The Runaway Princess (2 page)

“No, I think you’ll find that’s your job.” I reached into my rucksack for our diary, glad of the chance to steer us away from the rocky subject of the party. I was in charge of bookings, as well as driving, invoicing, design, and plant purchasing. Ted chopped things and mowed things. “You were supposed to be in Fulham this morning.”

Ted looked sheepish. “I thought we could go together. I’ve, ah, had to move that job in Eltham Avenue. Mrs. Matthews wasn’t ready for me when I called round.”

“What? Wasn’t she back from the gym?”

He flushed. “Um, she hadn’t quite … got up.”

“What on earth do you mean?” I asked, even though I had a good idea what was coming. “Was she ill?”

“She will be if she thinks a dressing gown like that’s appropriate for
January
,” he went on. “Seriously, I could see her … She should look into pajamas.”

“She was in her negligee!” Jo hooted with glee, making Badger wriggle in her lap. “Ted! She wanted you to
refresh her beds!
”

“Stop it.”

“Or was she after some
hoeing?
Or …” Jo tapped my arm impatiently. “Help me, Amy, I’m running out of double entendres.”

I put a finger on my chin. “Did she want you to harden off her perennials? Um,
something something
her ranunculus?”

Ted gave us a baleful look, and I couldn’t go on. It was like poking fun at a big cow. A big Hereford cow in a sweater.

A significant number of our clients had seen too many TV adaptations of
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
and fancied having their own Mellors popping round once a week to trim the borders—it certainly kept our coffers full over the summer. Ted, with his broad shoulders and habit of turning up for work in his old rugby kit, was the perfect garden accessory, especially in hot weather when he liked to work in a white undershirt (he wasn’t the type to work topless, not even in a heat wave, not even with encouragement from his swooning employers).

“You’ll just have to be less irresistible,” said Jo. “Dig less, talk more. Start giving her your wildflower meadow lecture. God knows I love you both, but if I have to listen to the pair of you droning on about the plight of the honeybee for one more dinner, I’m going to boycott honey altogether.”

“You won’t be saying that when I’ve put a beehive on the roof of Leominster Place and we’re making our own honey,” I started.

Ted tossed his head as much as a six-foot bloke could. “If you understood the first thing about the basic biomechanics of—”

“Buzz off,” said Jo, meaningfully. “With the emphasis on
zzzzzz
.”

“So you just came round here to pick up your chaperone for the afternoon job?” I asked. I didn’t want Jo puncturing our business dream for the year, just a few days in.

“Actually, no,” he retorted airily. “I wanted to see what you’ve been doing with the famous feng shui cottage garden balcony. And, ah, to see if Grace’s famous Dream Seeds are surviving without her while she’s away skiing?”

I was pretty sure this was a convenient lie—he’d almost certainly come to “bump into” Jo—but I humored him, and pointed to five artisan-crafted terra-cotta pots lined up along the far railing, showing precisely arranged compost and not much else. “They’re probably quite glad of the break. She chants over them, you know.”

Grace—a twenty-six-year-old Trustafarian who’d spent more time being life-coached than most people did in full-time employment, and one of our most regular clients—had been given the seeds at the end of her latest course, and planting them “with faith and love and self-belief” was supposed to make both the plants and her secret dreams spring forth. She planted and chanted; I tended. And mended.

Jo looked deeply cynical. “What are they supposed to be bringing her again?”

“Serenity, prosperity, stability in the foreign bond market, and for Richard to seal the Palace View deal, then propose by Valentine’s Day. With a ring from Asprey.”

Ted and I also wanted Richard, a property developer, to buy Palace View, a huge development with even huger possibilities for gardening contracts. Not just the hundred or so balconies, but also the land around the site, and the rooftop. I had a bit of a bee in my bonnet—yes, ho ho—about wildflower meadows, the sort that brought butterflies and bees and insects into the heart of the city; it had been my final year project. I had a plan to create localized wildflower meadows and then set up local beehives—but first I needed the space to plant meadows.

As a side order, some serenity for Grace would be a bonus for me. I’d redesigned her balcony twice in a year already, once for feng shui, once for color therapy.

Jo and Ted were both staring at the pots, their faces strained with the effort of finding something positive to say.

