The Runaway Princess (18 page)

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.

*

M
y 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 explain 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.

“So?” Dad repeated. “Have you got a boyfriend who calls himself a prince or not?”

They were both staring at me. Mum had the teapot poised, as if my next answer would release the flow of tea. Instead of looking thrilled and excited, they both looked worried.

“Um, yes,” I said. “I have. His name is Leo. I was going to tell you today, actually.”

“And he’s a prince?”

Well. This was blowing Kelly’s nonappearance off the agenda.

“Yes,” I said. “He is a prince.”

Mum’s bosom heaved up and down anxiously. “Are you sure, love?”

“What do you mean,
am I sure
?”

“We’ve seen it on television,” Dad informed me. “These con men who claim to be Arab princes and take advantage of much cleverer folk than you. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Amy. Did he say where he was a prince of? Di Overend couldn’t remember.”

My face went hot. “It’s a principality called Nirona. It’s an island off the coast of Italy. Very famous for lemons and celebrity honeymoons.”

Mum seemed more impressed by that. “Ooh, now, didn’t Betty and Ike Thwaites stop off there on their anniversary cruise?”

“Probably,” I said. “There’s a marina. It’s very exclusive. People who can’t get a berth on Nirona have to go to Monaco instead.”

Dad put down his cake and spoke his mind. “He hasn’t asked you for any money, has he?”

“Dad!”

“Stan!”

“Well, we all know how easy it is to be led astray by folk who seem to have lots of cash.”

Mum, Dad, and I flinched at exactly the same instant.

I thought about showing them my diamond daisy chain, but decided that Dad would have it off me and down to the local jeweler for carbon testing before I could say Cartier. And I didn’t have to defend Leo to them.

“He’s not like that,” I said hotly. “He’s got a job in the City, he earns his own salary even though he doesn’t have to. He didn’t even tell me he was a prince for ages, because he didn’t want me to judge him!”

“Didn’t tell you for ages,” said Dad, all but tapping his chin with a finger. “Hmm.”

“I’m sure Amy wouldn’t have got that wrong,” said Mum. She helped herself to another fairy cake, delicately peeling off the starry paper wrapper. “Would you?” The cake vanished into her pink mouth in one bite.

“Of course I haven’t got it wrong.”

“And how long have you been seeing him?”

“Since just after New Year’s.”

“But it’s only the end of February now!” Mum looked shocked. “That’s no time!”

“It’s long enough for me to know that …”

I had to raise my voice because the lunchtime train was going past the back window. We had to wait until it stopped. I wondered how they put up with it; our old cottage had been so quiet you could hear birdsong during the day, if Kelly wasn’t singing or having an argument with someone on the downstairs phone.

“Long enough for me to know he’s a nice guy,” I finished, and took a slice of cake. I put it all in my mouth so I wouldn’t have to answer any questions for a few seconds.

Mum and Dad exchanged glances.

“Di said she barely recognized you in the photos,” said Mum. “She said you looked like a right glamour-puss.”

That cheered me up a bit. “Good. I was picking false eyelashes off for days,” I said crumbily.

I was explaining the outlandish concept of false eyelashes to my dad when Badger’s ears pricked up and he scuttled toward the front door. Ten seconds later, there was a knock. Three loud knocks.

My heart broke at the hopeful expression that transformed Mum’s face. She hoped it was Kelly. It was so obvious.

It would also be typical of Kelly to crash my special moment too, I thought waspishly.

Dad leaped to his feet. “I’ll go,” he said.

“It’s probably Di Overend,” I said to Mum as her eyes followed him down the hall, “come to show us that copy of
Hello!
Was it really a nice photo of me?”

“Apparently so. But you take a lovely photo, Amy. You always have done.” Mum smiled and offered me the scones. “Go on, have another. It’s your dad’s jam!”

Our ears were straining to catch the conversation in the hall, but it didn’t sound like Di. I heard Dad say, “Come on through” in an overly polite tone that gave me a horrible flashback to when the police had first come round looking for Kelly, and then, all at once it was my worst nightmare.

