Tilly Maguire and the Royal Wedding Mess

by Emma Grey

  Reuben grips the dashboard beside her, and looks back to monitor the chase. ‘There’s no way you’re going to shake them,’ he says. ‘Don’t risk it.’

  His words only make her stamp her foot deeper on the accelerator and turn on the music, loud, to shut him out.

  Flirt with me, oh, mystery girl, please . . .

  ‘Not that!’ she says, then, in response to his frantic hand signal, swerves around a corner into a laneway lined by hedges, and onto a gravel road, and pushes a button to flick the stereo to a station not playing an Unrequited hit.

  ‘I thought you didn’t know any of our songs,’ Reuben says, and she glares at him.

  ‘And in breaking entertainment news, Unrequited pop idol and playboy to the rich and famous, Reuben Vaughan, appears to be off the market again, ladies. After loving it up with long-time friend and rumoured on-again-off-again girlfriend, Princess Isabelle, just twenty-four hours ago at a London charity ball, England’s most eligible young bachelor has been spotted tonight at an exclusive restaurant in Wallingford, his companion the unknown Australian woman with whom he staged a dramatic exit from the ball last night. Reporters on the scene said the woman confirmed the pair is in a relationship, and that, folks, is the sound of twenty-five million teenage hearts shattering across the globe . . .’

  He shuts it off.

  ‘I thought this is what you wanted,’ Tilly mutters as she practically does a hand-brake turn around a bend.

  ‘Can you slow down a bit?’ he pleads.

  ‘What? No kissing on the first date, Reuben? You surprise me.’

  He tells her there’s a T-intersection coming up, and a laneway not far from the left-turn. Their pursuers have lost some ground and she’s going to risk it. She screams around the corner, floors it for half a mile and screeches into a tiny road, hemmed in by hedges on both sides, where she cuts the engine and lights.

  The silence is punctuated only by their rapid breathing, and by what she imagines to be two racing heartbeats as they look back and watch headlight after headlight speed right past the turn-off and up the road. She’s done it.

  When she’s convinced she’s lost them all, she glances back at Reuben, who is staring unreadably at her. She can’t tell if it’s fear or admiration in his blue eyes, or something else, and she doesn’t want to know. She is furious.

  She goes to start the engine again.

  ‘Just wait five minutes,’ he says quickly. ‘Be certain they’re gone.’

  It’s cold in the car without the engine running and she shivers. ‘Tell me why I kissed you back there,’ she says quietly.

  He is grasping for the right words.

  ‘And don’t joke about this, Reuben. No stupid lines about me throwing myself at you or finding you irresistible, because I don’t.’

  He runs his hand through his blond hair in frustration, clearly struggling in the interrogation seat while he attempts to craft an acceptable answer to her question. ‘It’s going to take longer than five minutes to explain,’ he says.

  ‘Fine. We’ll sit here all night.’

  ‘You’re cold.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘I do.’ He holds her gaze, and she feels her heart quicken again though there isn’t a photographer in sight. An inconvenient memory pushes its way through all her anger. Their kiss on the steps outside the restaurant. Dragging him close. Taking him entirely by surprise at first, both totally acting a part . . . until he’d started kissing her back. She’d felt his arms wrap around her and pull her tight against his body. One hand had inched slowly up her spine, fingers threading through the chignon at the nape of her neck, pulling it loose, while the other took her arm, then touched her face, gently . . .

  ‘You said you can’t act,’ she accuses him.

  ‘I can’t,’ he replies, his voice gravelly. She shivers again. If that wasn’t acting, what was it? ‘It’s probably safe to go back to the house now,’ he suggests.

  It doesn’t feel safe. It feels like she’s voluntarily thrown herself into a situation more dangerous and complicated than the plot she’s trying to wrangle for her book. Reuben is holding out on her. She doesn’t understand what could possibly be so important that her intuition had compelled her to trust him back there, immediately after he’d comprehensively let her down. And now to go back to the house on their own? After that kiss.

