by Anna Bloom
“I don’t know what you are laughing at.”
I turned to get my bags out of the car and Oliver managed to stop laughing enough to speak. “There’s a slight catch to Christmas.”
Why did my stomach plummet like that? “Oh yes?”
He pointed back to the way the car had driven from the main palace. “We have to be in there.”
“What? Why?” I sounded like Daisy. Speaking of which, where was Daisy? I knew straightaway. She’d be up there with the King, no doubt in the stables, stomping in mud and horse shit getting freezing cold and probably catching some awful cold that would make her sick.
“Don’t worry, she’s tucked up next to a warm fire watching Christmas movies with Mum.”
Oh. I didn’t think there would ever be a point I’d get used to the royals acting like any other family. It made me all warm inside knowing that Oliver knew the way my worries went. “So why the palace?”
The snow started to blow down harder and I waved my gloved hands to keep it out of my eyes.
“Mum does this thing with a tree. It’s really bloody annoying, but we have to humour her, otherwise she sulks.”
“A thing with a tree?” I pulled a face. “In the palace?”
“Well normally in Wales, but you know.”
“Okay.” I shrugged pointing to the palace. “In there.”
“In there.” His grin made my stomach tingle.
“You better make this worth my while.”
He laughed, pulling me in closer until I could smell spice mingled with the frost of the air. “Oh that’s guaranteed.”
“Come on then.”
He went to open the door to the still waiting car. “Oliver Beaufort!”
“What?”
“I think we can walk.”
“It’s freezing.”
“Ooh poor little prince.”
His eyes lit. “You are going to pay for that.” Bending at the waist he swept up a handful of snow and slicked it at my face.
It stung as it hit my skin. “Shit!”
“What did you call me, again?”
Bending my knee, I grabbed my own handful and shoved it right in his face.
“Fuck, Leia.” He spat out snow.
“Don’t take me on. I grew up on the gritty streets, my friend, I’ll take you down.”
He launched for me and gripped his hands at my waist, hoisting me over his shoulder.
I screamed and kicked my legs as he paced back for the palace, almost begging him to put me down. If he walked me into my first royal Christmas upside down with my arse in the air, I’d never forgive him.
Just short of the door he dropped me to the gravel, holding onto me tight as I found my balance.
For a long moment we laughed and stared at one another. Hallmark movie puke fest.
Then it snapped inside me. I might have broken some palace rules this morning by going to find Mrs Patten, but in doing so I’d set myself free.
I had nothing left to hide.
The one thing I’d always dreaded would never happen. No one would take Daisy away from me, not ever.
Finally, the shadows from my past no longer held any weight over me.
“Wait a moment.” I reached into my all important handbag, the one I’d been bashing against Ollie’s back the whole way across the snow.
“What are we waiting for?” He reached forward and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.
“I think the Tabloid Princess has just arrived.” I pulled out my phone and then ducked into his side, lifting the phone and taking a picture.
“Leia, you’ve got to get my good side.” He grabbed it and then held it higher, kissing the top of my head as he retook the picture. “What’s this for?” He asked, handing it back.
I pulled off a glove and banged my cold fingers against the screen a few times. Then I lifted it and showed him my new Instagram account.
“Why today?”
“It’s our first Christmas as a family. People should get to share the joy we have with each other.”
His lips curved into a slow smile and he shook his head. “Finally, she gets it.”
“I do.”
“Although, you might not be saying that once the tree is done.”
“No?”
“Just promise not to leave me. It’s a silly tradition.”
“I’ll never leave.”
“Good.”
Twenty-Two
I regretted saying I wouldn’t leave by five pm the following day. Christmas Eve took on a new context.
Turns out that the King of Norway doesn’t just send a tree for Trafalgar Square.
He sends one to the King too. For the palace.
The Queen’s tradition is making Ollie, John, and Bella decorate it.
“Is he safe up there?” I absentmindedly grabbed the bauble Daisy handed me, not even stopping to admire how delicate and fine the glass ornament was. My attention was focused on Ollie and the fact he balanced precariously on top of a ladder.
“Sure, sure.” Bella’s fingers plucked at the blanket tucked over her legs. She seemed to be twitching a lot, and part of me wanted to press pause on the evening—to tell everyone to stop what they were doing—because my radar, telling me something was wrong, beeped loud and clear.
But then, The Earl of Leicester was legless, and he created a diversion from the niggle of worry in the back of my mind.
“Ah, the pretty princess to be.” He almost landed on my lap as he thudded onto the sofa, showering Bella and I in sherry.
“Leia.” I smiled politely while trying to edge my skirt out from his arse.
“Lovely to have a breath of fresh air. That other woman was a frightful brown noser.” It took a moment for me to realise what other woman he was talking about, but of course, it was Charlotte Macclesfield. I’d never met the woman, but I hated her with considerable force.
“Well I try.”
He leered closer. “And you grew up on a council estate, did you? How very interesting.”
“Hmm.” I tried to use all the training the Queen and her team had given me to maintain protocol at all times, but it was no easy task.
“And your mother, a drug addict they say?”
