Page 2 of The Heir Apparent
And so the Queen had accepted an offer from a telco billionaire to fly me back to England on his Dassault Falcon. There were six people on the plane I didn’t recognise, but they were all young and dressed in black suits. Junior aides, I assumed, from Papa’s office.
The moment I sat down, an aide slid into the seat beside me and took my hand. I thought perhaps she was trying to console me, but she produced a bottle of acetone and started rubbingoff my dark nail polish. Even after all these years, it was still a thrill to pick out a shade with a ridiculous name like Barbaric Burgundy or Poison Ivy at the salon. Even more intoxicating was to watch it chip at the edges and do nothing about it for weeks on end. Now I was watching my month-old Courgette Coquette nails disappear.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Of course, Your Royal Highness,” she whispered. She looked around and then, when she was satisfied no one could hear us, she leaned forward. “I know it’s ridiculous, this rule about dark nail polish. It’s not very modern. If it were up to me, you’d wear what you wanted.”
I had got on the jet in Patagonia fleece and hiking boots, but I knew I’d come down the steps looking like the last eleven years had never happened. I wondered if she’d start sewing in extensions next, to boost my curls to their pre-Australian levels. They couldn’t get me back under fifty kilos in fourteen hours, though, I was pretty sure.
Stewart took the seat in front of me and began texting. It was odd to see him on an iPhone. The last time we were close, I was still trying to convince him to play Snake on his Nokia. He had been Granny’s private secretary for thirty years, but he seemed to have had a hand in all of our lives.
“Is there any more news about Louis?” I asked him.
He looked up from his phone and back down at the screen. “No, ma’am. I’m sorry. They’ll radio up to the pilot if they hear anything.”
We both knew we wouldn’t discuss what had happened back at the house. After the chopper landed in Hobart, Stewart had taken me to the vineyard to pack a bag. I sat under the grape-leaf arbour while he ransacked my room. But then came a strange feeling, one I’d had before, like a black wave cresting and breaking over my head. The edges of my vision began to dissolve and I remembered, in quick succession, the feeling of Mum’s fingers braiding my hair; the time I fell off my horse andPapa ran across the wide, green lawns of the Scottish estate with something like fear in his eyes; and how, if a window fogged up, Louis and I drew a star each with our fingertips, one for him and one for me. Even after we’d stopped speaking, I still found myself smudging two stars on frosted glass on winter nights, wondering, as they clouded over, if he ever thought about me anymore.
By the time Stewart had come out of the cottage to ask where I kept my passport, I was doubled over in my chair. It was like hot claws had taken hold of my lungs, and I flinched when he put a hand on my shoulder.
“Breathe, ma’am,” he murmured. “Just breathe.”
Palace aides are forbidden from touching members of the family. But Stewart had always been around when I was growing up, always giving me sweets and helping me onto my horse, and I adored him. He had constantly implored me to stop hugging him, but we both knew I held all the power and if I wanted to wrap my little arms around his knees and squeeze, I would. It was nice to feel his touch again. It was almost enough to stop the walls of my mind caving in.
“Here, ma’am,” he said, his hand still on my shoulder. “This will calm you.”
I looked up and he was holding the bottle of amber liquid. I hadn’t seen it since the week Mum died, all those photographers in boats bobbing in the waves just beyond the villa’s dock. Back then, Stewart had drawn the blinds as I sat trembling on the edge of the bed, and then he came towards me as he pulled liquid into the dropper. It was meant to taste like blackcurrants, but it had burned my throat, and I wanted to say I didn’t like it. But then the cold rush was back. It was as if the floor opened below me and I was falling, falling through black nothingness.
I took the bottle from Stewart’s hands and tossed it as hard as I could. It landed somewhere among the pinot vines, and I imagined Jack finding it days or weeks later, wondering how a bottle of diazepam elixir had ended up on his property.
“Don’t touch me again, Stewart,” I gasped, my chest heaving.
I was almost myself again by the time the jet took off from Hobart Airport. Stewart put his phone down and settled his elbows on his knees, his trouser legs riding up so I could see his compression socks. He was getting old.
“You should prepare yourself, ma’am. They were under the snow for more than twenty minutes. Prince Louis had a small air pocket, which is how he was able to survive being buried, but it’s not… it was probably not enough,” he said.
We need 3.3 millilitres of oxygen for every 100 grams of brain tissue. I remembered writing that equation down again and again before exam time:3.3 ml per 100 g. I’d made a rhyme of it:three-point-three per one hundred g, three-point-three per one hundred g. If that number drops, the body redirects blood flow to the brain to try to save it. After five minutes in an oxygen-deprived state, brain cells start to die. That’s when the permanent damage sets in, and it accelerates until the brain just stops.
My brother’s brain.
“He was in extreme cold, though,” I heard myself say. “It happens sometimes—a child falls in an icy lake and the temperature sort of flash-freezes the brain cells, and they come back with all function intact.”
Stewart looked down, and the bespectacled girl with the nail polish remover held my hand tenderly.
“I’ve read about it,” I told them.
“Yes, ma’am,” Stewart said. “We pray for Prince Louis. But I do not want you to get your hopes up.”
An unspoken “this time” hung in the air between us. I felt tears simmer in my eyes. Louis was the only one who’d hugged me after Mum died, even though he was furious with me. I didn’t know then it would be one of the last times a family member took me in their arms and held me.
Unbidden, another memory: The four of us on a ski trip to Courchevel. Louis and I wore matching red jackets. Mum looked resplendent in a white Fendi snowsuit, her chic mirroredgoggles hiding her tear-stained eyes. I’d heard our parents arguing again in their suite that morning. The slamming of doors, Mum’s quiet sobs. The photographers were assembled a respectful distance away on a snowbank as she helped us with our poles and jackets. When Papa kneeled in front of me and tightened my already fastened buckles, the whirr of the camera shutters sounded like crickets all around us. He looked up at me and grinned.
“There you are, mignonette,” he said with the stagy brightness of a man who’d been fighting with his wife all morning and was holding it together for both the kids and the world’s press.
The photograph of that moment was often run alongside stories about our deteriorating relationship. That was when things were good, the tabloids claimed. Often they’d include a picture from the day Louis and I were born, Mum looking young and overwhelmed with a baby in each arm, Papa beaming and relieved to be discharged of his duty. The photo from Mum’s funeral was always there too, showing me and Louis, aged seventeen and completely blown apart. I didn’t really remember anything from that day—the picture was the only proof I had that I was even there.
When my nails were clean, I excused myself and walked to the bathroom, where I could check my phone. I’d been clear-headed enough while we packed my suitcase for London to stick the phone in the waistband of my leggings when Stewart wasn’t looking. Fifty-seven text messages had arrived in the space of twenty minutes. Seven missed calls from those old-fashioned enough to try to phone someone who’d just endured a family tragedy that already had its own Wikipedia page. Most were from Uncle James. If I’d picked up, he would have begged me not to get on this plane.
I tapped on the little nesting dolls of news alerts on the screen so I could start from the beginning.
