guest quarters while it was being put together. With a squeeze and a promise to make dinner plans for the four of us soon, I saw Cilla off at the front door with a happy smile. But as her little car disappeared past the clock tower, her absence hit me sharply, and I realized what I felt was homesickness. Even though I was, technically, at home. I felt so much like myself with Cilla—the Bex Porter of old, a person I knew well, and whose goals and dreams and agenda were not dictated by anyone but herself.
So I called in another old friend: Margot.
I’d made it out of the palace gates once, and it was only my own skittishness that put an end to the mischief. Maybe Margot could go even farther. Her wig and her mole and her retro sunglasses and frumpy taste might be my ticket out of the lavish prison in which I’d found myself, so I boldly signed off on some paint colors and then dug out Margot’s hair for some restorative fluffing. There was so much I wanted to do—the Magritte exhibit at the Tate Modern, a stroll through Apsley House to ogle all the Duke of Wellington’s expensive stuff, which appealed now that I was living in the home of another person who never threw anything out—but I knew I needed my first attempt to be something simpler. Very basic, very uncool, very much a place where nobody would give me a second glance.
I needed a McDonald’s.
Once, when we first started dating, Nick had shown me a door in his and Freddie’s quarters that connected to the Kensington Palace museum. Emma used to sneak the kids in there at night and they’d explore; he’d never taken me through it, but I knew it would put me out somewhere near the downstairs public bathrooms. I waited until Freddie’s car left his apartment the next morning, and I let myself into Nick’s old place with my key. The passage was just off a little-used billiard room at the far end of the flat, looking like nothing more than a bookcase. Nick had told me that pulling out Martin Chuzzlewit and Jackie Collins’s Lucky would reveal it, so I ran my finger over the shelves until I found them both, took a deep breath, and slid them toward me. I heard a click, and saw a subtle release. Success.
I pushed it open to reveal a dark hallway—with a functioning nightlight; apparently even the secret passageways were attended to scrupulously by the staff—and then another door, which let me into a janitorial closet. I slipped into the museum from there and pretended to “discover” that the women’s room was across the hall. Nobody was there to see my acting job, so I simply strolled in, washed my hands, smoothed my wig, and then walked right out toward the foyer. Any nearby tourists were all too busy consulting their maps of the palace, or turning over souvenir mugs in their hands, to pay me any mind. (I couldn’t help but notice that the gift shop’s stock of teacups honoring our wedding had been deeply discounted.) I feigned an interest in some aprons, and then set out into the park, pulling up the collar of my wool coat against the brisk October air.
It was sunny, but crisp; a breeze ruffled what was left on the trees and convinced several leaves to give up the ghost. I strolled toward the high street, then headed into the McDonald’s and ordered an Egg McMuffin and a hash brown. The teller looked at me very curiously, and as my heart leapt into my throat, she pointed up at the clock.
“Sorry, love,” she said. “We’ve stopped serving breakfast.”
“Oh,” I said, nearly forgetting to put on my accent, and sliding into a compromise that sounded vaguely Australian. Okay, then. Margot was from Down Under now. “Right, sorry, lost the plot there. Jet lag. One Big Mac meal, please, mate. Er, g’day.”
The woman didn’t even look up again; she just took the bill I handed her, my grandmother-in-law glaring officiously up at me from one side. Oh, hush, I thought, before guiltily remembering she was hooked up to a heart monitor.
I polished off my burger at a table by the window, pleasing myself with people-watching, and eavesdropping on the patrons who came and went around me. One was discussing Aston Villa’s football fortunes; another wanted to write an angry letter to the entire England cricket squad. A