Gaz had been right about the people-watching, at least. Clive’s divorced father was arguing boisterously with Agatha about Western-style riding, and Clive’s brothers’ limitations had indeed proved distinguishable: Martin was boomingly stupid, confident he was always right even though he never was, while Thick Trevor came off like his brain was working very hard yet going nowhere (it made me sad the one called Dim Tim hadn’t come, just for the comparison). Bea’s parents were her clones, patrician and perfect with chins like upside-down Gothic arches. Conversely, her sister Pudge was the apple that fell so far from the tree that it rolled into a ditch and landed in a pile of snortable substances. Alarmingly gaunt, with a haircut she might have given herself with safety scissors, she’d disappeared to the bathroom six times already that night, and seemed to view everything with a deep, miserable hatred. Even from three seats down I’d caught her blitz of f-bombs about the food, the company, even the butter dish, though everyone pretended not to hear.
And after three long hours of this dysfunctional family dinner writ large, the menfolk—Richard’s exact word—excused themselves for brandy and cigars (and presumably talk of topics too weighty for our tiny ladybrains). On my way out the front door, I found Bea trying to lug a clearly queasy and spaghetti-legged Pudge out of the bathroom, a spot of vomit on her shirt and an indiscreet smattering of powder under her left nostril.
“Come on, Pads,” she was saying, as gentle as I’d ever heard her. “Let’s get you home.”
“Can I help?”
She looked up at me, startled, and then a flash of embarrassment flickered across her face. It wasn’t an emotion I generally associated with Lady Bollocks. But she was in a pickle, and she knew it, so she nodded and let me drape Pudge’s arm around my shoulder.
“Easy, Paddington, we’ll get you,” I said, trying to use her full name out of politeness, although frankly I’m not sure it was much better.
Pudge’s head lolled on her shoulders until she jerked it in my direction. “Your hair smells like violets.”
“Thank you.”
“Violets fucking stink,” Pudge snapped.
We trudged outside, saying nothing but stopping three times to let Pudge decorate a variety of bushes with the contents of her stomach. Bea’s resentment about depending on me for help fairly radiated off her. Once we got inside our chalet, Bea and I hustled Pudge to the room they were sharing, I brought her water and a puke receptacle, and we spent a wordless period putting them alternately to her lips until she passed out on her bed.
“Thank you,” Bea said grudgingly.
“Sure,” I said. “This can’t be easy, and—”
“I don’t actually want to discuss it. I am simply being polite,” Bea said sharply.
Then her phone beeped, and she pulled it out to check a text message. “Ceres,” she said. “She’s on her way over.”
I said nothing.
“Yes, Nick’s ex is in town.” Lady Bollocks’s radar for other people’s insecurities is as precisely groomed as she is. “And his other ex could be dropping in at any minute. Are you jealous?”
“No,” I said, mostly honestly, although I was starting to feel intimidated. And outnumbered.
“I doubt they want the job,” she said. “Or else they’d already have it.”
“Nick isn’t a job.”
“You’ll soon see,” Bea said, tapping the air with a stiff, well-manicured pointer. “Those hungry mobs at Oxford were just sycophants and desperate, disgraced blue bloods. The real catches don’t want any part of this.”
“So you’re saying I’m here by default.”
“Those are your words, not mine,” Bea said.
“Well, I don’t believe them.”
“Suit yourself,” Bea said. “But someone should inform you that being Nick’s partner isn’t actually a partnership at all. It’s accepting a position. You’re on display, and on trial.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked. “To help, or to pretend to help until I run away screaming on my own? Because we all know you don’t want me and Nick to end up together.”
“That’s neither here nor there,” she said. “You’re who we’re stuck with at the moment, and Nick is my friend, and I don’t want him going any further with someone na?ve or unsuitable, or weak. He doesn’t need it, and honestly, if you are the spineless sort, neither do you. So if you do not think you can handle it, step aside before it ends badly for both of you.”
No one has ever accused Lady Beatrix Larchmont-Kent-Smythe of mincing her words.
“You know, for someone who says she’s Nick’s friend, you are really bad at being friendly, Bea.”
“Someday you might disagree,” Bea said. “Cheerio, Rebecca. Enjoy your prince.”
And with that, she sailed out of the room, leaving me unsettled as Pudge snored softly.
*
“How’s the snow looking, sir?”
The BBC News photographer got off the first question over the rustling and clacking of the rest of the press corps. Richard and his staff at Clarence House arranged this photo op for the royals in attendance every year, in the exact same spot—atop one of the gentler slopes, the Alps cresting behind them—in exchange for total privacy the rest of the week. It was a deal not unlike the one that had kept Nick protected at Oxford, and which everyone observed, again, because both sides essentially needed each other more than anyone cared to admit.
“The snow is as perfect as my lovely wife,” Richard said, his attempt at a romantic tone contrasting with his villainous black ski suit and polarized wraparound shades. “She wishes she could have been here, but she is no longer so partial to sport.”
He laughed lightly, at odds with the actual sentiment he’d expressed. It made me think of the most famous of the Klosters photos over the years: Svelte in a red ski suit even though she’d had Freddie only six months earlier, Emma had two-year-old chubby, cheeky Nick standing on his stubby skis between her own, giggling as she kissed him. Even Richard had been smiling. It was one of the last family photos on record.
“Freddie! There have been reports that you’ve brought former glamour model Fallopia Jones as your personal guest,” a reporter shouted. “Can you confirm?”
“I believe she has been sighted on the slopes,” Freddie replied with a cheeky grin.
“What a coincidence,” Richard said, jaw clenched.
“Perhaps, but we are extremely good friends. Allegedly.” Freddie winked broadly, which got a laugh.
I glanced at Fallopia, obliviously drawing faces on the fogged-up glass of the medical cabin where we’d been stashed to watch and wait for the press conference to end. She had probably, whether she knew it or not, just served her last purpose. Freddie’s frowned-upon girlfriends arrived on a schedule as regular as the crosstown bus and were just as interchangeable, and Fallopia had just left the station.
“Nick!” called the royals reporter from the Daily Express. “We’re also hearing rumors that you’ve got a new girlfriend. Care to comment?”
“Uh-oh,” Cilla muttered, next to me.
“Come on, Annalisa. You know I’ve no comment on my personal life,” Nick said, his expression hardening subtly from Perfectly Pleasant into Aggressively Pleasant.
Freddie must have noticed this, too, because then he chimed in: “One minute it’s girlfriends, the next you’ll be wanting our inseams, eh?” he chirped. “Although personally, I’m always delighted when you lot do us the favor of believing that my brother has any game at all. I mean, look at him. You’d have to be—”