Tilly Maguire and the Royal Wedding Mess

by Emma Grey

  She feels like she’s taking her first real breath. Ever.

  She kicks off her uncomfortable heels and steps onto the manicured grass, into the warmth of the sunshine, which falls through her veil and creates shadows in the folds of her dress, in what would make the perfect wedding shot, had this been a perfect wedding. Then she passes her bouquet to Reuben. Ever-hopeful fangirls, watching on the roaming coverage on screens outside the church, erupt in delight at the symbolism. Belle and Reuben look at each other and laugh, and then her laughter gives way to tears of relief. This is what total honesty feels like.

  Angie steps out from behind a pillar in the cloister, wearing black for the first time in living memory, like she’s at a funeral instead of a wedding. She tugs at Reuben’s suit jacket. He wraps his arms around her and smiles.

  ‘Great wedding,’ she says, brightly. ‘Wish I’d attended it now.’

  ‘You were invited,’ Reuben replies, teasing.

  She looks at him, and then at Belle.

  ‘The thing is, I have this funny little policy not to go to weddings when I’m in love with the groom.’ She takes a breath. ‘Or the bride.’

  Belle stares at her. What did she just say?

  Reuben, looking like he’s just been handed the best news of his life, is staring at her too. He takes a step backwards. ‘Are you asking to cut in?’

  Cut in? What is happening?

  Belle suddenly has no time for old-fashioned chivalry. And no intention of waiting for Reuben and Angie to act out some sort of messed-up bridal waltz scenario, or whatever it is that the two of them are doing here. She steps forward, takes Angie by the hand, and pulls her into a corner of the grassed square. If the cheering was intense before, it’s totally off the charts now.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Reuben pushing the cameras out of the way. It’s nice, but she really doesn’t care who sees this, even if it’s the entire world. In fact, yes. The entire world should see this. She will not hide anymore.

  ‘Ang—’

  But before she can speak, Angie takes Belle’s face in her hands and pulls her close for the kiss that’s been years in the making. The touch of Angie’s lips, finally on hers, fires a rapid response through every part of her, blurring sound and light until she’s aware of nothing but Angie. It’s just the two of them, in their private world, as if this very public moment isn’t being broadcast around the planet, breaking royal protocols, shattering traditions and carving its own place in the history books.

  This is what this grown-up moment is meant to feel like, Belle realises with growing astonishment. It’s as if everything that has been off-kilter her entire life has finally slotted into place where it belongs. In coming out, she has come home.

  This. Is. REAL.

  When they eventually pull apart, much to the disappointment of the crowd, the large majority of which is loving every second, Reuben approaches the pair again and the two of them drag him in for a close group hug. The crowd loses its collective mind.

  Belle breaks away first, and tries to compose herself enough to speak.

  ‘Tell me that impossibly small Beetle is parked in the official area,’ she says.

  Angie laughs. ‘You wouldn’t fit in that dress! But no, I came on the motorbike. You know, the vintage one that I restored?’

  ‘Of course you did,’ Belle says, with pride. ‘Do you have any idea how much I love you right now?’

  Angie bursts into another smile. ‘I don’t see you fitting on the bike in that dress, either, although I do have two helmets . . .’

  ‘Not me!’ Belle says, gesturing at Reuben. ‘HIM! What time’s her flight?’

  Chapter 65

  ‘We’re never going to make it, Ange,’ Reuben yells from the back of the bike. Even with a police escort and the streets clear of cars, there’s utter chaos, everywhere. People are hysterical, cheering at the sight of this rebel stealing the princess’s ex-fiancé away from the church, tearing towards Heathrow. Helicopters packed with media follow them overhead. The bike runs like a dream, and Angie rides it like they’re in a road race.

  When they finally scream into the departures bay, they get off the bike, park illegally, run inside and find that all of Heathrow is abuzz. There’s media everywhere. Big advertising screens are beaming their every move around the terminal, replaying everything that’s happened in the last half-hour on continuous loop. It’s the craziest thing Angie and Reuben have seen in all the years they’ve suffered chaotic scenes at international airports with the band.