“Nothing so far?” asked Jo. “I mean, should there be? I don’t blame the plants for not wanting to get out of bed in this weather.”

Ted did a deliberate double take, from me to the pots and back again. “Well, duh! They’re probably
designed
not to sprout so she’ll have to sign up for another session. That’s how these people get gullible women hooked.”

“You’re so right,” said Jo, deadpan. “Before you know it poor Grace’ll be on the hard stuff, like bulbs. And boracics.”

“Brassicas.” Ted’s ears went red.

“Ooh, Ted, no need for that!” She swiped him playfully. “So, when’s Grace back from skiing?”

“Next week.”

“Can you speed them up a bit?” She peered into a pot, but there was nothing to see. “Or just put in something that’s actually growing?”

“Not allowed, apparently. Only
her
energies will awaken the magic seeds.” I made woo-woo gestures over it.

Jo put the pot down. “Then she’s doomed. Grace has all the energy of a three-day-old salad.”

“Ah, now.” I raised a hold-up-a-second finger. “I had a feeling she’d manage to kill them off by feeding them Red Bull or leaving them under her sunbed, so I nicked the rest of the packet while she was planting these pots and took the spare seeds home. I’ve planted my own set. For her, not for me,” I added when they both looked blank. “I haven’t completely lost it.”

To be honest, I’d felt so sorry for flaky Grace, putting what little self-esteem she had into this latest nonsense, that I’d wanted to make sure she got the boost she was hoping for. Even if she didn’t get the ring from Asprey she might get a buzz from making the seedlings appear. I was just … helping.

Jo caught on first. “Forward planning—I like it! So, how’s her future looking?”

“Or should I say ours?” added Ted. “Not that I’m being mercenary here, but we could do with that contract.”

I thought of the row of pea-green seedlings on the kitchen windowsill. With careful feeding and overnights in the airing cupboard, they weren’t looking too bad. “She’s okay for the bond market, the health, and the proposal, but serenity’s looking dodgy. Still, if you’ve got the first three …”

“Do we know what they are, these magic seeds?” Ted didn’t normally get too involved in the horticultural side of things, but he could sense a business opportunity when he saw one. “Could we be selling them? To other hippie weirdos who need backups?”

“No idea.” I’d done a bit of trawling, but so far hadn’t been able to work them out. Not even my dad, a walking plant encyclopedia, had any idea. “They look like some sort of—”

“Sorry as I am to leave this episode of
Gardeners’ Question Time
, I should be making tracks.” Jo got up and rearranged her huge scarf. “Callie Hamilton, the world’s neediest client, will be wanting to quiz me about this party, and I’ll have to think of reasons why I can’t invite her.” She pointed at each of us in turn, fixing us with her sharp brown eyes. “Keep thinking about your party outfits. I want glitter and conversation pieces, from both of you. And no pantomime horses.”

“If I wear those jeweled washing-up gloves you gave me for Christmas, can I stay in the kitchen?” I asked. “Ted can wear his undershirt and bring his best rake—that seems to be most people’s idea of heaven round here.”

“I’m not wearing an
undershirt
to a party in January,” said Ted, horrified.

Jo laughed, a full-bodied cackle that was always a surprise to hear bursting out of her rosebud mouth, and with a final affectionate ear scratch for Badger, she clip-clopped off in her patent leather boots, waving a hand behind her.

Ted watched her leave with an expression of longing I usually only saw him direct toward takeaway curries. When he turned back and saw me and Badger staring at him, it vanished at once, to be replaced by faint embarrassment. He pinched what was left of my egg sandwich and stuffed it in his mouth before I could stop him.

“So, what’s the plan with Amazing Grace’s plants? When are you going to swap them over?” he asked through a mouthful of crust.

“I’ll take these ones home with me tonight, then bring back the five pots I’ve managed to grow when she’s back next week. If I put my plants into her special pots, she’ll think these are the ones she grew herself.”

“These are special pots?” Ted peered at the handmade terra-cotta containers. “Look pretty bog-standard to me.”

I sighed. Grace had had them shipped over from Italy specially. “How little you know your female clientele, Ted.”

“And that’s what I keep you on board for,” he said, stretching out his hand for the last of my crisps.

I took enormous pleasure in swiping them out of his reach and feeding them to Badger.

T
he airy flat in Leominster Place that I shared with Jo had belonged to her family since 1865.

