The Royal We

by Heather Cocks

  It was an impossible wish. That one unguarded second in Klosters marked a sea change in Nick. He stopped drinking or dancing, and started getting frustrated if he felt any of us was imbibing too much, reveling too loudly, lowering our guards. When Lacey returned for the summer and rekindled her dalliance with Freddie, Nick fretted about how careless they might be, what media stoning Lacey or I would receive—or, almost worse, what admonishments would come from Eleanor or Richard. The clouds over his head rivaled anything the British climate could conjure.

  “Pipe down and untwist, Knickers,” Freddie would say, handing him a drink that would go untouched. “You’re not the king yet.”

  “But this is how it starts,” Nick insisted. “You think no one is watching, so you stop being vigilant. And then they pounce.”

  It bothered me that Nick was so daunted. Before, it had been easy to live like we’d begun everything together, like nothing of consequence happened to either of us before that rainy day at Pembroke. But Nick’s almost pathological fear of the headlines, larger than the headlines themselves, reminded me that there had been twenty or so mile markers before me, and I knew surprisingly little about the journey between them.

  * * *

  The paparazzi wasted no time finding my new flat, and furthermore became my regular greeting and salutation anytime I entered or exited Greetings & Salutations. The pictures landed on blogs and message boards that dissected my nose (natural?), my boobs (too small?), my taste (emphatically too boring), and even though Lacey meticulously helped track what I’d worn each week so that I didn’t look like I was living in my own laundry pile, the occasional comment would pop up from within G&S walls with precise details about how often I repeated my shirts. By June, the colleagues who were once disinterested in anything but their own professional frustrations started guiltily closing papers whenever I passed, and I couldn’t grab a Diet Coke from the fridge without hearing whispers about my clothes, or which columnist had spied Ceres at Nick’s favorite club, India at Clarence House, or Gemma Sands at Heathrow. Even the woman who read The Economist every day had swapped it for Hello!

  One especially sweltering summer afternoon, the heat outside causing the industrial carpet in our office to reek even more strongly of chemicals, I was plugging away on a new line of sympathy cards with the meaningless directive “The Modern Condolence.” Two of my coworkers loudly discussed how my gray suede kicks had sold out online since being featured in heat, and even the usual din from Piccadilly Circus—a constant soundtrack of roaring buses and honking horns—wasn’t drowning them out. I couldn’t focus. I had ten cards to illustrate and no inkling whatsoever about which blossoms conveyed a hipper sense of sadness than usual. Frustrated, I pushed my chair backward to stretch my legs, and crashed into something human.

  “Dangerous as ever, Killer,” a familiar voice said.

  “Freddie!”

  I leapt up and hugged him, as everyone within gaping or gasping distance did one or both of those things. Freddie seemed unperturbed by their curiosity, perching rakishly on my desk, a fluorescent light flickering its way to death just over his lavishly cute head. Two extremely unlikely worlds were colliding. The office grapevine would never recover.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Just passing through,” he said blithely. “Piccadilly Circus is wonderful for quiet reflection.” He caught the eye of Pandora Millstone, the old battle-ax who sat in the cube next to mine and wore an endless rotation of olive cardigans. “How are you supposed to have juicy, private conversations if everyone is out in the open, listening to each other?”

  Pandora dropped the highlighter she was holding.

  “Just teasing,” he said, winking at her. “I am here to discuss, er, a commission. A card for, ah, my father’s beloved manservant Barnes. He’s such a…special creature.”

  “Let’s go in the conference room.”

  “Right! Cheerio,” Freddie said to the people in our vicinity. “You look lovely in that cardie…Pandora,” he said, reading her nameplate. “Makes me crave a martini.”

  I grabbed a notepad and all but shoved him into the conference room. It had windows, but at least we could speak privately.

  “Nick is going to kill you,” I said closing the door with a firm click. “People will totally gossip about this.”

  “You’d be surprised. A spot of charm goes a long way,” Freddie said smugly.

