The Runaway Princess (6 page)

“What, Rolf’s royal?” My eyes widened. Jo’s social circles were glittery, but I hadn’t realized they were
that
glittery. “What? As in … a prince?”

Jo nodded, then shook her head, then did a sort of squinty-eyed halfway head-wobble. “Well,
ish
. His family’s from Nirona. He’s one of the Nironan Wolfsburgs.”

I hadn’t heard of Nirona. But then, I’d thought the Kardashians were an area of Russia until quite recently. My family weren’t big readers of
Hello!
magazine.

Jo clocked my blank expression. “It’s one of those island tax-haven principalities off the coast of Italy, all yachts and casinos and gold shoes. Jake Astley had his stag weekend there last November. He said you couldn’t move for hedge funders having shady meetings with their accountants.”

“Oh,
there
,” I said. “I’m always popping over to Nirono.”

“Nirona. You might have heard of Rolf’s mum, though—she’s an American model? Liza Bachmann?” She made a pouty fish face, and it was a sign of how long I’d been living with Jo and her glossy fashion mags that I knew immediately whom she meant. “With the signature cheekbones?” she mumbled, pulling her skin on her face back to demonstrate.

“Yes!” I pointed at her. “I know who you mean. She wrote that awful vegan cupcake cookbook Grace Wright gave me for Christmas. The one with the website that tells you how to make your own yogurt out of—”

“Don’t remind me! That’s her!”

“And she produced Rolf? She’s so … dignified.”

“I know,” said Jo. “Genes are a funny business, aren’t they?”

Despite myself, I was quite awestruck. Who knew we’d had a royal person in our flat? Even if he had kicked my seedlings off the balcony, trodden a load of olives into the carpet, and goosed Mrs. Mainwaring.

I blanched, thinking of all the inappropriate things I’d probably said to him. Should I have curtsyed? It wasn’t as if he’d
behaved
like a prince. “So he’s … Prince Rolf? That sounds more like something you’d call a dog than a prince.”

“His full title is His Serene Highness Prince Rudolfo-Harolde de Nirona and Svetland.” Jo rolled her eyes. “I only know that because he has the whole thing printed on his platinum credit card and insisted on showing us how they’d had to go to two lines to fit it all on.

“Don’t be impressed,” she went on, reaching for another slice of toast. “It just means he should know better. And it doesn’t get him automatic entry to
my
parties. Rolf’s on my
outdoor-events-only
guest list, for very good reasons.”

“Which are?”

“Small fires,” she said darkly. “And puddles. Don’t ask.”

“So we got off pretty lightly with a near-death balcony plunge.”

“We did indeed. Anyway, that’s more than enough about Rolf.” Jo buttered her fourth piece of toast with such a ferocious swipe of the knife that I didn’t dare press her any further about their exact history. “We still haven’t got to the bottom of
your
night. What was your highlight? Best three moments, then we’ll do the worst three.”

I opened my mouth to tell her about the amazing man I’d met, but then something stopped me. Was it rude to say I didn’t want to meet any of her friends because I was so busy, then confess that I
had
met someone? Leo was very posh. Exactly the sort of posh boy I’d just told Jo I couldn’t bear. And knowing Jo, she’d insist on having a dinner party to set us up again—but that would mean inviting Rolf too, and clearly that wasn’t a goer. …

Jo was shoveling in fried egg with a fierce expression that I suspected was repressed Rolf Rage. I decided to keep it to myself. It wasn’t as if I was going to see him again anyway.

My chest contracted suddenly.

“Ted. Ted was a highlight,” I said, to distract myself as much as Jo. “Doesn’t he brush up well in evening dress?”

“He brushes up fine.” Jo gestured with her fork. “It’s just when he gets talking that he makes a girl want to run screaming for some wet paint to watch.”

“That’s because you rub each other the wrong way. If you didn’t talk to him like he’s your annoying little brother—”

“Listen, I’ve got a whole bunch of various kinds of brothers, and none of them is as rude to me as Ted is. I’ve tried to help him over the one hundred years I’ve known him, but he resists all attempts at improvement.”

It’s because he fancies you,
I wanted to say, but didn’t. It seemed too obvious.

“He reminds me of my dad,” I said instead. “He’s reliable, he calls a spade a spade—”

“Well, he has to do that, darling. How can you trust a gardener who calls it something else?”

Jo had a habit of deflecting personal comments with a
darling
and a witty comment, exactly as she was doing now. I eyeballed her.

“It’s all very well you trying to set me up, but when was the last time
you
were out on a date with someone who—”

Jo held up a hand, the gold nail varnish unchipped from last night. “Did I tell you the latest from Marigold?”

That stopped me in my tracks, as she knew it would. I
loved
Tales from de Vere Towers. Jo’s family was like an Agatha Christie novel without the body count.