Once upon a time, the de Veres owned the whole house, four elegant stories of it, with a squad of servants below stairs and a view, if you leaned out of an attic window, of Buckingham Palace. After the war, it had been divided into apartments and sold off to pay death duties, all except the flat Jo now lived in, which had once been the de Veres living quarters, and a tiny garden flat in the basement where her mother, Marigold, stayed when she needed to escape whatever her domestic crisis was that month. Jo insisted on keeping at least two full floors between them, “for everyone’s sanity.”

I’d seen prewar photographs of 17 Leominster Place when it was a society-party hot spot, with uniformed staff lined up the sweeping front staircase and potted palms everywhere, but those days were long gone. A mail table full of pizza leaflets and Dickon from upstairs’s mountain bike now stood where housemaids had once bobbed curtsys, and the parquet they’d polished was covered by durable carpet. Not every trace of opulence had vanished, though. Our flat might have been the smallest, but it contained the jewel of the old house: the master bathroom. Faced with the depressing task of dividing his family home up into apartments, Jo’s grandfather drew the line at ripping out the marble-tiled main bathroom, with its magnificent, clunking mahogany loo and Art Nouveau stained-glass window.

“Showers are for the French. If an Englishman can’t have a decent bath, he might as well give up,” he’d said, and I couldn’t have agreed more. During the border-digging and bulb-planting months, the thought of a long soak in Montgomery de Vere’s rolltop bath, wineglass propped against the metal rack, a sneaky dollop of Jo’s Penhaligon’s bath oil soothing my weary muscles, was the only thing that kept me going through the backbreaking working day.

I loved living with the ghosts of the old house. From my bed, I could see one half of the plaster ceiling rose that had supported a magnificent brass light fitting, and there were two wrought-iron balconies outside the long French windows in our sitting room, where it didn’t take much to imagine blushing debutantes stepping out to cool their cheeks after a vigorous Viennese waltz with men in starched evening dress.

That was what I liked to imagine anyway. Jo had a whole array of other, more outrageous stories.

The balconies made excellent window boxes for the various cuttings and seedlings I always had on the go, and gave Badger somewhere to sunbathe. There wasn’t room for a human to lie down and the rusty ledge didn’t look strong enough to support a modern human being anyway, so I kept them full of blowsy red geraniums and pots of Mediterranean herbs, and on warm summer nights, the soft fragrance of wallflowers drifted through the flat along with the rumble of London traffic.

This Saturday morning, I was moving all the houseplants, including Grace Wright’s Dream Seeds, onto the balcony, which we’d agreed would remain firmly out of bounds throughout the party. I wedged the seedlings safely behind a window box and sat back on my heels, oddly proud of the seven brave green shoots and the beginnings of tightly furled leaves.

Even without Grace’s guru business, seeds always felt magical to me. I hadn’t mentioned it to Jo—she had an allergy to anything remotely mystical—but ever since my dad had first helped my fat little fingers to shove a tomato seed into a pot, I’d been spellbound by them. You opened up the packet with impossibly tall and colorful flowers on the front to find these ordinary brown chips of nothing. But then you covered them with a blanket of warm soil, watered them, fed them, and—as if by magic—something woke up inside the seed and it knew when to grow, and where to find the light, and how high to reach. Add in all the amazing natural magic with bees dancing pollen around on their wings, from flower to orchard to flower, and who needed fairy tales?

Okay, so I’d nicked a couple of Grace’s seeds for my own dreams.

One for the Palace View contract, so I could unveil my plans for a whole building’s worth of cottage garden balconies, and so Ted could have a really big lawn to mow into the perfect stripes, his goal in life.

And another to wish for something … new. Didn’t matter what. A surprise. I shivered at the thought of inviting the unknown into my life. As a rule, I didn’t like surprises. I liked to know exactly where I was. But lately, I’d felt ready. I could handle something new.

Just moving to London had been a massive leap of faith for me, and I’d been incredibly lucky so far. To have found an affordable flat right in the middle of town, and a brilliant flatmate like Jo, and a job straight out of college—sometimes I looked back and couldn’t believe it had slotted into place like that. My sister Kelly had always said (not very nicely) I was one of those lucky people who fell on their feet, but the luckier I felt, the harder I worked to make sure it wasn’t just luck.

