The Runaway Princess

  Boris nodded. “When we’re ready,” he said. “I haven’t seen what the interval refreshments are going to be. You did make sure about the ice cream?”

  The man nodded. “Neapolitan. Soya.”

  “With wafers? Organic? The fan ones, not the tube ones? My grandmother was an opera singer,” he added to me, as if this explained everything.

  Leo was glancing at his watch. “We should go through, everyone’s waiting.” He nodded at the security guard. “Amy? Are you set?”

  The room had emptied in the space of a minute, apart from the ushers glaring at us, and I felt the familiar missing-the-train panic I got every time I went home. We were holding everyone up. They’d all be tutting and checking their watches. Like the ushers were.

  “Leo, you’re so … nine-to-five,” drawled Rolf, but Leo ignored him and directed me toward the corridor that led to the private boxes, offering me a program as we went.

  Rolf and Boris followed a majestic three full minutes later, and then the house lights went down and the royal gala performance began.

  Thirteen

  I have to be honest with you. I spent more time boggling at the glittering surroundings of the Royal Opera House than I did listening to what was going on below. People came on, they sang beautifully (selections from Cats, I think, and The Lion King), everyone clapped. But there was just too much going on around me to look at the stage.

  For a start, we were in what I assume was a, if not the, royal box. Deep raspberry velvet seats, gold leaf and crystal in every direction, champagne in ice-beaded silver buckets by our sides. Rolf was getting through a bottle all on his own, although it didn’t affect his ability to text. His fingers never stopped. After the first performance, a willowy Chinese girl in a leather dress slipped into the box and took the seat next to him; although Leo acknowledged her arrival with a polite smile, no one said a word, which I thought was a bit odd, but frankly unless he got drunk and fell off this balcony I intended to keep quiet.

  The man in dark glasses stood behind us, but after five minutes, he slipped out and returned with a crystal dish of Neapolitan ice cream, which Boris ate with a miniature silver spoon. Every so often Boris would guffaw and clap uproariously, and Rolf would accuse him of showing off for the cameras, and Boris would deny there were any, although I did spot the occasional flash that seemed to coincide with the guffawing/clapping.

  I was trying to take it all in to tell Jo later, but I couldn’t quite get beyond how delicious it was to be sitting next to Leo in the dark like this. He was the only one in the box paying proper attention to the performances on the stage, but he still kept sneaking the odd sideways glance in my direction to see if I was enjoying it. Once or twice he caught me staring at his handsome profile, and I wondered if the same shiver ran through him that did me.

  I think, once or twice, he looked at me when I wasn’t looking too, and that was even nicer. I just hoped my face wasn’t giving me away, so I kept it set to “entranced.” That was not hard.

  *

  The curtain fell after forty minutes, and Rolf got up before the applause finished. “I’m just nipping out to—” he started, then his phone rang. He looked at it, and said, “Oh, jeez.”

  The beautiful Chinese girl had risen too, and was smiling uncertainly at me, as if not sure whether to introduce herself. Rolf saw me opening my mouth to save him the trouble and said, “Oh, this is Ida. Ida, this is Amy.”

  “His personal trainer,” said Ida with a smile, and Rolf looked slightly put out as he glanced at his phone again and flinched.

  “Hello,” I said, and shook her hand.

  At least he’d got my name right this time, I thought, then noticed Rolf was shifting from foot to foot.

  “What’s the problem?” asked Boris through a mouthful of ice cream.

  “It’s that nut-job Tatiana.” Rolf thrust the phone at me. “Answer this and say you’re my therapist and I can’t take calls in session.”

  “What?” His phone had a big R on it in crystals. Or diamonds. It matched the iPod he’d sent Jo, and the ring tone was some kind of hunting horn. I gave him a dark look, emboldened by another glass of champagne. “Are you sure I’m the person you want to deal with your excess of girlfriends?”

  “For God’s sake, turn it off!” said Leo. He grabbed the phone, turned it off, and dropped it in the slushy ice bucket. “That’s been driving me insane all night.”

  “Like father, like son,” said Boris indulgently. “Too many women, too little time.”

