Page 56 of The Heir Apparent
“No,” she said immediately. “Do you think love is what makes marriage work?”
“My parents—”
“Love wasn’t the problem for your parents—it was compatibility.”
I looked up at the strange sky to stop the tears from rolling down my face. It was an accusation I had heard many times—that it had all been Mum’s fault, that she’d been naive and wanted too much and should have known better. If she had tolerated Papa’s obsession with Annabelle, if she had dimmed her own light so it glowed just enough to shine on him, if she hadn’t been so sensitive, she would be alive today and she would be the future queen. I had heard it all. I’d just never thought Amira and Louis agreed.
I was really crying then—for the first time since I had returned to London. I walked past Amira and left her standing in the quadrangle. All the windows around us were dark, but we knew better than to assume no one was watching and listening.
“Lexi,” she whispered. “I’m not trying to be cruel, I promise. I just want you to open your eyes.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
2012
According to the tabloid version of our lives, the trouble between Louis and me began the night before I flew to Australia. There are two books about our severed bond:Royal TwinsandThis Is Not What Isla Wanted.In public accounts, the story follows a familiar script: Louis and Amira had fallen hopelessly in love during our Upper Sixth year, but when I’d discovered them kissing (according toRoyal Twins) or chastely holding hands (This Is Not What Isla Wanted) or shagging (various tabloids), they had insisted it was just a fling. Right before we were all meant to go our separate ways for our gap year, I had learned their relationship was far more serious than I had been led to believe. Rather than waiting six months to reunite in South Africa, as we had planned, they intended to travel the world together as a proper couple. I had been so offended by their duplicity, or so jealous in unspecified ways, that I’d immediately decided to move halfway around the world. It was clearly a storyline fed to the writers by Somerset staff, and I did nothing to correct it, even though it made me look demented.
But here’s what really happened.
The tabloids had largely obeyed the palace’s order to leave us alone until we had finished secondary school. But once we turned eighteen, the media collectively decided they were free to break their promise. They began to speculate about our sex lives, basing their wild conjecture on our body language in blurry photographs taken through long lenses. I didn’t givethem much to work with: trapped under the crushing weight of Mum’s death, all I knew how to do was study and starve.
That term, I joined the rowing club. I liked the idea of an all-consuming sport that required dawn starts, burning lungs and enough cardio to whittle my body down to nothing. One day our boat got bogged in river silt, and a photographer hidden behind a public toilet block snapped a picture of a crewmate’s brother taking my hand to help me onto shore. ThePostdeclared him my “crush” and camped outside his family’s house for a month. The poor guy is still described as my “first love” in articles about my romantic history, even though we barely spoke.
Kris had finished at Astley the summer before us and spent our final year doing officer training down at Sandhurst. Once the rest of us completed our schooling, Kris and Louis would take their gap year together. But as we counted down the days and weeks until we were free, Louis and Amira started heading into London on weekends to sneak into clubs. Astley policy stated that all students, regardless of whether they were of drinking age or not, should stay out of licensed premises. But no one was going to punish the heir—especially since he had just lost his mother.
One night, which I spent staring up at the ceiling in my suite, the three of them went to Madame JoJo’s in Soho, where a fellow clubber surreptitiously took a photo. It showed Louis, tall and sweating through his shirt with his arms around Amira’s peplum-accented waist. His face was in the crook of her shoulder and, with his heavy-lidded eyes and parted lips, it gave the impression of unbridled teenage desire. In the background, I could just make out Kris’s shoulders as he turned away from them. But for the public, the photo was confirmation: the future king had a girlfriend.
The next day, when it was on the front page of every news site in the English-speaking world, they had both laughed and said Louis was simply asking Amira what she’d like from the bar. I don’t think it had occurred to him until he saw the photo that this was something he could do: occasionally give the tabloids amorsel of heterosexuality to feast upon so they would never make him the meal. He and Kris kept their love for each other a secret from everyone but Amira and me. They held hands in front of us; they were tender and true. We assumed our parents had no idea, although there was something in Vikki’s sly eyes that gave me the sense she was starting to see what everyone else missed. The fact that she read the tabloid rumours about Amira and Louis, but never demanded the truth from either of them, was surely a sign.
As the end of our Astley days grew near, the tabloid fanfiction went into overdrive. Louis had always maintained a certain mystique at school, so none of our classmates could confirm if he was dating Amira. But given how much time they spent together, it made a certain sense. If Amira and I went to his rugby match, a photographer made sure to get a picture of her looking proud in the stands. They captured her enigmatic smile as we watched Louis march in the Astley Tattoo. They went to the school leavers’ ball together: Louis resplendent in his tuxedo, Amira in a turquoise Marc Jacobs gown seen on Sienna Miller three months earlier. I took Kris as my date so he and Louis could be together, but he spent most of the evening glowering across the table at my brother.
We sat our final exams. We packed up our suites. We smeared shaving cream and confetti on every surface. We were finally done. Now it was time for our gap year—twelve months that were wholly our own.
We had broken our year into two halves. We planned to spend the first six months apart—I would go to Australia, Amira to Europe, and Louis and Kris to South America. We would then come back together for the second half in Africa. I never mentioned to any of them that Uncle James and I had spent the better part of a year working on a plan that meant I would never actually show up for this reunion.
Even as I emailed James daily, my secret plan to stay with him in Australia never felt quite real to me. It was a game I was playing with myself, a fantasy I enacted with the help of props.At worst, I would bail on the volunteer work in Queensland and cause a minor rift with Papa by spending six months on James’s farm instead. I fully expected that I would lose my nerve and show up at the Shankar lodge by January. I thought I knew myself well enough to be sure of that.
Three days before we were due to go our separate ways, we were in Amira’s room, helping her sort through her mountain of clothes. The boys were being no help, lounging on Amira’s bed and using her pile of clothes as a pillow, their heads nestled together among the mess as they looked at their phones. I was always the organised one, and I sat on the floor, rooting around in an overstuffed suitcase looking for her missing passport.
“I need chic outfits for France,” she said, pulling a top from underneath Kris’s shoulder. “But then I’ll need practical outfits for Africa, which feels like an entirely different packing approach.”
“You’re coming back here for Christmas,” Kris muttered. “Just repack then.”
I finally found the passport lodged inside a sneaker and pulled it free.
“Here it is,” I said, holding it above my head.
“Lexi, you’re a lifesaver,” she exclaimed.
She took the passport from me, but as it changed hands, a folded piece of paper tucked in the sleeve slipped free and fluttered into my lap. Absently, I picked it up, intending to pass it to her as well. A word in the top-right corner caught my eye:Santiago. I don’t know why I looked. I had barely paid attention to Louis and Amira’s antics all year, but one glimpse of the city’s name and I understood everything. I unfolded the document, an itinerary, and read it top to bottom. Amira was due to fly from Charles de Gaulle to Chile in a month.
“What is this?” I asked, staring at the paper.
Louis and Kris looked up from their phones. Amira, who was by her desk, turned and saw what I was holding. There was a brief flash of panic on her face, but she quickly brightened and snatched the paper from me.
“Oh, nothing… That’s an old itinerary from when the travel agent mixed up our bookings.”
I watched as she folded it back up and slipped it beneath a pile of travel books on her desk. She was feigning casual indifference, but the set of her shoulders gave her away. I looked over at Louis and Kris, who had both returned to staring at their phones. The room was heady with conspiratorial tension. I had been so consumed by grief in the last year that I’d barely been aware of what was happening around me. I felt like the glossy black bubble I’d been trapped in had just been pricked with a needle.
