The Runaway Princess

  “There’ll be jazz hands,” I warned him.

  “I can take jazz hands.” He gave me a quick demonstration of his own jazz hands, which were surprisingly jazzy for a man in a Savile Row suit.

  “If you’re really sure …”

  “I am. It’s a date.”

  A date.

  A DATE. WITH A PRINCE.

  I opened my mouth to make a lame joke, but when I looked up into Leo’s handsome face, framed by the perfectly arranged gray scarf wrapped round his neck, my mind went blank. His face wasn’t familiar because I’d seen it in magazines; it felt familiar because we just clicked together. Something in the way he was gazing at me, as if he was feeling the same giddy homecoming that I was, made the rest of the King’s Road vanish around us, and I let the awkwardness of Friday night slide away as he pulled me closer to him.

  *

  Chicago-a-go-go might have been a one-woman play, but it had a full-time understudy, viz me.

  Thanks to Jo’s constant bellowing of “When You’re Good To Mama” and other highlights in the bath, bus, and bedroom, I could have performed the whole thing myself, plus most of the hoofing. Sometimes I did, miming along in the bathroom mirror when she had her tap on full in the sitting room. Callie Hamilton’s builders could probably have acted as Jo’s backing dancers, if she’d been practicing on the job as much as she had at home.

  The pub theater didn’t have a dressing room as such—Jo had commandeered the biggest loo cubicle to change in, and stuck a gold star on the door—so once she’d gone in to start plastering on her makeup, I hung around by the picnic tables outside the pub, waiting for Leo.

  As usual, when I saw him appear round the corner, his coat collar turned up against the night air and his hair gleaming under the streetlights, I had to give myself a quick pinch.

  “Hello.” Leo’s smile lit up his face as he leaned forward to drop a kiss on my lips, resting his hand gently on my shoulder. “Have you been out here long? You’ve got lovely pink cheeks.”

  “What? Oh no, am I—?” I started, touching my face; that photo in the Mail had made me very mindful of my flushed cheeks, but Leo stopped me.

  “No, pink like you’ve just been skiing. It’s pretty.” He pretended to frown. “Do I have to send you to my compliment-

  accepting coach?”

  “You had one of those too?”

  “Yes,” he said. “My mother.” He cupped my face with his hand and rubbed his thumb against the hollow under my ear. “First lesson for free: if I say you look gorgeous, just smile and say thank you, okay? Like you hear it a million times a day but still appreciate the effort. That’s straight from the horse’s mouth.”

  I couldn’t really argue with that. I didn’t even tell him I couldn’t ski. Which was a step forward.

  Leo held the frosted glass door open for me, and I walked into the pub acutely conscious about the prince at my side, but no one seemed to notice I was with one. Leo blended in with the crowd of City workers in their suits and heels, except his coat was a tiny bit better cut, and his scarf was a tiny bit softer. And—to me, anyway—he had a polish you could see a mile off.

  “What can I get you?” I asked, searching in my bag for my purse. I waved away his protests. “No, please. This is my night. And don’t even try to pay for the ticket—we’re on the guest list. They’re tickets money can’t buy.”

  “I’m flattered to be invited to the premiere.” Leo squinted at the wine list. “I’ll have a …”

  I crossed my fingers and prayed he wouldn’t order champagne or a fancy cocktail served in a whole melon or something that might blow my spare cash for the rest of the month.

  Or, my dad’s voice added, a half-pint of shandy or some other girl’s drink.

  “… a bottle of Beck’s, please.”

  I released my breath. Normal, straightforward, and quite cheap.

  I ordered two Beck’s, and when I’d paid we wandered upstairs to the theater area and waited. On our own.

  “So,” said Leo, who didn’t seem at all fazed by the empty seats around us, “has Jo been acting for a long time? Is this her first solo performance?”

  “She goes up to the Edinburgh Festival every year, usually with a stand-up routine about builders,” I said. “It’s very funny, but she had to change a few things for legal reasons. This is her first musical.”

  As we chatted, a few people wandered in and sat down. I started to feel a little less tense about Jo’s ticket sales. She’d put the thumbscrews of guilt on her entire Facebook friend list (roughly equivalent to the population of Southampton), but it was a Thursday night, and as she said herself, Thursday was the new Friday.

