I hoped they would loosen up once we got into it with the kids. We all sat on the floor of their lounge, a cozy, carpeted space done up in warm tones, which the residents had been encouraged to wallpaper with handwritten inspirational quotes, photos, and even in-jokes. Nick surprised me by breaking the ice with a short recollection of his mother, and one by one, the kids took turns discussing their unique struggles. One girl described her depression as bleaching the color out of the world; another kid said he felt like he was living inside a permanent, chilly fog. Others talked plainly about feeling anxious from the moment their eyes opened in the morning to the second they closed at night. An older teenage boy recounted lying awake obsessing about his fears, which grew and multiplied and took on lives of their own, until he felt like his brain was running on a treadmill where an unseen force kept relentlessly upping the pace.
And Nick cried.
Actual dripping tears.
Freddie shot me an alarmed glance over the top of Nick’s head. Nick’s public face rarely slipped, but this time it fell all the way off into his lap.
“My goodness,” he managed.
The kids seemed unfazed. “People cry in here all the time,” one of them said, and passed him a box of Kleenex. “You should’ve seen Martina the other day.”
“I’m allowed to be upset,” snapped a girl whose nametag ID’d her as the Martina in question. “My sister has never tried to understand me and she has some bloody nerve coming to visit and hitting on Jamison.”
A good-looking kid I took to be Jamison winked at me. Nick simply dabbed at his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish my mum could meet you all. She would be very proud of you, and as inspired as I am by your strength.”
It was an effective—and honest—save, but it inevitably leaked to the media that the future king had lost his composure. Much of the media and most royal watchers were sympathetic, but the Mirror theorized that Freddie and I had broken him, and Xandra Deane sounded the alarm that this was a breach of British tradition: A stiff upper lip does you no good if your lower one trembles, she wrote. Clive offered, You can take it from me: The Prince Regent will be furious at Namby-Pamby Nicholas, the Duke of Drip, which was incredibly hacky (as usual), but got great play on Twitter.
But Richard didn’t flog Nick for any of it. I don’t know if he felt too guilty to push once he heard the Emma line, or if he’d noticed that his sons no longer had any relationship to speak of and thought twice about compounding the situation. Maybe both. Regardless, Richard was still, at heart, an ass, so instead of making sure Nick was taking care of his own mental health, he tripled Nick’s workload, as if to prove that this crying jag was cause specific and the heir was otherwise in robust spirits.
I’d been wondering how the hell we were all going to get through Christmas together at Sandringham, but then Richard straight-up canceled it, citing Eleanor’s health. This freed up everyone to do whatever they’d always wanted to but never could, including spending the day in a place with central heating. Edwin and Elizabeth planned a proper morning of presents with their kids; Agatha invited my mother on a posh singles trip to Mallorca that sounded mortifying, but which Mom agreed to do because she had just read Shonda Rhimes’s book Year of Yes; and I don’t know what Richard had in store, but I assume it involved going to an orphanage and cutting the power. Freddie disappeared completely; Bea hinted he’d gone skiing with a tech executive he’d met. And I spent my feelings on holiday decorations.
One of the great benefits of living in a mansion is that if you really commit to decking the hell out of your copious halls, you have less time to concentrate on the fact that your husband is avoiding you. I procured and trimmed a giant, twinkling tree in the living room, and an even bigger one in the foyer. I hung stockings by several chimneys, with care. I bought whimsical holiday-themed throw pillows and swapped out our candles for winter-scented ones. We had nutcrackers and Santas and even a Grinch or two scattered all over the communal areas, every window had a wreath, and everything that I could hang a garland from was begarlanded. It screamed, “Our first married Christmas will be extremely fucking festive, Nicholas,” in a way that I myself wanted to but knew I should not.
It didn’t work. Christmas morning was gloomy and distant and very much not extremely fucking festive. It felt like my decorations were mocking me for being foolish enough to think I could paper over our problems with expensive holiday cheer. Nick gave me a treadmill I could wheel out to the upstairs terrace, because he knew I missed running outside—which was thoughtful but unromantic—and then almost broke down again when he burned the hell out of breakfast.
“They’re just toaster waffles, Nick,” I said, but it came out more irritably than I intended.
He rubbed his face. “I know. But it’s just been…”
“A long year,” I finished.
“Yeah,” he said.
“For me, too,” I said. “I guess I hoped we could put it behind us
