Page 108 of The Heir Apparent
“Are you ready?”
I nodded, suddenly nervous. When I looked back at the drawing room, I remembered that it was the place Louis and Ionce built forts out of sheets and fought over the remote, it was where Mum tried to teach herself the guitar, and Amira and I had curled up together almost every night for a year. This house was my first home, and I was certain I would never see it again. I looked at Charlie and nodded again.
“Okay,” I said.
Together we lifted a wriggling, unhappy Chino into the trolley and then I climbed in after him. Inside, it smelled like cleaning solvents and wet towels.
“I’ll close you in now,” Charlie said as pulled the lid up. “Don’t worry, it’ll only be for a minute.”
We were in the dark. The plastic drum wobbled on its wheels as Charlie steered us over the carpet, across the floorboards and out the front door. When we skittered through some gravel, Chino let out a yelp and I pulled him to my chest to soothe him. For a moment everything was still. But a great shove threw us backwards, like the ascent of a rollercoaster, and I knew Charlie was pushing us up the ramp and into the van. There was a metallic thunk as the doors shut us inside.
“Everything okay back there?” he said as he buckled himself into his seat. “Let’s get through the gate and then I’ll park around the block and let you out.”
“All fine,” I said.
The van shook to life and soon we were crunching through the gravel of the quadrangle before the tyres gained traction on the sealed road. There would be two police officers standing sentry at the gates. I’d emailed them that morning to let the carpet cleaner in, and now all they had to do was sign him out. The air in the trolley was becoming moist from our quick breaths and I tried to stay quiet as the van slowed to a stop. Burying my face in Chino’s fur, I silently pleaded with him not to make a sound.
“Hey,” Charlie called in an affable voice. “All done in there—thanks, mate.”
“Right then, one moment,” I heard one of the officers reply. “Happy Christmas.”
The iron gates groaned against their frozen hinges, and then the van was rolling forward. Soon we were moving at speed, just another workman’s car on the streets of London. It was the week before New Year’s, when time seems endless, and no one leaves the house if they can help it. By the time Stewart realised I was gone, it would be too late. The quadrangle would be scandalised by my escape. All my older relatives would stand around whispering, trying to figure out how I had done it.
It was the second time that I had slipped away from them undetected. But this time, I didn’t plan to return.
Two weeks before Christmas, Mary had called Stewart to ask that the Queen’s speech no longer announce my forthcoming investiture as the Princess of Scotland. The public shouldn’t be promised something that would never occur. Over a series of fraught, clandestine meetings at Amira’s dining table, Stewart had made clear that if I intended to give up the crown, I would be giving it all up. My titles, my name and my privileges would all be taken away so that I didn’t overshadow Richard’s future reign. No one had ever willingly removed themselves from the line before, so if I did this, I would be choosing a life in exile.
“I know what I’m giving up,” I said.
I was not permitted to speak to the Queen directly about my decision. Instead, Stewart spoke to her himself. She sent a message back, saying that I was to take the fortnight before Christmas to make sure that I was sure. Her speech would become a meditation on the meaning of service. If, by the time it was broadcast, my case of cold feet had passed, we would pretend it had never happened. No one would ever know how close Richard had come to wearing the crown, least of all Richard himself. But if I searched my soul and found that it was not fit for a queen, I would be shown the door.
On Christmas afternoon, with her speech aired and our family taking tea in the drawing room, Granny and I went for a walk around her estate. Chino and Pud raced ahead of us into the fading afternoon sun, while she held on to my arm gingerly to navigate the muddy snowmelt.
“You know, there were many times when I was your age that I wanted to give this up,” she said. “Your grandfather and I had our hardships early on and I wondered if perhaps it was best for my family if I handed it over to Beatrix. She always wanted it more than I did.”
“I never knew that.”
We stopped by the old water fountain that had been drained and covered for the winter. Granny’s blonde hair glowed like a corona in the setting sun.
“I hope you’re not reconsidering because of the furore over last month’s reception,” she said. “It’s been my view for quite some time that you are being poorly advised. The people around you have been filling your head with dangerous ideas about what this role can be. I did consider intervening earlier, but it’s a lesson we must all learn the hard way.”
“What is the lesson?”
“That this role is not a platform for your ideas.” She looked at me. “What did you say at the reception? When we speak, the world sits up and pays attention? That is not the role of a monarch.”
“What is the role, then?”
“You should hardly speak at all. We are meant to be solid and stable as the nation shifts around us. We’re the thing they grasp on to. I know some people think we’re a relic of the past, but everyone needs steadying now and then.”
I looked back at the house. I knew that Richard would be watching from one of the many windows that overlooked the gardens. I could feel his eyes on me.
“So a more appropriate monarch is a man who hires private investigators to stalk his own family? A man who blackmailsthe people he’s supposed to love? Richard has been threatening me for months. He said that if I didn’t leave, he would expose something that Papa and I did years ago. I know you prefer to stay out of these things, but perhaps it’s best if you know what’s happening in your own home.”
A huge skein of geese came twisting and undulating through the skies, their call so loud that we had no choice but to wait until they passed. It was a frighteningly beautiful sight, but I realised Granny wasn’t looking at the birds. She was staring at me. When the geese vanished into the horizon, she turned back to the open lawns of the estate and kept walking.
“Freddy had a strange attraction to secrecy,” she said quietly. “His first instinct was always to lie, to cover things up, rather than just confront them and move on. I told him as much at the time, although by then it was too late—he’d already paid that Italian man to get you off the boat.”
Of course he had told her what happened in Italy. He hadn’t been able to keep a secret from her in his life.
