by Anna Bloom
My head shook and it splattered my tears onto the desk. “She’s mine, Janine. Just mine and no one else’s.”
“Darling,” Janine reached her hand for mine squeezing my fingers. “We know that, but we want to protect you.”
A boiling rage pressurised my chest cavity, but it was dragged down with an enormous weight of shame. The two things tempered each other, boiling and cooling, boiling and cooling, two opposites. The truth and the secret.
The truth. I didn’t know who Daisy’s father was.
The desperate secret that I’d never wanted to find out. Never wanted to give anyone the chance to take her away from me.
Never wanted to be judged for not being good enough.
But being judged all the same.
“Leia, Oliver is trying to help. He’s got a team looking into this before the news can break.”
I huffed a breath.
“Oliver?”
“I didn’t know what else to do. I knew it would hurt you, so I reached out to the person I knew would protect you.”
My mouth opened, no words to be found.
“Leia, it’s okay. No one is going to take Daisy away. She calls the future king Daddy for God’s sake; no one is going to argue with that.”
“Oliver knows?” I barked. “How long?”
Janine flinched. “Just a few days, that’s all. He said he’d get a team to look into it and then he’d talk to you.”
“I can’t believe you’d keep this from me.” Janine keeping a secret wasn’t the worst of it. Ollie had promised. He’d promised me in that cottage in Cornwall that he would never do anything like this again.
Betrayal stung like poison.
“Leia, it’s not like you think, I promise. I called him because I wanted to know the facts first. Better we know everything before—”
“Before someone sells their story. Tells the world I got high one night and had sex with a total stranger.” I shuddered a breath. “Before someone tells the paper the future king’s girlfriend has no clue who the father of her child is because she took so many pills and smoked so much weed in one evening she passed out and never knew what had happened.”
Janine sat in silence while all my words bubbled to the surface.
“If that story breaks it will kill us. The press will never ever let it go. The royal family will never be able to accept Daisy and me; the shame would be too great. That’s worse than my own mother being a heroin addict. That’s me admitting that I’m like her. That just like she never knew who my dad was, I’ve done exactly the same thing.”
Janine still waited.
“Oliver’s going to cover it up, isn’t he? He’s going to make it disappear to keep us together.” I grabbed at my chest, trying to keep myself together. “This is why he wouldn’t agree to his father’s suggestion of giving Daisy a title, because he knows he can’t until the story is dead and buried.”
Bending at the waist, I gagged. Tears splattered the stupid moleskin skirt, rolling down the expensive leather boots.
“Leia. Look at me.”
I couldn’t. Janine, she’d saved me, so many times. Now she’d kept a secret unlike any other.
“Some man is going to tell the world he’s Daisy’s dad and that I never told him.”
That dark secret; the wish I could keep Daisy to myself for all eternity, crashed to the surface of my consciousness. “It was never intentional.” My words blurted. “Mum died and it all happened so quickly. I’d only done the pregnancy test a couple of days before I found her. I’d gone to school. I’d been looking at all the boys, trying to see if anything could jog my memory. I didn’t know who to talk to, who to ask. What do you say to someone?”
“Leia. It’s not Daisy’s dad.”
I blinked at her, more tears dropping. I needed to get a grip.
I couldn’t, couldn’t grip anything.
“It’s a woman who’s lived in Douglas House all her life. Her son, Jacob, he was in your year at school and lived two floors above you.”
The echo of that front door slamming echoed in my head again; my feet pounding in the stairwell.
It had been a climb up the stairs in shame, not down.
“Jacob?” I tried to reach into my memory, trying to push through the wall of black to find anything. Nothing; just black and pain. Destruction and shame. “So this Jacob has realised Daisy’s a royal meal ticket?”
“Leia, Jacob is dead. He was killed in action three years ago.”
I stared at her. “What do you mean?”
“It seems Jacob was just as desperate to leave those flats as you were.”
I couldn’t get any air in my lungs.
“He’s dead?”
“Yes.”
“So we don’t even know if this story is credible? It’s just a mother who’s putting two and two together?”
“It’s a simple DNA test to find out.”
I shook my head and Janine reached back out for my fingers, squeezing them harder than before. “She’s a mother who’s lost her only child. Leia, that’s a story even you should understand.”
I shook my head and grabbed my bag, standing from the chair on trembling legs.
“How long have you known about this, Janine?”
She hesitated but then met my eye. “Since you and Oliver came back from Cornwall. I’ve been trying to piece it all together, but then last week I realised I needed more help.”
“That’s been weeks. You could have told me. I would done something.”
“What would you have done?”
“I would have never let myself go to the palace. I would never have pretended to be anything other than I’m not.”
“Leia…”
I turned, unable to look my old friend in the eye.
Seventeen
“Leia, you have to get ready.” Vanessa wrung her hands as she hovered in the bedroom doorway. Daisy and I had the duvet pulled up to our chins while Cinderella played out on the television.
