“But you don’t need to be. And if you don’t need to, then why?”
Elise is saying nothing, just unpacking the lunch we’ve brought with us, sipping at her hip flask.
“Because I sit at those state dinners too. I answer questions. I pretend to know nothing when it suits me, Len. That doesn’t mean I don’t have an interest or want to know more. William seemed a bit, I don’t know, out of his depth?”
Lennox’s face clouds. “He’s young. The youngest PM there’s been. But he’s still seven years older than me.”
I know Lennox will probably be king before he’s forty. I know our father’s health isn’t good. There are consultants involved, a surgeon, scans. But he says nothing to anyone.
“But you’ve been brought up to do this job.”
He gives one firm nod and looks to the mountains. “So’s William. His father.”
I look to the ground.
“Doesn’t mean you’re the right person for the job.”
Lennox’s head swings towards me. “Did you ever want it?”
He’s never asked me this before. Even when he’s been blind drunk and asking me advice about women, told me too much information about whisky dick and Elise’s tits, he’s never asked me if I’d want to be queen.
“I’ve never had to think about whether I’d want it or not. The crown’s not mine. Someone else will be queen after mother. Not me.”
I see Elise’s eyes fix on Lennox as I say the words and I feel the rage bubble inside me, a poisoned cauldron stirred. She wants more than just my brother’s crown jewels.
* * *
We eat. Drink. Tend the horses.
For moments, an hour, we are normal young adults, sitting in a heathered field in summer under a veiled sun. We talk about sport, food, a new restaurant, a marriage, divorce, a birth.
“Do you remember Ben?” Lennox says. He’s drank too much of whatever’s in his hip flask, but his horse is good and won’t mind. It’s rare my brother is able to be off duty. “He was round a lot when we were kids. I used to play football with him.”
I remembered Ben.
“A bit. He was more your friend than mine.” Liar.
“I remember him. He was tall and blonde.” Elise giggles like she did when she was fifteen and saw a workman with no top on.
Crows fly over us. Cawing.
“He helped his dad in the gardens.” It was a fact.
Lennox stretches out, lazing over Elise’s legs. I’ll ride home alone and leave them to enjoy al fresco sex with the midges and Scottish sun.
“I remember you spent loads of time with him.” Lennox pulls a long stalk of grass and chews it. “Especially one summer.”
The summer when Elise stayed and was more about my brother than me. The summer I first kissed a boy and learned that shadows were for more than than just spying from. The summer I discovered what my body could do and how my mind was key to a whole new world.
“It was a long time ago. I wonder what he’s like now?”
I can see them itching to touch each other, her fingers stretching towards him, trying not to feel. It’s as if she’s fingering his aura, touching the yellow light that flickers from him, her inky blue turning him green. I see in colours, shades. My head is an artist’s palette.
“He’s been in the army,” Lennox says, shifting, not away from her, just shifting. “He’ll be bigger. Taller. How long is it since he left?”
It’s eleven years.
“I’m not sure. I think he was about twenty.” He was twenty. I remembered his birthday. I stayed in my room that day, in my tower. My hair did not fall from the window for him to climb.