  ‘She’s not answering her phone. Do you know which airline?’ Reuben asks.

  ‘Qantas,’ Angie says quickly.

  ‘I thought you quit being my assistant!’

  ‘You’re not that easy to give up on, Reuben, and you want to hope Tilly feels the same way about you as I do.’

  They race to the Qantas desk. ‘If Tilly feels the same about me as you do, after that display back there with Belle, I think we’re in a bit of trouble.’

  She laughs.

  ‘Flight QF8030 for Dubai. Has it left yet?’ he asks.

  The attendant looks at Reuben, unprofessionally starstruck.

  ‘We’re in a hurry,’ Angie explains, but her presence only distracts the woman more. That and the fact that the three of them are now on live television, everyone desperate to see how this interrupted wedding ends.

  ‘Flight QF8030?’ Reuben repeats. ‘Please hurry.’

  She glances at her computer. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just taken off.’

  Angie’s heart sinks for Reuben and there is an audible sigh across the airport. Nearly everyone is glued to the coverage. It’s surreal.

  ‘When’s your next flight to Melbourne?’ Angie asks urgently. ‘You’re not giving up, Reuben!’

  The woman checks the system. ‘Our next flight isn’t for a few hours, but there’s one with another airline boarding in twenty minutes. It has a shorter connection. You’d actually arrive in Melbourne before the Qantas flight. Let me check availability . . .’

  Excited squeals erupt throughout the airport and a camera zooms in on the attendant, who goes red.

  ‘I’m sorry to have raised your hopes. That flight’s full.’

  Everyone sighs in unison: Reuben, Angie, the woman on the desk, the people filming next to them, the crowds lined up at the check-in desks nearby, everyone in the food court watching the big screen . . . Angie is trying to ignore the mounting hysteria over this situation, so she can think. She’s just begun wondering about the logistics of chartering a private flight, when the attendant receives a phone call and her face lights up as she listens.

  ‘Hand me your passport,’ the attendant urges. Reuben looks stricken. ‘I’m going to check you in here,’ she explains, ‘and then you need to make your way urgently to Terminal 3, Gate 5. Apparently we have several passengers offering to give up their seats.’

  ‘I’ve left my passport back at the . . .’ Reuben begins, crushed, until Angie smiles and pulls the little book out of her shirt pocket like a magician.

  ‘What sort of personal assistant would I be if I didn’t pick it up back at the Abbey, Reuben? I knew you’d have it with you, packed for the honeymoon!’ She hands it with a flourish to the airline attendant, who has clearly watched too many romcoms. She’s blinking back tears. In fact, as Reuben and Angie run towards security and people realise he has a chance of making a flight, there are tears from people everywhere. Tears. Cheering. TV reporters bawling as they try to describe the scene. People are hugging strangers and smiling. What is it with airports and romance and humanity on display?

  Angie leads the way through the parting crowd like she’s wielding some sort of invisible machete. More magic!

  ‘I don’t pay you enough!’ Reuben calls out.

  ‘I know!’ she yells. ‘And that’s a conversation we’ll have when you get back!’

  Chapter 66

  Tilly is completely exhausted coming through customs in Melbourne, and queueing fo
r her bags. She can’t sleep on planes, and somehow the trip back home is even worse than the one over. Something about date lines and time zones. She’s a mess. And she’s sick of all the staring! People haven’t stopped pointing and whispering since they landed. She’d hoped for a bit of anonymity back home, but it doesn’t seem possible anywhere.

  She’s desperately in need of a shower and a bed. At least she had a change of clothes this time, and was able to throw on a floaty dress before they landed. The whole of Victoria is apparently in the grips of an Indian summer. Except now she’s trying to carry about a million things, including a stack of pieces of paper that she used on the flight to write notes for her story after her laptop battery died, plus the Ugg boots she definitely doesn’t need on this unseasonably hot autumn day in Melbourne.

