The Royal We

by Heather Cocks

  “Just leave it,” Nick said frostily.

  I remember once waiting for the Tube and thinking, as its oncoming headlights gleamed brighter in the tunnel, I could just jump. Not because I wanted to die, but because sometimes your mind dangles the worst-case behavior in front of you specifically so that you can be aware that you’re choosing to resist it. They call them intrusive impulses, and mine stacked up high: throw my arms around a clearly reeling Nick; scream at Nick that Freddie was right; smack Richard upside the head and ask him why he was such a raging douchelord; take Agatha and Nigel and crack their skulls together like the Neanderthal they apparently thought I was. Instead, I casually studied my ski map as if none of this was unfolding in front of me. I just wish Clive had told me sooner that I’d been fake-reading it upside-down.

  Suddenly, Gaz patted his stomach. “I’m famished,” he said loudly. “Anyone care to dive into some fondue? My treat.”

  “Not likely. You’d faster see a yeti than Gaz with cash,” Cilla said.

  As they bickered, Clive gently turned us all toward the door as if it were the most natural time in the world to take our leave. As the three of them swept me out of there, I heard Agatha’s voice.

  “Oh, Nicky, just don’t go off and get engaged until I’ve at least introduced you to Ursula Northrop-Cumber’s daughter Ruth,” she pleaded. “She’s so aristocratic. She speaks four languages!”

  “I’m not getting engaged, Agatha,” Nick said firmly, and that was the last thing I heard before the door slammed behind us.

  There was something undeniably awkward about hearing him say that so staunchly, particularly after Bea’s lecture the previous night. Cilla seemed to feel like she had to distract me from it, dispatching Gaz and Clive in the direction of the ski lift and regaling me over lunch with the latest details of her on-off relationship with Tony. He had not been invited to Klosters, most likely to prevent headlines like PRINCES HIT POWDER WITH SOHO COKE HO.

  “He swears it’s his business partner who’s doing it,” Cilla said, poking at her bratwurst. “I know you think it’s mental of me to still be with him. He’s just a sight better than any of the blokes ’round my sister’s village. And nannying her children takes it out of me. All I want is a bit of fun when I’m in London.”

  “But there might be plenty of fun guys who don’t also potentially sell drugs,” I said.

  “Is my bar that low?” she groaned. “Am I turning into Joss?”

  “Just as long as you don’t start giving me sweaters,” I told her, a rueful glance down at my own. It was not the last time that my wardrobe would publicly be found wanting.

  Nick caught up with Cilla and me as we were strapping on our skis for another run. He had changed into an orange ski suit with green piping, and with that and a knit cap and goggles, he looked totally anonymous.

  “Irish colors?” I asked. “Interesting pick.”

  “They’ll never expect it,” Nick said.

  The three of us carried our skis to the enclosed gondola and rode it all the way up to the top, passing quaint mountainside cafes and looking down at skiers of every ability carving through the fluffy powder, and occasionally wiping out. In fact, we were about to disembark when a round-looking figure careened down one of the steeper runs, totally out of control, screaming as he went past.

  “There goes Gaz,” Cilla observed calmly.

  He rolled like a ball and then skidded to a stop, spread-eagle, in the snow.

  “He can barely ski at all,” Cilla added. “He just doesn’t like Clive to feel superior.” She sighed. “I’d best go make sure he hasn’t broken his leg again.”

  “I’ll take you down the hill, Bex,” Nick said as she skied away. “It’ll be nice to slow down and actually see the views.”

  “Speak for yourself,” I said. “I will be watching my feet.”

  We pushed over to a patch of snow-covered trees and plopped down in the powder to get our gear in place. Nick sat with his back to most of the other skiers and pulled up the hood on his parka while rubbing sunscreen onto his face.

  “My family has been in rare form,” he said. “I’m sorry about that whole scene down there today. That reporter’s question had me in such a mood, I didn’t even defend you properly until you were already gone.”

  “Don’t sweat it. I understand.”

  “I just can’t believe we’ve got a leak,” he said. “I promised I’d keep you out of the papers.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I insisted. “You can’t control the entire world.”