“Uncle!” Ollie called down from the tree.
“Oh, just saying. It’s all out there now for the people to know.” He quaffed back more sherry. “We can’t hide that one now, can we?”
“There isn’t much to hide.” I sat up straighter and Bella moved under her blanket.
“And what’s wrong with you, little princess? A touch of the flu is it?” The Earl leered at his niece and my stomach turned.
I could see now that the normality of the immediate royal family stemmed from the Queen. The Earl of Leicester, the King’s brother, had a stick up his arse so long I couldn’t believe it didn’t pop out of his mouth as he talked.
“Just the flu,” Bella told him and I frowned in her direction.
Funny flu.
The Earl opened his mouth to say something, but the door to the sitting room opened and Cartwright came in, his face grey and drawn.
My stomach dropped in reaction.
What had I done now?
Marcus walked straight to the King and showed him something on his iPad and then the King’s gaze flickered to me.
I wish I’d chosen a sherry now after all.
“Oliver. Please come here.” The King barked and Oliver grumbled all the way down the ladder. I watched, my stomach in knots, as he walked to his father and ‘I’m Such a Prick’ Marcus Cartwright looked at the iPad.
“I told you that the crown would deal with the issue, and now Leia can be seen in an unsafe area without security. ‘Leia runs back to past from luxury of palace’.” He almost barked the headline.
The King didn’t look at me. Oliver received the full brunt of his anger. The Christmas cheer evaporated from the room quicker than you could say, ‘pass me a mulled wine’.
I’d been spotted at the flat
s yesterday.
My stomach dropped like it contained a cannonball.
“People will now find out why Miss Lawrence was there. We are talking more headlines and speculation.”
“Her name is Leia.” Ollie snapped in response to Marcus. “And I respect her actions. She did what she felt was right in the circumstances. She discovered the truth and she didn’t hide from it. She acted with humility and grace by going to see a grieving mother.”
I knew the words hurt Ollie to say. He didn’t want anyone else having a claim on Daisy, but he was man enough to be able to deal with it.
“Oliver, this is not the way we deal with things.” The King’s voice rang stern and authoritative. “We do not air our laundry for people to see.”
“You’re a hypocrite, Dad. Look at us, decorating a tree. Bella pretending to have flu. Look at what we are.” Oliver gestured around the room. “Everything about us is lies. Can’t you see how wrong this is?”
“Are you telling me, Oliver, that other families don’t decorate a tree for Christmas? Or have a merry drink? Or keep secrets from the neighbours? Difference is here, Oliver, we don’t have neighbours to gossip about our secrets, we have the entire world to do it.”
My hand thrust itself into the air and I stared at it in horror. No… now’s not the time to blurt something… stop it.
“I didn’t decorate a tree. Or have Christmas. Not until I was fifteen and found Nana.”
Everyone stared, but I couldn’t stop it. I’d rather they looked at me, than glared at Ollie.
“Father Christmas never came to my home. We never had turkey. When I was seven my mother went on a bender and I spent three days by myself, with no food and no heating.”
Do not cry. Do not fucking cry.
“So yes, there are lots of people doing what we are doing now, on a lesser scale,” I allowed. “But there are also a lot of other people out there who aren’t. The balance is bridging the gap between that world and this one.”
Marcus turned the screen around and swiped up at a different picture. Ollie and I stood outside the palace just hours before. His arms around me and us both grinning at the picture. The Tabloid Princess’ Christmas post. We actually looked hot together. I couldn’t help but be proud.
“Leia is trying to show people who we are, get them to understand us,” Ollie said.
“Are you proposing we take pictures in our pyjamas on Christmas morning of us opening our presents? Because I don’t think that’s going to help the starving people out there.” The King directed his comment to me this time.
“I just think it’s okay to show that you’re human. It’s okay for the future king to have a cheesy smile in the run up to Christmas.” I pointed at the iPad. “It’s okay to admit how lucky you are, while at the same time having care and concern for those who aren’t.”
“This is unacceptable to me. The monarchy is the backbone of this country. We are admired and respected by every other nation in the world.”
“You were,” I muttered.
“Excuse me?” Cartwright’s eyebrows practically merged with his hair.
“I said you were. Society has moved on though. Social media has made everything accessible by everyone twenty-four hours a day. Apart from you. The only way people get to know about you is through the press and what they print. You don’t tell them the truth and they print what they like anyway, no matter how badly it reflects. What harm is there in showing images of the future king dressing a Christmas tree?” I glanced at Ollie. “You hide the best bits of yourselves trying to protect an image that is tarnished anyway.”
“Leia’s right, Pops. We are a lie.”
“I will not have you speak in this way, Oliver. This is your birth right.”
“No, no it’s not.” Oliver stepped across the carpet and the scattered baubles. “I don’t think I want it if I can’t be who I am.”
“Oliver.”
I stared at him in horror. What did he just say?
Shaking my head, I gasped in a breath. “Ollie, don’t say things you will regret.”
“I don’t. Leia, I told you before. I told the nation. If we can’t be ourselves here, then this isn’t a place I want to be.”
