Page 13 of The Heir Apparent
“I got in last night, but they confiscated my phone. I only just got it back,” I lied, not really knowing why.
“Oh, wow, they’re not messing around, are they.”
“Have you been to work?” I asked. “I didn’t even call them to ask for time off.”
“Babe, everyone on Earth knows you need a bit of time off, don’t worry,” Finn said gently. “I was on shift this morning and Ben said just to call in when you’re ready and you can figure out a plan.”
I had a year left of my residency. Any longer than a few weeks off and I’d fall behind.
“Okay, I’ll try to call him next,” I said, though I knew I absolutely would not. I’d procrastinate for days before I endured the inevitably frosty conversation with my boss. By now, we were doing a pretty good impression of a professionalrelationship. But the talk Ben and I needed to have was bound to stir things up that had been tightly packed down.
“You should call Jack first,” Finn said. “He’s been really worried about you.”
There was a light knock at the door, and a chambermaid stepped inside and curtsied. She was carrying a silver tray with tea, toast and a stack of newspapers. The pages were shiny, and I knew they were freshly ironed to ensure the ink didn’t stain royal fingertips. I waved her in and smiled.
“I’ll call him at the end of my day when he’s awake,” I murmured, suddenly aware that everything I said would ripple through the palace whisper network.
The maid slid the tray onto the table beside me and cleared her throat. “Her Majesty says the meeting for funeral preparations will begin at noon, Your Royal Highness.”
I nodded and she bobbed on her ankles again and left the room.
“Check you out,Your Highness,” Finn said. “Are they waiting on you, hand and foot?”
I glanced at the tray: three slices of fruit toast in the rack, three gems of butter on a dish and a pot of strawberry jam. It was the same breakfast I’d been served every morning since I was a girl. The newspapers were fanned out beside the tray, and I saw my face on the front page of every single one.The Prodigal Princess Returns, one headline read.
“How’s Ragu?” I asked suddenly.
“Oh my god, he’s an absolute monster,” Finn said. “He chased the chickens yesterday and nearly got one. And then he found a hole in the fence and ran down the creek.”
I yearned to be home then. I’d made up my bed with fresh sheets, imagining the luxury of slipping in there the night we were supposed to return from camping. The sweet peas in the jar by my bed would be shrivelled by now, the water slimy and cloudy. What I would give now to see that little room again. I loved its sloping ceilings and the spiders that took up residence in every corner. It was always dusty, and every time itrained, water seeped under the door. When Louis saw it during his one and only visit, he was bemused. Everything we had, in such embarrassing abundance, and I chose to give it all up to live in an old barn.
“Is there anything I can do, Lexi?” Finn asked, suddenly serious again.
I had the odd, panicky impulse to make things right with Louis. I never knew that there was a finite number of days left, each one ticking down towards zero. But too late now, too late for it all.
“Just send me lots of photos of Ragu. And tell everyone I’m fine. The funeral is next week, I think.”
Finn was quiet for a moment, which was unlike him. “Have they talked to you about what happens next?”
“What do you mean?” I said, though I knew exactly what he meant. I had barely allowed myself to think of it from the moment Stewart told me they were all dead. The truth of it had been wrapping its cold fingers around my throat for days now, its grip tightening every moment.
“Well… you know, you’re like,itnow, aren’t you,” Finn said, more a statement than a question.
It was never meant to be me, I thought. I cleared my throat and shook my head. “I’ve got a meeting with them now actually, so I better go before they come looking for me.”
“Alright, dolly, call me anytime. Love you so much.”
“Love you too,” I said and hung up.
Finn vocalised his love for everyone, from his mother to the girl at Pigeon Whole Bakers who sold him the last croissant. The words had never sat easily in my mouth, but with Finn, they were as sweet and nutritionally complex as spun sugar. Sometimes I wondered if I’d latched onto him in medical school so I had someone to whom I could say the words.
I looked at the clock again. I had thirty minutes before they expected me in the drawing room, and Queen Eleanor did not tolerate lateness, even for the jet-lagged and recently bereaved.
I slipped out of Amira’s bed and took my tray across the hall to my own room. An outfit was laid out for me on the bed—presumably for me to wear to this meeting. Even after a night tangled in a down pillow, my hair was silkier than it had been in years, so after a quick shower, I brushed it out and pinned it up. When I was done, I still had ten minutes left, so I sat on the edge of the bed and told myself I would emerge at five minutes to the hour.
The only sounds in the room were the ticking of the clock above the mantel and my quiet breaths. I had done this so many times as a child. I would sit and wait until the last possible moment to leave my room before another frosty dinner, another reception during which my parents could barely tolerate standing next to each other. My father’s sulking was like an energy source for Mum. The more he glowered and pouted, the more she shone. By the end of the evening, the whole gathering encircled her, laughing and gasping at the twists in her story.
I looked at the old dollhouse. From the turret, the Isla doll peeked out, baby Lexi in her arms. Mum was dressed in a tiny replica of her wedding dress, the big folds of taffeta like spoonfuls of clotted cream. Even for the early nineties, it was objectively the ugliest dress that had ever existed, an affront to the menswear-inspired minimalism that would come to define Isla. I had always thought it looked like a dress designed by a little girl. It took me too long to realise that it had been—a nineteen-year-old eaten alive by her ridiculous gown. I took the dolls from their turret and stared into their faces. When I was small, Mum and I would plot their escape from the Scottish castle.