  He blew out his lips. “Clearly, I can’t even control my own corner of it.” He stared out at the mountain. “I just wanted it to be on our terms, always. What’s the bloody point of being who I am if I can’t even make it safe for you to be with me?”

  “Nick. A question from a reporter is not going to scare me off,” I said.

  He gave me a grateful smile, then fell silent, fiddling with the straps on his poles.

  “Gaz seems happy in his legal training. Clive’s a reporter, just like he always wanted. Joss is busy making clothes. Even Cilla seems to enjoy taking care of her sister’s children,” he finally said. “I’m going to sound ungrateful, but I’m so jealous that they get to pick. They can be anything. Even Freddie gets some choice, but I have none. I’m stuck hanging about looking cheerful until everyone around me dies and I’m given a job I am required by genetics to do.”

  His voice cracked. I’d never heard him sound so dark about his life.

  “I am a placeholder,” he said. “And I am a chess piece. And obviously, this comes with a lot of advantages. I know I am extraordinarily lucky. But do you know what it’s like to never, ever be asked what you want to be when you grow up? Or being told not to bother about it because it doesn’t matter?”

  “No,” I said softly, wanting to hug him and hating that I couldn’t.

  “I do sometimes look forward to military service,” he admitted. “But is that because it’s the best of the options I have, or because I actually want to do it? It’s so bloody hard to tell. I might never know.”

  A certain sense of déjà vu crawled over me. “You mean, is it good on its own, or is it just good by default,” I translated.

  I saw how stuck he felt, and it tore at me. This was also the most monumental confidence he’d ever shared, and I wanted to choose my next words carefully.

  “I think,” I said slowly, “that you can’t change what you were born into, or what your life has been up to now, but you can control what it’s like going forward. Listen, you are who you are. Richard is your father, and one day, you are going to inherit the throne. That’s just the reality. But you are not a job, Nick. You’re not a title. You’re you. And there has to be a way for you to make this into a life you want to live. You’re still in charge of yourself. That has to be the key, don’t you think? That’s the touchstone.”

  He poked me in the leg with his pole. “You’re the only touchstone I need,” he said, his voice blazing with feeling.

  Looking back at this conversation, I want to hug both of us. We really did think we could handle anything as long as we had each other.

  “You know that if I weren’t…the person I am…it would be totally different, right?” he whispered, urgently. “I would be going up to strangers in the street and telling them about you. The last thing I want to do is pretend we’re just friends.”

  “I know,” I said, and I blew him the tiniest, most imperceptible peck, then looped my ski poles over my wrists, planted them in the snow, and heaved myself to my feet gracelessly.

  “And now you’ve seen our seedy underbelly,” Nick said. “The press, the leaks, the squabbling, Julian drunk before noon. And Nigel. I wouldn’t blame you if you walked away.”

  “You’ll have to do a lot worse than Nigel to spook me,” I told him. “Now, quit stalling. Unless you’re afraid to race me. Ready?”

  He rose and studied me intently.

  “I’m ready,” he said, leaning over
and kissing me, briefly, tenderly, perfectly, not for more than five seconds.

  We never even saw the flash.

  Chapter Four

  ‘POSH AND BEX?’

  Nicky Goes Snoggers in Klosters, says XANDRA DEANE

  The Prince has a pauper: Single since breaking the heart of his most recent socialite, Prince Nicholas was caught on vacation kissing an Oxford classmate.

  And she’s an American.

  Nicholas, 24, was giving lip service to the plain brunette during the annual Royal Family trip to Klosters, the Swiss resort favoured by the Lyons clan for its privacy. Sources identify her as Rebecca “Bex” Porter, 23, an exchange student who met Nicholas at Oxford three years ago, and seduced him before the Prince broke it off with cuckolded party planner India Bolingbroke.

  “She’s quite persistent,” one former classmate says of Porter. “Not bad looking. Bit heavy on the eyebrows, maybe. But she set her cap for him early on, and she got him.”

  The Palace hasn’t issued a comment, but sources claim the Princess of Wales is particularly distraught…

  “Well,” Bea said, drumming her fingers on a folded copy of the Daily Mail that sat on my dining table. “The good news is, they think you’re unemployed.”

  “If that’s good news, then I’m in trouble,” I said, accepting a mug of cocoa from Cilla.