I closed my eyes and let anticipation ripple through me.

Just not a surprise in red trousers,
I added quickly, in case some invisible force was listening in.

“Are those Grace’s seedlings?” Jo asked, appearing by my side with a clipboard.

“Yup.” I glanced upward. “We’re going to lock the balcony windows this time. Aren’t we? After what happened at Christmas?”

We both grimaced.

At our Christmas party, the fire brigade had come round to rescue a guest clinging to the edge of our balcony by his fingertips. We never found out if he’d been climbing up or had fallen off. He was wearing a Santa hat, so we guessed he’d been planning a big entrance and missed the chimney. He ended up getting a date with one of Jo’s actress friends who’d strapped up his sprained wrist, and Jo had drinks with a fireman, so, as Jo pointed out, it wasn’t entirely for nothing.

She nodded. “Strictly out of bounds. Much as I’d like a visit from those
divine
fire brigade men again, I don’t think it’s worth the risk. And I promised Mrs. Mainwaring there would be no danger of inebriated young men trying to climb in through hers by mistake.”

“Are you sure she wasn’t hoping you’d say exactly the opposite? She was the one trying to get them to unjam her sticky window last time.”

Irene Mainwaring, and her supercilious tomcat Elvis, had the flat below ours. She was a retired piano teacher with pale blue hair, and although she frequently complained about being “driven to derangement” by Jo’s parties, she nearly always appeared at the end of them herself and could very easily be persuaded to demonstrate variations on the twist. She undermined her outrage by holding a raucous fortnightly date with her bridge club, after which we’d see her staggering out with a clanking recycling box while wearing diamante-studded dark glasses. Elvis made himself scarce for those.

“Well, I’ve invited her, to be on the safe side. She can’t moan once she’s here. And Dickon from upstairs. The Harrises are on holiday, and Marigold is in the country. Thank God.” Jo looked up from her clipboard. “Hell
is
a party with your own mother chatting up the handsomest specimens and getting tiddled on cherry brandy cocktails.” She shuddered theatrically.

“Did you tell Mrs. Mainwaring and Dickon it was a heaven and hell party?” I asked. “Or is Dickon going to come in his usual costume?”

Dickon in the attic was a portrait painter. Not, as I’d initially thought, a painter and decorator. That had caused an awkward misunderstanding when I’d asked him if he could paint my bedroom, but we were over that now. More or less. He drifted around the house in a series of big shirts and tight jeans, and you’d never guess that his dad was actually a senior policeman from the smells that emerged from his studio.

Jo sighed. “I think he got the message. It’s so hard to talk to Dickon when you can see him eyeing up your proportions. Anyway, he’s the heaven/hell expert right now. Have you seen his latest work in progress?”

“How can I miss it? It’s a seven-foot canvas and he leaves it on the landing to dry. Just because he gave the angel green hair doesn’t make it look any less like you in a big pair of wings.”

“Oh!” Jo looked surprised. “I thought it was you.”

“Me? Why would I pose for him?” I turned red. “I don’t even like having my passport photos done! And this angel’s … how can I put it? Somewhat challenged in the robe department.”

Jo squinted at me. Jo’s squints were the sort that cut right through to the heart of the matter. “So what if Dickon’s based this angel on you? It’s not a cardinal sin to acknowledge your own good points,” she informed me. “In fact, it’s a weird form of inverse vanity, pretending you’re some kind of wild-haired yokel when in fact you’re perfectly presentable, bordering on very attractive. And you can’t keep playing the country bumpkin card when you’ve been living here long enough to cut up the black cab drivers round Hyde Park Corner. You’re cute! Men fancy you! Embrace it! Although,” she added, “you might want to clean under your nails first.”

My cheeks felt hot. “Is this about Max Barclay? Because the thing is, I know he’s your friend, but I honestly don’t have any amusing stories about ski lifts, and he makes me feel—”

“That’s exactly what I mean.” Jo turned up her palms in despair. “You’re so
resistant
to being set up. Have you got a secret celebrity boyfriend you’re not telling me about? Are you in love with Ted?”

“No!” I unbuckled a bit under her gaze. “It’s just …”

“What?” she implored. “What do I have to do to get you up on the dating horse?”