  Stick to the script, Tilly, she lectures herself as she turns the key and brings the car to life again. Pop stars are meant to kiss like that. You’re nothing to Reuben but a convenient part of some bizarre, bigger plan and this decoy romance couldn’t be any more imaginary if it was the plot of your own fiction . . .

  Chapter 20

  This decoy romance feels real, Reuben thinks, gripping the seat as she drives, marginally closer to the speed limit, back to the estate. Why couldn’t he have selected some person a lot less ‘Tilly’ for this charade? And how much will he have to tell her, really? Surely not everything. Not the ‘big picture’. Not the secret he’s known since he was eleven and has gone to enormous lengths to hide.

  This is the first time in his life that his own secret has really mattered. The first time he’s thought through what it might mean to reveal it to someone else. Up until now, everything has been a game. The chances he’s taken. The career he’s forged. The brief relationships he’s fallen into and out of as he and the rest of the band have risen to fame and had the good life handed to them.

  Until last night, it had all felt predictably secure. The band would stay together, making music, touring the new album, taking a break, making another album, touring . . . until they got sick of it and stopped. And none of them was sick of it yet. Even Angus had stood by them, alongside his solo projects, and none of them had cared when his new, edgier, alternative stuff trumped their traditional pop hits on the charts.

  What happens if your plans involve another person?

  Her fingers grip the gear stick near his knee. He thinks back to last night, when those same fingers had been on his leg in the back seat. And tonight, on his chest outside the restaurant before she pulled him into that kiss. That’s where things got messy. Reuben couldn’t afford mess in his life right now, or at any time. It didn’t go with the territory. Pretending to be with Tilly, even though he’d urged it, is suddenly the last thing he needs, particularly as she’s proven, over and over again, she doesn’t do things by halves.

  ‘Where’d you learn to drive?’ he asks after she takes another roundabout practically on two wheels.

  ‘I did a self-defence course for new drivers,’ she explains.

  ‘New rally drivers?’

  She takes her eyes off the road. ‘Are you criticising my driving, now?’

  He is, and it’s clearly a bad idea. Tilly is the strangest mix. Everything she does is ‘all in’. That’s how they’d wound up here in the first place, because she saw a great photo opportunity at the ball and took it. She claims to live such an ordinary life, yet she appears to be living it in a more extraordinary way than anyone else he knows. Particularly those he knows who live in the spotlight, like he does, where you can’t move without people watching you and misinterpreting things. That’s the privilege she stands to lose by hanging out with him.

  ‘What does a relationship with you look like?’ she asks.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You know, if, by some miracle, you convince me to go through with it, how would we play this? What do you normally do with your girlfriends?’

  He hadn’t really had any. Plenty of girls, but nobody serious. No one he’d ever cared enough about to introduce to anyone important. And there was a very good reason for that.

  ‘What the press probably expects are a few wild nights in clubs and the odd weekend on a yacht,’ he answers. ‘And maybe a red-carpet entrance or two.’

  ‘I hate clubbing,’ she says, and he could have predicted it. ‘And I get seasick. You’ve seen me in action at official events, so . . .’

  ‘Maybe the story is
I’m finally growing up and you’re a good influence on me. Nights in?’

  ‘Or maybe we could use this absurd situation to actually do something meaningful?’ she suggests.

  ‘We won’t be doing anything if you don’t slow down, Tilly. I’m serious!’ She lifts her foot a fraction as a small concession.

  ‘Reuben, if we’re going to do this, for reasons you’re going to explain as soon as we get through the door – and those reasons had better be good because I don’t just kiss virtual strangers in front of the world’s media, or at all – surely we can find some purpose in all of this.’

  ‘There already is a purpose,’ he says enigmatically as she hits the brakes and stops the car just short of the property’s heavy security gate. The question is, how is he going to explain that purpose to her in a way that will satisfy Tilly’s curiosity, protect Belle’s privacy and still keep his own secret safe?

  Chapter 21

  Reuben puts his hand on Tilly’s arm as soon as they enter the house. ‘Shh!’

  Her blood goes cold.