  “Don’t drink that. It’s going to ruin your skin.” Bea snatched it and handed it to a brooding Pudge, whose face presumably was sacrificial. “And it is good news, because at least nobody is making fun of your ridiculous job yet, although it’s only a matter of time.”

  The paparazzi snaps had hit the Internet the night they were taken. Nick was so upset that he put us on a charter straight back to England—where it turned out photographers were already lying in wait at Kensington. So he had PPO Furrow take us to my flat instead, refusing to spend New Year’s Eve apart; by the time we woke up the next morning, though, the press had found and surrounded my hovel in Shepherd’s Bush, forcing us to hole up there for several more days. It was us against the world, except for the occasional moments where Nick’s mood would char and I’d lose him to the wilds of whatever was whipping through his brain.

  Once Nick had safely escaped, Cilla called an emergency summit at my flat with Joss and Bea (with a typically bleak Pudge in tow; so far she’d kept her New Year’s resolution of sobriety, but there was no cold turkey plan for rage). Lady Bollocks may not have been my biggest fan, but she is never intimidated by a crisis and she loves telling people what to do.

  “Right. You’ll need basic dresses, nothing too short, and no blouses you can’t wear with a bra,” Bea said, starting to check off her list items on her finger.

  “Oh, I’ve got some frocks,” Joss piped up. “Made a few at school the other day that got the attention of an investor, actually.”

  “Don’t be batty. She can’t go all experimental and psychotic now,” Bea said, then turned back to me. “Get some skinny jeans, not those wretched things you had on the other day. I don’t know where you even got those. Cilla, write this down.”

  I expected a protest, but Cilla was already looking for a pen.

  “Map out three alternate routes to work and vary them every day,” Bea continued. “Also find a shortcut branching off from each one, as an escape valve, if you need it. Carry the number of a car service. Don’t let Nick pay for it. Link it to your credit card.”

  “He won’t like that,” I said.

  “I don’t care,” Bea said.

  “He can’t be seen paying your way,” Cilla said, scribbling furiously on a notepad.

  “They’ll start going through your rubbish, Bex, so take it out in the wee hours and change up the bins you use,” Bea went on. “And for God’s sake, shred anything interesting and divide the pieces into separate bags: credit card bills, prescriptions, receipts. If Nick is in the habit of writing you love letters, burn them. Or bury them, I suppose.”

  “Fucking eat them,” Pudge said.

  “Am I not allowed to keep them?” I wondered, archly.

  “Certainly, if you want a ticking time bomb,” Bea retorted. “Have you ever read a tabloid? They’ll use anything they can get their hands on, however they can get their hands on it. Do not get comfortable with any reporters and do not wave at the paparazzi, even if they seem sympathetic. If you engage, they draw you in, and then suddenly you’re on the front page looking like you want to whack one of them with your umbrella.”

  “Like Britney Spears,” I said.

  “No,” Cilla said. “Like Bea.”

  “Fuck it,” Pudge said, sitting up from her slouch on my sofa. “Fuck it all. They want your soul. Don’t let them take it. They’ll eat you alive.”

  She then slumped back, as if someone had hit the “off” switch. Bea rubbed her temples and stared out the window. Outside, the clouds had whipped themselves into fat, dark puffs, promising something cold and wet that might at least give the paparazzi pause about continuing to camp out on my doorstep.

  “Pudge’s second trip to rehab was right after my eighteenth birthday party,” Bea finally said. “She rode a horse into the living room. Paparazzi were on our family for days because Prince Richard had been at the party, and…” She looked again at her sister. “Well, don’t talk back. We’ve all done it and we’ve all regretted it.”

  I’d seen paparazzi coverage of other celebrity couples; I wasn’t naïve about the news cycle. But when the lenses turn on you, at first it’s hard to reconcile the thoroughly regular person you are with the person everyone else suddenly finds extraordinary. I was still a half beat behind, so while Bea’s advice was intense, I was also grateful for such a proactive to-do list. My mother, on the other hand, had been so excited by the photo’s appearance in People (under the headline A STAR-SPANGLED PRINCESS?) that she’d turned a recent dinner party into an English tea, to the great surprise of the guests who’d come over expecting a barbeque.

