I blow out a breath.
“So? What's it going to be, Maximilien?”
I look at my father's grim face, his mouth down turned, his nostrils flared. He’s got one eye twitching in irritation. I’ve taken things too far this time.
“Look, Father. Be reasonable. It's not me who's the problem here. It's that Fabiana Fontaine woman. She's the one who broke the story. Not that there really was a story.”
“No story? We nearly lost seven carp thanks to your little show. Those fish are descendants of those given to ourfamily by the Thai King over 200 years ago,” Father says, his nostrils flaring to widths never witnessed before.
“I feel bad about the fish. Really, I do. But in my defense, I never thought I would end up in the pond. None of the children did.”
“None of the children are twenty-seven years old and weigh 200 pounds, my dear boy.”
“205,” I correct. “I’ve been lifting more weights recently.”
Father glares at me, and I’m pretty sure some smoke begins to emit from his nostrils.
“What your father is trying to say, darling, is that not only did you re-home the carp to the lawn, but you could have hurt yourself,” Mummy says in a far more conciliatory tone.
“Yes, that and the fact you made a spectacle of yourself that’s now headline news across our country,” Father adds.
“As I said, blame Fabiana Fontaine,” I grind out, my dislike for that woman growing in intensity with each passing minute. Which I didn’t think was possible. I’ve hated her for years, even before she tried to blow Amelia and Ethan’s cover in Monteluce five years ago. “Why did she have to make a big deal of my minor mishap? It's hardly newsworthy.Prince falls into pond. Big deal,” I say.
“And now you’ve become a meme, I’m told,” Father says.
“Do you even know what a meme is, Father?” I ask.
“Of course I do,” he sniffs, but we both know he doesn't.
“Amelia keeps sending us videos of people falling into toddler’s swimming pools with the child calling ‘cannonball!’ She thinks it's all rather amusing,” Mummy says, and a hint of a smile quirks her lips.
“We, on the other hand, do not,” Father adds, as if that's not blindingly obvious by the mere fact I’ve been summoned for this very conversation. “You have become the laughingstock of our family, Max.”
I take exception to the term. “Laughingstock? Isn’t that going a bit far? Look, I get it wasn't the right thing to do at a garden party, but in my defense?—”
“You have no defense, son. You messed upagain, and now you need to fix it,” Father says.
“What do you mean ‘again?’ It’s not as if I make a habit of diving onto slip ‘n slides, you know,” I say in protest.
“Oh, this isn’t your first mess, my boy,” Father quips. “There was the time you were photographed partying on Prince Nicholas’s yacht with popstar twins, wearing nothing but your swim trunks and drinking from a champagne bottle,” Father says, continuing to catalog my less than stellar decision-making over the last couple of years.
“Doesn’t everyone need to cut loose every now and then?”
“Not while dancing to a very inappropriate remix of the Ledonian national anthem, my dear boy,” Father grumbles.
“Trixie and Tallulah hit number one with that song.” My protest falls on deaf ears as my parents continue to count off my failings, all with alarmingly accurate details.
“Didn’t you auction off a kiss as well?” Mummy asks, even though it’s clear she already knows the answer. “To that female TV presenter who gushed about your ‘superior lip action’ on national television?”
“That was for charity. I raised a lot of money with that one kiss. And besides, Lorena Samboni was rather a good kisser, so all in all, it wasn’t a bad outcome.”
My parents are not listening.
“And then there was the time you donned a Hawaiian shirt and mustache, borrowing your friend’s yellow Ferrari to visit your sister while she was hiding out at a Malveauxian lake with an actor,” Father says.
“By ‘actor’ you mean Ethan Roberts, aka herhusband?” I say pointedly.
“The fact of the matter is you were in a yellow Ferrari. You may as well have circled Amelia’s location on maps and personally handed them out to the paparazzi!” Father says.