  My jaw dropped. I could not imagine my dad saying that. I couldn’t imagine casually dropping a phone worth hundreds of pounds into an ice bucket either.

  “Too little brain, you mean.” Leo ignored Rolf’s attempts to dry off his phone and turned to me. “Amy, can we get you anything?”

  “No, no! It’s all perfect. I’m just going to … freshen up,” I said, levering myself out of the velvet seat with a wobble.

  Actually, what I needed was air. And a large glass of cold water. The canapés weren’t soaking up as much alcohol as my own sausage rolls usually did. The usher assigned to the box steered me discreetly toward the ladies’ room, and when I pushed open the door, the marble-tiled loos were thankfully empty.

  I swung over to the mirrors with a swagger in my step now no one was watching, and was surprised to see, in my reflection, a sparkle around my eyes that had nothing to do with Jo’s smoky Mac eye palette.

  I looked glamorous. That was quite a surprise for me, and now that I was a little bit, um, relaxed, I didn’t feel like such a traitor to my normal “take me as I am” state to admit that I liked it.

  Apart from a stray curl here and there, my makeup and hair were holding up pretty well. In fact, I thought, adding another layer of rose lip gloss with a shaky hand—the only part of the makeup process Jo had entrusted me to top up unsupervised—it was all holding up well. Hair, dress, conversation. Boris and Rolf were rather intimidating, and I was going to tell Jo all the gory details of Rolf’s girlfriend shuffling later, but Leo seemed happy with the way things were going. Maybe we’d go on somewhere else afterward, just us.

  Maybe tonight, with me in my beautiful dress and him in his black tie, might be the night he decided that we’d done enough taking things slowly and get on with the princely ravishing.

  I shivered and saw myself in the mirror, grinning like a loon.

  But first, I had another hour of light opera and chitchat to get through. As I was thinking of some intelligent questions to ask about feral cats, the door swished open and a magnificent blonde stalked in, her eyes flashing almost as much as the huge gold necklace around her throat.

  I smiled at her since she was staring at me through the mirror, but instead of turning left into the cubicles, she made straight for where I was standing.

  “Are you the girl who came here vith Rolf?” She had a faint accent and very, very toned biceps. They were pulsing, along with her jaw. She looked much more like a personal trainer than Ida did.

  “Well, technically, I suppose I am. Are you looking for him?” I said. “He’s still in the box, I think.”

  “Really?” she said, her eyes narrowing.

  Or was this the sister? Sofia? Not very friendly if she was.

  I opened my mouth to ask her, but before I could speak, she grabbed the vase of oversize Dutch tulips by the basket of towels.

  “You can tell him from me,” she roared, “that he is dumped, and you are a cheating slut.”

  “Now, hang on, I’m not here with Rolf—” I started, holding up my arms to defend myself, but she didn’t throw the vase at me—she yanked the waxy flowers out of it and deliberately poured the water over my head, soaking my dress and flattening my hair.

  I gasped as the cold—and stinky—water coursed down my back and into my shoes. Everything was sticking to me, and my eyes stung where my so-called waterproof mascara was running.

  I was too stunned to speak. All I could think of was poor Jo’s beautiful vintage
dress. And my own brand-new shoes. And the fact that no one had changed that water for days.

  “Don’t lie to me!” The woman jabbed her finger at me, her nostrils flaring. “And you don’t vant to know vhat I’m about to do to that scumbag! Tell him Verbier is off! And so vill his balls be if I catch you vith him again!”

  And then she turned and stormed out, just as two older ladies in crushed-velvet floor-length gowns were opening the door to come in. They took one look at me and backed out, their eyebrows nearly in their wigs.

  I wanted to cry, but I was in shock. Every time I moved, something squelched, and the air conditioning was freezing. I squinched my eyes half-shut and risked a peep in the mirror: my hair was plastered to my head in the most unflattering way imaginable, making my ears seem enormous, and as if that weren’t bad enough, the water had turned the dress completely see-through. I wasn’t wearing Liza Bachmann Muffin Top Wranglers either.

  Somewhere in the main hall, a bell rang and an announcer requested that the audience retake their seats for the beginning of the second half.

