Christmas at the Palace

by Jeevani Charika

  Without another word, he opened the door and left.

  Kumari sank down on the bed, fitting unconsciously into the warm place where he had just been. So that was it. The love of her life. Gone. She wrapped her arms around herself. She couldn’t fall apart. Not yet. With a huge effort, she got back up again and pulled out the bag that Dave had brought from her flat all those weeks ago. She packed only the things that she’d originally owned. The rest didn’t belong to her. Then she left her room for the last time and went to the main staircase, where Forrest had a car waiting for her.

  *

  It was well past midnight when the car turned into the cul-de-sac. The houses were all in darkness apart from her parents’ house, where the downstairs light was on. They must have waited up for her, even though she had her own key and could have let herself in. She thanked the driver and lugged her bag up to the gate.

  A window opened in the house next door. ‘All right?’ said the familiar voice of Alfred, the septuagenarian who lived there.

  ‘It’s only me, Alfred,’ she said. She pushed the hood back off her head.

  ‘Oh. Good to see you’ve not forgotten your home, lass.’ She couldn’t see him, but she could picture his face.

  ‘I’d best get inside, Alfred. It’s a bit cold out.’

  ‘Right you are.’ The window shut.

  Kumari found her key and let herself in. Amma appeared before she’d locked the door behind her.

  ‘Kumari.’ Amma, dressed in her nightie and dressing gown, opened her arms. Kumari fell into them. Bending forward, she buried her face in the all-too familiar shoulder and breathed in the smell of Olay.

  Suddenly all the effort of holding it together was too much and she burst into heartbroken tears.

  Making Changes

  Chapter 23

  The Sentinel

  Will having an Asian ‘princess’ in the palace make Buckingham Palace embrace diversity?

  As the head of the Commonwealth, the queen is no stranger to the citizens of the East. Indeed, a large proportion of UK citizens identify their ethnic origin as Asian according to the 2011 census. Social attitudes towards interracial relationships have changed rapidly in the last thirty years, with less than twenty per cent of people expressing any fears about it. This number drops even further among the under-twenty-fives. Millennials, it seems, are entirely comfortable with unions that cross race lines.

  If Britain itself is multicultural, the Royal Guard does not reflect this. Staff in the royal household are overwhelmingly white. Perhaps having a non-white member of the family will be the final push needed for widening diversity in palace staff.

  How does the Asian community react to Prince Benedict’s Asian girlfriend?

  The royal family is generally popular among South-East Asians. It’s part of what makes former Commonwealth citizens feel British. They were British enough to fight in the name of the king, so why not? As such, they’re delighted to see someone non-white on the arm of the prince. About time, they say.

  The people who are most perturbed by Prince Benedict’s non-white partner seem to be people who write for the media. Most papers discuss Dr Kumari Senavaka in terms of a second-generation Sri Lankan immigrant. But even the use of the word immigrant is misleading – the clue is in the ‘second generation’. While her parents were economic migrants in the eighties, they became British citizens some years later. So Kumari Senavaka was born in Yorkshire to British parents. She has lived in the UK all her life. She is no immigrant, but as British as any of the prince’s former girlfriends. More so, in fact, than his Swiss ex-girlfriend Leonie Baum. Yet none of those women have garnered as many column inches as Senavaka, with much of the speculation about the Asian community’s reaction.

  I live in Birmingham and my family hails from Bradford. I can tell you, the Asian community is delighted.

  ‘Kumari. Come quickly,’ Amma shouted from the living room.

  It was late evening and Kumari was doing the washing up. She rushed into the living room, drying her hands on a tea towel.

  It was a news clip showing Princess Helena visiting the opening of the Canham Prize for Contemporary Art. Helena was smiling and talking to some of the museum staff. She looked elegant and relaxed. How funny that she looked more at home on camera than in her own garden.

  The news anchor’s voice said, ‘Some members of the press took the opportunity to quiz the princess about her brother’s relationship.’