“Is that what last night was about? Not the gas at all?”

She nodded. “It was a ruse to get her emergency files out of the flat. Kit won’t sign the divorce papers—he wants joint custody of all the dogs, and Marigold’s holding a horse as ransom. She wants to know if she can change its name by deed poll. I mean,
God
. You’d think by now she would know the score. How many times do you have to get divorced before you learn the cheat codes?”

Jo’s mother was going through her fourth divorce, this time from a very famous (apparently) horse trainer called Kit Pike who could tame any mad stallion but had terrible trouble controlling Marigold de Vere. Meanwhile, Jo’s dad, Philip, Marigold’s first husband, lived in
his
family’s rambling pile in Worcestershire with his second wife, Laura, and their three children, Oliver, Edwin, and Betty. Marigold and Kit had no extra children, but they did have several Clumber spaniels, named after various characters from
Fawlty Towers
, plus Kit’s horses, all of whom had names too. It was sometimes hard to tell whether Marigold was screeching about human family members or doggy ones. (Jo was very good about drawing people diagrams on napkins and so on while she dished the gossip.)

“It’s maddening,” said Jo. “I’ve told her—I’ve got quite enough legal drama in my life spending all day with builders, without getting dragged into her court cases.”

“But that’s exactly why you need Ted,” I persisted. “He’d bring calmness to your life. Calmness and kindness and a lawn with amazing stripes.”

“I get that from having you as a flatmate.” Jo reached for her tea again and gave me a friendly nudge. “And you smell a lot nicer than Ted.”

“Even if I do leave mud on your nail brush?”

“I can deal with the mud in return for this fried egg,” said Jo, and she smiled at me as she chewed.

I smiled back at her and thought, not for the first time,
Who knew the best friend I’ve ever had would be someone who thinks fried egg is a delicacy?

T
here were lots of things I loved about my job—I could literally see the fruits of my labor springing up around me (hee), and the satisfaction of watching a neglected space turn into a fragrant cloud of flowers never got old. I set my own hours, and I didn’t have to worry about office politics or have an opinion about the latest reality TV show, and thanks to my digging, I could also beat most men in arm-wrestling matches. However, even I had to admit that being a garden designer was a lot more fun between March and October. The reality on a cold January morning was thermal leggings under my jeans and a moisturizing regimen that stopped just short of a light coating of duck fat, like a Channel swimmer.

January, for me and Ted, meant a series of backbreaking tidy-up jobs inspired by other people’s New Year’s resolutions. We’d spent two days clearing a mountain of deadwood in Battersea, which the husband of the household had chopped out of his apple trees during a trying Christmas with the in-laws, and another day discreetly fixing his frenzied handiwork. By Wednesday we were on our fifth trip to the tip with a full vanload of cuttings to be composted, and my arms felt as if they were about to fall off.

Saturday night’s party seemed like a very long time ago, although the memory of it floated in and out of my mind constantly. I couldn’t stop thinking about Leo scaling the scaffolding. And also Ted refused to stop going on about Grace’s ruined plants and what he’d like to do to Rolf Wolfsburg with his shovel.

“You realize that if Richard can’t make Grace’s dreams come true, we’re going to have to think up a whole other source of revenue for—oi! Can you put your phone away?” Ted turned in the passenger seat and glared at me.

I pocketed my phone. I’d just been checking it was still working. Not that I was expecting it to ring—Leo hadn’t taken my number, and anyway, what would I say if …

Anyway, it hadn’t rung. He hadn’t rung. No one had rung. Or texted.

“I was just seeing if Grace had left a message,” I improvised, because I was, sort of. “She’s back on Friday.”

Ted slapped his forehead. “Friday! What are you going to say happened to her plants? A very specific balcony burglary? If you’d just left her plants there, instead of taking them home to swap the pots over …”

That
had
occurred to me. Many times.

“I could just tell her the truth.” I still had one plant, after all. One plant might be enough.

“Which part of the truth? That she managed to blight the seeds she planted? Or that you didn’t trust her to do it properly, so you stole the rest to do yourself? Or, ‘Oh dear, Grace, only one of your wishes is going to come true’? We need to get her onside.”

“Stop it!” I bit my lip and glanced down to the footwell, where Badger was curled up on my spare sweater. “I could tell her that Badger was running around and they got knocked off? Because both those things happened … just not necessarily at the same time.”

Badger cocked his ears, as if to say,
That’s right, blame me,
and I felt bad. Gran hadn’t entrusted her beloved dog to me so I could use him as an excuse for out-of-control minor royalty.

“Well,
my
suggestion is that you just find some more plants and substitute them,” said Ted, as if I hadn’t heard the first twenty times he’d told me that. “And if she notices, which I doubt, then call me and I’ll talk her round.”

I glanced across at him incredulously.

