by Ann Abrams
“I understand all the stress on you, it must be really hard.”
“It’s very hard, ha ha, no you’re absolutely right, it really is a duty more than a pleasure, look at HRH, never had a day off in 90 years.”
Kate felt the heavy burden of national security and destiny on her shoulders, while the very thought of anything going up there, it was meant to be a one way street!, revolted her to the core, as much as people saying serviette or settee (if they weren’t joking lol), everyone had a duty to serve their king and country.
“Yes Willz, I will, I will do it for you,” she said solemnly looking into his wonderfully manly and kingly green eyes.
He gulped. “God bless you Kates, you’ve got what it takes. I will get the wube.”
He stepped out of the hot tub clearly proud of her sacrifice. She followed him to their wonderful Swiss-style bedroom, and practically had to run to keep up with him. She heard guffaws from elsewhere in the chalet.
“Ok just lie down, face first,” he sounded more like he was arresting an Iraqi insurgent than about to make love to her.
“Can we, uh, go under the blankies, please,” she said aware that she did actually look great, her weight was perfect.
In the dark cubby hole of eiderdown quilts with her face pressed into the crisp sheets she thought of the war, the blitz, and the way mummy had shopped at Tescos when they were three sets of boarding school free to cough up.
“This can be a little chilly,” he said squelching the wube tube with its freezing gel onto her touche. She could hear the joy and excitement in his voice, and who needed all the faffing around with the warm up kissing and cuddling.
His royal member in her loo hole was no more or less painful than say an injection, and his deep breathing and “I really like you Kates” made it all worthwhile. After no more than six or seven solid piston actions she felt a warmth flooding her nether regions, it really was quite fun in a way, although really quite disgusting. But she had won her marron glace wings and her prince no longer needed to look anywhere but her botty for his sweet release. The moment he snored she rushed to the rainforest shower and sprayed herself clean, squeaky clean. She would get used to it, like you did the most disagreeable things like for example mummy not being very posh.
The ring
“Ooh, ooh, oooh!” Kate’s quick fingers unwrapped the glittering package eagerly. Pipz was bouncing up on the bed excitedly. “Is it really from him, is it Kates?”
“Yes, Pippy, calm down sweetie. Yes, it’s from my prince charming.”
The unwrapping revealed a box. Opening it gingerly Kate saw there was another smaller box inside. “Oh what fun this is, what a cheeky little boy you are Willy.”
Pippy sniggered. “Open it, open it, what is it?”
Kate took out the smaller box. It was covered in regal velvet. Expectantly she opened it.
“Why, there’s nothing in there!” Pip exclaimed.
A dark cloud crossed Kate’s face. She’d been expecting a ring, or some earrings. Maybe something that belonged to the family, maybe even something that had belonged to his mother. Pictures of Lady Diana, beautiful in her stunning if a bit 80s designer clothes raced through Kate’s mind. She went a deep crimson red, and after forlornly examining the box once more, threw it into the corner of the room and dived onto the bed, covering her head with a huge real feather pillow.
Pipz sat on the corner of the bed which shook gently as Kate sobbed. She smiled to herself and stared into the mirror, flicking back her hair. It was longer than her sister’s, and as she pouted at her reflection she thought to herself how much nicer her nose was, it was a truly royal nose whereas Katie’s was like a little button pressed onto her face.
So what if they had dated once or twice, that didn’t matter. Kate wasn’t cut out for royalty, that much was sure, after all she couldn’t even take a little joke. What a laugh that Will was…
Kate had fallen into a deep sleep. When she awoke it was four in the afternoon. It was Sunday and the smell of mum’s gravy and roast lamb was drifting up from the kitchen. She still did most of the cooking herself, mum was really old fashioned like that. Kate felt hungry, and after clearing up her smudged mascara and examining herself in the mirror, and feeling a little better after admiring her splendid nose, went down the stairs with the lofty air of a lady.