  A clip of Helena showed her stopping to speak to members of the public. A voice off-screen said, ‘What do you think of Prince Benedict and Kumari?’

  Helena smiled. ‘I’m delighted to see Benedict so happy,’ she said, and moved on.

  Kumari stared at the screen. Helena hadn’t answered the question, but she’d conveyed the impression that she was delighted. What had Ophelia said? ‘Helena is a consummate diplomat. We all are. But we try to be honest with family.’ Helena may have been unsure of Kumari behind closed doors, but outside, to the world, she had just given her support.

  ‘I thought you said she was frosty?’ said Amma. ‘She doesn’t seem it.’

  Kumari sat down on the sofa, next to her mother.

  ‘I don’t understand any of it,’ she said. ‘They live . . . it may as well be on a different planet.’

  *

  A day passed. Kumari was alone in the house. The post arrived, late afternoon as always. There was one window envelope, addressed to her parents, with the local council logo on it. This, she put on the coffee table, where the post usually went. The rest she approached with caution.

  Her parents had shown her the box where they put the suspect letters, the ones they opened wearing gloves, or, if they were really worried, didn’t open at all. They had taped the number of their police liaison officer to the wall above the phone. She came and took the hate mail away to be safely checked and destroyed.

  One letter had ‘Parents of Kumari’ written on it in block capitals. She put that in the box to send to the police. There followed three postcards, two with the Union flag on the front. The third, incongruously, was a holiday postcard of Ibiza. They all had variations of ‘Pakis go home’ or ‘Coming over here, sullying our royal family’ on them. These, too, went into the box.

  The remaining two letters had printed labels with ‘Mr and Mrs Senavaka’ on them. She stared at them. How did you know which ones were legitimate and which were hate mail? What did you do when it wasn’t obvious?

  She went to the back window and held the envelopes up to the light. Both had what seemed to be folded paper inside. One letter appeared to be considerably smaller than the envelope it was in. Kumari put that one in the suspect box too. Since she couldn’t be sure what was in the last one, she threw that in too. Filing it in the hate-mail box meant that it would be a couple of days before it was opened. She hoped that, if it was legitimate, it wasn’t something urgent.

  She trudged upstairs to her room. Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out and looked at the unfamiliar number. Who was this?

  ‘Hello,’ she said cautiously.

  ‘Kumari? It’s Sinead.’

  ‘Sinead?’ Why was Sinead calling her? She pulled herself together and put on her professional voice. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘It’s just that . . . I was trying to make an appointment to show you the new fabrics I’ve found, but Julia is telling me that you’re not taking appointments at the moment. I thought it was a bit strange. So I thought I’d call you?’ There was a pause, as though Sinead had just remembered something. ‘Oh. Are you on holiday? I didn’t realise. I saw His Royal Highness yesterday, so I didn’t . . . I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have hassled you.’

  ‘No. No, it’s OK. Er . . . Listen, Sinead, it’s fine.’

  ‘No. I’m so sorry. Just let me know when you’re back and I’ll come and see you. Sorry. Bye.’ Sinead hung up.

  Kumari flopped down on the bed. She missed Sinead. Another person whose life she’d messed w
ith. With her gone, Sinead would be out of a job. Of course, Ophelia would make sure she had a good reference, but Sinead had been set to be dresser to the prince’s fiancée and she wouldn’t be able to put that on her CV. She was already working on what Kumari would wear on the day the engagement was announced and was scouting for designers for a wedding dress. They’d agreed to try to give a boost to lesser-known British designers, especially ones with a minority background.

  Oh God. She had let so many people down. She had left the man she loved, caused immense amounts of pain to him, to herself and to other people around her. Why? Because she couldn’t handle the pressure? She had always prided herself in not giving up. Not running away from a fight. And here she was, running away. Hiding in her parents’ house like a child.

