Page 4 of The Heir Apparent
Princess Alexandrina Anne Barbara Mary born 28 December 1993 at 2:04 p.m.
Twenty-nine years later, another easel was placed outside the gates:
Prince Louis died peacefully at Visp Medical Centre this afternoon. His wife, Amira, Duchess of Somerset, was by his side. She will return to London tonight, where she will stay with the Queen. Princess Alexandrina is expected to arrive in London tomorrow.
Amira, after receiving permission from Granny, had agreed to turn off Louis’s life support while I was somewhere over the Timor Sea. She had done the same for her brother, Kris, ten minutes earlier.
Later, theDaily Postreported that a Swiss doctor had phoned me on the plane to run through their clinical evaluation of Louis’s chances of recovery. We’d conversed in French, apparently, and I’d tearfully agreed that it was time to remove life support. It was my idea that his organs should be harvested first. I couldn’t work out who had leaked this falsehood to thePost—probably Granny’s people, to cast her in a warmer light. Or perhaps it was Stewart, trying to help me save face.
Because in reality, they didn’t radio the pilot as they’d promised, but waited to tell me when we landed for a fuel stop in Singapore.
“Oh,” I said to Stewart when he broke the news. I was so unsteady that the young female aide who’d cleaned my nails was now gripping my arm for fear I might collapse onto the tarmac. “Can I speak to Louis now?”
Stewart and the girl exchanged a look.
“No, ma’am,” Stewart said slowly. “As I just told you, Prince Louis died two hours ago.”
I shook my head. When we were babies, Louis and I could only sleep if we were swaddled together in the same cot. As toddlers, we chattered in the secret language we’d invented. He brought me a glow-worm in a jar; he gave me a piggyback when I cut my foot on an oyster shell. Louis and I were two little stars drawn on the glass, and I couldn’t believe he was disappearing into the fog without me.
“No,” I said again. “I’m sure there’s been a mistake. If you could just let me talk to him—”
Suddenly my knees buckled, and the girl holding me up almost toppled over as she tried to catch me. Orphaned and alone, there was nothing to do but allow Stewart to help me back onto the plane that would return me to my family. But even as I flew closer to London, advancing further up the line of succession, I was still a pariah in the House of Villiers.
CHAPTER TWO
2 January 2023
Granny was a 23-year-old newlywed on her first international tour when she became queen. At some point, while she was dancing with dignitaries at an embassy party in Barbados, her father died in his sleep and the crown slipped invisibly to her head. The following day, she landed at RAF Northolt and her ladies-in-waiting realised they hadn’t packed mourning attire. The new queen sat on the plane for forty-five minutes while a black dress was procured from Watford Castle. It’s one of the most famous photos of her: Eleanor’s bow-shaped mouth set in a grimace, her delicate hand holding the railing as she descended the steps towards the neat row of men who would schedule every minute of the rest of her life.
Five decades later, Stewart was determined not to make the same mistake. The girl who did my nails flicked through a rack of black clothing, pulling out Erdem dresses and Reiss blazers, glancing at me appraisingly and popping them back.
“She can’t look too styled,” she whispered to Stewart as I stared out the window, lush green farmland giving way to sprawling suburbs. “It needs to look like it came from her own closet. But also… you know.”
My wardrobe no longer included British designers, A-line hems or headbands. The only thing I’d really kept from my oldlife was Mum’s waxed Barbour jacket. I rarely wore it, fearing I would disturb her last remaining essence still lurking in the fabric. When I did wear it, theDaily Postwould inevitably run a photo of me alongside an old picture of Mum from the eighties, looking gorgeous and windswept on the moors.
“Just keep it simple and appropriate,” Stewart whispered. “And nothing too flashy.”
We landed hard on the empty runway and I gripped my seat. It was the first time I’d been in England in three years. That last disastrous trip, I’d left two days early, booking a flight back to Australia on the train to Heathrow. It took me twenty-eight hours, including a nine-hour layover in Seoul, to get home. I wore sunglasses and a hoodie and dozed on airport carpets and no one gave me a second look.
Out the window, I saw the row of men in suits walking across the tarmac to meet the plane. It took a moment to realise one of the men was, in fact, a woman, dressed in a black pantsuit.
Stewart cleared his throat. “Ma’am, just to reiterate the plan: there are no photographers and we’ve strung tarps against the fence to safeguard your privacy. Once you’re in the car, we’ll take you to the palace so you can be with the Queen.”
In the end, they dressed me in an Alexander McQueen skirt suit.
“Black looks good on you. You’re a true winter,” the young female aide said as she rolled up the blazer’s sleeves.
She had the mousy look of most female palace aides. They were all white; they were all rich. With her featureless blonde face, she could have been pure aristocracy. Her family must have been somewhere further down the food chain, but high enough that a £21,000 palace salary covered her tab at the Twenty Two hotel while she lived off a generous trust.
“Thank you,” I responded uneasily. “What’s your name again?”
She might have told me already, or I might have waited sixteen hours to ask—I couldn’t recall.
“Mary,” she said with a flush. “Mary Williams.”
“Right, yes, sorry. That’s my middle name.”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said warmly. Again, she glanced around us. “I’m a big admirer of yours.”