I don’t know who looked more shocked, me, Mum, or Dad. I could see the three of us in the mirror over the fireplace, slack-jawed. It wasn’t a good look for any of us.

Leo, though, looked perfectly relaxed in his jeans and cashmere hoodie under a peacoat. He looked more like a Hollywood actor than a prince. Although that didn’t make him look any less incongruous in my parents’ conservatory.

“I hope you don’t mind me dropping in,” he said with his most charming smile. “I tried to call Amy, but her phone was off. Oh, is that Battenberg cake? That’s my absolute favorite.”

I think that was the point where Mum fell in love with him.

*

O
nce I’d got over my initial shock at Leo’s unannounced arrival (and that took a couple of cups of tea), I had time to marvel at how thoughtfully he won over both my parents.

He chatted to Dad about the rose garden, and laughed at his jokes—most of which were about me (thanks, Dad). He ate Mum’s cake. Not just the Battenberg, but a bit of everything. And then he asked for some to take home. Actually, maybe that was the moment Mum tipped over from love into outright adoration.

The tin lid was put on everything when Di Overend
did
knock on the front door and ask if we knew what was going on with the helicopter parked on the cricket pitch at the other end of our road.

“I thought Pam might have been taken badly.” She was craning her neck to see if we had guests. “Or maybe you were on one of those reality shows where they reunite you with a long-lost relative,” she added darkly.

“None of the above, Mrs. Overend,” I said, closing the door. “We don’t know anything about the helicopter.”

“I saw you in
Hello!
” she shouted through the letter box. “It’s amazing what they can do with Photoshop these days, isn’t it?”

But while I was really happy that Leo and my parents were forming their own mutual appreciation society in the conservatory, I was struggling with some shabby feelings I wasn’t proud of.

I was suddenly conscious of how small the house was, crammed with all our things from the old cottage. The horse brasses that had looked so right on the half-timbers of the cottage looked tacky here, and you could barely walk down the hall without knocking Mum’s china ornaments off the shelves.

As Leo relaxed on the creaky wicker chair from the old music room where the piano had been, I wanted to explain
why
my gentle dad and lovely mum were living in these crowded, ugly rooms,
why
they’d quietly sacrificed all the things they loved and moved to this place where they didn’t know anyone.

But I didn’t want to think about that, and I definitely didn’t want to tell him about Kelly, so it curdled into a churlish irritation that he’d sprung this on me—a romantic millionaire’s gesture that made me feel defensive, not swept off my feet.

I spent longer than I needed to washing up the teacups. I was so long that Leo came to find me, giving me a sudden panic
that he’d want to use the loo, which was full of old copies of
Private Eye
; I’d had no idea till I moved to London that reading matter in the loo was only just worse than keeping a pig in the backyard.

“There you are,” he said, slipping his arms round my waist. “Come through and talk—your mum’s telling a hilarious story about how you won your first vegetable competition with a squash nearly as big as you.”

“Not the marrow story,” I groaned.

“I’ve just been promised the story about you and the swing.” He jiggled his eyebrows. “But apparently you have to be there for that.”

I moved away and grabbed a tea towel.

“What’s up? Don’t you think I’m ready to hear the swing story?”

I turned round and dropped my voice so my parents wouldn’t hear. “How did you get my address?” I hissed.

“Jo gave it to me.” Leo seemed surprised at my wild eyes. “Why? Is it a state secret? Are you in a witness protection program?”

“No, I just think my parents would have liked some time to … prepare.” I rolled my eyes at the stacks of seed trays on the stairs and the piles of newspaper ready to go to the allotment.

“Why? I don’t need a red carpet,” said Leo.

“
They
might like to roll one out, though,” I snapped back. “Round here you’re not supposed to drop in on folk without written warning.”

I wished I hadn’t said that. I sounded like a right pious snob. I’d only let it slip because I was cross with myself.

Leo shoved his hands into his blond hair. “I thought it’d be a nice surprise, me coming to pick you up for this concert—it wasn’t meant to be a big ‘meet the parents’ production, just—”