and with it the harbour a little further on and the salty suspension that the sea mist carried inland.
I still couldn’t comprehend everything that had happened that day. It felt as though the events since that morning had occurred over several days, and were still no more than skin-deep. Yet my body hadn’t failed to note the pricking and inside, I felt oddly numb – my mind’s way of protecting itself, I supposed.
I glanced at the clock on the church tower, surprised at how long it had taken me to get home. Time just didn’t seem to move in a constant way anymore.
Inside, the blinking light of my laptop lured me in as I placed a cup of tea on the desk and checked my emails. Sure enough, Jo had returned a sprawling epic that required much scrolling. Despite her confused lineage – French-Canadian and German, now serving as a guardian at a boarding school in Switzerland – her English was word perfect, something eight years at St. Sapphire’s had given her.
The first three paragraphs were dedicated to gushing about how hot the prince was, and how I should feel lucky to be bestowed the chance to be so intimate with him. The rest added up to a warning: what I suspected of him and his family was not a light accusation and that I should tread carefully. She ended with her own theory as to why he was here, which I dismissed immediately, blushing.
I leant back in my chair, unsure of how to reply. I contemplated telling her about losing it that morning, but decided against it, not wanting to provide any opportunities for rumours. There was no point telling her about what the prince had revealed: she didn’t know I hid – had hidden – my title.
Pushing away from the desk I collapsed onto the cushioned window seat. Through the window, I could see the maple tree in the garden, the nearest branch just a foot or two from my window – when I was a child, reluctantly returning home from school for the weekend, I would often seek solace in the crux of its branches, where the trunk would divide into four and form a neat little seat, perfect to fold into. It was my own palace of leaves, decorated with pinned flowers, plucked from the garden, or dream-catchers, which I would make endlessly at the desk where the laptop now sat – some of the frail structures had survived, and were now dangling from the eaves of the window, minus the feathers. They had become rotten and mildewed, and my mother had removed them. When I had collected more gulls’ feathers to replace them, she had taken those too.
I knew I couldn’t face school the next day. I couldn’t face the questions on top of the already mounting dread I had at the prospect of detention on Thursday. Besides, a day would act as a sort of buffer against the shock: the buzz about my title would have died down a bit by Thursday. Let the prince deal with the questions, I thought. Let him sort out what he caused.
‘Autumn, why didn’t you tell us?’
‘You never asked.’
‘That’s not the point. You’re the duchess of England, and we never knew. I mean, that makes you the highest ranking nobility in the country. Right below royalty. Er, hello?’ Gwen snapped.
‘I thought that title died with that woman, a couple of years back. There was something about a state funeral on the news, remember?’
I shot Tammy a look, and comprehension slowly dawned on her face.
‘Oh my God, that was your grandmother, wasn’t it? And what, the title skipped your dad? How come?’
‘Human.’
I was wrong about the buzz dying down. If anything, my absence had escalated the hype. The questions didn’t stop all day, and when they did it was only because I made an escape to the bathroom, or the prince was around. Then, the questions would be aimed at him. They could extract more from him considering I was letting little out.
Thankfully, the day passed quickly. I even managed to avoid speaking to the prince for the entire length of our English literature lesson. He didn’t try to start anything resembling conversation.
Five o’clock had long passed before I got out of textiles and I suspected it was going to be a long evening. In contrast to the GCSE essay that had earned me the detention, the A level English work was long and laborious. It didn’t help that the prince hadn’t read the play or any of the set poems, so I had to explain everything he was copying out. From his desk, Mr. Sylaeia would occasionally look up until eventually, as the hands of the clock shot past seven and towards half past, he announced that we could leave.
The contents of my folder had become so sprawled across the desk that by the time I had reorganized and packed them away, the light had faded outside and what had been a murky grey sky became purple through the pouring rain. I watched it through the window, unable to see the art building roof just opposite. A knot formed in my throat.
Outside in the corridor, the rain didn’t seem as heavy, the doors at each end sealing out the roar of the wind, but on the stairs, it was clear just how bad it was. The sky slapped the rain down so forcefully that water sprung a metre back up from the ground, ricocheting off the benches and joining huge pools where the tarmac dipped and was beginning to crumble. The autumn-flowering blossom on the tree was putting up a fierce fight, but the wind was winning, sweeping the petals high into the air and away over the buildings.
‘You’re not going to fly in that, are you?’
I paused and the prince drew up beside me, both of us staring through the glass doors at the chaos outside.
‘I’ll take the bus.’
He looked me up and down sceptically and I knew that in my blouse, skirt and thin tights, I wasn’t exactly dressed for the weather.
‘You’ll get soaked. It’s dark too. You shouldn’t wait on your own.’
‘I’ll be fine—’
‘Seriously, I can give you a lift.’
I took a few steps towards the door, hoisting my bag higher on my shoulder and preparing to make a dash through the rain. ‘My parents say I shouldn’t accept lifts from strangers.’
He flinched and the puzzled expression from two days before returned. ‘I’m not a stranger.’ His tone made it sound almost like a question, as though he wasn’t even sure of that statement himself.
You’re as good as a stranger, I thought.
I hovered for a few more seconds, unsure if he was going to say anything else. When he didn’t, I braced myself against the door and pushed, hoping my body weight would be enough to hold it open just long enough for me to slip through. It wasn’t. In the second that the wind caught the door and flung it wide open, I became drenched, standing directly below the overflowing gutter; blinded by the water seeping down from my hair and the rain, battering my face like needles, I only just saw the door swinging wildly on its hinges and dived back, helped by a hand yanking on the material of my blouse. Landing on the floor, I pulled my feet back over the lip of the frame just in time as the door slammed shut so violently that the lowest pane of glass fell from its seal and shattered on the ground outside.
‘Are
