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The Runaway Princess

Hester Browne


  But the main reason I had to go home, the reason we all knew but never actually said, was that Dad’s birthday was two days before Kelly’s, and me being there for his party meant that Mum and Dad could celebrate Kelly’s birthday too, but without any of us mentioning her at all.

  It was amazing what complicated emotional knots my family could tie themselves into without talking about anything. We were the emotional equivalent of Jo’s mime classes.

  *

  Typically, this year Dad’s birthday party landed on a weekend filled with all sorts of London delights. Jo was on the VIP list at three different clubs, Mrs. Mainwaring had invited us both to a sherry party in her flat for the first time ever, Dickon had an opening (although we were privately a bit dubious about that one), and Leo had tickets to a completely sold-out gig at the Royal Albert Hall that was so popular the tickets were allocated by lottery.

  He’d revealed this surprise to me over hot soup and takeaway coffee in his garden, where I’d spent the morning planting Souvenir du President Lincoln rosebushes, delivered straight from the French rose specialist I’d tracked down online.

  “I’ve got a surprise for you,” he said when we were huddled up on the bench together with our minestrone. “Call it a late Valentine’s present.”

  “But you’ve already given me a Valentine’s present,” I protested. “I’m not one of those girls who has to be constantly plied with gifts, you know. Though obviously they’re much appreciated.”

  I’d got back to Leominster Place after the most eye-opening night of my entire life in Leo’s antique sleigh bed to find he’d had the flat filled with flowers—not forced scentless blooms, but proper garden-grown roses, with delicious fragrance that was almost edible, lilac Blue Moons and blushing White Mischief interlaced with china-blue hyacinths and flag irises and tangles of greenery.

  “They were just flowers. Coals to Newcastle, I know. Here. And don’t tell me you don’t like the bands playing—I checked out your iPod.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the tickets: front-row stalls.

  I boggled. “Seriously? Leo, I know for a fact that this is sold out because Jo failed to get tickets when they went on sale last year. How did you get these?”

  He grinned, and pulled a piece off his bread roll. “Magic. Don’t ask.”

  “I won’t.” I grinned back. Maybe dating a prince had unexpected advantages. But then I looked at the tickets again, and my heart sank. “Oh … these are for Saturday night.”

  “Are you seeing someone else?”

  “No. Well, yes. My dad. It’s his birthday.” I felt awful. “I’m going to Yorkshire for the weekend. I don’t think I’ll be able to get back in time.”

  Leo’s face fell. “You can’t leave a little early?”

  “It’s not quite as easy as that—it takes two trains and a bus to get there. And I can’t leave until all the sandwiches have been eaten and everyone’s checked me over to make sure I haven’t started talking like a southerner and eating crème fraîche. You know what family dos are like. Well,” I added, “maybe you don’t.”

  “What if I came with you?” Leo beamed as if he’d just had a great idea. “Hey, let’s do that! I’ll drive you there and back—we can do it in a day. I’ve never been to Yorkshire. It’ll be a nice day out.”

  I choked on my soup.

  “What?” Leo frowned. “Don’t you want me to come?”

  “No, it’s just …” I was going to say, “I can’t even imagine you in my parents’ house” but changed it to, “. . . this soup is very hot. And it’s a long way.”

  I know. Not great. But it was the first thing that came into my head. The thought of Leo and his gorgeous princely glow in my parents’ cramped front room made me feel panicky. They’d need at least six months’ notice—(a) for my dad to rebuild the whole house, and (b) for my mum to have enough therapy to deal with the stress of hosting someone who wasn’t an immediate member of our family.

  I regretted it as soon as I’d said it, because Leo looked crestfallen. Admittedly, sitting on a park bench in his winter coat, with a gray cashmere beanie over his expensively tousled hair—and, okay, his nose red with the cold—he looked rather more normal than he did in black tie, but even so. My last boyfriend had been an apprentice scaffolder.

  “I don’t see what the problem is,” he said, hurt. “Don’t you want them to meet me? Unless … you haven’t told them you’ve got a boyfriend? Is that it?”

  Ironically, that was it. “Not in so many words.”

