Page 9 of The Heir Apparent
I could see the light under Louis’s door. Amira was awake. Perhaps it was the jetlag, perhaps it was because I was a resident who spent fourteen hours a day having difficult conversations, but I knocked. Shave and a haircut. When we’d boarded together at Astley, she’d stomp or rap her knuckles on her desk to let me know it was safe to come in: two bits.
Nothing happened, so I opened the door a crack. She was standing by the bed in a Team GB Olympics t-shirt and a pair of men’s boxers. I couldn’t tell if she’d been coming to let me in or planning to hide in the bathroom. But she seemed surprisedthat I’d just opened the door as if we still had that kind of relationship.
Her hair looked expensive. Last time I’d seen her, at the wedding, it had been rolled into thick, gleaming sausage curls. But in the ensuing years, she’d backed off from the toppers and curling irons. Now she was sleek, her hair spilling over her shoulders. Only her eyes gave her away. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hello.”
Like Granny, she would not cross the room for me. But in her baggy boy’s pyjamas, she looked fifteen again, and I felt a flare of protectiveness. It was like I’d opened the door and wandered back into our suite at Astley in 2008. I walked over and hugged her.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
She was thinner than I’d ever seen her, her ribs like corrugated iron. She would not yield to my embrace, but she rested her chin on my shoulder and allowed me to hold her for a moment. I wondered if anyone had dared to touch her since she told the doctors to switch off the ventilators. Finally, she extracted herself from my arms and mopped up a few stray tears by hooking a finger under her lower lashes like all women who wear a lot of makeup do. She’d stopped wearing a stack of Cartier Love bracelets and was restricting herself to one. The remaining bracelet was diamond-paved, so it was probably worth all its predecessors combined. I couldn’t imagine anything more claustrophobic than a piece of jewellery you couldn’t remove without a screwdriver.
“Did they really charter a helicopter and come find you on some island?” she asked.
“Yes.”
If we weren’t so uncomfortable at the sight of each other, I’d have turned the whole thing into a joke: Stewart, dressed in a suit, stuffing my things into a backpack as he flitted arounda dirty campsite. But Amira had been the one to identify my father’s body. Now was not the time for me to try to cajole a smile out of her like it was the old days.
“Was it awful?” I whispered.
By then, holding back her tears with her fingers was a lost cause.
“Kris was covered in bruises. I couldn’t work out what caused them. I suppose it was the pressure of the snow? Or when he fell down? I couldn’t work out how his body could bruise the way it did if he was dying. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Bruising can occur as long as there’s blood flow,” I said.
She gave me a queer look. “Right.”
She walked over to the bed and started removing the mountain of pillows there. Granny must have dismissed the staff for the day if we were turning down the beds ourselves. She pulled back the blankets and sprayed lavender mist on her pillow.
“I think we’re talking about funeral preparations tomorrow,” she said. “I don’t know what time.”
“Okay,” I said.
I moved to leave the room, aware that I’d overstayed my welcome or crossed some line somewhere. My family was riddled with invisible tripwires and it often felt as if everyone but me had the map.
“Here,” she said and threw me something from a chest of drawers.
It was a pair of boxers and Louis’s Astley rugby shirt.
“Just stay here tonight,” she muttered, still annoyed with me.
I hesitated. Another wave of jetlag crested just above my head. I ached at the thought of slipping into the white linen sheets waiting for me next door. But Amira wasn’t in the habit of asking me for favours anymore, and Louis wouldn’t want me to leave her in his childhood bedroom to stare at the ceiling until the bagpipes played.
“I just need to wash all this slap off my face.”
“There’s oil cleanser in there,” she said, gesturing to the bathroom and arranging herself in the bed.
I clocked the prescription pill boxes stacked behind the tap. The sink was brimming with La Mer and Augustinus Bader and other heavy gold bottles that looked like goose eggs. The no-makeup makeup look they’d given me on the plane was a thick layer of clay settling on my face. I scrubbed it off with Amira’s cleanser, which smelled like frankincense and rosehips.
Determined to ignore the pill boxes, I searched for a spare toothbrush under the sink. I stared at my reflection as I did my teeth and then braided my hair. They’d soon be at me with the extraction facials and lasers and eyebrow dye. I had my mother’s face, but Barbara Villiers was fighting for a glimpse of herself in me too, and the result was slightly awkward. My jaw was a little too wide, my eyes hooded, my nose just the tiniest bit too heavy. In unison, it all worked. I knew that. But unlike my mother’s beauty, which was otherworldly and indisputable, mine was something I had to chase after and suffer for.
I finally gave in and looked at the pill boxes. Prozac, 40 mg a day. The script had been written six months earlier. Clomid for ovulation. Temazepam prescribed on an extremely tight leash: one 12-tablet pack, no repeats. A generous box of Valium prescribed yesterday—probably by the Swiss doctor who’d turned off the machines keeping Amira’s brother and husband alive. I told myself this violation of her privacy was necessary so I knew how to help her. Being a doctor gives you an almighty shield with which to justify some pretty abysmal behaviour.
In the bedroom, Amira had a silk eye mask over her face and an air purifier sending up a little smoke signal by the bed. I slipped in beside her. My jetlag was like an anchor dragging me to the bottom of an oceanic trench. I spiralled gratefully down towards its dark depths. I would worry about everything later. Granny, Amira, Jack, the line of succession, the location of my passport, the fact that I was meant to be on shift at the hospital in a matter of hours. But who knew what would become of my residency now? All of it could wait.
