The Runaway Princess (25 page)

“Your trainer? Heavens! What time did you get up?”

“I see my trainer at six. We work out for an hour, then I cycle in to the office and shower there,” said Sofia, as if this were entirely normal and not the schedule of a maniac. Or an insomniac.

She turned back to me. “Would you like to get dressed? We’ve got quite a lot to get through.”

“I’ll put on the coffee and toast,” said Jo, and sailed into the kitchen.

I had no idea now who was winning, but I knew for certain it wasn’t me.

*

I
stood in my bedroom and panicked. I had never in my entire life been quite so paralyzed about what on earth to wear, not even for my first dates with Leo. Sofia probably had scorecards in her briefcase to hold up when I walked in.

I reminded myself that Leo had told me he liked my “natural” style, then pulled on my best jeans and a Breton top, and added my engagement ring and the diamond daisy chain to make myself feel better. I loved my sparkling daisy chain; it was a mixture of the ordinary and the precious—and, if you wanted to be all metaphorical, the precious in the ordinary—and more than that, it reminded me that Leo had actually been listening when I’d been rambling on about wildflowers and how much I loved them.

I stared at the priceless slices of diamond fringing the yellow centers, a funny sensation fluttering just out of reach in the back of my mind; then I snapped myself out of it, and went back to face the music.

In the kitchen, Jo and Sofia were having one of those chesslike conversations that involved working out how many mutual friends they had, but without revealing how well they knew them. My brain ached just listening to it.

“Have you got coffee?” I reached for the jug. “And do you mind if I make some toast?”

“Not at all,” said Sofia. “Could you pop that in some boiling water for me, please. Filtered.” She reached into her briefcase and pulled out a ziplock of herbal tea bags. “We have a lot of ground to cover and I have an important meeting in the office at four.”

“Oh, really?” I dropped the tea bag into one of our better cups and seized the opportunity to show I’d been paying attention in Nirona. “Would that be a will-related matter?”

Sofia stared at me as if I’d just asked her how much she earned a week. “Interfamilial litigation is my main field, yes.”

“That must be fascinating,” said Jo. “Families are the absolute worst. My mother’s rewritten her will about thirty times in the last ten years—I can’t even remember if I’m in the latest one or not.”

I furrowed my brow at Jo—family wills weren’t the most tactful topic right now—but Sofia reached for her transparent file without reacting.

Jo’s nostrils flared in well-bred surprise. She wasn’t used to being blanked.

“Amy, I’ve prepared a checklist of objectives that my mother and I feel it would be realistic for you to achieve by the end of October, which is when we’re scheduling the coronation, as well as some shorter-term strategies that we’d like to get in place before the official engagement photo shoot and press release, and then again some longer-term goals.”

With each
goal
,
strategy
, and
objective
, she slapped stapled spreadsheets in front of me.

“I know that makes it sound rather businesslike,” she went on with an apologetic smile, which actually wasn’t all that apologetic when I looked more closely, “but I think it would help you to think of it in those terms, so it doesn’t feel so … personal. This isn’t a reflection on you, it’s more an indication of what the role of Leo’s wife entails. Think of it more like a job specification.”

The haggard specter of Pavlos floated before me; I blinked him away and started to make “no, no, it’s fine” noises, but then my eye snagged on the first page of targets, specifically the phrase “Achieve BMI 18,” and I felt as if someone had grabbed my muffin top and squeezed. Squeezed and then sniggered.

Beneath that particular heading were the notes: “AW to meet with dietician and personal trainer in London; SW to accompany. AW to supply details of dietary requirements to String Beans, daily meal plan supplier. AW to confirm best times for biweekly weight check/Harley St.”

I looked up, shocked. “Biweekly weight checks?”

Sofia tilted her head. She’d had her brows shaped since our last meeting. They were not as bushy as I remembered. Obviously I wasn’t the only one with a checklist. “It’s so much easier for you if you can fit into a sample size. The camera adds at least ten pounds, and designers simply don’t make runway dresses in a size ten.”

“But surely the point of couture is that it fits you, not the other way around?” said Jo smoothly. “That Zoë Weiss dress Amy wore for the charity ball was stunning.”

Sofia looked unperturbed. “I’m not saying it wasn’t a strong piece,” she said. “But we want Amy to have the same access to the preseason collections as everyone else. She’s marrying into a high-profile family and she needs to be in the same fashion frame as the other young royal women.”

“It’s all fine. I understand.” I tried to claw back some dignity. “I’ll have to check my work diary for some of these dates. Ted and I are actually quite busy at the moment. I’ve just signed an important landscaping contract, and …”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Jo’s foot swinging, and that wasn’t a good sign. For anyone. It was a sort of metaphorical mime of the arse-kicking she was about to dish out.

