Lacey was waiting by the Basil Street entrance of Harrods, looking crisp in a day dress and heels. I had texted her to join me there for a prescribed shopping outing, because I’d known she would accept, and now she’d beaten me there—along with six or seven paparazzi, who would doubtless multiply. Two Porters were better than one.
“Bex! Over here!” one of them called, and the cameras turned away from Lacey and the store’s iconic terracotta fa?ade when they spied me spilling out of my cab. Most of these guys were my regulars, who’d shown up every day since we’d fled Greetings & Salutations, hoping I’d crack again and give them something similarly juicy. My boss was losing his patience, although that might’ve been because the press made greeting-card artist sound so foolish and inconsequential, or worse, made-up.
“Shopping for Nicky’s birthday?” That one, I’d dubbed Voldemort.
“Not getting him a Coucherator, then?” asked Too-Snug Safari Vest.
“Is he ever going to marry you?” Mustache boomed.
I turned a deaf ear and pressed toward Lacey, the cameras tracking my every step.
“Let’s get inside,” I said through my smiling, clenched teeth.
“Just give them what they want, Bex,” she murmured.
“Just give us what we want!” Mustache parroted as the men advanced on us, the flashes from their cameras bright and disorienting. My breath quickened. That day we ran up Regent Street, I’d at least known somewhere around us lay air and space. But at Harrods, I didn’t have anywhere to go other than through a plate glass window. I couldn’t control Lacey, but I was not about to stick around and get shoved through it by twelve hundred pounds of loudmouthed testosterone, and bleed out on a display of beaded evening bags.
“Have a nice day, gentlemen,” I said tightly, pushing inside to the complicated air of men’s promotional fragrances.
Harrods takes up an entire city block and sells everything from handbags to riding equipment to foie gras, to elephants like the one Queen Eleanor bought Nick for his ninth birthday—although in fairness, they had needed to special-order that. (Now it lives at the London Zoo. His name is Patrick. Nick likes to visit him.) It was hardly a soothing place for me to regain my bearings—I once had to ask directions five times just to find the restrooms—but I’d been forced there for a very specific reason: I, my friends, and my immediate family had all gotten the same gold-edged, cream invitation with elegant script requesting the honor of our presence at a birthday celebration in late August for His Royal Highness Prince Nicholas of Wales, black tie required. Eleanor had stuffed the invite list with important diplomats, politicians, and foreign relatives, making it more of a coming-out party than anything else—and in a much smaller sense, it felt like mine as well, given that the handful of approved reporters in attendance would all know who I was, or what they suspected I might be. Which left me with one very large problem, and apparently I wasn’t the only one who knew it.
“You’re going to bungle this, aren’t you?”
I had flinched and held the phone away from my ear. “Hi, Bea. I take it you got the invitation today, too.”
“Has he gotten you a stylist? No, of course not. He cannot be seen paying to tart you up, especially when you don’t officially exist,” Bea mused, as if she’d called just to monologue at me. “And yet if you insist on banging about with him, it’s in everyone’s best interest that you do this correctly. I suppose I can help. Meet me at Harrods on Sunday, and for God’s sake, bring the right underpinnings.”
And then she’d hung up on me.
I spied Lady Bollocks waiting at the foot of the ornate Egyptian escalator, which probably seemed like the height of opulence when it was built but now feels like something on loan from a Vegas casino. Bea looked wan underneath her typically cross expression. I’d heard from Clive that Pudge had fallen off the wagon, and also off a wagon, at Glastonbury.
“Where is Lacey? I haven’t got all day,” she snapped in her usual tone.
“Out making friends with the paparazzi,” I said.
“Naturally,” she said, her lips tightening with disapproval. “You have got to put a stop to this. She’s getting more and more indiscreet. You should’ve seen her and Freddie at that party, breathing all over each other. It was almost worse than snogging.”
I groaned. “She is addicted to Freddie. He shouldn’t be legal.”
“He is irresistible,” Bea affirmed. “Everyone’s slept with him.”
“Have you?” I asked.
“Of course,” Bea said.
“Sorry!” Lacey bounced over, tucking her phone in her purse. “One of the photographers wanted to know where I got my shoes.” She grinned. “They’ve given me a nickname. Racy Lacey. I think it’s cute!”
“You would,” Bea said, giving me an arch look. “It’s not a compliment. It means they think you’re unsavory.”
“Nah, it’s just their way of saying I’m fun,” Lacey said. “I like it.”
“It’s not a compliment,” Bea squeaked, almost losing her composure in what would have been a historic first.
Bea had arranged for a private fitting area, a beautiful sanctuary of a room where racks of pre-pulled gowns waited for us, along with petit fours, chilled glasses, and an ice bucket holding an open bottle of white wine. There was a bell to ring if we needed any assistance, but otherwise, we had complete and utter solitude.
“Discretion,” said Bea, “is nine-tenths of success.” She glared at Lacey again for good measure.
“I may never be able to shop another way ever again.” Lacey sighed, ignoring Bea in favor of sampling the sweets.
The three of us spent the next hour zipping and unzipping some of the most perfect dresses I’d ever touched, and I relaxed and let out the breath that I’d gotten accustomed to holding every time I felt a stranger staring at the side of my head. Lacey and Bea put aside their squabble and seemed to have fun—or as close as Bea ever got—bandying about opinions on what I should choose. In the end, Lacey knew best; her first pick for me was a magnificent forest green strapless gown with gossamer gold thread woven into the bodice, then shooting through the skirt like a sunburst, and it won easily.
“It’s even a British designer. They’ll love that,” she said, as she fastened the hook-and-eye closure at the back.
“Quite. You may not be totally useless,” Bea said to Lacey, which for her was rapturous praise. The dress cost three times my rent, but if Lady Bollocks approved, there could be no other choice. Sabotage was not Bea’s game: I might be a foolish American, but as long as I was with Nick, I was her foolish American.