The Runaway Princess (31 page)

“Living up to royal standards is a nightmare,” confesses Amy, 26. “I haven’t eaten for days and I’m going mad. But when your mum-in-law’s a supermodel, you can’t expect anything to be normal!”

“
I never said that!” I protested. “I mean, I said I was
starving,
but it was a manner of speaking.”

“So we’ll sue for fabrication,” said Leo. “Giselle, get on the phone right now, tell them we’ve got lawyers on the case. We’ll want to see tapes.”

I raised my eyes very slowly from the page. Liza was staring at me, and I felt her eyes burning my face.

“Amy?” she said. “Don’t even think about lying to me. Have you been speaking to the press?”

I opened my mouth, but then closed it. There was no point. I already looked guiltier than Badger next to an empty packet of biscuits.

Amy, who only achieved average results at her local comprehensive, now sports diamond bracelets worth more than fifty thousand pounds from exclusive jewelers-to-royalty Chaumet and high-end designer sunglasses when she returns to slum it in her former home. …

“
I did—” My voice cracked. “I did do a very informal interview with my local paper. I think that’s where that photograph has come from.”

“What?”

“I knew it,” said Giselle. “It’ll be on tape. We can’t sue for fabrication. Shit.”

“I don’t understand—it ran weeks ago,” I spluttered. “I didn’t even think it was worth mentioning. I mean, it was just with a girl I knew from school.” I was babbling now. “It didn’t say any of those things! It was just ‘Amy works in London, she’s really excited about marrying a prince, she’s met Keira Knightley at a premiere.’ It didn’t even make the front page—they probably thought Jennifer was making it up.”

“So who is the ‘close friend of the princess-to-be’ who’s supplied these quotes?” demanded Liza. “The ones about you being terrified of offending me because I’m so high-maintenance? And how you’re being crushed by the responsibility of what you’ll have to take on as a ‘top international princess’?”

She sounded concerned, but I honestly couldn’t tell if she felt sorry for me or wanted to murder me now. Her politeness was like a suit of armor.

“I have no idea—I don’t have any close friends apart from …”

Jo wouldn’t. Jo just … wouldn’t.

Leo was staring at me now. Or he was, until he put his head in his hands and groaned.

“Jo would hardly describe
herself
as a society actress,” I protested. “And she wouldn’t get her own name wrong!”

“It’s probably the original journalist,” said Giselle through gritted teeth. “I bet she’s tried to sell them the story, and they’ve done a deal for the pictures, interviewed her, then airbrushed her out of the picture.”

“Liza, I’m really sorry.” I was mortified. “I never said anything like that. Yes, I might have said it was a strain not eating carbs—we met at a café!—but I was just making conversation. I certainly didn’t say you were high-maintenance or that I didn’t want to take on any responsibilities. …”

…
except when you were showing off to Jennifer about how many staff your mother-in-law had, and telling her how you had to come up with a list of four charities to take on as your personal mission. …

I was struggling to breathe now. Was this it? Was this where I had to break off the engagement for real this time? I glanced across at Leo, but his face was a steely mask too. I hadn’t felt so sick with shame and panic in a long time. The thought of everyone reading that and thinking I’d said those things—here in London, and up at home—was so monumentally humiliating that my brain wouldn’t let me contemplate it all at once. It was an iceberg of embarrassment.

Although,
said a little voice, right at the back of all the white noise,
there’s no mention of Kelly and what she did.
I’d take being called a gold digger over some of the other possible options.

I kept my eyes glued to the pale oak flooring in case Giselle and Liza could read my mind.

“Can we stop them running it?” Leo directed his question to Giselle.

She shook her head. “I had to call in every favor I had to stop that photo of Rolf in the tank last year. If we try to spike this, they’ll only try to run it again with new stuff.” She cast a beady eye at me. “Didn’t I make it clear enough, Amy, that all press communication has to be run past me, and I will run it past Liza and Boris?”

I nodded meekly. “I didn’t think the
Rothery Gazette
counted as … press.”

“Everything counts with the Internet,” said Liza.

She put her hands to her head and let out a yowl of frustration. “I have been working so hard recently.
So hard
, just to get the family on message for the coronation. I’ve flown back and forth from New York to Washington to London to Italy pushing the Be an Everyday Princess campaign, I’ve written all Boris’s speeches for the next six months, I’ve even hired a press agent for Rolf. But I do not expect to have to deal with being called a control-freak anorexic in the pages of the British gutter press, by the real-life princess I’m supposed to be coaching myself! Do you have any idea how this will play in the US?”

“But I didn’t—!” I began.

“And what the hell is a
top
international princess?” she demanded crazily. “Is there any other kind? Your journalists are so sloppy!”

