willi had known exactly how this whole princely deal worked, I realized. Boris’s charming bonhomie was precisely the sort of secret ingredient a really popular monarch needed. You either had it, or you didn’t. Pavlos didn’t, and neither did I. And look what had happened to Pavlos.

  I pulled on a bright smile despite the leaden sensation in my chest, and said, “I think Liza and Leo are through here. Shall we?”

  I offered my hand, and Boris gallantly offered his arm for me to take.

  And when Leo and Liza saw us appear from the other room, only the faintest flicker of unease crossed Leo’s handsome face. Liza’s showed no sign of flickering at all.

  Thirty

  What can I say about the shoe ceremony? I was on autopilot for the whole thing.

  I managed to bring the right (Louboutin stiletto) shoe to Liza at the right time, and I smiled in the right direction for the cameras as she pretended to try it on, and I waited the right length of time while Liza and Boris sailed around the dance floor to tumultuous applause, and then I shuffled through the right steps with Leo, who seemed more focused than I’d ever seen him as he whirled me around beneath the spectacular glittering chandeliers, to the orchestra playing in the gallery above us.

  It was over quickly, and I had one dance with Rolf, which he spent telling me what a “game-changing girl” Jo was. The photographer got some nice photos of that too, although I don’t know whether I managed to keep my face in a suitable arrangement the whole time.

  But it all felt too late. If I hadn’t heard that conversation between Liza and Leo, I might have convinced myself that I’d pulled it back—but I hadn’t. When Leo told me how charming everyone had found my English grace, it sounded as if he was convincing himself as much as me; but I couldn’t let my face drop in case someone snapped me looking miserable.

  I went through the rest of the ball in a sort of trance, my cheeks aching from smiling, asking inane questions so no one could accuse me of being aloof. It was a relief when Leo found me at half one, and murmured that Boris and Liza had left, and so now we could too.

  Jo and Rolf were still dancing a wild quickstep on the slowly emptying floor, their feet flashing in split-second unison as their flirty glances burned up the air around them. Again, I thought, you could either do that or you couldn’t. Jo was so much more fitted to this sort of life than me. Performance and sociability ran somewhere in her blood, whereas my blood ran with tea and fertilizer. And that was fine. That was just the way it was. Frankly, I didn’t think any amount of diamonds could compensate for a lifetime of evenings like that, especially with the additional delights of Sofia for Christmas, for the foreseeable future.

  Leo was quiet as he escorted me up the sweeping staircase to the family apartments. He didn’t make any reference to the conversation he’d had with his mother, and I didn’t have the energy to fight about it. Instead he asked me if I’d enjoyed the evening, and seemed to take my wooden responses for tiredness. I couldn’t believe any of the compliments he passed on, even though I knew I was being churlish; and when he carefully removed the gorgeous diamond necklace, and unclipped the diamond cuff, and pulled the heavy tiara out of my hair, instead of falling into his arms and making love on the huge bed, I pretended to slump with weariness as soon as my head touched the pillow.

  Leo curled himself round behind me, tucking the throw around my blistered feet, and soon I heard him breathing drowsily, and I knew he was asleep.

  I didn’t sleep. I lay there replaying the events of the night over and over, but my mind wouldn’t let me edit and improve the version the way it usually did—it made me face up to the blunt reality. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t Leo’s fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.

  I loved Leo, but was I really going to be able to do this?

  *

  I often felt better after a shower, but not even a cloudburst showerhead the size of a serving plate could wash away the ashy grayness of the previous night.

  It was just six thirty, so I pulled on jeans and a cashmere sweater and went through to the sitting room of our suite. The long arched windows looked out over the pool and the gardens, which were dappled with early-morning sunlight, and the organic confusion of the flowers was strangely comforting to my raw soul.

  As I passed, I glanced at my mobile, charging on the desk, and noted that I had four missed calls, all from home. I frowned and picked up my messages.

  First, Dad. That was unusual—he never rang unless Mum was unable to hold a telephone (i.e., never).

  “Amy, love, I expect you’ll be in Nirona now, at your ball. Hope you’re having a nice time. Could you give us a ring, when you’ve a moment? Thanks. It’s Dad, by the way.” That was at four yesterday.

  “Amy, it’s Dad again. Can you ring? Thanks.”

  My throat tightened. He sounded anxious.

  The seven o’clock call was downright worried. “Amy, it’s Dad. I don’t know if you’ve seen, but there’s been something in the newspaper that’s upset your mum, and I was wondering if there was anything you could do about it. Maybe you could call me?”

  The eight o’clock call was only three seconds long, but I caught the distinct sound of crying in the background. Mum crying.

  Awful thoughts dive-bombed my mind. What had the paper got hold of? Kelly? The court case? An old boyfriend of mine with some cringy story?

  I grabbed Leo’s iPad from the desk and turned it on, flicking through the newspaper websites. Dad hadn’t said what it was, or where …

  “Shedding for the Wedding?” ran the headline.

  Last night’s champagne burned the back of my throat like acid.

  There, in all our glory, were me, Jo, and Mum outside Wedding Warehouse, lining up to get into the Range Rover with our bags. I looked bad enough, but the angle they’d got of Mum was very cruel. It made her seem twice the size she really was, and the strain on her face—caused by that awful dress—looked like peevishness, not self-loathing.

  To make matters worse, they’d put a photo of Liza and the First Lady next to it, ostensibly to illustrate the other mother-in-law but really so everyone could have a good ga
wp at the chasm between Leo’s skinny, chic mother and my lovely normal mum.

  The headline referred to more paparazzi shots they’d got of me and the psycho personal trainer as I puffed my way round Hyde Park like a walrus in a tracksuit, but I didn’t even care. The comments beneath were so horrible I could barely bring myself to read them, but I did, because I knew Mum would have winced over each stupid one.

  “Like mother, like daughter, watch out, Leo!”

  “OMG, it’s the new Princess of Whales LOL!”

  And on and on.

  I closed my eyes, but the images were burned on my brain. I’d done this to Mum. She’d be distraught right now, and Dad twice as distressed, and it was my fault.

  I couldn’t think there, surrounded by the discarded clothes of the previous night, so I slipped out, down to the gardens to call Dad out of earshot. It was early, but Mum never slept when she was upset and Dad would be sitting there with her.

  *

  The morning air had an autumnal nip, and the gardens were empty, apart from a few seagulls. I just stared at the phone, paralyzed.

  What could I say? “Sorry”? “I’ll make it up to you”? “Just ignore it—they’ll get bored after a couple of years”? I was signing them up to this sort of invasion of privacy for life.

  Even Liza’s so-called media strategy hadn’t protected me—this was presumably revenge from the other papers for not getting access to the ball.

  I stared blindly at the stone wall, and listened to the distant hush of the sea and the swish of the automatic water sprays. I don’t know how long I sat there, but eventually I heard footsteps on the stone path.

  “What are you doing down here?”

  Jo was standing on the grass in front of me, wearing a pair of shades that hid her face. She was dressed in the sort of weekend casual look I’d spent five thousand pounds acquiring in Harvey Nichols, except the cashmere draped over her shoulders was vintage and authentically moth-eaten.

  “Why are you up?” I demanded. “Not even the gardeners are out!”

  She sat down on the bench next to me with a wince. “My flight’s at midday and I’ve got to get back to the mainland to catch it. Callie’s off on holiday, and I said I’d drop in this afternoon to make sure everything was on track with the wet room.”