Page 35 of The Unlikely Heir

Sorry, not going to happen now you’re in the limelight.

There’s no immediate message back from Callum. I go into my bathroom to brush my teeth. When I come back out, I find Callum has sent me a reply.

How have you coped with it all?

I stare at his message. I sense the desperation in his words, and I want to give him some good advice, but I know general platitudes aren’t going to cut it.

It’s a constant process. You have to learn to detach yourself from what is being said. Try not to look at any of it.

That’s far easier to say than actually do.

Callum’s words take me back to when I was a first-term MP from Essex, how I relentlessly followed all press and social media coverage of myself, how frustrated I’d gotten any time I was misrepresented.

It’s been a slow, evolving process to accept that I’m going to have a significant portion of the country hate me just for what I represent, who will find fault no matter what I do.

Being married to Garett helped me in the beginning because he had an upper-classwho cares what the plebs thinkmentality. And while it came from the wrong place of snobbery and entitlement, at least his approach helped me cope with the overwhelming negativity that went with my job.

I send an honest reply to Callum now.

I know it’s not easy.

I put my phone on my bedside table and rub my face.

Maybe this is the best I can do for Callum. Maybe he doesn’t need someone with all the answers. He just needs someone who’ll be honest about how difficult it can be, someone he can vent to when it becomes too much.

I can be that person if that’s what he needs me to be.

ChapterTen

Callum

“So, today, you’re opening the newly refurbished wing of the British Museum,” Raymond says. It’s part of our morning briefing when he gives me the rundown of my itinerary for the day. “There’s going to be lots of priceless artifacts around, so it’s a hands-in-pockets occasion, okay?”

My expressive hand gestures are proving to be a problem.

Last week, in my first speech at a gala fundraiser, I knocked the microphone halfway through and the room echoed with the tortured wail of microphone feedback. The tech people had to come and reset it before I could continue.

Yesterday I went to a bake-off raising money for a mental health charity and managed to knock over the winning Victoria Sponge by gesturing far too enthusiastically, which triggered another round of creative headlines.

Prince Callum Cake-tastrophe

Bake-Off Blunder

Prince Callum’s ‘Destruction Derby’

TheDaily Chronicleis now running a betting pool about how long it will be until someone is injured by my overenthusiastic hand gestures.

But so far, the palace doesn’t seem too worried about these types of headlines.

“It’s early days. The public is still getting used to you. And at least you’re occupying space in the papers that would otherwise go to profiling your relatives’ shady deeds.”

The shadow of my relatives’ betrayal hangs heavy over the monarchy. I barely see my grandmother. She appears to be running herself ragged, trying to fill in all the official engagements my uncles and cousins would normally have done.

It’s like she’s trying to personally atone for the behavior of her sons and grandchildren.

The papers continue to leak salacious details of what the investigations have so far uncovered. There’s not just a leak from inside Scotland Yard. It’s more like a torrent.

My Uncle Edwin and his children, Chloe and Frederick, all seemed to have been caught up in a scandal of bribing FIFA officials in an attempt to win Britain the rights to host the Football World Cup. Which, while illegal and immoral, at least had the right intentions to help the country.