Page 87 of Tabloid Princess

I dropped next to her on the mattress. “Maybe last week made me realise some things.”

“Like what?”

“That maybe I’ve been telling myself I’ve been protecting Daisy all this time, but really I’ve been protecting myself. I didn’t give her the best start in life, but I gave her all that I could. Maybe it’s time I stopped beating myself up about it and just let us live.”

She nodded slowly. “I think that’s incredibly wise.”

“Oh, now hold on, let’s not take this too far.”

“Just have fun, Leia. Live life like a twenty-two-year-old with the world at her feet. Have dates, breakups. That’s part of the growing process.”

I considered her words once she’d left to check Daisy still played happily in the lounge.

In some ways she was right.

But in others she was far off the mark.

What I was about to do had nothing to do with normal dating. There couldn’t be such a thing.

There would be no waiting for phone calls, no will we won’t we. His world didn’t work like that.

If people found out about the prince and I there would be no small breakup. It would be worldwide everywhere.

I didn’t know what this could be.

All I knew was that to keep it secret for as long as possible was paramount.

The air seemed cooler, the Indian summer had finally loosened its grip. I searched the pathway from the house checking for cameras and journalists, but the restraining order seemed to be holding its weight.

I told myself to believe what Nana had said. I was just any other twenty-two-year-old going for a night on the town.

I chuckled to myself under my breath.

Most twenty-two-years-olds going a date in the city would at least know where they were going.

Bill sat in the black car one street along from mine. His anxious glance peered through the windscreen as I walked along. I gave him a small wave and slipped into the back of the car.

“Why are you frowning?” I glanced about trying to see what was wrong.

“I don’t like not collecting you from the door.”

“Bill, thank you. But you know I’ve walked up and down this street a fair few times and nothing has ever happened to me.”

His glance met one in the rear-view mirror. “That will change.”

His words kicked my nerves up a notch.

“Where are we going anyway?”

“I couldn’t possibly say.”

I watched through the window as the roads slipped past. At eight o’clock, most of the city’s workers were either home or on their way, but in a town as big as London nothing was very quiet. The daytime workers had given way to night-time revellers.

When we pulled alongside St Martin in the Fields at Trafalgar Square, I looked about in surprise. We were in tourist headquarters here. Even I didn’t like coming into this area of town. Too many people, most of them utter idiots.

The car kept cruising around the darkening streets, and I craned my neck to spy the top of Nelson’s column. I couldn’t see the top from where I was but knowing it was up there in the sky, the same as it had always been, unmoving and unchanging settled my nerves a little. This moment I was on was just fleeting. The evening would end, one way or the other, but things would still stay the same, unchanging around it.

Bill guided the car to a small entrance alongside the National Gallery, a car park barrier lifted, and we went behind the building.