“Oliver,” the Queen who’d hardly spoken stepped up to her eldest son. “Don’t be rash, Oliver. Everyone is tense. You’ve had a lot going on, we know that.”
“No, Mum. I’ve had a lot going on because you haven’t allowed me to speak out and tell the truth. The reason I can’t announce my engagement to the woman I love is because you insisted I lie about the reasons my previous engagement failed. Today, my fiancée took herself to a dodgy part of town because she knew she had to act quick before you guys shut down a situation that wasn’t suitable for the family. You want us to remain closed behind these four walls while people in our country suffer. Some place out there, there could be another seven-year-old girl afraid and alone with no food, no safe adult, but still we sit here following our stupid protocols that leave us looking like pampered idiots because no one knows the truth about us.”
“Oliver, that is enough!” A pin could have dropped as the King silenced Oliver’s tirade.
I couldn’t breathe.
I’d singlehandedly destroyed the royal family.
Oliver turned to me, and like he’d been able to since the moment we met, he read the thoughts on my face. “It wasn’t you. It was us all along.” He turned and smiled at Daisy who stood frozen with a red ribbon in her hand. “Come on, Daisy. I think I’ve got something better planned for Christmas.”
“Ollie, please don’t. Don’t leave, I can’t stand it.” Bella’s voice croaked from the sofa and for a moment I thought he’d back down. He walked to the sofa and bent down to kiss Bella on the top of her head.
“Sorry, sis,” he whispered something else the rest of us couldn’t hear and then straightened up.
John watched in silence, his mouth open as Ollie ushered Daisy and I to the door of the sitting room. He turned at the door, his chin held high. “I wish you all a merry Christmas.”
Then he pushed us through and dragged us down the hallway.
My breath flew through my chest, my ribcage ached with the deep gasps of air I pulled down.
“Oliver, please. We don’t have to go. Just calm down. We don’t need to fight a war today.”
He turned his beautiful face; the angelic carving of an avenging warrior tore straight in two. “It’s a war I should have fought a long time ago. Now we leave.”
“And when we come back? You have to come back, Ollie. You are the prince, this is your rightful place.” Funny that I got that right now, now at the end when he’d given it all up. “This is all part of the man I fell in love with.”
“Then I come back on my own terms. Now, can we please go and try to enjoy Christmas?”
“Where are we going?” Daisy’s voice shook and Ollie dropped his shoulders.
His eyes met mine. “The cottage? We haven’t got any food in though.”
“I could know somewhere better? And the roast potatoes are good.”
“Nana?” Daisy said, her smile growing.
“Who else does the best roast potatoes in town?”
“She was meant to come here for Christmas. She might not have anything in either.”
“Nah,” Daisy and I both said at once. “She’s always got the makings of a roast dinner.”
The moment had lightened, our decision was made, but as we walked back out of the palace doors, I couldn’t help but meet that emerald gaze and shiver down to my toes.
The Range Rover trudged through the snowy streets and Oliver’s hands clenched the steering wheel. The press, the poor bastards standing in the freezing cold by the gates, had watched us leave, their cameras raised for the shot.
“So you always give your staff Christmas off?” I peered at him anxiously, the streetlights bounced off his cheekbones, throwing the shadows of his face into an orange glow.
“They deserve it after being
with me all year.”
“Bill’s going to be pretty cross when he finds out you’ve been driving through London in the snow without him.”
Oliver turned, his face exasperated. “I’m a grown man, Leia. I am allowed to drive by myself.”
I shrunk down in my seat. “I know. Question is, should you?”
He steered the car to the side of the road and I automatically glanced behind us to see if we were being followed. The London streets were too quiet almost, the downpour of snow had sent the last-minute Christmas shoppers scurrying home.
“Leia, I’m getting mixed signals here. You’re the one who keeps saying we should change, that the royals should show who they are, so here I am, trying to enforce some sort of chain of events that might enable that to happen, and now what? Now you aren’t sure?”
“Ollie.” I glanced at Daisy in the back seat. She watched the snow swirl around the car. “I just don’t want you to be rushing this because of me.”
His eyes held steady on my face. “Because you aren’t sure about us or because you are worried about the monarchy?”
“Because I don’t want to be the reason you aren’t with your family.”
He sighed and leant towards me, his gaze tighteningly intense. “Leia, you are my family now.”
I nodded silently. His words, they delved deep into my soul. All my life I’d wanted someone like him, someone to stand by my side and tell me I was worth it, that the battle they had face to support me was worth it.
My mother never could. The draw of heroin had always been too strong. Her love for it greater than the love she held for her own daughter.
Ollie wanted Daisy and me more than he wanted anything else. More than he wanted to be king.
A single tear slipped down my face. “You shouldn’t have to choose between us,”
His phone beeped and he broke our intense gaze to bend down and pick it up. When he saw the screen, he snorted. “It’s not a hard decision to make.”
An image had already been uploaded onto a news website of us leaving the palace gates in dangerous weather conditions: Heir to the throne breaks tradition and flees palace with royal lover.
His baleful eyes lifted to mine. “It bites my arse they are still calling you a royal lover.”