I couldn’t let go of Daisy. My hugs had been too tight since I’d collected her from school. The press, still there, had waved, expecting me to talk to them like I’d started to do, my theory being if I gave them something then they would stop looking for it.
All that theory had disintegrated into dust.
I’d got out of the car leaving Isabella inside and hid behind the broad shoulders of the bodyguard, unable to ignore the sinking feeling of doom in my stomach. With every call of my name it felt more and more like the press knew my story, knew my deepest darkest truths.
Jacob.
Funny I should find out his name right now. All these years of not knowing, and then suddenly it’s there, a truth that can’t be ignored. Actions that I took that have consequences.
Janine.
Oliver.
People making moves to protect me, out of love, sure. But they can’t protect me from my own fears.
No one can.
“Vanessa, I don’t feel well. Please send my apologies.” I sunk lower under the duvet, breathing in the scent of Daisy’s strawberry shampoo.
“You can’t send apologies to a state banquet. It’s not how it works. All members of the family have to be there for the Russian president, it’s expected.”
“I’m not family.”
“Leia!”
“Bloody hell.” I grumbled as Nana swept into the room rather like a World War II tank.
“Shh!” Daisy whispered.
“Get out of bed this instant.” Nana pulled at the duvet and then stared in horror at what she found below. “Oh my days, are you wearing those awful pyjamas again?”
“Leave my nightclothes out of this.”
“Leia, I’ve just come all the way across London to be here to babysit.” She perched on the end of the bed. “What is going on with you?”
“Bad day.”
“I can see that.” Nana pulled out her phone and opened up a news app where a picture of me hiding from the press was the most newsworthy hi
ghlight of the afternoon.
Bastards.
“I thought we were through this?”
“I told you. It’s been a bad day.” I hated them, but tears whirled up again.
“You and Oliver had a row?” Nana dug deeper and I cringed.
No. Not yet. I didn’t know what to say about him and Janine hiding things from me. I couldn’t even face him to ask.
And now I had to put on a stupid frickin ballgown and go and stand by his side; the woman who brought scandal everywhere she went, with everything she did.
Jacob… a soldier in a grave who never knew his daughter. Maybe.
It’s a simple DNA test.
And then what… another lie? Another pay off?
“Vanessa, could you take Daisy for me please? I’ve got the makings of epic hot chocolates in the bag on the kitchen counter.” Nana took control.
Daisy glanced at me but then slipped out of my hold and I ached at the cold air that snuck into her space.
I watched her go, brushing at my wet cheeks. “She’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted, you know that?”
“We all know that, Leia. What’s going on with you?” Settling at my side, she reached out and slid her hand up and down my arm.
I dragged in a breath and opened my mouth to tell her, but I couldn’t find the words. I didn’t want to say them.
“Leia, you know you have to go to this dinner. To not go would be an affront to the royal family, the Queen; you don’t want to be rude, do you?”
“I’m always rude, aren’t I?”
“You like to pretend to be rude. I think we all know it’s an act.”
“A woman has come forward. She thinks Daisy is the daughter of her dead son.” My head pounded.
Nana stilled for a moment, her breath oozing out in one long exhale. “Oh.”
“Oh?”
“Leia, I’m not surprised. Are you… really?”
“Uh, yes. No one knows about her, never has.”
Nana patted my hand, her skin dry and crinkly like a paper bag used too many times. “Leia, my gorgeous, but utterly ridiculous granddaughter, everyone knows about her. Everyone. I can’t believe you weren’t expecting this to happen.”
“Why though? It’s not as though I told some guy I was pregnant and then ran away. Nobody knew. She was my secret.”
“Leia, nothing about you is secret now. Not where you buy your clothes, not where you went to school, not what you like to eat for lunch. Everyone knows everything. That’s the choice you made when you decided to be with him.”
I shook my head. “No one knows anything about me, much like they don’t know anything about the royal family. No one knows the Queen is probably the nicest person in the history of the universe, no one knows the King mucks out his own stables every day.” I trailed off, unable to articulate the things I knew about John.
“So what happens now? Why are you hiding under the duvet like a teenager instead of going to a dinner with the Russian president?
“Oliver knew. He knew this woman had come forward. Janine told him. They kept it from me.”
Nana smoothed a lock of hair behind her ear and I had to wonder, albeit briefly, why I didn’t inherit the good hair genes. Funny I only had a vague recollection of my own mother’s hair: knotty and greasy and always scraped back as she forwent personal hygiene in the search for her next fix. “They are trying to protect you.”
“No. They were trying to manage me.”
She scrunched a face. Now that, Daisy had inherited. “I don’t think so.”
“He’s going to try to find a way to make the problem go away. The family aren’t allowed to let internal matters reach outside ears.”
“Do you know that for a fact?”
“Well, no.”
“So you don’t know how he feels, or what he is doing? Right now, he’s standing in the reception for a state dinner and wondering where his partner is.”
“If we were true partners, he would have told me this days ago when he found out.”
“Or maybe he wanted the facts before he brought something to your plate that he knew would hurt you, hurt Daisy.”