  Leo didn’t mention Rolf, and I thought it best to avoid the topic of the truckload of orchids clogging up our entrance hall. For me this time, not Jo. At five past eight, the lights dimmed. Well, the lights went off at the switch, and Leo extended an arm along the back of the seat. I leaned into it happily and held my breath.

  Jo strode onto the stage in her silver trilby and fishnet tights, put one foot on a chair at a semi-gynecological angle, and opened her bright red mouth to start singing, but as she did there was a clatter and a blast of light from the landing as some latecomers shuffled into the empty seats.

  I turned round to see who had come in, but the room was too dark to make anything out beyond the general shapes.

  Jo didn’t seem unduly fazed. “The opening’s the best bit, darlings, as the actress said to the bishop, so let’s do that again.” She rammed her trilby back on, disappeared off the stage, and went through the booming intro and spotlight routine once more.

  “Is that in the script?” Leo whispered, his breath tickling my ear.

  “No. She practices her put-downs on plasterers,” I whispered back. My lips were close to the smooth, tanned skin on his neck and, as my senses sharpened in the darkness, my heart did a cartoon thump in my chest. I was surprised not to see an outline of it appear through my top.

  Maybe Leo noticed, because he turned his head and our eyes locked. I didn’t say anything, and he didn’t either, but suddenly the distance between us felt very small and filled with a crackling tension. He’d been devastating in a dinner jacket in the Royal Opera House; but somehow here, in a Battersea pub, in his work suit, I wanted him even more.

  And then Jo marched back on and started hoofing like her life depended on it, and we had to concentrate on not getting a size-seven silver tap shoe in the face.

  *

  Wisely, Jo had decided to condense her show into one hour rather than risk losing anyone to the interval bar, so Chicago-a-go-go whipped past at breakneck speed, much like Jo’s black and blond wigs, which went on and off more times than a Piccadilly Circus traffic light.

  When she exited the stage, high-kicking like a demon, there was a stunned silence, followed by the sound of loud clapping—coming from next to me. Leo hadn’t been lying when he said he was a professional applauder. It sounded like a thunderstorm.

  I started clapping too, albeit at a much more amateur volume; then I registered a sort of stereo loud clapping effect coming from somewhere behind us. That clapping was then augmented by a furious whistling, then whooping, then a sound that I didn’t think humans could make.

  I spun round and saw Rolf sitting in the back row surrounded by the usual gaggle of women with hair like Afghan hounds.

  I spun back to Leo, who was now calling, “Encore! Encore!” but not quite loud enough for Jo to hear.

  “Why’s Rolf here?” I hissed.

  “He’s here to support Jo.” Leo beamed a job-well-done beam. “I told him he had some serious making up to do, to you and her, and that it had to be thoughtful. He said he’d bring along a theater producer friend and a reviewer—he knows lots of people in the entertainment industry whom Jo might find useful for the show.”

  “Oh!” That was thoughtful. And the little room seemed to be packed too.

  “Rolf’s very sorry about what happened,” Leo went on. �
�He wants to apologize in person, to both of you. Properly.”

  I made a vague noise of appreciation, but my brain was throwing out car-crash scenes of Jo ramming her trilby over Rolf’s head until he was wearing it like a necklace. Despite Rolf’s orchids and apologies, Jo was still livid on my behalf and had already got anyone who knew Tatiana to defriend her on Facebook. Tatiana was now persona non grata all over West London and was apparently finding it very difficult to get into any of the clubs in Soho.

  “Maybe not here, though?” I said, already hearing Jo’s mighty roar in my head. “Maybe … over a quiet drink somewhere else?”

  A couple of hands clapped down on my shoulders from behind. “It’s Runaway Amy!” oozed a voice in my ear. “And Jilted John!”

  “For God’s sake,” said Leo.

  I spun round and tried to scramble back to the happy place I’d been a few moments ago.

  “Amy,” said Rolf, taking my hands and fixing me with what I now realized was the trademark Wolfsburg family melting look. It was a bit less impressive now I’d seen his dad’s version. “Amy, Amy, Amy. I don’t know what to say.”