“Okay,” he amended, seeing my expression. “If she notices, we’ll call Jo, and she can talk Grace round. She’ll probably end up booking her to refurbish her kitchen at the same time, knowing Jo.”

I gripped the steering wheel and checked my mirrors like a fighter pilot before pulling out into the quiet residential road, lined with big 4x4s and old trees. Ted frequently teased me about my methodical approach to driving, but I had to center myself before tackling the mad London traffic. I’d learned to drive in the quiet country roads near our house, and it had taken me a few months to get past the Fear of Hyde Park Corner, but now, in my van, I was like Boadicea. No bus or cab cut into my lane. Oh no.

“Did you enjoy the party?” I asked as we headed toward the recycling center.

“It was all right,” Ted grunted, which I took as high praise. “At least there’s enough to eat now you’re on board. Used to be just Pringles and those weird olives at Jo’s. Now at least you get something to soak up the booze.”

I beamed. “Thanks! Do you want any more sausage rolls, by the way? We’ve still got a few left over.”

Ted had taken two dozen mini sausage rolls off our hands as he left on Saturday night. There were still another seven dozen in the freezer. I’d started to give Badger two a day on the quiet, rather than chuck them out, and they were making the footwell smell somewhat fruity.

“If they’re going spare.” There was a pause, which I thought was down to Ted reflecting on the succulence of my sausage rolls, but then he blurted out, “Do girls really like guys like that total idiot?”

“Which total idiot?”

“That … idiot Rolf.” He looked pained. “I can’t believe Jo likes him.”

“Him? No!” I said. “Absolutely not. She
refuses
to take his calls.”

I thought I was being tactful, but Ted’s crestfallen face told me I’d actually put my foot in it.

“He’s been calling her?”

I bit my lip to stop myself blurting out something worse. Rolf had been
bombarding
her with calls. There were nine unlistened-to messages on our answering machine, and so many on her mobile that she’d turned it off for a while. I’d never known Jo to turn off her mobile. She even kept it on during weddings and funerals. (Silent vibrate, obviously.)

I hurried to fill the awkward gap. “Just to apologize, I think. She certainly doesn’t want to talk to him. Jo’s as upset about the plants as I am, I mean, as we are. She reckons it’s the height of rudeness, someone kicking someone else’s dreams off a balcony.”

Ted snorted, then ran a hand through his curly hair, which, to be honest, could have done with a wash. But then, neither of us was in fragrant condition after a morning’s hard labor.

“Do you want to talk about … anything?” I started. I was a good listener; Jo often said I’d have made a great talk show host, or policewoman: I didn’t say a lot, but I had one of those faces that made people admit the most personal things without meaning to.

“No,” said Ted unhappily, “I don’t.”

That in itself told me everything.

We drove on in silence for a few minutes. Then he said, in an entirely different voice, “We need to think of how else we’re going to do this honey project, if Grace decides we’re too incompetent to recommend to Richard. Maybe we should just buy some space? Rent some gardens? I could probably get some cash off my mum. How about you? Can you get your folks to invest?”

I felt myself snap shut like a Venus flytrap, as every defensive muscle in my body twitched.

Maybe I should explain a bit about our Great Plan. And my parents. The two are sort of linked.

Okay, the Great Plan. Ted and I were going to make local honey in each of the postcodes we worked in, by planting as many large-scale wildflower borders and containers as we could, then either setting up our own hives or doing a deal with local beekeepers. The more local the honey was, the more effective it would be for hay fever sufferers in that area—I knew it worked because Mum had always dished out honey sandwiches to ward off the red eyes and sneezing Kelly and I both suffered from as kids.

Dad had kept hives in the rambling gardens of our old house in Hadley Green, before we had to move to Rothery where there was just a small yard. The beautiful flower gardens there were balanced with a big wildflower meadow, and you could taste the lavender and cornflowers and daisies in the honey. My clearest childhood memories were of watching the bees flit around the hives in the summer sun, me with an ice cream, Dad with a beer—I was never scared of them, just a bit spooked by their extraterrestrial communication abilities.

So I knew Dad could hook me up with some beekeeping
equipment
, and Jo knew the right sorts of deli owners who’d pay a fortune for our local honey. But ideally, we needed a big development like Palace View to plant proper swaths of wildflowers on the roof as well as hives.

And that was the second thing: start-up money. I had very little left after my monthly outgo, and though I knew Dad would help me with the bee element, he and Mum had no spare money either, and I didn’t want him to think I needed it.

“I’d rather we got it going ourselves.” I could hear my voice had gone tight and northern, like Mum’s when she was in one of her moods, and I wished it wouldn’t. “Leave Grace to me. I know she’ll help us out if she can.”