Sofia reached for her leather notebook and BlackBerry. “While we’re in Harley Street today, we can call in at the orthodontist too, get your braces sorted out. And where is your dermatologist?”

“Is that a stamp collector?” I joked.

Sofia blinked patiently. “No. It’s a skin-care professional.”

I could see that joking with Sofia was going to be an uphill process. “I don’t have one. Unless you count Boots the chemist?”

“Her beautiful skin is all her own work,” said Jo lightly. “I’m madly jealous of her freckles. Amy never wears a scrap of makeup and she still looks radiant. Must be all the vitamin D from the sun.”

Nothing registered on Sofia’s discreetly made-up face. It would have a job anyway. “Ooookay,” she said, scribbling a note. “That was something I told Mom I thought you would have. No derm. Never mind, I can make some calls. Did you do a New Year’s
detox
?”

“No.” I nearly laughed, thinking of the three-foot-long Toblerone Jo had brought back from Verbier. “Definitely not.”

“Well, we can get you checked out there too. Um, hairdresser, we’re booked in after lunch for a consultation before we make any firm decisions about … anything. My facialist is clearing an appointment for you later.” She looked up from her list. “Nails?”

Sofia fixed me with an unflinching stare, the type normally seen through either a confessional grille or a gun turret. Slowly I withdrew my hands from where they were safely hidden under the table, and showed them to her. She grimaced.

She actually grimaced. And I thought they weren’t looking too bad.

“I’m a gardener,” I protested.

“Not anymore you’re not,” she said. “From now on, you’re a junior royal. Two pairs of gloves and no washing up, please.”

I glanced across at Jo, but by now even she’d lost the will to joke.

I
was hoping Jo might have been able to come with me on
Sofia’s
Improving Amy Roadshow round Mayfair, but she had to go and deal with Callie’s latest drama. Callie, I was willing to bet, was agog at the developments. She didn’t seem to get out much, thanks to the boyfriend she always seemed to be waiting in for.

“Text me your whereabouts and I’ll try to bump into you,” Jo hissed, while Sofia was on the phone to her manicurist; she hadn’t bothered to drop her voice when she instructed her to “book out a double appointment. Actually, make it three.”

I tried to look on the bright side, I’d seen a lot of makeover shows in which normal girls like me were transformed into glossy beauties by a ruthless glamour-puss in glasses. The more unrecognizable the end result, the more pleased everyone was.

“It’s like when you made me try on skinny jeans for the first time, right?” I asked in an undertone. “I should face my fashion fears. I mean, it might be fun? Going shopping with a princess?”

We both looked over at Sofia at the same time. She didn’t look much like a princess. She looked like a corporate lawyer, albeit a very, very senior one. The stroppy madam I’d seen over the dining table in Nirona had been replaced by a woman with superflicky blond hair who was on a mission.

A woman whose brother had just been promoted over her. A woman who might take it out on her brother’s fiancée using the terrifying weaponry only a hairdresser could offer.

Jo grabbed my arms. “Try to enjoy it,” she urged. “I know she’s a bossy cow, but if it makes life easier for you to have the right clothes, do it. At the end of the day, it’s just a hairdo.”

I nodded. Aside from the lemon-sucking face, Sofia did look fabulous, and I knew I needed some help in that area. Now wasn’t the time to get on my “real women don’t wear mascara” soapbox.

“And if you get offered any limited-edition Chanel nail varnish, bag it and I’ll give you the cash,” Jo added fiercely.

*

S
ofia had borrowed Leo’s car for the day, and I was pleased to see Billy’s familiar figure standing by the Range Rover as I stumbled out of 17 Leominster Place behind Sofia. She wasn’t hanging about, towering heels or not.

“Good morning, ma’am!” he said as he opened the door for me.

“Morning, Billy!” I replied. “How’s the wisteria? It should be springing back thick after that second pruning?”

“It’s doing very nicely, thank you, ma’am.”

I frowned. I’d thought he’d said Amy the first time, but that was definitely two
ma’am
s. I opened my mouth to say something, but he flicked his eyes meaningfully toward Sofia, and closed the door behind me.

The dark leather interior swallowed me up, and I felt smaller. But the smell at least was reassuringly familiar.

Sofia leaned forward and said, “Harvey Nichols, please,” then leaned back and said, “Amy, one thing before we start—it’s best for everyone if you maintain the correct distance from staff right from the outset. That goes for any job. There is no
we
in management, just
me
. I like to feel my department is a team, sure, but my office manager doesn’t need to know about my weekend plans, unless they involve working late and requiring additional admin support.”

She actually spoke like that. In full sentences that went up and down with “thoughtful” modulations, like one of Jo’s voice-overs.