  “You keep saying sorry.”

  “I’m more than sorry. I’m contrite. I’m repentant. I’m prostate at your feet with—”

  “Prostrate,” I said. “I don’t want to know about your prostate, thanks.”

  “Saucy,” replied Rolf, after a second’s thought. “I have told that bad Tatiana that she will never board the Rolf Express again, and she is so grateful that you’re not pressing charges that she has—”

  I saw the curtain twitch out of the corner of my eye. I really didn’t want Jo to kick off at Rolf if there were useful theater contacts here. She could kick off at him later, when no one was reporting.

  “Well, it’s all water under the bridge now,” I babbled. “Thanks for coming! How many parties have you got to fit in tonight? Don’t want to keep you. I’ll tell Jo you were here if you want to dash off.”

  “Oh, there’s nothing until about midnight-ish,” said Rolf, to my dismay. “Thought we’d have a bite to eat here, then mosey up to Knightsbridge.”

  “But this is just a pub!” I exclaimed. “Pub food! It’s all chips and peas and—and I don’t even know if it’s organic.”

  The curtain parted and Jo’s face peeked round. When she clocked Rolf, her eyes darkened and she yanked the curtain right back and marched across the stage, wearing her fishnets and tap pants with an old Downe House hockey shirt over the top. Since the stage was only about three meters long, she was right up behind him before I had time to say, “Brace yourself.”

  “You’ve got a nerve!” she started, but Rolf was right on it.

  “You. Were. Magnificent!” he yelled, then turned to the blondes. “Sukey! Saffy! Over here! And where’s Sadie?”

  Sadie. Sukey. Saffy. I tried to tell them apart, and failed.

  “Sukey’s from the Evening Standard,” Rolf explained, as one blonde got a phone out of her bag and another blonde started taking photos of Jo. “Saffy’s her snapper. She’s going to splash you in the diary feature, aren’t you? She’s going to say I was here, and Leo was, and you’ll be sold out.”

  “And Sadie?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “A dear friend from school,” Rolf replied, hurt.

  “How can you dare to—hang on, let me take my hockey shirt off!” Jo glanced back and forth from me and Leo, to Rolf, to the blond Evening Standard pair.

  “And these are for you!” Rolf went on, thrusting a gigantic bunch of flowers into Jo’s arms. I had no idea where they’d come from; they were big enough to have needed their own ticket.

  Leo shot me a look. It started hopeful, but when he saw me unable to control my amazement, it turned to amusement too.

  “Amy and I are going downstairs to the bar,” said Leo. “Join us when you’re done so we can buy you a drink!”

  And while Jo was busy being photographed with her flowers, he swept me out and down to the bar, where it turned out there was a bottle of champagne on ice for us.

  *

  The rest of the evening was a bit blurry. In a good way.

  Jo, Sukey the writer, Saffy the snapper, and Sadie the random reality TV star (and dear old school friend) got on like a house on fire. Once they’d dispensed with the small matter of Sukey’s column and the burger Sadie had to eat under the table in case anyone saw her, all four bundled into a taxi to some nightclub, with Rolf in the middle like a playboy Buddha, leaving me to my bar supper with Leo.

  I rubbed a clear spot on the steamed-up pub window with my napkin; as the taxi pulled away, it was suddenly lit up by a barrage of flashes, photographers running alongside it. A shiver ran across my arms.

  Leo didn’t even break off from the steak and ale pie that the waiter had just put in front of him. “I thought I saw some photographers earlier,” he said, more to himself than me.

  “For who?”

  “Rolf. And Sadie, probably, if her press people are on the ball.”

  “Does that happen everywhere you and Rolf go?” I asked, thinking of the barricaded photographers outside the Royal Opera House. I’d thought they were just there because it was a big event.

  “Pretty much.”

  “Will they still be there when we leave?”

  “Maybe. Depends whether they got enough good pics of Rolf falling into the cab.” He looked up, and saw my anxious face. “Joke. Look, it’s because of Mom—she’s in the news in the US at the moment because she’s spearheading this campaign to get teenage girls to respect their inner princesses or something, so it’ll be freelancers trying to get photos of Rolf to sell to the US gossip rags. And we have a big bicentenary coming up too. No one’s really interested in Uncle Pavlos because he and his family never do much, so they go after Rolf.”