“Or hurt his family.”
Nana stood up, her movements abrupt. “Leia. Stop hiding.”
I met her eyes. “What if someone wants to take her away from me? What if it makes people say I’m a bad mother, more than they already are?”
“Then, for fuck’s sake, show them you’re not.”
A tear slipped down my cheek. “I should have gone and looked for that guy.”
Nana’s shoulders sagged. “Is that what this is about? Guilt?”
I nodded, my words too tight to vocalise.
“Leia, you didn’t even know you were keeping Daisy. Your reasons for not going back to those flats and searching for a face you wouldn’t have recognised goes deeper than simple guilt.”
To my utter surprise Nana’s eyes filled with tears. “You’ve always protected your daughter, but now you have to let other people in to help you do that. Don’t fail the way I did. Make the right choices, do the right thing.”
“You didn’t fail your daughter, Nana. She failed you.”
“You’re a mother, Leia. You know that’s not the truth.” She wiped at her face and pulled herself up straight. “Now, go, be who you have to be now.”
I pulled in a deep breath that was tinged with regret and loss and then I swung my legs out of the bed. “Where’s the dress? Vanessa! I need to get dressed now.”
My poor lady-in-waiting almost fell through the door with relief.
“I’m sorry.” I nodded at her.
“No need, Ma’am. We can still get you there.”
I watched myself in the mirror as she helped me into the dress, wondering just who I was seeing in the reflection. I didn’t think I knew her anymore. If I ever did.
I crunched over the gravel, my attention focused on not falling over in the black high heels; they had a fancy name that didn’t mean that much to me.
When a shape moved to the side of the building, I gave a little jump.
“Oliver?”
He peeled away from the shadows, his face half hidden, his inky hair blending with the night sky. “I didn’t think you’d come. You haven’t answered any of my messages all afternoon.”
I nodded mechanically, a sharp bop of my head. “It’s been a difficult day.”
His hand reached for me, his fingers stretching. “Bella told me you’d been to Bright Futures and seen Janine.”
Another nod. “Yes.”
“Leia.” His shiny shoes, to match his black tuxedo, crunched over the gravel. “I was going to tell you. I promise on everything I love. I just wanted to find out first how credible the story was.”
Another nod. I’d get a crick neck at this rate.
“You can understand why your hiding things hurts though?” I swallowed, trying to stop my words from shaking. “It’s only been months since you promised me you’d never do something like that again.”
“Leia, I swear I would never do that again.”
My hand smoothed over the lapel of his jacket. “So that’s not why you refused your dad’s idea of giving Daisy a title? Because you were worried we were about to bring scandal down on your family again?”
Oliver face dropped open with shock, his deep eyes registering a flash of fire. “I haven’t even told anyone. I wouldn’t. We will have to, and probably soon, but that’s not what prevented me agreeing with the suggestion.”
“You know they will tell you to pay her off, this woman who lost her son; the woman who might have a granddaughter she’s never met? It’s your family’s way.”
He dropped his gaze, his shoulder’s sagging. “It’s not my way, Leia. You’ve taught me something new. And I’m battling here, every day is a fight for us to be able to be who we want to be, but you are worth it for me, worth the stand to make myself something other than what has been predicted from my birth. Worth the battle.”
�
��So why don’t you want Daisy to have a title? Wouldn’t it protect her more if the King gave her a precedent that means she’s under his care and duty?” The words Ward of the Crown had been brandished about. I’d recoiled at the time, but now my need to protect Daisy outweighed everything.
“Leia. I said no...” He hesitated, running his tongue along his lower lip, his gaze burning as it traced over my face.
For some reason I couldn’t explain my heat raced, my breath caught.
“Because I want her to be mine. I want to adopt her, to be her dad.”
Shit. My heart.
“Blugh?”
“I love her. She’s everything. One day, assuming you don’t murder me for being a tosser, we will have our own children. I never want Daisy to believe for one moment she isn’t anything other than one hundred percent mine. That I’m committed to her with all my heart.”
Shit. My make-up.
“Ollie.”
“No, wait, let me finish. I said no to the King’s proposition because I want this to come from me. It’s not about limiting scandal, it’s not about doing the right thing. It’s about my heart, something that until I met you, I never gave much consideration to.”
My hand on his lapel tightened, and I pulled him closer, bringing his lips down to mine. I gasped as our mouths connected. He stole every single part of myself and wove me into someone else, a person I could be with him, a person who was meant to love him.
“Leia,” he whispered my name as he pulled us apart. “I’m not going to lie to you. When I knew someone had come forward, I wanted to tear down the palace walls. I don’t want to lose her any more than you do.”
“We aren’t. She’s mine, ours.” For the first time in six years I truly believed this. The wolf I always imagined chasing my tail, calling me out for my secrets and lies, evaporated.
His head dropped to mine and he shuddered against me. “I was glad he was dead, Leia. What sort of person does that make me?”
“I think that makes you a dad, Ollie.”