Ted mumbled something, but we’d worked together long enough to know—just about—when to leave a grumble before it flared up into a row. So we said nothing while we hauled all the wood cuttings into the council composter, and nothing while we drove home, and he said nothing when I asked him to drop me off at the park so I could give Badger a lunchtime run before I went over to my afternoon job in Pimlico.

We were both
thinking
plenty, though. I could almost hear the gears in Ted’s brain grinding with the effort of not saying it aloud.

*

B
adger and I had a power walk round the park, and by the time I decided to head home to make a sandwich (in the interest of my new economy drive), we were pleasantly breathless and spattered with mud.

I was thinking about the different bedding plants I could try this spring in the rather gloomy Pimlico garden, but when we turned down the street, my concentration was jolted—there was something on our front step.

That in itself wasn’t unusual—Jo regularly got flowers from grateful clients—but this didn’t look like the usual florist’s bunch. I sped up, as did Badger, eager to sniff out what had appeared on his territory.

There was no one around, so I jogged awkwardly toward the front step, shoving wispy curls out of my eyes. To my surprise, it was a row of terra-cotta pots, each with a little plant sticking out. There was no note attached to any of them, or stuck under them, or left in the letter box.

Who could have left these?
I wondered, only to rock backward in shock when Badger started barking as if the house was on fire. At the same instant, I caught movement from the steps down to Marigold’s basement flat—what had been the servants’ entrance in ye olden days—and stumbled as I got to my feet. Someone was making his way up, presumably having failed to get any answer from Marigold’s doorbell.

I froze. Was this Kit Pike, come for the horse’s birth certificate? What was I supposed to say?

Badger carried on with his guard dog routine, barking like a much bigger dog, and pulled so hard I dropped the lead. He made a dash for the top of the steps, yapping furiously; then, when the man didn’t stop coming up, Badger started snapping at his trouser legs, to my mortification.

“Badger!” I yelled. “Knock it
of
f
!”

“Hey! Enough of that!” the man said, much more mildly than Badger deserved—I was already saying a lot worse, in my head—and I recognized the voice at once.

A searing blush started around my forehead and spread rapidly across my whole body.

It wasn’t Kit Pike. It was Leo.

As he emerged from the steps, he looked a bit different in a work suit than in the jeans and shirt I’d seen him in on Saturday night, but everything else was very much the same. The teddy-bear blond hair, the shy smile, the arresting blue eyes.

Actually, he looked better in a suit. He looked like a suit model, but capable of doing whatever job he needed to wear the suit for.

Predictably, my brain went into standby mode, just when I needed it.

“He won’t bite,” I babbled, “he’s just very barky and—
Badger!
Stop it! He has a thing about deliverymen—I think one must have kicked him when he was at my gran’s—not that I’m saying you look like a deliveryman, obviously, or that you kicked him—
Badger
!”

I finally stamped on Badger’s lead just as he launched forward again, but not before Leo stumbled back to avoid him, and fell into the railings running alongside.

He spun, then sat down with a thump on the stone front steps, and I grabbed the growling Badger and scooped him under my arm. I wished there were some kind of rewind button I could press to do this the way I’d been imagining it in my head for
the past four days
. Most of those scenarios had ended with Leo laughing at my ready wit, then taking me out for dinner. None of them had involved this much apologizing before we’d even begun.

“I’m
really
sorry. Are you okay? He didn’t rip anything, did he?” I went to help him up, then thought better of it, in case Badger went for his tie. It looked like a really expensive tie; I had an awful mental image of Badger swinging from it by his teeth. “This is Badger. My dog. He’s a bit protective of me and Jo. Thinks he’s the man of the house!”

“Well, I guess he’s cuter than a burglar alarm.” Leo nodded at him warily, and got up, brushing dust from his trousers. “Unless you’re a burglar. Does he do that to everyone?”

“Just, er, deliverymen.” I shook my head, and put Badger down, clamping him between my feet for safety. “And men with hats. And men who look like the dodgy handyman who lived next door to Gran. That’s why he wasn’t invited to the party—he operates a really strict door policy.”

“You mean, he wouldn’t have let Rolf in?”

“Not if he was wearing a hat, or carrying a parcel, no.” I grinned nervously. “Santa gets a hard time of it. That’s why he uses the chimney.”

Badger was sniffing the air between him and Leo, and I could feel his wiry body trembling through my jeans; but then Leo made some kind of clicking noise and, to my astonishment, Badger sat down and looked balefully up at him through his sparse white lashes.

“Wow,” I said, amazed. “How did you do that?”

Leo raised an eyebrow. “Deliveryman trade secret.”

I took a deep breath and noticed, out of the corner of my brain, that the air was tangy with the scent of next door’s winter honeysuckle, which bloomed early every year. I could smell spring in the air, even though it was still winter. Being near Leo seemed to heighten all my senses, as if every tiny detail was sharp around him.