“Okay,” I said.

I glanced forward and saw Billy’s gray eyes, guarded in the rearview mirror. He was very good at not seeing or hearing things, if you know what I mean, but he’d obviously heard every word Sofia had just said, and I felt embarrassed for him. And me.

I tried to telegraph “it’s fine, it’s just for today” using only my eyebrows, but then it struck me that actually Sofia was his employer, and I wasn’t. She knew the rules; Billy knew the rules; I didn’t.

So I shut up and listened to Sofia reeling off all the appointments we had to fit in before three. I didn’t even want to think about what Ted would be saying when he got my text message about not being able to make it to Palace View to measure the big landscape boxes because I was having my teeth fixed.

Just go with it,
I told myself.
Stick it out. For Leo.

*

I
f this were a film, there would now be a montage of me being marched around the West End in a flurry of high-end bags, nail files, and hair dryers, with maybe a jaunty shoe-trying-on sequence to the tune of, say, “Rich Girl” by Gwen Stefani. And at the end of it, I’d emerge beaming in triumph, all polished up and looking like a million dollars. I mean, I’ve seen
Pretty Woman
.

It didn’t really work out like that.

For a start, Sofia didn’t have a rail of fabulous evening wear wheeled into the personal shopping suite of Harvey Nichols. Instead, she gave me a lecture about flattering my figure with simple basics, and how I should stick to a palette of cream, oatmeal, and caramel, which is a fancy way of saying “no colors.”

I didn’t mind the styling advice, which came from her and the personal shopper in a sort of bad cop/good cop routine. The stylist kept smiling and complimenting me on my “fresh” skin, and Sofia kept frowning and throwing out fascinatingly random details of etiquette, like how all royals wear closed-toe shoes, and that bare legs were totally out from now on. And some of the things they made me try were amazing—I had no idea how tall and elegant I could look in the right skirt.

But as the clothes started being wrapped, as well as being piled up on the velvet couch, a disturbing thought struck me: Who was paying for all this?

Slowly, panic clamped around my innards as I realized the probable answer was: me. My bank balance was teetering on the thin line between black and red, thanks to my new social life. Leo wouldn’t let me pay for much, but the more I noticed his casual chucking around of money, the more important I felt it was to pay my own way some of the time, if only to prove to myself that I was staying true to the life I’d built up. It was a point of principle: I didn’t want him to think I could be bought that easily.

Sofia wasn’t checking the price tags, but I was—when they weren’t looking—and I’d had no idea you could even find a T-shirt that cost so much money. There was about three months’ salary currently draped over the arm of one chair, and Sofia hadn’t even started on closed-toe shoes yet.

My mouth dried as the Card-Declined Shuffle played out in my head. Should I go to the loo and text Jo? Or Leo?

Not Leo. I didn’t want Leo getting involved in this. I needed to show him I could handle situations with his sister.

Sofia caught me looking at the door. “Problem?”

I glanced anxiously at the assistant, who was busy calling down to the shoe department for reinforcements. I wasn’t sure how to start, especially with someone who seemed to treat Harvey Nichols like Topshop.

“Um, are we taking all these clothes?” My voice sounded quite high. “Could I maybe just take the skirt and the jacket and—” That was five hundred pounds right there. For me, that was a week’s salary.

Sofia furrowed her brow. “No, this is your capsule wardrobe. If Leo asks you to come home for the weekend, you’d need all these.”

I’d already stayed there for the weekend. How bad had my outfits been? Had they prompted some kind of fashion intervention? My armpits prickled.

“It’s lovely that you’ve got that … shabby chic thing going on, nothing wrong with it at all, but you need to upgrade to investment pieces. You need at least one go-to silk shirt,” said Sofia patronizingly. “And a versatile trouser. And a luxe cashmere knit. And a timeless shift in at least two foundation colors. You build from that. You see?”

“Right.” I swallowed, and my panicky eye fell upon a sign by the desk. I could almost hear the celestial hallelujahs. Store cards! Of course! I could open one of those accounts. I was in the personal shopping suite with a princess, wasn’t I?

“Do you think I should apply for a store card?” I asked as
nonchalantly
as I could. “You know, for the loyalty points? If I’m buying a lot, makes sense. …”

“If you want.” Sofia seemed nonplussed. She was clearly a stranger to M&S gift vouchers, or paying things off over about twelve months.

“Good. Good. Right. Let me go and … talk to the assistant.”

I scuttled off in search of the assistant and tried to steer her into a discreet corner, just in case my application was declined. Mum had refused to have credit cards for the past ten years, just in case the credit check ran into Kelly’s history and set off some big red alarm above the tills; Dad, as a bank manager, saw them as a slippery slope, and had written me a four-page guide as to why they could end up ruining my life when I went to uni.