  Kumari lay on her back and stared at the ceiling. Had she been selfish? Probably. But the life she would have to lead at the palace would be so restrictive, she couldn’t bear it. And what if her parents were right? What if she lost them? When she and Shane split up, it was pretty awful, but she always had this place to come to, to be safe. Her parents were always there for her. With Ben . . . it would be different, she knew. Amma and Thatha wouldn’t have been comfortable going to the palace and she couldn’t see Ben’s family making any effort to see them. Apart from his sisters, none of them even bothered to see her. They had done their duty and met her. Acknowledged her in the barest terms. That was it. Ophelia did her best, for the sake of her brother, but her influence was still limited. But even to Ophelia, Kumari was an opportunity, a way to channel the things that she herself wasn’t allowed to do. So the press wasn’t too far off with the suggestion that there was a PR angle. But that was only because someone spotted an opportunity to use what was already there.

  But what was she to Ben? She was a woman he loved enough to give his mother’s diamond to. Not an experiment. Not a PR stunt. Just a woman he’d fallen in love with. Strange. The thought that he didn’t love her had never occurred to her. He was the one who noticed her, he pursued her; when she first wanted to run away, he persuaded her to stay. She believed he loved her. And she loved him. But did she love him enough to stay and follow the rules?

  There was a knock on the bedroom door. Kumari ignored it. Her mother came in anyway.

  ‘Kumari, come and eat something. It’s the evening and you haven’t eaten anything since that slice of toast this morning, have you?’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Darling, you can’t starve yourself. If you’re so unhappy, why don’t you call him and apologise?’

  ‘Amma, you know why.’

  Amma sat down on the side of the bed and touched Kumari’s hair. Kumari shuffled over and laid her head on her mother’s lap. ‘So there are rules and traditions,’ Amma said. ‘You said to me that those didn’t matter because you loved him. What changed?’

  ‘They want me to give up everything – my job, my clothes, my friends, you.’

  Amma stroked her hair gently. ‘To be fair, they never asked you to give up your family.’

  ‘They may as well have. Like you said, you’d never be comfortable or even particularly welcome there and any children we had would never be able to come and see you. I can’t lose you.’

  ‘You’ll never really lose us. We’ll always be your parents,’ said Amma. ‘I didn’t mean to make you throw away your happiness just to please us.’

  ‘I—’ She frowned. Was she using her parents’ fears as an excuse? Yes. Probably. Not only was she making Ben a laughing stock, she was making her parents feel guilty too. She was an awful person. She groaned.

  Amma said nothing, just continued stroking her hair.

  ‘What should I do, Amma?’

  ‘I can’t tell you what to do. You need to work that out for yourself.’

  ‘If I go back, I’ll have to deal with that stifling world again.’ Tears pooled at the corners of her eyes. ‘But I miss him, Amma. I miss him so much.’

  ‘So perhaps you need to decide whether missing him is better or worse than being in the stifling world. Imagine yourself in a future without him.’

  Right now, it felt worse. The absence of Ben was a smouldering hole in her chest. The embers of it threw out sparks from time to time and made her want to die.

  ‘I’ll tell you what, though,’ said Amma. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything put you off your food before.’

  Even that reminded her of Ben, asking her about steak and salad. The tears escaped and ran into her hair.

  Chapter 24

  The Northern Paragon

  Prince opens new primary school

  Prince Benedict opened a new school, St Crispin’s Primary School, in Halifax. The new school caters for the catchment opened up by the new housing development.

  When asked whether the fact that his new girlfriend, Kumari Senavaka, hails from Leeds had made him feel more affectionate towards the north, the prince replied, ‘I’ve always been fond of the north. Who wouldn’t be?’

  The prince later sat with the Year 1 class and helped them do some collage work.

  The Daily Watch

  Is Prince Benedict going back to his old ways and does Kumari know?

  Prince Benedict was seen emerging from a private party last night with a woman who wasn’t his girlfriend. It appears that he took home Gwyneth Ellesmere-Jones, whom he had a relationship with several years ago. His new girlfriend, whose right to privacy he publicly defended two months ago, was nowhere to be seen.