  Leo’s mouth dropped open. “What? You haven’t—”

  I hurried to explain. “It’s just that my parents tend to give anyone I bring home the third degree. Especially my dad. They’re quite protective of me. They worry.” I was editing a lot here. “It’s nothing to do with you, they’re just a bit mad. Sometimes you’ve just got to … you know, humor your folks.”

  “Listen, they can’t be more mad than my family.” Leo stretched out his long legs, crossing them at the ankle to reveal a flash of discreet black sock. “You know I said Mom was involved in this campaign to”—he employed heavy air quotes—“make every American girl an everyday princess? Well, Mom made me and Sofia fly back to Nirona for the afternoon on Monday, just so we could be in a photo shoot for Vanity Fair, talking about how important a down-to-earth upbringing was and how we’d always eaten our greens, et cetera, et cetera. Sofia was not happy. She kept following the journalist around, telling her that actually she wasn’t ‘normal’ at all, she’d been a member of MENSA since she was twelve.”

  “No Rolf?”

  “Definitely no Rolf.” He twisted his lips in wry amusement. “And of course Mom couldn’t let rip at Sofia while the journalist was there, but she more than made up for it when the woman left. I thought something was going to get broken. The windows, maybe. That’s not in the American Princess Plan, let me tell you.”

  I smiled and blew on my soup. Then stopped myself. That wasn’t good etiquette. Or was it? I’d have to check.

  Leo sighed and dipped his bread in the soup. “So you’re telling me I’m going to have to take Rolf?”

  “Well, that’d be perfect for your mother’s big campaign! What could be more mannerly than taking your own brother to a rock concert! There’s bound to be a photographer there,” I added.

  “I’m not going anywhere with Rolf if it has a backstage area,” said Leo. “No way, José.”

  “Take Jo, then. Take Jo and Rolf, and you can teach him how to show a lady a good time.” That wasn’t what I meant. I spluttered on my soup. “I don’t mean, like that! I mean—”

  “I know what you mean.” Leo shook his head. “But I don’t really want to go without you.”

  I thought for a moment that he was trying to get me to cancel on my parents, but I shook my head. I wasn’t going to do that. And I couldn’t bend the laws of time and physics to do both.

  “Another time,” I said. “I promise.”

  *

  It was only a few weeks since I’d been home to Yorkshire for the annual unofficial mince-pie eating record attempt, but as usual my parents reacted as if I’d been on some round-the-world voyage, not digging a few gardens at the other end of the East Coast rail line.

  “You’re skin and bones!” wailed my mum, before I’d even heaved my rucksack over the threshold. Badger lurked behind me, letting Mum’s attention wash over me first before it could turn to him and his “hygiene issues.” “Aren’t you eating? Are you too busy to eat?”

  “You’re looking worn out, Amy,” added my dad. “Have you got one of those colds going round? They say they spread round the Underground network like wildfire. Germ cocktails. Mutating all the time.”

  “Oh, Stan, be quiet. Amy’s not ill,” Mum corrected him, stroking my arm. “When she’s ill, she looks more gray. She looks peaky, not ill. Underfed, if you ask me.”

  Dad made a snorting noise, because only remote tribes in Tonga where women weigh more than horses would consider me unde
rfed.

  “Happy birthday, Dad,” I said, before he could start arguing with my mum about my body fat. “I’ve got you a present.”

  “You shouldn’t have,” he said automatically, but I could tell he was pleased. “Is it seeds? Or bulbs?” He eyed my rucksack hopefully, then spotted Badger behind me. “Oh. I see you’ve brought the demon dog with you.”

  “Yes,” I replied. “He’s the reason I had a table seat to myself on the train. Wouldn’t travel without him.”

  “I’ve just hoovered,” said Mum. “I hope there won’t be a repeat of last time.”

  “Oh, come on, Mum, it’s not Buckingham Palace!” I said, and immediately wished I hadn’t.

  My mum and dad’s end-of-terrace house was nice enough by Rothery standards—Victorian, with bay windows, a narrow kitchen, and a faint air of gloom that wasn’t helped by the noise of the railway line running behind the street. But if you went through the house into the back garden, it was like stepping into a different world. Dad had crammed every inch of available soil with an ever-changing patchwork of plants and shrubs, the pride of which was a vine that he’d actually coaxed grapes from during the very hot summer of 2010. Thankfully, not enough to make any wine.

