‘Would you really?’ Sinclair eyed her. ‘Surely you’d want to do good, too?’
Miranda’s eyes went back to the queen smiling, the children elated. ‘Perhaps.’
Before long, the moustaches arrived and the meeting began, and on and on it went.
It was incredulous to Miranda how much pointless discussion was involved. Naturally, things needed to be perfect – she got that. But a forty-minute discourse as to whether to add a much-needed break in aback chapel of Westminster Abbey after the service was excessive. The men kept insisting that since it had ‘never been done that way before’, it was ‘against protocol and tradition’. The entire discussion was nonsensical.
After an hour, a tea trolley was wheeled in, and Miranda excused herself to the ladies’, desperate for a few minutes’ peace. On her way, she looked out the window. The pageant had finished, three footmen rolling up the carpets. Beside them, a limousine pulled up to the main door, and then, of all people, the queen herself came out to open the door.
Miranda wondered who would be so grand as to have the monarch welcome them personally, but then she saw.
It was four-year-old Charles and little Anne, still only two. Miranda watched as the queen stepped forward to greet her children, not austere, as all the newspapers would have it, but loving and caring, scooping up Anne into her arms and kissing her, taking Charles’s little hand in hers to head back inside. It was a natural motherly instinct, a smile beaming from Elizabeth with the close connection, a mother and her children.
Miranda quickly tried to blot out a sudden feeling of unease.
Back in Connecticut, she and Jack had talked about the children they’d have. It was the summer before Pearl Harbor, before they’d married, before he’d gone. Together they’d run, dancing through the sun-dappled lanes, talking about their future. They’d have a dog called Bess, and two children – he liked the names Adam and Catherine, but for her it was Rose and Tommy. She pictured them in her mind, twirling them around in the sunshine, a lump in her throat as she mourned their absence.
Ever since Jack’s death, she’d avoided young children. When her friends reproduced, she found other places to be, new friends with whom to spend her time. The more she threw herself into her career, the more she realized how children would have held her back – wasn’t it a relief that she’d never had them.
And yet, she acknowledged as she watched the queen delighting in the little girl’s giggles, she felt something stir. Her dreams of childrenwith Jack had been squashed down when he died – the ghosts of little Rose and Tommy had died alongside him. And now she felt a small thud of regret that she hadn’t done things differently.
By the time the meeting ended, it had gone six o’clock. Miranda and Sinclair retraced their steps to the entrance, and soon the car was winding through London.
Meanwhile, they entertained each other with updates about the palace. Today Sinclair included a choice morsel concerning Miss Driscoll being perennially growled at by the Queen Mother’s favourite corgi.
s
It was late by the time they were dropped at the palace, and after depositing their meeting notes in the offices, they hurried to the Underground station in the driving rain. It was then that Sinclair proposed that they stop in a pub beside the park ‘to dry off’, adding, ‘I think we deserve a drink after that meeting.’
Keen to grill him about the royal family, Miranda readily agreed, following him into the charming old pub with a low ceiling and easy chairs. They took a table by a great fire, warming themselves after the deluge.
‘Cheers,’ he said, raising his glass. ‘I suppose it made for a nice break, getting out of the city for the afternoon.’
‘I managed to avoid my aunt’s cooking – she has tripe on the menu for today.’ She laughed. ‘I can’t imagine you’d ever be faced with that dilemma,’ she said, and paused, looking at him quizzically. ‘Or perhaps you have a wife at home, a houseful of children?’
Laughing, he replied, ‘Neither. I’m not married and have no offspring. I have to cook for myself.’
‘I bet you have a house in the suburbs, a well-kept backyard.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘You strike me as a gardening man.’
‘Actually, you’re wrong in both regards. I don’t live in the suburbs, and I don’t have a garden – although I am partial to a spot of gardening, so perhaps I should give you a little credit for that.’
‘Then where do you live? A plush flat in Chelsea?’
‘Nothing as dull as that, I assure you. No, I live in an area in north London called Little Venice,’ he paused, then added, ‘on a canal boat.’
Miranda laughed. ‘A canal boat?’
‘One of those long houseboats that chug around the city’s canals.’ He laughed. ‘I told you that I love to travel, and if I can’t go abroad, then I’ll live in a place where I can imagine it.’ He grinned, his eyes lighting up. ‘And Nessy is that place.’
‘Nessy?’
‘Her full name is Vanessa-Jane, but when I bought her, I was told that she likes to be called Nessy. Barges are often named after real people, so I imagine the real Nessy must have been a character.’
‘What’s Nessy like? The boat I mean, not the person.’
He gave a rueful smile. ‘She’s beautiful,’ he said, then blushed. ‘But I would say that, wouldn’t I?’
‘Don’t tell me, she’s your stand-in child?’
