In the sitting room, Marta was laughing.
“Does she do that to people often?” I asked.
Marta looked puzzled, then turned her phone toward me. “Orange Is the New Black,” she said. “American prison looks amusing. Have you been?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“Don’t give up hope,” Marta said. “Life is long. I’m proof.”
I excused myself and collapsed into an antique chair in the hallway. Nick had apparently been very busy on his own cell while mine was off.
You’re lucky to miss this
Dick just said how much harm we could have done to Scotland through our “book lies” wtf
He called Freddie a hero
The agenda for this meeting is 46 pages so I live here now
I am texting under the table
Hiding my phone under the table not sitting under the table
REBECCA, THIS IS AGATHA. WE HAVE CONFISCATED NICHOLAS’S PHONE.
I put my mobile in my bag and stood. Then I sat again. Nick had the keys to the Range Rover, not that I trusted myself to drive one without accidentally mowing down a bunch of tourists. I could call Stout or Popeye to drive me home, wherever that was now—neither Nick’s place nor 1A fit that title. I fidgeted. Innumerable people would die for the chance to be trapped unsupervised in Buckingham Palace, but all I wanted was out, and yet I had nowhere welcoming to go.
I retrieved my phone again and scrolled through my contacts, hovering over Cilla’s name. She had first been one of Nick’s closest friends, then one of mine, to the point where I’d hired her as my assistant in the run-up to the wedding so that I had someone of my own on the team. But Cilla and I hadn’t talked since Nick and I fled. I’d told myself that was because she might get in trouble for withholding information about us from her palace overlords, but Nick and I had also been pretty far up our own asses in Scotland. We may have needed to be alone, but we’d left the rest of our family and friends holding the bag while we did it. My apology tour of London would be prolonged.
Hi, I wrote to Cilla. I miss you.
The word read appeared underneath my message. But there was no reply.
We’re back and supposed to move into 1A. Want to come poke around?
Three little dots immediately appeared on my screen. They winked at me, one at a time, for an interminable stretch. And then the dots disappeared.
That didn’t seem like a good sign.
Marj says it’s a mess. Loads of antiques. Probably some stolen objects from your ancestors.
More dots.
And then, finally: Got the key from Marj. Meet you there.
CHAPTER FIVE
Cilla did not come to Kensington Palace alone. By the time PPO Popeye pulled the Range Rover into the courtyard, the steps of Apartment 1A held not only her but also her husband, Gaz, and the illustrious snob and skeptic Lady Beatrix Larchmont-Kent-Smythe, whom we privately referred to as Lady Bollocks (both due to her initials and the unnecessarily snooty first—and second, and tenth—impression she tended to make). Cilla and Gaz were bickering, as they’d done for years at Oxford in what proved to be their version of foreplay, while Bea stood away from them as if they’d all merely arrived in the same place by accident. My nerves at how they’d receive me were completely overpowered by relief at seeing them again, and in my excitement, I nearly fell out of the car.
“Appalling,” Bea said, elegant in a navy shirtdress and pearls, her style as sharp as her features. “Have you forgotten everything I taught you?”
“Hush up and hug me,” I told her.
“I will not,” Bea said. “You’re not a hero home from war, you’re a—”
If she finished that thought, I didn’t hear it, because Gaz sped over and wrapped his arms around me so hard that my ears popped. He pushed a pastry box into my hand.
“Crumpets,” he said. “It’s a traditional English housewarming gift.”
“It is not,” Cilla huffed.
“It could be,” he said. “If you’d open yourself up to it.”
Cilla sighed. “If you’re trying to use her to win an argument, Garamond, at least tell her,” she said, then turned to me. “I told him they were a bit chewy and he didn’t believe me.”
“Master of curries; servant of baking,” Bea said.
“Not half,” Gaz said defensively. “I’m just a perfectionist. Unfortunately, so is my wife.”
“I don’t remember you ever baking before,” I said, looping my arm through his, delighting in his familiar shock of red hair and the traces of beard threatening to take root on his cheeks.
“I need a break from my savory cooking,” he said. “It’s ruining restaurant cuisine for me.”
Cilla suppressed a smirk. “His five-star palate is a curse.”
“Oh, get off it, so we can get on with it,” Bea said, snatching a manila envelope from Cilla and ripping it open. An old skeleton key tied to a ribbon plopped into her hand with a satisfying thud.
“That’s the first thing we’ll change,” Bea said, marching to the door. “Any idiot can pick one of these locks.”
She jammed it into the keyhole and wiggled. It wouldn’t turn. Gaz hurried over to help, leaving Cilla and me to circle each other. She didn’t seem angry, but my five-foot firebrand of a friend was holding herself unusually reserved, so I kept my arms to myself.
“You look terrific,” I said. “I love your hair like that.”
She touched her new side-swept bangs. “I felt a bit cliché going blond, but they say it’s more fun, and I needed fun.”
Gaz pushed open the door with a holler of triumph.
“Get in here, you lot,” he called.
Cilla and I started up the steps, but the crunch of tires stopped me. I turned around to see a coupe I didn’t recognize creep past the arch toward the entrance to Freddie and Nick’s current apartment. The driver appeared to be a woman, and by the way she was working her accelerator—which is to