  We’d moved to Rothery ten years ago, after Kelly’s Shame had forced my parents to downsize from our lovely thatched cottage in the much nicer village of Hadley Green, with a huge garden that was the star turn on the Neighborhood in Bloom poke-’n’-preen. Kelly and I’d had swings on the apple tree and rabbits in the garden, and Dad had presided over a huge vegetable patch that was so impressive they eventually made him a judge at the local show because they ran out of categories for him to win.

  Now Dad had an allotment on the other side of town and blagged exotic seeds off me from a contact I had at the agricultural college. Badger hadn’t exactly covered himself in glory last time Dad took him up there at New Year’s, although he had covered himself in soil and pigeon droppings from the pigeon loft next door.

  “Don’t be mean to Badger,” I said. “He’s been looking forward to seeing you.”

  “I’m only going on past record,” said Mum darkly.

  “You’re okay, aren’t you, lad?” Dad gave him a roughhousing stroke, and Badger barked, rolled onto his back, and, I think, made a terrible smell.

  “Go through,” said Mum, waving us down the hall toward the sitting room. I waved too, to dissipate Badger’s indiscretion. “I’ve put a few things out in case you were hungry on the train, just to carry you on till teatime. …”

  I edged past her—no small feat, given the narrowness of the hall and the width of my mother—and went into the conservatory. Pale Yorkshire sunlight filtered bravely through the net curtains, falling on the groaning table of plates and glass cake stands waiting for me.

  Chocolate birthday cake. Thick slices of fruitcake. Cookies, various. Brownies in a tumbling nutty pile. Five types of sandwiches cut into tiny quarters with the crusts trimmed off. I blinked. Had I got it wrong? Was this a surprise birthday party for our whole family?

  I glanced at Dad.

  “Your sister’s card arrived yesterday,” he whispered. “It set her off. Thought she might be coming.”

  A familiar weight draped itself on my shoulders like a moody cat. Kelly sent cards every birthday and Christmas, but never said where she was or when she’d be back. It didn’t stop Mum pulling out all the stops, just in case. “And is she? Did she put a letter in this time? Was there a postmark?”

  Dad shook his head sadly. “No. Nothing we could make out. Just ‘Happy birthday, lots of love from Kelly. Kiss kiss.’ That’s one more kiss than last year.”

  On the table between all the cakes were five cards—mine from the Kew Gardens collection, one “to my dear husband,” one “to my dear brother,” one “to a special neighbor” (well done, Di Overend), and a big sparkly card that dwarfed the others.

  A white-hot ribbon of anger ran through me. If Kelly could spend ten minutes writing a simple note in these cards, instead of just picking the most expensive one in the shop, then Mum might not be in such a state. It was almost worse than not sending one at all. It just got their hopes up three times a year—as usual, it was more about Kelly salving her conscience than helping them with the chaos she’d left behind.

  Over the past few years I’d tried to track her down myself via Facebook and friends, but Kelly had covered her tracks pretty well for someone with that big a mouth. She obviously didn’t want to be found. I was only sixteen when it all happened, and I hadn’t properly understood the full extent of Kelly’s stupidity then; but now, looking at Mum comfort-eating herself into XXXXL smocks and Dad lost in enforced early retirement from a job he’d loved really made me realize that it wasn’t Kelly who’d been punished for what she’d done—it had been us.

  She, on the other hand, had the luxury of starting over.

  “How hard is it for her to pick up the phone?” I hissed. “I mean, it’s what? Nine years now, nearly? Can’t she get over herself and ring?”

  Dad suddenly looked older than sixty-five. His mustache, once the badge of his bank-managerial respectability, drooped. “It’s hard, love. I suppose she’ll come back in her own time. We all said things we regretted—”

  “For very good reasons!” I snapped. “I didn’t get to say enough at the time!”

  “Amy! It’s not like you to be sharp.” He seemed genuinely shocked.

