Once Nick had safely escaped, Cilla called an emergency summit at my flat with Joss and Bea (with a typically bleak Pudge in tow; so far she’d kept her New Year’s resolution of sobriety, but there was no cold turkey plan for rage). Lady Bollocks may not have been my biggest fan, but she is never intimidated by a crisis and she loves telling people what to do.
“Right. You’ll need basic dresses, nothing too short, and no blouses you can’t wear with a bra,” Bea said, starting to check off her list items on her finger.
“Oh, I’ve got some frocks,” Joss piped up. “Made a few at school the other day that got the attention of an investor, actually.”
“Don’t be batty. She can’t go all experimental and psychotic now,” Bea said, then turned back to me. “Get some skinny jeans, not those wretched things you had on the other day. I don’t know where you even got those. Cilla, write this down.”
I expected a protest, but Cilla was already looking for a pen.
“Map out three alternate routes to work and vary them every day,” Bea continued. “Also find a shortcut branching off from each one, as an escape valve, if you need it. Carry the number of a car service. Don’t let Nick pay for it. Link it to your credit card.”
“He won’t like that,” I said.
“I don’t care,” Bea said.
“He can’t be seen paying your way,” Cilla said, scribbling furiously on a notepad.
“They’ll start going through your rubbish, Bex, so take it out in the wee hours and change up the bins you use,” Bea went on. “And for God’s sake, shred anything interesting and divide the pieces into separate bags: credit card bills, prescriptions, receipts. If Nick is in the habit of writing you love letters, burn them. Or bury them, I suppose.”
“Fucking eat them,” Pudge said.
“Am I not allowed to keep them?” I wondered, archly.
“Certainly, if you want a ticking time bomb,” Bea retorted. “Have you ever read a tabloid? They’ll use anything they can get their hands on, however they can get their hands on it. Do not get comfortable with any reporters and do not wave at the paparazzi, even if they seem sympathetic. If you engage, they draw you in, and then suddenly you’re on the front page looking like you want to whack one of them with your umbrella.”
“Like Britney Spears,” I said.
“No,” Cilla said. “Like Bea.”
“Fuck it,” Pudge said, sitting up from her slouch on my sofa. “Fuck it all. They want your soul. Don’t let them take it. They’ll eat you alive.”
She then slumped back, as if someone had hit the “off” switch. Bea rubbed her temples and stared out the window. Outside, the clouds had whipped themselves into fat, dark puffs, promising something cold and wet that might at least give the paparazzi pause about continuing to camp out on my doorstep.
“Pudge’s second trip to rehab was right after my eighteenth birthday party,” Bea finally said. “She rode a horse into the living room. Paparazzi were on our family for days because Prince Richard had been at the party, and…” She looked again at her sister. “Well, don’t talk back. We’ve all done it and we’ve all regretted it.”
I’d seen paparazzi coverage of other celebrity couples; I wasn’t na?ve about the news cycle. But when the lenses turn on you, at first it’s hard to reconcile the thoroughly regular person you are with the person everyone else suddenly finds extraordinary. I was still a half beat behind, so while Bea’s advice was intense, I was also grateful for such a proactive to-do list. My mother, on the other hand, had been so excited by the photo’s appearance in People (under the headline A STAR-SPANGLED PRINCESS?) that she’d turned a recent dinner party into an English tea, to the great surprise of the guests who’d come over expecting a barbeque.
“Don’t come home for a while,” Dad teased on the phone. “She’s got it bad. If you turned up now, she’d make you walk around with a book on your head.”
Mom’s voice came down the line: “Bex, that’s a good point, actually,” she said. “You’ve got to stand up straight if you’re going to—”
“Lay off, Mom,” Lacey hissed, and I could picture her wresting the phone from both of them. I felt a rush of affection until she added, “Let her deal with her eyebrows first. They do need a little work, Bex. You’re going to be a public figure now.” I heard a puff of contentment come down the line. “It’s all moving forward. Finally.”
But if Lacey could have seen Nick’s face every time he looked at the paper, she wouldn’t have been celebrating, and ultimately, neither was I. We’d lost control, and we were now reacting instead of acting. In retrospect, the Palace should’ve been the one giving me the practical and psychological tools to deal with the aftermath of being discovered. Instead, there was a lot of criticism, but not a whole lot of help. Richard, in fact, gave us the silent treatment for two full weeks. When we were eventually summoned to his private meeting room at Clarence House, the mighty Prince of Wales spent ten minutes glowering before slamming the article on the table and spitting that he wasn’t sure if he was madder at the photographer or at Nick.
“I can’t believe that’s even a question,” Nick had said. He looked exhausted. His insomnia was at full strength; he probably got three hours of sleep a night.
“You were stupid,” Richard accused. “You got careless.”
“It’s Klosters; it’s supposed to be safe!” Nick said. “And it’s not like I was having an orgy. I was kissing my girlfriend.”
“We’ve all wanted to kiss our girlfriends,” Richard snapped. “You’re the only idiot who got himself photographed.”
Nick flinched at our girlfriends, and I bumped on it, too, but I kept myself from acknowledging it. It was seriously not the right time.
“So now what happens?” I ventured.
Richard’s eyes bored into me. “We can’t lie,” he said. “But we don’t have to tell the truth, either. A no comment will do.”
“We cannot go public until your relationship is stable,” Barnes informed us.
“I didn’t realize it was unstable,” I said before I caught myself. Under the table, Nick took my hand.
“There can be no ups and downs,” Richard hissed. “Once you are out, you are happy. Period.”
It sounded like a threat. And two hours later, Marj added an ultimatum to the pile.
“Her Majesty would prefer if you and Nicholas refrained from any more overnights in royal residences, even in separate bedrooms,” she relayed to me by phone, in the imperious tone she uses when she’s working from Eleanor’s script. “Premarital coitus cannot be tacitly sanctioned by the Crown.”
“I…right,” I said, unable to deny that one even for sport. “So…does that mean Nick is allowed to sleep here now? Or…are you asking us to…?”