“Believe me, I’m thrilled to be called away for an emergency that involves tea.” She tore open a scone. “I’m up to my ears in Dutch state dinner minutiae.”
“Do you need an intern? Because I would love to have useful face-to-face conversations with someone, anyone, that don’t involve whether to turn one corner of the living room into its own walled-off office.”
“You should not,” Cilla said. “You have too many rooms as it is. Besides, it’s your reception room. It has to be grand.”
I blinked. “When you put it that way,” I said, shoving the renovation binder away. “This stuff is making my eyes cross. Should we paint the hallways Clotted Cream, or Cream Cheese, or Double Cream? They look the same to me, but what if Nick has strong feelings about cream?”
“Only Gaz has strong feelings about cream.”
“Or the kitchen. Twisted Goldenrod? Sunshine Martinet?”
She looked taken aback. “Isn’t a martinet a torture device?”
“In more ways than one,” I grumbled. “These are not real problems. Intellectually I know this. It’d be better if Richard would let me help with family business.”
“Small problems can still feel big,” she said. “Nick’s schedule will slow down in due time, and then you can sort out together what your public role will be. It hasn’t even been two months since the Queen’s stroke, has it? One of my mother’s cousins stole a hat from her sister, and they didn’t speak for thirty years. This is nothing.”
“Did they eventually make up?” I asked.
“In a sense. One of them died.” Cilla peered at the table. “Go with the Sunshine Martinet.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon chuckling at paint names, designating bedrooms for my mother and Lacey for when they came to stay, and agreeing that Nick and I should overhaul our own room last so that we could move into suitably modernized guest quarters while it was being put together. With a squeeze and a promise to make dinner plans for the four of us soon, I saw Cilla off at the front door with a happy smile. But as her little car disappeared past the clock tower, her absence hit me sharply, and I realized what I felt was homesickness. Even though I was, technically, at home. I felt so much like myself with Cilla—the Bex Porter of old, a person I knew well, and whose goals and dreams and agenda were not dictated by anyone but herself.
So I called in another old friend: Margot.
I’d made it out of the palace gates once, and it was only my own skittishness that put an end to the mischief. Maybe Margot could go even farther. Her wig and her mole and her retro sunglasses and frumpy taste might be my ticket out of the lavish prison in which I’d found myself, so I boldly signed off on some paint colors and then dug out Margot’s hair for some restorative fluffing. There was so much I wanted to do—the Magritte exhibit at the Tate Modern, a stroll through Apsley House to ogle all the Duke of Wellington’s expensive stuff, which appealed now that I was living in the home of another person who never threw anything out—but I knew I needed my first attempt to be something simpler. Very basic, very uncool, very much a place where nobody would give me a second glance.
I needed a McDonald’s.
Once, when we first started dating, Nick had shown me a door in his and Freddie’s quarters that connected to the Kensington Palace museum. Emma used to sneak the kids in there at night and they’d explore; he’d never taken me through it, but I knew it would put me out somewhere near the downstairs public bathrooms. I waited until Freddie’s car left his apartment the next morning, and I let myself into Nick’s old place with my key. The passage was just off a little-used billiard room at the far end of the flat, looking like nothing more than a bookcase. Nick had told me that pulling out Martin Chuzzlewit and Jackie Collins’s Lucky would reveal it, so I ran my finger over the shelves until I found them both, took a deep breath, and slid them toward me. I heard a click, and saw a subtle release. Success.
I pushed it open to reveal a dark hallway—with a functioning nightlight; apparently even the secret passageways were attended to scrupulously by the staff—and then another door, which let me into a janitorial closet. I slipped into the museum from there and pretended to “discover” that the women’s room was across the hall. Nobody was there to see my acting job, so I simply strolled in, washed my hands, smoothed my wig, and then walked right out toward the foyer. Any nearby tourists were all too busy consulting their maps of the palace, or turning over souvenir mugs in their hands, to pay me any mind. (I couldn’t help but notice that the gift shop’s stock of teacups honoring our wedding had been deeply discounted.) I feigned an interest in some aprons, and then set out into the park, pulling up the collar of my wool coat against the brisk October air.
It was sunny, but crisp; a breeze ruffled what was left on the trees and convinced several leaves to give up the ghost. I strolled toward the high street, then headed into the McDonald’s and ordered an Egg McMuffin and a hash brown. The teller looked at me very curiously, and as my heart leapt into my throat, she pointed up at the clock.
“Sorry, love,” she said. “We’ve stopped serving breakfast.”
“Oh,” I said, nearly forgetting to put on my accent, and sliding into a compromise that sounded vaguely Australian. Okay, then. Margot was from Down Under now. “Right, sorry, lost the plot there. Jet lag. One Big Mac meal, please, mate. Er, g’day.”
The woman didn’t