“We can handle this.” Leo shifted forward on the sofa and started to count off his fingers, as if he were in a business meeting. “Amy, this is a great moment to launch your therapy garden. We can do a photo call, you and me, planting vegetables with kids. Say you’ve always loved getting your hands dirty, play up your
normal
-girl roots. They’re nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, let’s get your mum to send us more photos of you with your dad.”

He glared at Giselle, who paused and then, under the weight of his stare, began writing.

Leo turned to Liza. “Mom, I’m sure you and Amy can do a little shopping this afternoon together? There should be plenty of photographers in town today—there’s a garden party at Buckingham Palace. Maybe you two could pop into Ladurée for
macaroons—
that ought to kill the anorexia and the animosity in one go.”

“We need more than that,” said Giselle. “We need a bigger statement.”

Liza had been thinking, moving her diamond rings up and down her fingers, alternately pouting and squinching her glossy apricot lips. Finally she looked up and stared straight at me.

“The Coronation Ball,” she said.

I nodded. It was only a few weeks away now, and to be honest, I wasn’t massively looking forward to everyone staring at me, commenting on my outfit, my ability to waltz, my fitness to marry Prince Charming, and now my apparent obsession with marrows. I was secretly hoping that Sofia would demand to take center stage in all the available diamonds. I fully intended to
let her.

Liza’s gaze didn’t waver from my face. “Amy will recite the grace at dinner,” she said. “And she can be the girl who brings in the golden slipper.”

I heard a sharp intake of breath to my left.

“Mom—” Leo began, as Giselle failed to speak, and Liza raised a hand to silence him without looking.

Then I heard a voice say, “I’ll do it. Of course I’ll do it,” and to my absolute horror, I realized it was mine.

The stroppy Yorkshire voices in my head had finally taken control. And they seemed to be making a point.

O
f course, I found out soon enough that while being asked to read the grace and present the golden slipper that started the Coronation Ball was a significant honor, it was also a significant honor that had originally been earmarked for Sofia, as the eldest daughter of the soon-to-be-crowned Sovereign Prince.

It also meant being the center of attention not once but twice, and being expected to fulfill both tasks without slipping up or saying the wrong thing, but I didn’t let myself think about that.

I was relieved—and a bit surprised—when the note the courier delivered from Sofia was cordiality itself. She was very busy with a landmark ruling involving a sizable estate in Geneva, said the monogrammed card clipped to the manila file of instructions, so she was more than pleased to hand over the duty to me. And the slipper ceremony, the note went on in her firm handwriting, had always felt rather degrading to women, with its patriarchal Cinderella overtones, and when many women in the third world had no shoes at all, it was obscene to have one made of gold studded with Swarovski crystals.

Rolf, though, was positively gleeful about the possibility of a giant catfight between me and Sofia. He rubbed his hands when I told him and Leo about the Swarovski crystal comment.

“I’d watch your coffee if I were you,” he said. “Sofie’s got form in the area of sabotage.”

“As have you,” Jo pointed out.

His thick brown eyebrows shot up. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“Yes, you do,” said Leo. “And let’s let it drop.”

“That’s what all the girls say,” Rolf replied with a smug grin, and then yelped as Jo kicked him under the table.

We were sitting in the Wolseley on Piccadilly after another dancing lesson. It was a compromise venue, in that it was flashy enough for Rolf to be seen in, but far too noisy for even his conversation to be particularly audible. Our table was in the mezzanine balcony, with a great view of all the other diners, and the food looked delicious, but I had no appetite for my scallops.

On top of the stress now filling my head at the thought of having to dance in an actual spotlight at the ball when I still couldn’t turn without stamping on Leo’s foot, another picture of me had popped up on the Internet that morning. I was pushing a wheelbarrow under the heading “Her Royal Thighness.” It also referred to me as “blooming,” which everyone knows is code for “is she fat or pregnant?” I wasn’t even fat. I’d lost another four pounds, but there wasn’t much I could do with my thighs. They were just muscular.

Jo saw me frowning and gave me a kick too, for good measure.

“This grace sounds like an honor,” she said brightly. “Is it a tradition, Leo?”

He nodded. “It’s supposed to reflect the family supper held
after
the first coronation. That’s why it’s usually read by a junior member of the family.”

“Although it’s bollocks, because the first coronation was a huge affair with half the crowned heads of Europe squashed into the cathedral.” Rolf leaned over with a confidential tap of the nose. “We just like to pretend that the family’s been around since ‘ooh, let’s break foccaccia over this campfire’ times. We haven’t. The Wolfsburgs are a medium-old family that other royal families marry their reserve children into. And we’re German, not Italian.”

Leo glared at him, but Rolf grinned back. “It’s true. And now we’re half American.”

“And the shoe?” Jo went on, as if Rolf hadn’t spoken.