  “Humble as always,” I said. “What’s up? Don’t tell me you just dropped by to give Pandora a thrill.”

  “It’s a fringe benefit. I rather enjoy flummoxing people,” he said. “Mostly I just wanted to say hi. I had bits to do at Clarence House that were hopelessly dull, so I thought, why not pop by for some greeting-card intrigue?”

  “I didn’t realize Frederick Wales could just ‘pop by’ anywhere,” I said.

  Freddie shrugged as he took a seat at the head of the table, spinning in the chair like a child. “Don’t tell, but this area is so full of tourists that I often wander around by myself and nobody notices,” he said. “They never think to look. It’s quite relaxing.”

  “I know.” I sat opposite him. “That week before the press found my office was fantastic.”

  “I’m surprised they even bothered looking,” he said. “It’s much better for them to report that you’re a lazy money-grubbing shrew.”

  I ripped a page off my notebook, crumpled it up, and threw it at him.

  “You always make me miss my PPOs, Killer,” he said, swatting it deftly. Then he cocked his head. “How are you handling all of this?”

  “I’m getting by,” I said. “The paparazzi itself isn’t even that bad, honestly. It’s how much Nick hates it that makes it tough.”

  Freddie drummed his fingers on the table. “That’s another reason I stopped by. I wanted to chat about him when I knew he wouldn’t be around.”

  “I knew it.”

  “Knickers is wound tighter than I’ve ever seen him,” Freddie said, leaning forward earnestly. “He’s got veins in his face that don’t exist in most humans, and they’re all bulging out at once. He’s got to get out of his own head. And he won’t listen to me about it at all.”

  “He doesn’t listen to me much, either,” I said. “He’s not dismissive, but there are subjects where he doesn’t let me in, and I haven’t pushed.”

  “Perhaps you should,” Freddie said. “He internalizes things more than anyone I know. I tease him about being so serious and duty-bound, but sometimes I worry that he forgets even poncey future kings are allowed to have feelings.”

  “I said the same thing, once,” I said. Then I smiled affectionately at him as he rubbed his hair, so like his brother. “I’ve never seen you worried like this.”

  “Don’t look at me all misty,” he said. “This isn’t entirely selfless. I’m also bored of him staying in all the time, so I want you to fix him, and then we can all go to Hell.”

  I laughed. Hell was Tony’s latest enterprise, full of drinks laced with spicy peppers, music that only had the words hot, warm, or burn in the titles, open-flame light sources that I knew did not have the proper permits, and no air-conditioning. It was quite literally London’s hottest club.

  “I can try to talk to him, but if I have to be patient then you probably do, too,” I told Freddie.

  “It’s just that we were having such a good time,” Freddie said, leaning back and resting his feet on the table. “Knickers and I have always been close, but we never actually hung out together the way we have since you came along. It was nice. Like being real best mates.” He swallowed. “I miss my best mate.”

  I reached over and squeezed his forearm. “For you, Your Highness, I’ll push him as hard as I can.”

  Freddie gave me such a stunning smile that even my heterosexual male boss, whose turn it was in the rotation of people pretending they needed to walk by the room, gave an audible gasp as he passed. My phone rattled in my pocket, saving me from giving away that I’d heard him.<
br />
  I pulled it out. “Lacey’s here,” I said, quickly texting her to find me in the meeting room. Everyone at G&S was knocking off soon so that maintenance could pretend to fix the climate control; Lacey and I had plans to get manicures (her idea). “Are you guys on this week, or off?”

  Freddie pulled a face. “We’re mostly just friends, Bex.”

  I cocked a skeptical brow.

  “Not everything is about getting my kit off,” he insisted. “Only about sixty percent. Perhaps seventy.”

  I chucked another paper ball at him.

  “Fine. She’s been a very nice friend and I’m glad she’s back,” he said, swatting away my missile. “I like Lacey. I also like Tara and Naomi and Farthing—”

  “I thought Farthing moved to Ireland.”