Pipz was sitting on the edge of the large sofa, it was actually from DFS, but with her mother she had chosen fabric from Laura Ashley and given it a splendid new look. Her father was watching golf on Sky from his own brown leather armchair in the corner, the not-yet-read Sunday Times folded neatly on the floor beside him. The girls weren’t allowed to touch it before he’d read it all, if they pleaded they might get the style section. Her mother came into the room wiping her hands on her apron.
“Lunch will be about ten minutes my darlings,” she said in a voice that tried for cheerful but sounded a little strained. Of course Pipz had told them everything, of course they all knew. Kate thought she saw Pipz sneering at her, but when she looked her full in the face her eyes were doey and sympathetic.
“It’s a test of course,” daddy said after some time.
“A test papa? What do you mean?” Kate stood beside his chair, a hand on his cashmere cardigan.
“Well it’s all about how you react isn’t it? He is second in line to throne after all,” he said with authority. “Yes, I am sure they do it all the time. It’s a matter of pedigree you see. The right filly won’t fly into a rage, she’ll take it as, well, rather a funny little joke don’t you think?”
“Oh daddy, do you think so?” Kate cried. He looked so wise and handsome in his lovely chair with his full head of just greying hair.
“I am sure of it, just as I am sure today is Sunday. They have their ways the Royals, and for good reasons I am sure, we can’t feign to know their protocol,” this last word he said slowly, emphasising each syllable, “but what I can be sure of is that I have two beautiful daughters, who are my princesses.”
Kate suppressed a wince, “Oh daddy, you are my prince,” she said hugging him tightly.
“Dinner’s ready my puppets,” her mother called in from the kitchen.
Kate asks for sisterly advice
“Pippy-squeak,” Kate used the name for her sister that she’d apparently invented when she was five. Daddy had always said how clever it was, “can I ask you something?”
“Oh go on then, lucky chops.” Pipz was lying on Kate’s bed picking at a thread that was hanging off her black Gucci top. She was waiting on a phone call from a mysterious admirer, and couldn’t seem to concentrate on doing anything else.
Kate explained to her that Willz had asked her whether she wanted to come and have a special lunch with him. He’d called it a ‘hot lunch’.
“Well I surely don’t know honey,” Pipz sounded annoyed, it’s probably just some thing, you know, that they do…probably means having a curry.”
“Oh no, I’m quite sure it can’t be anything like that.” Since the skiing holiday, it was noticeable to her sister that Kate had adopted this strangely aloof manner of speech. In fact she’d caught her with a copy of Pride and Prejudice audibly mouthing phrases like ‘what a fine thing’, ‘heavens no’ and ‘simply must’. It clearly annoyed her.
“No, we had a curry together last week, they call it choo, or chow or something. It can’t be that. It’s strange because at first he asked if I fancied a Full English, when I said I most certainly didn’t, he said we’d have a hot lunch instead. What do you think it means Pip?”
Pipz was smiling at Kate now, she pulled her laptop from under the pillow and started tapping away. Soon she was shrieking with laughter.
“What is it Pipz, tell me. Is it on a cruise or something?”
“Oh no, babe it’s much better than that, believe me.” But her sister had grabbed the laptop and raced into her own room.
Just then, a text arrived, it was from Willz.
“Hi Kate, passing near, will yo
u invite me for tea?”
Willz comes to tea
“The prince, here!” mummy had shrieked. But in reality, she had been preparing for it ever since she’d heard of her daughter’s incredible luck. The curtains had been laundered, and the living room re-carpeted she’d hired a gardener to plant some mature shrubs and a line of flowering pansies in the garden, and she herself had clipped off the B&Q labels whilst trying to remember the Latin names. Her prescience had clearly paid off, and she now set herself to defrosting the Waitrose Seriously Chocolate Fudge cake, which everyone always thought was divine, and would be sure to impress the second-in-line. Everything in fact was in place, the Fortnum and Masons tea set, the Early Grey bags neatly arranged in one small white Jamie Oliver ramekin, sugar in the other – they had come in a set of three but the third had broken in the dishwasher; in the dining room a glossy poster of the Queen took centre stage over the mantel piece – daddy had said frame it, but the blu-tack had worked just fine. Under the coffee table a biography of Lady Di was discretely placed, Kate’s mother wasn’t sure if the prince would want to talk about his mother, but she wanted to make sure he knew that he could so if he wanted to – it was little thoughts like that which would make Katherine stand out from the competitors.