  Sources close to Kensington Palace have speculated that things may not be rosy with the unusual couple as Kumari has cancelled a lot of her appointments with palace officials in the past week.

  Kumari lay on her stomach on the living-room floor and stared at the paper. The picture had been taken as they were coming out of a doorway, Benedict’s arm was behind Gwyneth, so it could have conceivably been resting on her back. Or, more likely, not touching her at all. Benedict was half turned towards Gwyneth, speaking to someone behind her. Clearly visible over Gwyneth’s shoulder was Rhodri. Kumari peered closer. Because she knew what she was looking for, she could just make out Dave in the background.

  As far as she could see, Ben had gone somewhere with his friend and friend’s sister. The stuff about Gwyneth was nonsense. The papers did like to make up things.

  She sighed and found another picture of Benedict, sitting at a table, talking to schoolchildren. He was smiling, but he looked tired. She wondered if he was OK. If she had done any real damage. There would be fallout from her leaving. Embarrassment, at the very least. She hated that she’d done anything to hurt him.

  She missed him so much it physically hurt her chest. It was as though there was a burning hole inside her.

  Had she done the wrong thing? She had left because she felt trapped, her choices taken away from her. But now, she seemed to be trapped in her own home. People in the close were not likely to give away the fact that she’d come home, but she couldn’t go into town without the risk of someone snapping a picture. With the press wondering what had happened to her, it was likely to spark another flurry of interest in her and in Ben. She didn’t want that.

  Her phone rang. It was Ophelia. Again. Ophelia had been ringing daily, sometimes more than once. Kumari had ignored the calls. She had considered blocking her number, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. Weirdly, she missed Ophelia wafting in unannounced. She missed Sinead discussing the events she needed to go to and what impression they wanted to make. With a jolt, she realised that she’d been making friends.

  She stared at the phone she was holding. She had to hand it to Ophelia for being persistent. She wasn’t going to stop phoning.

  Kumari sighed and took the call.

  ‘About bloody time,’ said Ophelia. ‘What the bloody hell are you thinking?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Kumari said. Ophelia had been a friend in the cold, duty-bound corridors of Kensington. All she had asked in return was that Kumari didn’t hurt her brother. And Kumari had
n’t kept her side of the bargain.

  ‘You should be,’ said Ophelia. ‘You bloody idiot. How could you do this to him? Seriously, Kumari, I thought you were made of stronger stuff than that.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m sorry. It’s all very well for you. You were brought up with all that protocol and etiquette, and people knowing exactly where you are at all times. It’s all normal to you. But I’m not used to it. I’ve been making my own choices for so many years now. After that, it’s so hard to go to a place where there are rules for everything. Where I have to check everything I do and say, and have someone watching my every move. I don’t know how you can bear it, and frankly, I can’t.’

  ‘Well, that much is obvious,’ Ophelia snapped. ‘But why did you even try? If you didn’t love Benedict enough to bend a little, why did you even start this thing? You know, if he’d wanted to, he could have just kept you and nobody would have said anything. He wouldn’t have been the first prince to have kept a mistress. But no. Benedict wanted to marry you. Make you official. Now you’ve made him a laughing stock. Thank goodness the papers haven’t got wind of it yet. There’s going to be a shitstorm when they work out you’re no longer together.’

  The thought that she’d embarrassed Ben made her feel awful. As much as she hated being told off, Ophelia had a point. She hadn’t been thinking about Ben. She had seen only the discomfort she was feeling. ‘Is he OK?’ she asked quietly.

  There was a pause. ‘He’s . . . not great,’ said Ophelia. ‘But I dare say he’ll get over it.’ She gave a sniff of mirthless laughter. ‘He’ll just take up drowning his sorrows again, like he did when he got back from the army. Maybe take up one of the more “suitable” matches that they keep waving in front of him.’