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ he whispers.

  She doesn’t speak.

  ‘Wait here,’ he commands. ‘Don’t move.’

  There is no way Tilly will wait here on her own while Reuben goes snooping through the house for an intruder. Is he crazy?

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ she whispers, and he frowns. She puts her bag down, quietly, on the hall table, and carefully takes off her heels so they won’t clatter on the wooden floors. She slips off her coat, too, because the house is hot, the coat is constricting and the idea of fleeing from a burglar in it freaks her out.

  Reuben glares incredulously at her.

  ‘Anything else you want to remove before we attempt to disturb a criminal?’ he whispers.

  The bangles, she thinks. Too jangly.

  She slips them off and rests them quietly on the table beside her bag. He shakes his head as he leads the way into the lounge room, lit by the embers of the fire. No one is there. Her laptop is on the couch, exactly where Reuben had left it. Tilly picks it up, along with an iron fireplace poker.

  He looks at the laptop. ‘What are you going to do? Live blog this?’

  ‘I don’t want anyone stealing my story!’ she whispers, and he looks at her like she’s finally lost the plot.

  They creep past the downstairs study. Everything is exactly where it should be.

  ‘Think I heard something upstairs,’ Reuben mouths, and she follows him, becoming more anxious with every step. They creep along the halls, painstakingly checking every bedroom and bathroom. With each room they enter, her heart quickens further and she wonders how much more of this she can physically take. Reuben is thorough. He opens the wardrobes and checks under the beds while she stands guard with her laptop and the fire poker. Nothing seems disturbed.

  ‘What makes you think there’s anyone here?’ she asks. They’re in his bedroom.

  ‘There was a strange sound as we came in. It feels like there’s someone here. Stuff like this happens, Tilly. Some of our fans are deranged. I don’t mean to scare you, but with news breaking about our so-called “relationship”, we have to be careful.’

  She shivers. Maybe paparazzi? Had they discovered the hideaway? Would they go this far, though? Breaking in?

  ‘Let’s check the back of the house,’ he says. ‘Give me that poker. You’re making me nervous.’

  She wasn’t giving up her weapon, although she did slip the computer under Reuben’s pillow. It would be unseen and safe there, and she’d have her hands free to defend herself.

  Downstairs again, the corridor is in darkness and the house quiet. They creep towards the kitchen and stop at the door. Reuben turns the handle and reaches through to switch on the light, and as he does so someone screams. Not someone. Everyone.

  It takes Tilly a few seconds to adjust to the light and register what is happening and who is there. And when she does, it’s with a mix of relief and terror.

  Belle.

  ‘We thought you were an intruder!’ Reuben explains, hand on his chest as if he’s willing his heart rate to return to normal. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

  ‘I thought you were intruders!’ she confesses.

  ‘How did you find us? This place is meant to be secret.’

  The princess looks mildly guilty. ‘Angie. Don’t be mad at her. I explained that I had to talk to you. Urgently.’ She looks at Tilly. ‘Alone, if possible.’

  Right. Tilly isn’t surprised that Belle is being cold with her. She has, after all, created what appears to be a desperately unwanted international scoop with Belle in the leading role.

  ‘You two are all over the news tonight, by the way,’ Belle adds, her eyes darting over Tilly’s dress and taking in her bare feet. Of course she would be shoeless right now, again, in front of royalty! Belle, by comparison, is head-to-toe fashionable as always, in tailored jeans, cashmere and a stunning pair of high-heeled boots. ‘Everyone’s dying to know who this girl is who’s stolen the pop star from a princess.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say stolen,’ Tilly interrupts.

  ‘It looks like a fairly convincing job to me,’ Belle replies.

  Tilly feels her face flush red in anger and embarrassment.

  ‘There are even polls up,’ Belle continues. ‘Team Princess or Team Matilda.’

  Ugh.

  ‘Who’s winning?’ Reuben asks, entering the conversation at last. ‘In the polls, I mean?’