  She has nothing to declare. Nothing to say at all, really. This is a weird feeling, coming home. In so many ways, she’s come so far – with her writing and her confidence. But she’s lost so much, too. She’ll just need to distract herself. Maybe she could cancel the rest of her gap year and go to uni a semester earlier.

  Coming into the arrivals hall, she can almost smell the eucalyptus. There’s something about being back on home soil. Everything just looks and feels so ‘right’. But she’s only a couple of steps in, when the now familiar media press gang of journos with cameras start jostling for photos of her. They’re everywhere! She’s just trying to blend back in, and they’re all calling her name and trying to get her to smile. What on earth?

  She feels the familiar anxiety bubbling to the surface, takes a deep, slow breath, then slowly lets it out. She realises she’s become so much better at handling this since her public exposure in the UK. People are lined up with signs ready to collect VIP passengers, but she’ll have to push through this crowd and make her way over to the pick-up zone outside, despite the text she just received from her mum saying they’re stuck in traffic because there’s something going on at the airport.

  Except, as she reaches the people with the signs, they all step aside to let her through. The whole crowd parts, actually, and when she sees why, she literally drops everything. Papers fly everywhere. Bags. Ugg boots. Even her laptop. Because, in the middle of Melbourne airport, even though surely it’s physically impossible to be true, there is Reuben Vaughan, still in his white wedding shirt and grey pinstripe pants, looking more incredible than he ever has, holding a sign that says, ‘Maguire’.

  She can’t believe this is happening.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asks breathlessly.

  ‘Standing in the arrivals lounge holding a big sign with your name on it, Maguire. It should be obvious. I’m here to pick you up.’

  ‘And take me where?’

  He smiles. ‘Don’t make this difficult. I’m nervous enough as it is.’

  ‘You’re nervous?’

  ‘Petrified!’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘What you’ll say. I’ve come all this way to ask you . . . well, to apologise. I don’t know how much you’ve heard about what happened at the wedding, and Belle coming out to the world, and she and Angie being together . . .’

  ‘What?’

  He starts wiping his brow. He really is nervous.

  Brilliant timing going dark on social media, Tilly. Suddenly, so much starts making perfect sense. The secret he kept from her about Belle, and why it was worthy of his silence. His loyalty and unwillingness to betray his friend. She’d bet the entire wedding was a sham, just to protect Belle’s secret . . . wow. Who does that for a friend, and ditches their own happiness in the process? She’s totally underestimated him.

  Reuben crouches down to help her pick up all the pages of her story, and she crouches down with him in an attempt at a private huddle away from the madness. He hands her an Ugg boot.

  ‘This is how you do the Cinderella thing in your country, is it?’

  She laughs. ‘I don’t do the Cinderella thing at all. I’m not your princess.’

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘That’s exactly why I’m here.’ He looks at her and gulps a breath. She swears he’s about to have a panic attack.

  ‘Reuben, come on. Name five things you can see.’

  They stand up, their arms full of her writing. ‘The error of my ways?’ he suggests genuinely.

  He. Is. Gorgeous. She can’t believe she’s standing here with him.

  ‘A second chance with the first girl I’ve ever . . . felt this way about.’

  She won’t let him off that easily. ‘And what way is that, exactly?’

  ‘You taking notes for your novel?’

  ‘Yes! I need specifics.’

  ‘Maguire, come on. I’ve loved you from that first moment on the red carpet at the V&A Museum. You’re everything all those A-listers could never be. My biggest fear is you might not love me back. I hope you at least feel something . . .’

  She laughs. ‘Something? Reuben, I had a shrine to you in my bedroom when I was thirteen. The entire world knows I’m your biggest fan.’

  He looks hopeful.

  ‘I know you’ve recently been jilted at the altar in front of millions of people,’ she teases, ‘but have a bit of faith in yourself!’

  He laughs and glances at the bunches of papers they’re both holding in their hands. ‘Is this stuff any good?’

  She laughs. ‘Nuh, it’s rubbish.’

  He takes the bunch of papers from her hands and tosses it, high into the air. It floats down on top of them and onto everyone around them in the arrivals hall, and she drags him into a kiss.