But needs must. And in two shakes of a ballpoint pen, I was welcomed into the charging classes.

*

S
ofia and I left Harvey Nichols with my brand-new credit card charged up to the limit with four bags of the most expensive plain clothes I’d ever clapped eyes on. While she phoned for Billy to collect us, I tried to work out how I was going to pay it off. There were a couple of extra balcony jobs I’d put on the back burner because Ted and I were already booked up till July, but if I focused my time and cut out all unnecessary activities, like sleeping and eating, I could fit them in. Just.

From Harvey Nichols we went to a Harley Street dietician, who clamped my muffin top and bingo wings with calipers and prescribed a bag full of supplements, in addition to the diet that’d be delivered to our house every day; the personal trainer swaggered in, and ran through the ex-marines boot-camp exercise schedule I was on (although my aerobic capacity amazed them all—thank you, years of digging); and finally, two doors down, was the orthodontist who fitted me for my new invisible braces. And reconstructive work. When he examined my fillings, he actually made that “which cowboys did
this
work?” sucky noise that builders make.

I tried to chat with Sofia throughout all this, but while she was cordial enough, she didn’t give me anything other than answers to my questions. I wondered if that was part of the training too—how to be so royal you never actually said anything.

We arrived at the hairdresser’s on the King’s Road at three, and there wasn’t a single area of my body that wasn’t earmarked for improvement. In a way, it was quite Zen. I seemed to remember Grace Wright had been on an extortionately expensive monthlong retreat to “break down her ego” and had only got as far as throwing away her hand mirror. Sofia had broken me in under seven hours.

I sank into the chair while the salon manager and Sofia (and Liza on the phone) chatted about my hair as if I weren’t there. It was almost soothing not to have to take responsibility for it. Sofia swanned off to get her own hair blow-dried, and I relaxed, until the junior brought my coffee and a pile of magazines, the top of which was the
Hello!
with me and Leo at the premiere of the new Keira Knightley film (Leo in black tie, looking like one of the Hollywood A-list, me looking like the Radio 1 listener who’d won a competition to go to a premiere).

I shut it quickly, looked at my be-foiled reflection, and flinched. Then closed my eyes.

When I thought back to that boxing gala Jo and I had gone to, just a few months ago, it almost made me laugh. I’d thought getting ready for that had been hard work, but it was nothing compared to this. Nothing. This was international-level maintenance carried out by trained professionals, not your flatmate wielding her hair irons, and Sofia hadn’t even started on the sinister-
sounding
“program of personal education” that would apparently cover things like the Wolfsburg family’s position in the European hierarchy of monarchy, and their charities, and their personal responsibilities within Nirona.

Not for the first time that day, I wondered whether there was a way I could subtly ask Sofia if every day was like this, or if this was a one-off, but I didn’t want to look like I couldn’t handle it. I didn’t want to give her another constitutional stick to beat Leo with.

When my phone buzzed in my bag, I nearly didn’t answer, in case it was Liza with another beauty to-do, like “be stretched three inches”; but when I saw Leo’s name pop up, a warm feeling of relief spread through me.

Hope all going ok. Let me take your new hairdo out tonight—Delaunay at 7? L

I pulled my shredded personality together. Leo, I knew, loved my old hair, my old nails, and my old muffin top. He could only love this new improved version even more.

*

“
Wow,” said Leo when the waiter showed me to his table, and pulled out my chair.

I held my smile, because he didn’t follow it up with anything else; instead he seemed to be taking it all in—the sleek blow-dry that made my hair look so much longer, my subtly applied makeup, my understated camel cashmere T-shirt (new) over my best jeans (old) and platform shoe-boots (concealed). I had noticed heads turning when I walked through the packed restaurant, something that had never happened before, but that might have been because I was swaying dangerously in my unusually elevated state. Sofia hadn’t thrown in walking lessons with the new shoes.

“Is that a good wow?” I ventured.

Leo gave me an appreciative smile that made my stomach flip over. “Of course it is. You look amazing. I mean, you always look amazing, but this is a new sort of amazing.”

“Why, thank you.” I shook out my napkin with a careless air and immediately knocked over my water glass. “Oh, nuts! Sorry, sorry.”

We both scrambled to stop the water coursing across the pristine white cloth, and I accidentally put out the candle in the middle. The waiter was there relighting it, and another two were replacing the cloth before I could finish apologizing.

When they were gone, he let the smile drift from his eyes down to his lips, and leaned across the table. “The thing I like best about the new you,” he murmured, just loud enough for me to hear, “is that I can still see the old you underneath it.”

“If you mean the klutz who knocks glasses over”—I pulled a regretful face—“I’m afraid she’s never going to go away.”