  Why does he care? None of this is real! Hadn’t he created this diversion spontaneously, in an attempt to undo Tilly’s mistake as quickly as possible at the ball and get them all out of there? She’s not actually his muse. Wasn’t the purpose of this whole thing just to temporarily bamboozle everyone because Tilly had botched something huge with the royals and Reuben saw an easy way out? Maybe if he’d realised just how unprepared she was for the spotlight his ‘muse’ brainwave would thrust her into, he’d have thought of Plan B instead.

  Maybe whisking her here, away from it all, is Plan B. Breathing space. Because he realised she couldn’t cope with the attention, and he felt sorry for her, and thought she needed a safe place to hide while all this scrutiny died down, until she could go back to being totally anonymous.

  ‘It’s safe to say that kiss broke the internet,’ Belle says plainly.

  Plan B has also failed, then.

  Reuben and Tilly lock gazes as she tries to grasp the enormity of the fact that she is standing here, in a country kitchen, with a princess, a pop star, a broken internet and —

  ‘Is there somewhere just the two of us can talk?’ Belle asks, taking Reuben’s arm. Tilly throws her hands in the air and walks out.

  Chapter 22

  Belle looks genuinely nervous, sitting at the kitchen table, and Reuben can’t work out why. She’s already told him her biggest secret.

  He’s never seen her this agitated in all the years they’ve known each other. She’s been effortlessly ‘together’ right back to the time they met as kids, pre-Unrequited, when he’d turned up at the boys’ school near her girls’ school on his first day.

  At eleven, he’d been completely out of his element. Wrenched from the local school he enjoyed, parachuted into a completely foreign environment where boys simply weren’t raised by hard-working single mums. He’d always hoped his dad wasn’t around because he was away somewhere, being a hero. The truth had been far less impressive. He’d known his mother couldn’t possibly afford the school fees. When he found out who was paying, he’d threatened to run away. It was Belle who had told Reuben about the scholarship and convinced him to go for it, because she didn’t want him to leave. She’d studied with him for weeks. She’d helped him take control of his life, and he’d always felt a bit like he owes her.

  ‘What’s up?’ he asks now, pulling out a chair and joining her at the table.

  She is fidgeting with her hair. Belle never fidgets. She’s completely composed at all times.

  ‘Well, Reu
ben,’ she begins, her hands shaking while she struggles to make eye contact. She takes a big breath and looks him in the eyes. ‘I’ve fallen in love.’

  He leans forward. ‘So you said! Anyone I know?’

  There’s a coy smile. Belle does not do ‘coy’.

  ‘All I know is how I feel,’ she says, then she takes both of his hands in hers across the table, the way she did at the ball, and drags him closer. ‘It’s honestly the most spine-tingling, soul-spinning, mad, wild, desperate crush. You know the kind?’

  It’s that new version of her again – the one he met when she shared her secret at the ball. The true version. She’s looking directly into his eyes, imploring him to get this point about all the soul-spinning etc. He gets it. And now he’s the one fidgeting.

  ‘I have an inkling,’ he replies. Too much of an inkling.

  ‘You’re my best friend, Reuben. You mean everything to me,’ she says. ‘I don’t want anything to change between us because of this.’

  ‘It won’t!’

  He’s struggling to see how he fits into this picture at all. He thinks it’s great that she’s found someone.

  ‘It’s hard enough knowing my parents would never approve,’ she continues. ‘They want me married off to someone “suitable”. At least an aristocrat. A man, obviously.’ She waves her hand like she’d love to dismiss the entire gender. ‘I can only imagine what they’d make of any future baby of mine, if I’m with a woman. IVF? Adoption? It clearly isn’t going to work, is it!’

  ‘Wowzers! Slow down, Belle! One step at a time.’ He has to admit though, this is far more complex than he’d envisaged. Clearly she’s thought it all through. She’s had to.

  ‘I can’t help how I feel!’ she says adamantly. ‘And I could really do without the headlines, right now. Telling you was huge. I’ve wanted to for years. I was just about ready to tell Olivia when she was in hospital. I needed her to know. Then we . . .’ she trails off.