  ‘I should warn you,’ he says, breaking away, ‘our every move is being beamed into the households of two billion people in about two hundred countries. Weird, what some people find entertaining. But as PDAs go, this is fairly intense.’

  She laughs and tries to kiss him again, but he stops her.

  ‘Also, you should know I won’t be accepting my title. So if it’s some sort of Prince Charming fantasy you’re looking for, you’ll be disappointed.’

  As IF!

  She shuts him up with another kiss, not for the cameras, but for her. Because kissing Reuben Vaughan in reality is a million times better than all the kisses she had with him in her imagination, when she spent her school days lost in some crazy, imaginary string of events where she would actually meet him, IRL, and he would fall madly in love with her. She breaks away and looks at him.

  ‘Just no proposals, okay? I’m eighteen!’

  He puts his hand on his heart. ‘I promise, no proposals.’ He wraps her even more tightly in his arms.

  ‘Not until you’re at least twenty-six,’ he whispers.

  Not unless she asks him first.

  ‘One selfie before we get out of here?’ he suggests, holding his phone up above them, surrounded by airport chaos.

  ‘Now? But I’m a wreck!’

  ‘You rock eleven time zones, Maguire. Always have.’

  She watches as he uploads the photo.

  ‘Just be careful which account you post it to, Reuben, if you don’t want the whole world seeing it.’

  ‘I know what I’m doing here, Maguire,’ he replies. And with that, the picture is captioned and posted.

  #writer #singer #relationshipgoals

  #ThisIsReal

  Acknowledgements

  I wrote the first half of this book in the last few months of my marriage. My husband, Jeff, died unexpectedly of heart disease, in 2016. He wasn’t an international pop star, but he was an international star in his own academic field, and I remain his biggest fan. He knew what it meant for me to write and be published, and always encouraged me when the going got tough, as it inevitably does when you’re wrangling words onto a page for a living. His faith in me and my career was so strong, it will sustain me through all the words I continue to write during his incomprehensible absence.

  After Jeff died, all I could write about was grief. When I picked up this book again, it became my bolt-hole from the real world. That’s why it’s such
an unapologetic fairy tale. There is so much darkness in our world, we need places to escape that demand nothing from us other than a belief in love and frivolity and fun.

  What follows is a list of acknowledgements reminiscent of Oscar speeches that go on too long, but after a tough couple of years, during which our family received an outpouring of support that is impossible to quantify in words, there are many to thank.

  Particular thanks to the following people:

  My publisher, Lisa Berryman at HarperCollins Children’s Books Australia, has been a champion of my work for several years. She took a chance on a new author and brings the gentle voice of wisdom and experience to my stories. For her enthusiasm, guidance and support – and for this dream of an opportunity – I’ll forever be grateful.

  Alex Nahlous and Eve Tonelli are brilliant editors, and I’m so thankful for their professional guidance. They have an eye for detail and a flair with words that strengthens the manuscript no end, and I trust them implicitly.

  Book designer Shirley Tran Thai has created the perfect cover to capture the magic of Tilly – thank you.

  My agent, Anjanette Fennell, not only looks after the business side of my work, but picks me up when I’m feeling lost or overwhelmed. She is relentlessly optimistic about my future path and her soothing encouragement is pure gold, as is her friendship.

  Gaetane Burkolter is a dear friend whose story guidance is invaluable to me. She reads every word of fiction I write, and has a superhuman knack for catching implausibilities and strengthening ideas and words through her strong editorial expertise. She is unfailingly generous with her very practical support of my career and I can’t thank her enough.

  Karen Logan jumped in and helped me proofread the manuscript while I was preparing to move house, which was wonderfully helpful, and there’s a group of people who read my first drafts and tell me they’re great (even when they’re not). It’s such an important type of feedback, early on. Ali, Al, Alison (so many Alisons!), Lyndal, Sal, Ree, Rach, Nina, Mel and Kat – I can’t thank each of you enough for your support in work and, of course, in life. I hate to think where I’d be without your friendship.