“The shoe tradition comes from a coronation ball in 1790 when the princess lost her slipper before the dancing,” said Leo, before Rolf could say whatever he was going to. Leo had clearly spent a lot of his school holidays following the tour guide around the palace. “The night was almost ruined, it looked like an awful omen, and she was about to leave when a page found the slipper under a table.”

“Someone’s lapdog had run off with it, according to legend,” Rolf interrupted. “What kind of lapdog not specified. So maybe you should bring Badger and reenact the whole—”

“No!” said Jo and I at the same time.

“It’s honestly nothing to worry about.” Leo topped up my wineglass. “It won’t take more than a few moments. A page from the household will bring you a cushion with a fancy gold shoe on it, you give it to Mom, she’ll thank you, you’ll curtsy, she’ll put it on, and then she and Dad will do a demonstration waltz and we’ll all clap.”

“And then we’ll all get drunk. Wa-hey.” Rolf waved at the waiter for more wine. Jo ignored him. She was using the “ignore the bad, reward the good” training method I’d used on Badger, with about the same success.

“And then when you’ve got a lovely smiley photo of Amy and your mother, the papers will stop printing all that nonsense about how there’s a War of the Princesses on?” she asked.

“Oh. So you saw the papers?” Leo frowned.

“ ’Fraid so,” said Jo. Giselle had biked an early edition of another paper round to our flat this morning; I was
“at loggerheads with fashion icon Liza Bachmann about the double wedding snub.”
And we weren’t allowed to engage—for which read, I wasn’t allowed to go back to Rothery and beat up Jennifer Wainwright. Who was probably thrilled to be singled out in the newsroom by a royal writ.

“Our legal team is on the case,” said Leo. “We’ve given one newspaper exclusive access to the ball and a seat at the coronation in return for an assurance that they’ll lay off Amy, and the rest are on a warning.”

“And that’s definite?” I asked.

“We have very good lawyers,” said Leo.

Next to him, Rolf nodded, like a man who knew. “Serge and Guillermo have been out in town every night this week, wearing the most tasteless jeans and snogging anything that moves,” he said. “And no one’s said a word.”

“Quite,” said Jo. “Decadence is so last-year. Charity work and gardening is where it’s all happening now.”

A look of sheer horror flashed across Rolf’s face, but he didn’t say anything. Maybe Jo was kicking him very hard.

*

M
y parents, of course, were mortified about the newspaper stories, and had rung me immediately to assure me they’d had nothing to do with it.

I knew they hadn’t, and told them so, but nothing I said could assuage their guilt. I offered to send them off on holiday for a week, to ride out the sniggers in the high street, but Dad refused, on the grounds that it would make it look more true.

He was right, and I was proud of his dignity in the face of the twine-belt trousers pic, but a dark cloud now hung over the Yorkshire wedding plans. Even taking Mum’s beautiful Zoë Weiss dress up the following weekend didn’t entirely wipe out the strange feeling of déjà vu in the house.

“Is that my frock from the shop?” Mum said when I carried the box in from the car. Her whole body was braced for disappointment, and she shut the door quickly in case anyone was looking.

“It is.” Despite my low-level gloom, excitement bubbled inside me at the surprise I was about to give her. I knew Zoë wouldn’t let me down. I’d sent photos of Mum and the measurements from the other dress, and Zoë’d presented me with a ribbon-tied box and a promise that if Mum didn’t like it, she’d wear the thing herself to my wedding.

I’d tried to pay her with my credit card, but she’d waved it away with a horrified expression. “Pay me later,” she said. “In column inches, when you’re on the best-dressed lists. And your mom’s my new poster girl for royal bridal mothers.”

I smiled encouragingly at Mum. “Want to try it on? Show Dad?”

She gritted her teeth.

“Pop it on, Pam,” said Dad. “I’m looking forward to seeing the knockout I’ll be escorting to the reception.” Dad had never ever made a reference to Mum’s ballooning weight, despite his spade/spade attitude to most things. It was the only area in his life where he managed to exercise some tact, out of sheer love.

She looked at us both and sighed, then turned toward the stairs.

My old bedroom had the biggest mirror, so we went in there. Mum removed the blouse and wide-leg trousers she always wore, and I tied my scarf round her eyes so she’d get the “wow factor” like in the shop.

“Maybe you need to hand those out to the rest of the congregation,” she said awkwardly.

I said nothing and lifted the pool of holly-green silk jersey from the tissue paper and slipped it over her head, pulling all the folds and pleats into place until it hung as Zoë had meant it to. Then I stood back and felt my throat choke up with emotion.

Zoë wasn’t a dress designer, she was an artist. A sculptress. The luxuriant fabric fitted and draped as if it had been precision-cut to Mum’s marble curves, and the color, a rich Christmassy green, made her skin glow and her baby-blond hair gleam. Mum’s best bits—her unlined neck and her strong shoulders—were framed by the swooping design, and any lumps vanished into the draping.