  “Don’t come home for a while,” Dad teased on the phone. “She’s got it bad. If you turned up now, she’d make you walk around with a book on your head.”

  Mom’s voice came down the line: “Bex, that’s a good point, actually,” she said. “You’ve got to stand up straight if you’re going to—”

  “Lay off, Mom,” Lacey hissed, and I could picture her wresting the phone from both of them. I felt a rush of affection until she added, “Let her deal with her eyebrows first. They do need a little work, Bex. You’re going to be a public figure now.” I heard a puff of contentment come down the line. “It’s all moving forward. Finally.”

  But if Lacey could have seen Nick’s face every time he looked at the paper, she wouldn’t have been celebrating, and ultimately, neither was I. We’d lost control, and we were now reacting instead of acting. In retrospect, the Palace should’ve been the one giving me the practical and psychological tools to deal with the aftermath of being discovered. Instead, there was a lot of criticism, but not a whole lot of help. Richard, in fact, gave us the silent treatment for two full weeks. When we were eventually summoned to his private meeting room at Clarence House, the mighty Prince of Wales spent ten minutes glowering before slamming the article on the table and spitting that he wasn’t sure if he was madder at the photographer or at Nick.

  “I can’t believe that’s even a question,” Nick had said. He looked exhausted. His insomnia was at full strength; he probably got three hours of sleep a night.

  “You were stupid,” Richard accused. “You got careless.”

  “It’s Klosters; it’s supposed to be safe!” Nick said. “And it’s not like I was having an orgy. I was kissing my girlfriend.”

  “We’ve all wanted to kiss our girlfriends,” Richard snapped. “You’re the only idiot who got himself photographed.”

  Nick flinched at our girlfriends, and I bumped on it, too, but I kept myself from acknowledging it. It was seriously not the right time.

  “So now what happens?” I ventured.

  Ri
chard’s eyes bored into me. “We can’t lie,” he said. “But we don’t have to tell the truth, either. A no comment will do.”

  “We cannot go public until your relationship is stable,” Barnes informed us.

  “I didn’t realize it was unstable,” I said before I caught myself. Under the table, Nick took my hand.

  “There can be no ups and downs,” Richard hissed. “Once you are out, you are happy. Period.”

  It sounded like a threat. And two hours later, Marj added an ultimatum to the pile.

  “Her Majesty would prefer if you and Nicholas refrained from any more overnights in royal residences, even in separate bedrooms,” she relayed to me by phone, in the imperious tone she uses when she’s working from Eleanor’s script. “Premarital coitus cannot be tacitly sanctioned by the Crown.”

  “I…right,” I said, unable to deny that one even for sport. “So…does that mean Nick is allowed to sleep here now? Or…are you asking us to…?”

  “We’re not that old, Rebecca,” Marj said in her regular voice. “No one wants to stop you from having a shag altogether.” She cleared her throat. “But, er, Her Majesty wishes to convey that if His Royal Highness insists on spending the night, your current situation is undesirable.”

  I felt backed into a corner. The Palace could not be perceived as setting up Nick’s good-time girl in a fancy flat, and nor did I want that to happen, but as a lowly greeting-card artist I couldn’t afford to satisfy the decree on my own. However, this gave my dad the leverage he’d been waiting for, because he’d been itching to move me somewhere nicer for ages, and I’d refused to accept his financial help. So on what remained of Lacey’s winter break, he sent her over with a budget and a mandate, and together we found a gorgeous place in Chelsea: the top floor of a smart redbrick building in a mews just off Old Church Street, with a cloistered back entrance and a petite front garden that set it slightly back from the road. We signed the lease and I spent the year taking gentle teasing from my father that he was spending my entire dowry but was relieved he didn’t have to give up any livestock. Lacey was so taken with my reality inching closer to her England fantasy that she insisted I needed her, and by April, she’d convinced my parents and, somehow, NYU, that she should take a short leave of absence because my unusual circumstance required her moral and emotional support. It would be our first time living together since before I went to Oxford, and I was happy about it, even if it was only for an extended summer. Everything was changing so quickly; maybe having Lacey back in my life would help things feel the same.