The family were poised for the entrance of HRH. Mummy had wanted them to greet him at the door as a family, but Kate had thought that wrong. Rather mummy should be in kitchen, and dad in the sitting room reading the paper – he had suggested wisely that it ought to be the Times, but the nearest shop didn’t stock it and when Kate had hurried back with the Daily Mail stuffed into her handbag – she looked so worried he’d instantly assured her it was just as good, if not in fact better. Kate herself would open the door, maybe wipe her hands on an apron or something to give over a homely look, whilst Pip stayed in her room, acting normal.
Willz’s arrival didn’t quite go as the family imagined. Two cars appeared in the cul-de-sac, and two burly men got out of one of them proceeding up the drive, trampling several daisies underfoot. Kate opened the door to them in her apron, and she was astonished that they appeared to assume she was staff. At any rate before she could tell them like exactly who she was the men pushed past her and into the house before unceremoniously looking in every room and occasionally chancing upon the astounded members of the family ready in their posts. Of course when later recounting the visit at length these details were carefully omitted.
Willz sat on the sofa with the family assembled around him as though for a group photo. Kate had noticed he too had brought some daisies and mud with him, there was a small trail of it on the new carpet, but he hadn’t appeared to notice and a relieved Kate had resolved that it was probably best not to bother him about it.
“Oh, tea, and cake too, I thought we were having a hot lunch!” daddy said.
Pipz cracked up. And Kate was pretty certain that she glanced meaningfully at Willz, who smirked.
The photographer
Matteo Testikles was like THE best photographer in the world. He’d taken iconic shots of Di, Kate, Naomi, Angelina, you Christian name it, he’d taken the picture. And he was handsome, immaculately dressed, with great hair and thin and probably batted for the other side. Perfect, and oh my god, he was going to take her photo.
“Katie, darling, what would you think of a nude photo, you have such a bellissima body, why not show it off, very tastefully?” he said, and she blushed from neck to ears.
“Um, not sure Willz would approve of that,” she said.
“But I will capture your beauty, what man doesn’t want that? But I thought you were no longer with him never the less?”
“Well, we’re just having a break, while I think things over.”
“What things?” he said with the seductive confidence of a skilled hairdresser, he stroked her cheek. “You can tell Uncle Matteo, I know many secrets, and I never ever never tell them to no one, never.”
“Look put on this amazing Christopher Kane dress and then we talk,” he said. She stripped off unembarrassed in front of him, her legs were thin and hardly needed waxing and she had a nice tan from Kenya, and the incredible dress fitted her like a sheath.
“Well, Matteo, it’s like this, he wants a full English, and I said I wasn’t sure I was ready.”
Matteo shrieked with laughter at this, “The prince, he wants you to cook him breakfast, what about all the servants?”
“No it’s not that. He wants me to do a full English breakfast, I mean,” she was red again.
“And I already did the other thing he asked me,” she felt like she might as well get it all out to him, after all he was rich and famous and had done THAT incredibly iconic photo of Kate, the other one.
“I don’t understand, you speak in riddles, what’s this code for?” asked Testikles.
“Full English. First he insisted on going in you know where you go to the loo and now this. I am just not sure I can do it, it’s so, vulgar and disgusting,” she said, relieved to have told someone.
“The prince he likes to do it in the shitter? Ah, they’re right what they say in Greece, all English gentlemen become ‘‘omosexuals at their boarding schools.” Kate didn’t really like this language, but guessed it was all right if you were gay to talk so crudely.
“So ok, is not so bad up the arse, make sure your butter is nice and soft, but what is this full English, my darling beautiful Kate?” Wow, thought Kate, the man who photographs the most beautiful girls in the world thinks I am. She couldn’t wait to tell her sister.
She leant over to Testikle’s ear and whispered to him what the full English was. Matteo cracked up again.