  “That was Tuppence. Farthing is someone different entirely,” he said impatiently. “Do try and keep up.”

  “Usain Bolt couldn’t keep up.”

  “We’re consenting adults,” he said. “You can’t dangle that twin of yours in front of me and not expect me to jump.”

  The conference room door burst open and Lacey sailed inside.

  “Twice as many paparazzi today,” she said by way of greeting. “And three of them totally whistled at my oh my God, Bex. I hate that shirt. Is it polyester?”

  “My loving sister, ladies and gentlemen,” I said.

  “No gentlemen in here,” Freddie said, getting up to give Lacey a peck on the cheek.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked delightedly, putting a hand on his arm and then rubbing it slightly. In her defense, once you touch Freddie’s bicep, it’s hard not to linger. “Are we still on for tonight?”

  “Of course,” Freddie said. “I never offer a lady something I don’t deliver.”

  Lacey giggled, then came over to me and stared very intently at a spot on my neck.

  “It does look like a hickey,” she announced. “About an hour ago someone tweeted that they saw you in the elevator with one.”

  “I had wondered,” Freddie said. “Doesn’t seem like Knickers’ style, though. I’ve always been afraid he was one of those rose-petals-on-the-bed sort of blokes.”

  I clapped a hand over it. “It’s a curling iron burn!” I protested.

  “I believe you. I know what you’re like with that thing,” Lacey said. “But no one else will think you were actually using a curling iron when they get a look at your hair today.”

  “Ugh. They’re going to want a picture of my neck,” I said. “Any chance you can distract them, Fred?”

  He shook his head, guiltily. “I might have blown off Prince Dick and pretended it was for a Navy thing, so…?”

  I let out a sigh. “I’ll take the bullet,” I said, pulling my hair out of my ponytail to cover my burn.

  “No. It’s all stringy. Put it back up,” Lacey ordered me. “We can stop in the bathroom and use real concealer on the fake hickey.” She sighed. “Too bad we can’t conceal your shirt. I thought I told you to run all new purchases past me.”

  Freddie clapped his hands together. “Right, you two do your thing, and let’s see who gets to the flat faster,” he said. “Remember, when all else fails, just chuck it and run.”

  He saluted and was off, exiting the conference room with a very loud, “The Crown thanks you for your service, Miss Porter. Barnes will be giddy with girlish glee.”

  Lacey shook her head. “What a goofball,” she said affectionately.

  “A goofball and a man-whore,” I said. “Which I say with love. For both of you.”

  Lacey looped her arm around my shoulder. “Don’t worry, I know what he’s like,” she said.

  This made me feel better, until she followed it with, “I’m playing it cool, and it’s working. If you haven’t noticed, I’m the girl he keeps wanting to spend time with.” She sighed happily. “I have this weird feeling we’re both going to get our Prince Charmings.”

  * * *

  Lacey had been right: As soon as we exited the building, a sprawling group of at least twelve photographers, rather than my usual six, sprang to life with a new nosy aggression.

  “Where’s the love bite, Bexy? We know you’ve got one!”

  “Come on, girls, over ’ere, look ’ere.”

  “Got a hickey from Nicky, eh?”

  “Give us a smile—yes, Lacey, that’s right, I saw that, you love it.”

  I nudged Lacey. “Head down,” I hissed.

  “That’s not my best angle,” was her reply.

  The photographers gave chase in an agitated cluster. Lacey and I picked up the pace to try to get away, but half the pack broke off and darted ahead to get in front of us, their frenetic flashes bursting in our faces. With every step, they encircled us tighter and tighter, like hands crumpling a piece of paper. They bumped and buffeted us, swiping at our bags, almost plowed us into traffic, and at least twice I felt hands roughly grab me. Even Lacey—who’d never felt like she was born for the spotlight so much as spotlights were born for her—looked unnerved.

  And that’s what lit my fuse. I stopped short, which caused pandemonium among our stalkers. I turned sharply, and when the ensuing shuffle of bodies created a hole on the opposite side, I darted through it, yanking Lacey along for the ride.