  I gripped the edge of the basins with one hand and slapped my face with the other, hoping it would make my brain start working again. Quickly. What was I going to do? Even if I wanted to go and punch Rolf for this—which I was already doing in my imagination—there was absolutely no way I could go back into the royal box looking like I’d wet myself, then fallen in a lake.

  I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the hideous outline of my thong in the mirror. You could see everything. Much as I longed to punish Rolf, I really really really really didn’t want Leo to see me looking like this. It would ruin everything. And as for his dad … His royal dad.

  My coat was downstairs in the cloakroom. Could I grab it, then sit in that until my dress dried? The wild-eyed stranger in the mirror cringed.

  No. No, I couldn’t. This wasn’t a student party. This was a black-tie gala, with actual celebrities, and photographers—

  Oh, my God, the photographers outside!

  I would have died inside all over again, but I didn’t have the luxury of time.

  I knew what Jo would do. She would storm back in there and show Rolf up, teaching him a lesson and turning the whole thing into a brilliant anecdote. But she was confident and didn’t mind people staring at her, whereas people staring was, as everyone now knew, my absolute worst nightmare.

  I didn’t want to do it—it was the one thing my dad had impressed on me, that decent people didn’t run away—but in my panicked state I couldn’t see what choice I had left. I was going to have to make a swift exit. Quickly, before Leo saw me. Thank God I had my bag—I could text him once I was safely out of the building, and pretend there’d been some emergency at home.

  Which there would be, once I got back. I would officially be having a meltdown.

  *

  The cloakroom lady wouldn’t give me my coat at first; she practically accused me of stealing someone else’s ticket, and it was only when I told her exactly what was in the pockets (Oyster card, lip balm, dog treats—embarrassing, but they were in every coat I owned) that she handed it over. Her beady eyes, and the eyes of all the security guards, followed me through the front door until I was safely out of the Royal Opera House. My one stroke of luck was that the first wave of celebs going on somewhere else had left during the interval and now the photographers were busy wiring their pictures. They didn’t notice Prince Rolf’s “date” slinking out in the shadows.

  At least when I was freshly soaked, there was an obvious reason for my disheveled state; but as I dried off, my hair just looked greasy and I smelled worse than Badger after a roll in the bushes. Even when I’d buttoned my coat up to my neck, I felt as if every single tourist in London was staring at me as I stumbled toward Trafalgar Square, my new heels scuffing and squelching on the pavement. Grace Wright would have said it was karma that I’d decided to give the feral cats a generous donation—which was still in my bag—so I was able to afford a cab home, although the first two refused to take me, on the grounds that I looked like I’d been dragged out of the fountains by Nelson’s Column.

  Jo’s dinner with Marigold must have finished early, because I could hear her bellowing the opening number from Chicago as soon as I opened the front door; she tried to keep her rehearsals for her one-woman show to times when I was out, since I now couldn’t hear “All That Jazz” without twitching. As I reached the first landing, Jo let out a showstopping shriek, and Mrs. Mainwaring’s door popped open and Dickon’s head appeared over the top banister.

  When they saw me, though, they both stared, said nothing, and vanished while I carried on trudging up the stairs.

  Jo stopped singing the instant I staggered in, her jazz hands frozen in place.

  “What happened to you?” She had one foot up on a kitchen chair and was wearing a silver trilby. “Don’t tell me Rolf pushed you in a fountain?”

  “Half right.”

  “Which half?”

  I collapsed in a stinky heap on the sofa and told her. Even Badger’s usual affectionate greeting had been cut short after some tentative sniffing—warm flower water was a stench too far for him.

  “That is the final straw! I’m going to phone that pig right now and tell him what I think of him and his harem of insane fembots,” said Jo, reaching for her phone with a black look. “If he thinks—”

  “No! No,” I said. “Run me a bath instead. I can’t think while I smell like this.”

  Jo hauled me up by the armpits and steered me into the bathroom, where she started to run a hot bath. Without a word, she poured a generous amount of her best bath oil into it. That bath oil only came out for contract terminations and dumpings. She was grinding her teeth in fury, and she hadn’t even mentioned the state of her dress.

