I see more pain in his eyes now than when I’d first come into the room. He was pale and tired before, but now he looks anxious because he thinks I’m lonely.
“I’m happy as I am, Dad.” This is the truth. My life isn’t one I would’ve chosen, but I cannot choose not to have it.
“You should be having more fun. Don’t do as many engagements. Travel more. Take a year or two out and see the world. Get away from here.” There’s anger in his voice. He knows something more than I’m aware of.
“I can’t leave you and mum and Lennox. Especially not Lennox.”
Some may have felt jealously for not being the first born and not being in line to succeed. I feel guilt because as much as I haven’t chosen this life, neither has Lennox and his head must eventually wear a heavy crown.
“Blair…” He shakes his head and there are details he can’t tell me.
“Tell me about Ben.” The words will lighten him. He liked Ben. Ben was the boy he would’ve wanted Lennox to be, had our grandfather not been who he was. “What has he been up to while he’s been away?”
“Fighting.” My father’s eyes see something that isn’t in this room. He was in the army, only briefly, before his father became king in the newly liberated Scotland. “He saved people. He’s brave.”
“Does he have a family now?”
“No.”
There’s no elaboration. My father sits up, colour returning to his cheeks.
“What are your plans today?”
“I have a migraine coming, so probably little.”
“A storm’s on its way then. You’re still the barometer girl.”
I nod and stand up, making my way to the door. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
“Aye, lass. I’m as okay as I’ve always been.”
I walk away and step into the light outside the room.
* * *
Days slip by when they have no structure to cling to. Usually, I have at least two appointments. People to visit or places to be seen, or to be seen at. Then there are dinners and events and openings and plays. A day with nothing to fill it apart from a migraine is a rarity and by the end of it, I will feel as if I’ve wasted time.
I need air and exercise so I dress in jeans and t-shirt and wander outside towards the gardens. It’s June, so they’re in full bloom, rows of hollyhocks and dahlias, lavender and heathers. Bees swill and butterflies dance. They don’t care who I am.
I pass through the gardens towards the maze, still kept neat and passable by Leonard. It’s a place I rarely come to now, maybe passing between the hedged walls just half a dozen times since Ben left. He’s ingrained in every leaf and every flower, even now. We spent summers in here, chasing, sitting, talking.
Kissing.
I wander through, the bright light teasing my head. Light isn’t an irritant with my migraines, it just seems brighter. I yawn, another symptom and sip the water I’ve brought. Really I want to hide in my room with a book I’ve pilfered from my mother and pretend the world doesn’t exist, but the oak tree in the centre is calling me.
The maze was structured around it, a centre point. Really there should’ve been something more significant, a statue or a plaque; something to commemorate the trek through the pathways and defeating the trickery they posed. But instead there was an oak tree, tall and wide and thick, its bark wrinkled and distorted with age.
Leonard had said he thought the maze was designed by an Englishman, given that the oak was a symbol of the South. I chose to think it was coincidence, preferring to keep the political world away from my fairy tale.
Nothing has changed when I reach the centre. The bench is still there, the tree still standing and in full leaf. Foxgloves and hollyhocks grow where they choose and heather, white heather, crawls over what was once a rockery but has been left to tend itself.
“I knew I’d find you here first.”
I turn quick enough to tweak a muscle in my neck and almost stumble, the voice older but instantly making me react, sharper now than ever before.
“Ben.”
He’s blonder and bigger and wider. His jaw and cheekbones are sharper and he has fair stubble grazing his face.