  “Until next time, boys,” she shouted at the confused pack.

  But rather than concede the point, the pack started running after us full bore. We picked up the pace, sprinting around the corner and up Regent Street, dodging in and out of the paths of oncoming pedestrians. I could hear the paparazzi panting behind us, and the click of their cameras, but the further ahead of them we got, the less I cared. It felt so good to act on the sum of all my impulses to run, just run, to do the Bexiest goddamn thing I could imagine, that I actually heard myself let out a delighted cackle. I didn’t want to be careful. I just wanted to be me.

  We wove through side streets to throw them off the scent, burst through various clothing stores that Lacey knew like the back of her hand, and even dodged into Hamleys, the massive seven-floor toy store. We giggled manically, hiding behind pyramids of stuffed toys, as the paparazzi flew past. But when we triumphantly burst onto Regent Street again, we saw they’d tricked us: four of them lay in wait, on all sides, and there was nowhere left to run.

  “Bus, Bex!” Lacey breathed as a double-decker lumbered toward where we stood.

  Without even thinking about it, I dove at the opening in the back and grabbed the chrome pole for stability, the momentum swinging me into the bus and temporarily off my feet. Lacey followed suit, and we saw the photographers, red-faced and frustrated, hunching over, panting, with their hands on their knees. Lacey waved cheekily, and then—after a lecture from the incredibly disgruntled driver, who didn’t care for shenanigans—we paid the fare and hunched down in our seats, feeling like we’d won. It was only once we changed buses toward home that I began to smooth myself out again, and realized that something felt off. Paper, once crumpled, never does go back to being whole again.

  When we finally made it through my front door, any remaining exhilaration wore off when we were greeted by a frowning Nick and an incredibly sheepish Freddie.

  “And how was your day, Bex?” Nick said, a note of challenge in his voice. “Anything exciting to share?”

  Nick had never spoken to me before with anything approaching condescension, and here he was talking to me like I was a child and he was tapping my knee to see if my kick reflex worked. And it did.

  “By your tone, I’m guessing you already know how it went, Richard.”

  Both men sucked in a breath. Freddie let his out first.

  “I told Knickers this was my fault,” he said, handing me his smartphone. “I’m the one who said to chuck it and run.”

  His phone was cued up to a Daily Mail story about me and Lacey leading the paparazzi on a chase through London, painting us as two brats endangering tourists on our selfish lark—as if the whole thing were just a Benny Hill sketch. They even had a photo su
bmitted by a bystander, in which we’re hanging onto the bus poles and giggling, a sweat stain thoughtfully starting to form under my left pit. The article wondered if I had hyperactive glands.

  “Freddie, none of this is your fault,” I said, looking up. “I knew you were joking. I wouldn’t have run if I hadn’t wanted to.”

  “My legs look fantastic,” Lacey murmured as she peered over my shoulder. “I should run in heels more often.”

  “She’s kidding, Nick,” I said, at the sight of what that did to his mood. “I’m sorry. Things got intense and I had to get us out of there.”

  “Please don’t be angry at her,” Freddie said earnestly.

  “I’m not. I’m angry at you,” Nick said, turning on him. “You were there, for some reason. You should’ve called for PPO help, or gotten her a car, or something, anything, other than just being Freddie. I don’t know why neither of you called me.”

  Freddie and I looked at each other. This was why.

  “I did this to myself, Nick,” I said. “Freddie wanted to figure out how to make things better for you, and I’m the one who made it worse. Running was entirely my decision.”

  “And was it your decision that had Freddie and Lacey getting caught doing…whatever the hell that is…at Soho House the other night?” Nick asked. “Scroll down.”

  Lacey obeyed and let out a whistle. “THE OTHER PRINCE AND THE OTHER PORTER,” she read aloud. “It’s a picture of him whispering in my ear.”

  Freddie threw his hands out in exasperation. “How the bloody hell else are you supposed to hear anyone in a loud bar?”