  “Get into that,” she said. “What did Leo say when you told him what happened?”

  I paused, one shoe off, and pulled a face. “He doesn’t know. I texted him and said Badger had had an accident and I’d had to leave.”

  “Why didn’t you tell him?” Jo demanded. “It’s not like it was your fault!”

  “What, and let him see me like this? I didn’t want a big scene, I just wanted to get out of there.” With Jo looking at me like that, it did seem a bit … wet to have slid away like that. But at the time …

  “There’s a difference between making a scene and—and—bringing someone to their senses.” Jo narrowed her eyes. “You don’t look as bad as you think. If that’d been me, no one would have noticed my appearance for the sight of Rolf weeping on the floor. Royal, schmoyal.”

  I should point out that at that exact moment, Jo was wearing a silver trilby, gold hot pants, and Ugg boots. That was the trouble with really confident people. Their embarrassment scale was calibrated entirely differently.

  “Well, I disagree,” I said weakly. “There were photographers.”

  “So what did Leo say, about this mysterious emergency?”

  “Dunno. I turned my phone off. I couldn’t bring myself to look.” I hiccuped; delayed shock. “Oh, Jo. He’s going to think I’m incredibly rude, isn’t he? It just seemed like the only thing to do at the time.”

  “Rude? You? After someone assaults you in a powder room?” Jo looked as if she was about to explode with fury.

  I suddenly felt exhausted, as if all my energy had been used up in getting home. “I know you don’t understand, but I already felt like everyone was staring at me for not wearing a couture evening gown. I didn’t want to be the sideshow on the way back down too. If I could do wisecracks like you, then maybe. But look!” I pinged my thong. “I don’t want the first glimpse of my knickers that Leo gets to be these ones.”

  She acknowledged that, at least.

  “And I’m so sorry about your dress.” I gulped. It was such a delicate thing. There was no way I could afford to replace it. “I don’t know if you can save it, but I’ll pay for any—”

  “The dress doesn’t matter.” Jo flapped her hands. “So what?
It died in a love triangle outside the royal box of the Royal Opera House. It’s what it would have wanted. I’m more worried about you and what—”

  The doorbell rang, and we both flinched.

  “What if it’s Leo?” I panicked.

  “What do you mean, what if? It’s bound to be him. Talk to him. Tell him what happened!”

  My mind went blank. It wasn’t just a case of telling him about Tatiana now; I also had to apologize for leaving without saying good-bye, lying to him, leaving him to explain to his prince father where I’d gone. … I needed to think about that conversation. I needed time to prepare it. Hadn’t this evening only proved what happened when I went off piste?

  The doorbell rang again.

  “I’ll get it.” Jo pulled off the trilby. “If it’s Rolf, I can’t promise I won’t lamp him.”

  She stormed off downstairs, but I didn’t get into the bath. Instead, I pulled on Jo’s bathrobe and crept out onto the landing to listen, out of sight.

  If I angled myself right at the very edge of the banisters, I could just see Jo opening the door, and—I cricked my neck—there was a dark evening suit and just a hint of white shirt.

  “Good evening, Jo. I’ve come to check that Amy’s all right.”

  My heart dropped like a stone. It was Leo.

  Oh, God. Was Jo going to lay into him? Was she going to invite him up to see the damage? I felt sick, and very sober.

  “She’s fine, thank you.” Jo sounded posher than I’d ever heard her, all clipped and shiny like piano keys.

  “And Badger? I got a garbled message from her about him being taken ill.” He paused. “Quite ironic, at a fund-raiser for cats. Is he all right? I’ve put our London veterinarian on standby, just in case.”

  I leaned my forehead against the cold wall as the full extent of the mess gradually revealed itself, in all its horrific glory.

  Downstairs, I could tell Jo was struggling not to tell Leo, because she was sticking to a grim sort of truth instead of inventing spiraling lies about canine defibrillators and vet medicopters as she would normally have done. “Amy wouldn’t have left unless it had been a real emergency,” she said crisply. “She was very upset.”