  “Sorry, Dad, but I just get so—”

  “Now, then. What can I get you?” Mum bustled in, piling another small wall of millionaire’s shortbread onto the cake stand, and Dad and I straightened up like guilty schoolkids.

  “This cake is amazing, Mum,” I said, reaching for the nearest plate. “So light!”

  A shy smile spread across her round face, making her blue eyes shine. Mum was still a good-looking woman despite her extra weight, and that seemed to make her even more self-conscious about her billowing curves. She’d been a local beauty for years and years; but now she felt everyone was looking at her with even more reproach when she went out. Looking and whispering. Mum rarely left the house because of her paranoia; the hospital cake-stall lady had to come and collect her bootful of light-as-a-feather sponge cakes.

  “You’ll have to take some back for Ted,” she replied. “And Jo.”

  “And that new boyfriend of yours,” added Dad through a mouthful of parkin.

  “What?”

  I was very glad Leo wasn’t around to see the crumbs spraying as he said it, or the murderous expression on Mum’s face.

  “Stan!”

  I looked between my gleeful dad and my mortified-but-at-the-same-time-agog mum and realized that not even the British tabloid press could match the Rothery grapevine when it came to the spreading of hot and potentially scandalous news.

  *

  My plan to break the news of my new boyfriend to my parents in a sensitive fashion we could all look back on with affection in years to come had been comprehensively scuppered, it seemed, by the intervention of the friendly neighborhood gossipmonger, Di Overend (who else?)—in this case, via her henpecked Other Half, Barry.

  Dad had been the unlikely bearer of the tidings to my mother only that morning.

  “I had Di Overend’s Barry on at me today up at the allotment,” he explained, while I tried to reshuffle my prepared speech about Leo into something that might fit whatever they’d heard. “Asking why on earth you’d pay good money to go to a boxing match when the lads round here put on a good show for free most weekends.”

  “She saw you in the hairdresser’s,” Mum explained. “In Hello! magazine.”

  “With a lad who called himself a prince.”

  “At a boxing match!” Mum added. “You don’t even like boxing. I didn’t think it could be you until Di said she recognized your friend Jo from that washing-up liquid advert.”

  My head flicked back and forth between the two. This was not how I’d wanted to lead into it. For a start, I’d have to expla
in why I’d been at a charity boxing match in the first place.

  Dad gave me a beady look. “Well, come on. What nonsense is all this?”

  Fine. The potted version was this. Whatever Rolf had done or said to Jo while he and the Three Blondes were sinking fancy cocktails in Tramp after Chicago-a-go-go, it seemed to have succeeded where boxes of cutaway knickers and several jeroboams of champagne had failed, because she’d agreed to go with me and Leo to watch him in a charity boxing match, fighting a very pretty former boy-band singer in aid of abandoned potbellied pigs.

  Hostilities hadn’t been totally called off; Jo still referred to Rolf as the Frog Prince, and claimed that she’d only agreed to go so that there’d be some more glamorous paparazzi shots of her on file than the blurry ones of her leaving the pub; but I could tell from the odd thing she’d said that Rolf had managed to reveal a more thoughtful side. I hoped so, anyway. He didn’t seem the type to be that good at hypnotism.

  Anyway, to cut a long story short, Jo had insisted that she call in all sorts of favors from various salon-owning clients, and we spent an entire day being waxed, tanned, styled, buffed, tanned again, professionally made-up, literally sewn into plunging dresses, and then deposited at a London hotel where about three thousand paparazzi went berserk thinking we were two of the famous guests.

  Much to our amazement, Rolf won his bout (possibly because his unusually waxed body hair distracted his opponent); he then donated his gold medallion to the charity, Jo kissed him (I’m condensing here, you understand), and in the car on the way home, Leo gave me a bracelet made up of tiny white and yellow diamonds set like a daisy chain—“so next time I take you to a gala, you’ll have your own heirlooms for the dress code.”

  If I made that sound like a normal night out, it wasn’t. It really wasn’t. But even if it felt like a hysterical dream, I woke up the next morning with a bad headache, a diamond bracelet on my wrist, and a snoring prince, so it must have been real.