“I think they may have just bred one too many times with their own people. Kate, bellisima Kate, they need you in the family to bring a bit of sense to them!” Kate silently agreed with Matteo, she’d heard he was very wise and had guided several supermodels’ romantic careers.
Testikles continued “Be a whore in the bedroom but only with a ring on your finger. Keep something from him, otherwise he gets bored.”
Kate was wowed by the sage advice and vowed to herself: no ring, no full English.
The palace said no killing animals which was just so fugging politically correct that it was practically a joke. I mean what the dickens was the point in going all the way to bloody Nairobi if you couldn’’t bloody kill anything in the massive bloody savannah. Kate didn’t get angry about much but this took the frigging biscuit.
Safari
Willz had asked her along with a gang of other jollies from Uni. And they were going to do surfing, non-killing safari, and then some total luxe beach bum stuff at Anscrudder’s 7 star beach house. Willz also wanted to hike up Kilimanjaro and mums said she better go with him so she’d be the type of girl who could keep her end up on a hike up a mountain in the height of an African summer.
Kenya wasn’t really dirty and disgusting like some of Africa, and there were some really nice places and the black people are just amazingly friendly and don’t even beg for stuff or money off you. Some of the staff were just really sweet and she said to Pip that they should put them in their suitcases and take them home with them to Hertfordshire. They really were amazingly helpful and quite intelligent.
She didn’t make a fuss about going on holiday with Willz not as his GF because she knew that he knew that she knew that he knew that something had happened with the charming billionaireish Anscrudder. She selected a killer white pret-a-surf bikini which would show off her toned legs and scrummy botty, and even if Pipz looked good in a dress , you could see the stretch marks when she put her bikini on, unless the beatch had gone and had them lasered off, which she wouldn’t put past her.
The villa was cute, with an infinity pool that practically touched the real sea which was confusing. And they had an adorable chef and Anscrudder tried to hop into her bed one night after a cracking fish braai on the beach, and her skin was really tanning well while Pipz had a red nose from the sun or bingeing on Margaritas. Anscrudde
r was handsome and rich but Willz was going to be king one day. But it occurred to her that her mum would prefer Willz but Anscrudder would be less hassle from the paps and stuff. But Anscrudder was just a semi-billionaire and there were quite a few of those, but minus two from the throne was like history.
Anscrudder was tall with better hair and seemed likely to be slightly less weird in bed, but Willz was big all over and that sort of turned her on, and he was so manly and king-like. She’d also heard that Anscrudder liked sausage and mash which just gave her a headache, what had happened to just kissing and making love and romance, why did it all have to be handcuffs and disgusting things.
Willz hardly spoke to her the next day after Anscrudder had tried to execute his late night invasion, she wondered if the rampaging Hezza had said something to him, and Kate was satisfied by Willz’s sulk, he was such a baby at hiding his feelings. They went up Kilimanjaro the next day, and he made a thing of walking with her, and she knew in her tight tan shorts and walking boots with her tanned calves she looked pretty hot. And Willz was actually a bit upset about the papers following him about and saying he was off the rails since he’d split with her. She pretended to find it really shocking how they just made stuff up about him and Naomi Cowtwerp and him and Fiona Anscrudder-Hessian Jones, and Tiggy Caltherp and Hepzhibah Capshett. She really just couldn’t believe that they stooped so low, and she really was convincing about not even asking him once about whether he had slept with two of the Catshet sisters in Montserrat. No one, especially the next in line if they skipped big ears, wanted a wife who was a jealous beatch who wouldn’t let men do what men do. You see girls didn’t really need lots of lovers like men did, or if they did they were total sluts like sis.
Wow, you could see for miles looking out, her feet hurt like ruggery, but it was quite lovely and she could only imagine how many calories she was burning walking up this mountain. She wondered if Willz would just throw her down in the dry African dirt, she imagined him ravaging her and maybe for once going in the front botty, for god’s sake if you wore a jonny you weren’t going to make the next next next in line. It never did really make sense all this we have to do it ‘Italian style’ to prevent contaminating the succession, I mean maybe Matteo Testikles, the iconic photographer, was right about English men who’d been to boarding schools, he was so wise and gay.