“This doesn’t feel like the dress I tried on,” said Mum, worried. “Have they sent the right one?”

I didn’t say anything—I couldn’t, not without a telltale sniff—but I pulled the scarf off her eyes.

The instant Mum saw herself in the mirror, her hands went to her mouth and her eyes filled with tears. Neither of us spoke. Slowly, she shook her head from side to side, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She moved her hips a little, this way and that, marveling that every angle was more flattering than the last.

Zoë hadn’t tried to hide her size, but she’d made her statuesque, in the real sense of the word. Mum looked like a Greek goddess of plenty, ample and magnificent; and as I watched, her spine seemed to straighten and her chin lifted unconsciously.

Her eyes met mine in the mirror, and though her mouth formed words, they wouldn’t come out.

“What’s going on up there?” Dad was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. “Can I see? Are you decent?”

Mum turned to me and clutched my hands. She couldn’t speak. I couldn’t speak. Her expression, though, said everything her heart couldn’t—gratitude and delight and surprise and a touch of pride. It was the pride that finished me off.

“Do you like it?” I croaked.

She nodded, and laughed at her own daftness.

“It’s my wedding present to you,” I blubbed. “For being such a wonderful mum. I wanted you to look as special outside as you are inside.”

“Oh, Amy,” she wept. “You needn’t have. You needn’t have.”

“I’m coming up,” announced Dad, ready with his usual brave encouragement; but when he got to the top of the stairs, he stopped, dumbfounded by what he saw.

“Pamela,” he said simply, his face awestruck with adoration. He couldn’t manage any more.

I watched them communicating silently in that instant, all the happiness and sadness of their long marriage swirling between them in a torrent of love. I wished with all my heart that Leo and I would have a bond that lasted like that. It was magical and real at the same time.

I crept downstairs, and left them to it.

*

W
hat felt like a week but was really three weeks later, Leo, Rolf, Jo, and I were at Heathrow Airport waiting for our flight to
Naples
for the Crown Princess Ball.

We were flying business class, mainly because that meant we could hide out in the VIP lounge out of reach of the photographers who’d followed us to the airport. Liza had ramped up her publicity efforts in the run-up to the coronation, and her latest stop in her Be an Everyday Princess campaign was the White House, where “Princess Eliza of Nirona” had conducted an exclusive interview with the First Lady for the
Times
, about how the correct underwear and a wide range of intelligent conversational openers could improve the quality of life for you and everyone around you.

Leo was reading it while we waited. Rolf was scrolling through his e-mails on the phone. Jo was over by the complimentary coffee facilities, trying to talk Callie Hamilton down from her latest episode. I was mainly preoccupied with not staring at our fellow business-class travelers and working out if I should know them or not.

Leo glanced up from the double-page spread of Liza standing next to a fireplace looking imperial. “Okay?” he mouthed.

I nodded and stifled a yawn. It was very early, and I was knackered. I’d been gardening nonstop all week, and had finished a makeover for a garden in Pimlico that even Ted said was the best I’d done. Following the feature in the magazine, I’d been contacted by someone from English Heritage about wildflower meadows, and they’d asked if I wanted to get involved with their community project to transform various unloved bits of London scrubland into butterfly and bee meadows.

I’d said yes, obviously—making up wildflower mixes like a gardening cocktail-maker was my idea of heaven, not a paid consultancy role.

“Got everything?” Leo mouthed, and I nodded again.

In my bag was my ballgown—couture Vivienne Westwood this time, fitted in her Mayfair atelier with Liza commenting via Skype—and the folder of official info about the grace/shoe ceremony that Sofia had forwarded, where I’d have to stand, what I’d have to do, etc. The grace was only a few lines long, but it was in German, which I didn’t speak. Even before it arrived, Leo had suggested hiring a speech coach/drama teacher to help me, but I’d pointed out that I lived with a drama coach. Jo had introduced me to one of her German clients, and I’d practiced it with her until I was pretty confident my accent wasn’t unwittingly turning the words into filthy swearing.

Leo winked, and I managed a smile. He seemed to think my grace-giving and shoe-presenting was an honor I’d pull off with aplomb; but even though I now knew it off by heart, I was still worried that what I could do perfectly well in the privacy of my own flat would feel very different with thousands of eyes on me.

I was determined to overcome my nerves, though, because I wanted to show him that I was trying to meet him halfway with this whole mad deal. The assistant/investing in the business hadn’t been mentioned again, but I knew he’d been biting his lip about the amount of time I’d spent working when he’d wanted me to be in Nirona with him. We hadn’t rowed—we just hadn’t talked about it. I hated having things we didn’t talk about, when we were so open about everything else. But then, I hated rows more than anything.