“Don’t laugh, but I’ve always thought the right guy will turn up on his own. And I’m not
unhappy
being single, you know. If I’m not working, I’m asleep.”

“Sure there’s no handsome farmer back home? No honest-faced country vet drinking tea with your parents and waiting for you to return?”

Jo read a lot of romantic fiction.

I nearly choked. “Definitely not. I wouldn’t take any boyfriend home until I’d got a ring on my finger—my dad makes the Spanish Inquisition look like a bunch of kindly aunts. No one’s good enough for his princess.”

“Dickon’s got a degree from the Royal College of Art.” Jo nodded significantly. “Stick
that
on your allotment.”

I allowed myself a tiny glow of pride at the thought of inspiring a real artist to paint, then remembered just how detailed the painting had been, particularly in the décolletage region. My head spun round to Jo. “Did you see where the
freckles
were on that angel?”

“That’s it,” said Jo grimly, scribbling on her clipboard. “If you refuse to let me find you a boyfriend, then I will devote tonight to finding Dickon a muse. A really foxy one who doesn’t mind taking her kit off.”

I’d seen the guest list. Four of Jo’s friends were burlesque dancers and most of the rest could easily be mistaken for one. “That shouldn’t be hard.”

“I like a party with a
purpose.
” She jangled my van keys at me. “Are you ready? Lots to do! We need to take Badger to his safe house and go to the supermarket for enough crisps to stuff a donkey, and then I’m going to throw open my wardrobe and transform you into something so gorgeous Mr. Right will gravitate into your orbit from hundreds of miles away, all of his own accord and with no reference to skiing or tennis or any other posh topic that activates your defensive chip.”

I opened my mouth to disagree, but Jo did her Pointy Finger of Silence and I shut up.

*

W
e’d said eight o’clock on the invites, and at quarter past, Jo and I were sitting in an empty, dust-sheeted flat surrounded by dishes of stuffed olives while Jo had her usual panic that everyone was having the best night of their lives round at some other friend’s flat.

“I bet it’s that cow Emma Harley-Wright!” She glared at her unusually silent phone. “She’s always throwing guerrilla pop-up parties, just to
ruin other people’s nights
!”

Secretly, a tiny part of me was hoping maybe we
had
chosen the wrong day. I wasn’t totally convinced about my costume, which was making me yearn for a DVD box set and a pizza, rather than a night’s carousing. After some heated discussion about turning me into Eve (Jo’s theater-school body stocking, loose hair, and an apple), we’d compromised on her pink silk pajamas and smudgy eye makeup. I was a heavenly long lie-in. I was worried I looked more like Satan’s unironed laundry basket.

Jo had opted for heaven too, but she did look heavenly: her neat curves were poured into a gold velvet evening dress, with her granny’s fake diamonds round her neck, gold foil in her hair, and a lavish amount of glittery body lotion on the rest of her. She was, obviously, a glass of champagne.

“No one’s going to come, and we’ve massively overcatered.” Jo paced up and down, trailing bits of body glitter as she went. “It looks like we’re hosting some sort of snack convention!”

That was my fault. Whereas Jo’s mum had drilled cocktail recipes into her from an early age, my mum had taught me that it was bad manners to let a guest leave a party without a small rucksack of food for tomorrow’s tea. I think when Mum met Princess Anne, she’d even tried to slip her an Eccles cake for later.

I eyed the décor. We’d put all the Christmas stars back up and tacked fairy lights round everything. Every spare sheet we owned was covered in gold stars, while the red lightbulbs in the hall and Jo’s bedroom were probably making the flat look highly dubious from the outside.

“Right.” Jo stopped pacing and fixed me with a look. “It’s time to break open the emergency bottle.”

Party rules were that if guests hadn’t arrived by half past, we could open the best bottle of wine to cheer ourselves up. Just as I was fiddling with the foil, the doorbell rang, at which point the cork exploded and prosecco gushed all over our makeshift confessional (the sofa).

“I’ll get it.” Jo dashed out and left me to mop up the wine as best I could with one of the “clouds” (cushion encased in bubble wrap). I wasn’t presenting the best view of myself when Jo reappeared, plus guests.

“Look who’s here!” she said, shepherding in our first partygoers while doing her “whoa, Nelly!” expression behind their backs. I had to struggle to keep a straight face.