  I couldn’t help thinking about the YoungHot&Royal website that Jo and I had found. We were both pretending not to look at it, but it was like having an open box of chocolates in the house. I wasn’t supposed to know, for instance, that Rolf had slipped down a place in the eligible list since he’d been spotted going to a trichological clinic in Harley Street. But I did.

  “Don’t think about it,” he said, tucking into his steak and ale pie. “I don’t.”

  Even so, when we did leave—after I’d paid the bill; I insisted—I noticed Leo glance round quickly before we pushed our way out of the pub, and pull up his scarf.

  There was someone who looked a bit like a photographer hanging around outside on the benches. He was on his phone, and took no notice of us as we walked down the deserted residential road. I breathed out, quietly, so Leo wouldn’t notice, but my heart was hammering—and not just because, at that moment, Leo slipped his arm around my waist and pulled me nearer.

  Ten thirty was always the awkward bit of a London evening. A bit too soon to go home, but not really enough time to go on somewhere else.

  Our footsteps echoed in the quiet, and I fidgeted at the silence. With every step, we were nearer the main road, and taxis, and going our separate ways. Or not going our separate ways, if you know what I mean.

  “This is going to sound a bit Rolf,” said Leo, pausing as if he could read my mind. “But I don’t really want to go home yet.”

  “Me neither. But I don’t want to go to Tramp, thanks,” I added quickly, in case he thought I was angling to follow Jo and the others.

  “Wild horses would not drag me to Tramp,” said Leo solemnly. “Not even with you.”

  I shivered, but not because I was cold. “It’s such a gorgeous evening,” I said. “Look at those stars. So clear. It’s almost like we’re not in London.”

  “I wish we weren’t in London.” Leo gazed up into the sky, then looked back down at me. “I know I should say good night and put you into a cab,” he said. “But I don’t really want to.”

  “I know. They’re ridiculously expensive at this time of night,” I started to gabble, then made myself stop. I had to learn how to be a bit more cool an
d calm. Now would be a good time to start.

  We stood there for a very long, quiet second; then he murmured, “Can I kiss you?”

  I nodded twice, and very slowly Leo leaned forward, tilted his head to one side and closed his eyes.

  I closed mine and held my breath, and suddenly his lips were on mine, just touching at first, then kissing, harder. Sparks flew all round my body as his hands slid under my coat and around my waist, stroking and pulling me closer.

  And my hands, I have to confess here, were inside his coat too, but he didn’t flinch at my chilly fingers against his warm body.

  “Amy.” Leo’s voice sounded thick in his throat. “Can I take you home?”

  I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t need to. I think my kisses were saying everything I needed to say, and quite a bit more than that.

  Fifteen

  My dad’s birthday was one of the nonnegotiable home visits of my year, along with Mum’s birthday, my birthday, Hadley Green Agricultural Show, and Christmas.

  This year, I’d bought my train tickets up to Yorkshire weeks in advance to get the cheapest fare. Mum and Dad lived in a small town in the middle of nowhere, and the combination of trains and buses required to get there made it only slightly less of a trek than walking. But not going, as I tried to explain to Jo when she found me at the laptop at 5:30 a.m. grabbing the discounted tickets, wasn’t an option.

  For one thing, birthdays allowed my mum to bake for a reason other than to off-load her nervous tension. My parents dealt with stress in different ways: Dad dug for hours on his allotment, and Mum turned into a one-woman all-night bakery. She’d always been a keen home cook, testing out recipes for the canteen on us in scaled-down portions; but since she’d given up her job at the school, she baked so much that our house now smelled permanently of fairy cakes.

  I mean, it was lovely—much better than the house smelling of cats, like Di Overend’s did—but all the cake had to go somewhere, and most of it was going into Mum and Dad. Mum was now at least two or three times the size she’d been when I lived at home, and I’d had to persuade her to set up a cake stall at the hospital, just to give Dad’s pancreas a break.