“That’s rich, coming from someone who spent years stressed about Pudge,” I said.
“And did that work? No,” Bea said. “In fact, it was once I stopped bothering about her that she pulled herself together, and now look at her. Norway is obsessed.”
“Lacey and Pudge aren’t the same, though,” I said. “Pudge had an addiction.”
“I’d argue Lacey does, too.”
“To what?” I asked.
Bea bit into a slice of apple. “To attention. To you. To your attention.”
“That’s not fair,” I said automatically. “Our relationship is different. Twins are—”
“Yes, yes. You’re bonded. It’s special. Etcetera,” Bea said. “I may not be a twin, but that doesn’t mean I can’t read one. Lacey is trying to get your attention by giving you none, and you are so desperate to make her happy that you’re going to ruin everything for yourself.”
“I can fix this, Bea,” I insisted. “She’s invited to Royal Ascot with me. It’ll be a great way to remind her that we can still be the Porter twins even when I’m the Duchess of Wherever.”
“Doubtful,” Bea said, snagging the last piece of celery. “But I have said my piece. Now, back to work. And if you flash me any of your knickers at all this time, I will call the Daily Mail and tell them you’ve never worn any.”
Chapter Four
By summer, unbeknownst to us, The Bexicon was rushing toward its conclusion so it could hit bookstores in time to stuff people’s Christmas stockings. Aurelia Maupassant chose to close her trove of flattering fallacies with this interpretation of my debut at Royal Ascot:
It was a triumphant appearance. As the young prince and his future wife stood on the balcony of the Royal Box, their faces showed it all: happiness, contentment, and commitment to each other and to the people amassed below them. Porter was the very picture of perfection, a living dream, an aspirational totem for those who cleave to the most hopeless and hopeful of romantic beliefs that someday, too, their princes will come.
If that’s what she saw, then I’ll take it.
The five-day, multimillion-pound Royal Ascot race meet every June is characterized by crazy hats, extremely rich purses—both in terms of prizes, and handbags—and the prestige of Eleanor’s daily attendance. This year, Nick’s ship would arrive in port in time for him to join the Queen’s procession, a prime opportunity for The Firm’s PR machine to capitalize on the mounting yen for a Posh and Bex sighting. The world seemed to feel that being given royal lovebirds, only to have them ripped away for half a year while one of them shipped out to the Indian Ocean, was voyeuristically unfair. So when word got out that we’d be there on Ladies’ Day, the Guardian ran the headline AND THEY’RE OFF, and the best of the Bex-themed fashion blogs, Bex-a-Porter, put a countdown to Ascot on the homepage along with a poll in which 73 percent of voters wanted me to wear a hat that made me taller than Nick.
Royal Ascot’s dress code already falls in line with the litany of rules I have to obey: Sleeves are mandatory, or at least straps wider than an inch. Skirts must fall no higher than the vaguely defined just above the knee, and hats must have a base of four inches or larger (I wish I’d been present when they decided three inches was too trashy to bear). Lacey was still allergic to Donna—it was mutual—so it was Cilla, at loose ends now that she’d quit nannying and moved in with Gaz, who acted as my wingman during the flurry of emergency fittings.
“You’ll want something bright, I think, Rebecca,” Donna theorized.
“You’ve pulled some ripping patterns,” Cilla observed. “In the right spots, they’ll hide any wrinkles from the car ride.”
“I was thinking a floral,” Donna said, impressed.
“But just a touch of it. She can’t look like a throw pillow.”
Donna pulled from the rack a summery white dress with a fiery cluster of poppies at the waist, a few wafting petals sprinkled in both directions.
“My first pick,” she said. “You’ve got a keen instinct.”
“You did the hard part.” Cilla beamed. She was the anti-Lacey. A love match was born.
The day of the races did not dawn fortuitously. We had to be in place well before the royal procession at two o’clock, but Bex Standard Time didn’t exist yet, so my usual well-intentioned struggles with punctuality resulted in Kira nagging me to tears. And then Lacey made Mom and me wait an additional half hour before texting that she’d have to meet us there. It was only thanks to PPO Stout’s lead foot that we were almost back on schedule when we drove in through the pack of wobbly racegoers spilling toward the grandstand. The racetrack has tried curtailing the party atmosphere, even adding an amnesty box inviting you to deposit any drugs you might have planned to sneak inside. (Freddie told me very seriously, in front of a stone-faced Twiggy, that they are doled out as Christmas bonuses to the PPOs.) I wish I’d attended just once when I could still anonymously people-watch, but instead we took an elevator above the fray to the curved, blue-carpeted Royal Box, jutting out like a flying saucer from the rest of Ascot’s grandstands. Clive and the rest of the Fitzwilliams had beaten us there, with his father, Edgeware, holding court among the other toffs about a recent rugby match in which his fourth son Tim majestically shattered his nose. Dim Tim himself stood by, listening, and offering little other than a vacuous smile and a wonderful view of his new Picasso of a face: flat where it should be strong, his nostrils too close to his eyes. His brothers’ buffet of distortions, to go with their matching hulking blondness, made Clive even more of an anomaly in the family than he already was.
“Clive!” I called out, spying him from behind.
He turned around, and with him, Paddington Larchmont-Kent-Smythe, in a yellow chiffon day dress straight out of a Fred Astaire movie.
“Rebecca!” Paddington said, gliding over to embrace me. “It’s so fulfilling to be reunited.”
“Um, yes, with you, too, Pud—er, Padding…Larchmont…?” I fumbled.
“You may use whichever name speaks to you,” she said, warm but still somehow remote, like she was communicating from a dimension a half step out of sync with my own. Per Tatler, she was spending every third week in an ashram.
“Bex.” Clive ducked in to kiss my cheek, dashing in his tailcoat. “It’s been ages.”
“Got any sure winners?” I asked.
“He’d better,” said Thick Trevor as he passed, yanking painfully on his brother’s earlobe. “Horse racing’s the only kind of sport he plays: one where you don’t actually do anything.”
Clive shot him a disgusted expression as Pudge waved at the throngs outside.
“I was trying to absorb psychic energies from the people, because it’s so fucking electric down there.” Her new-age veneer made her old favorite word sound like a spiritual orgasm. “But nothing came to me. I shall meditate on it.”