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Alex is so impossibly handsome that I can’t take my eyes off him. Which is a good thing. He helps me focus on what we are here to do. We have to sell our love to the world and come off not looking like the bad guys.
The interview is conducted in English. Our interviewer is the most famous talk show host in Moldavia, Yvette Dupree. She’s the Oprah of her little corner, and we are about to make her world famous.
We are seated on her couch together. She is placed in her usual armchair facing us. There is no live audience today. A bevy of cameras – more news cameras than I have ever seen in my entire life – decks the entire podium to the front of us. I’m frankly dazzled by all the lights.
My hands are numb. Come to think of it, I can’t feel my legs either. Madame Fournier has made us rehearse what we’re going to say again and again, but there’s always the chance of Yvette Dupree throwing us a curveball. She’s a journalist after all and you can’t curtail the freedom of the press, even in Moldavia.
Even if you are royalty.
Yvette is a stunning blonde. She is not beautiful if you take her individual features apart. Her nose is too narrow. Her eyes too close together. Her lips trend to the voluptuous side. But put together, she is stunning, especially with her huge mane of hair.
“Are you ready?” she says in her low, smoky voice. She is far from deferential, though she is clearly excited. This is her coup and she knows it. Her career is about to go stratospheric.
“Yes,” Alex says.
He clasps my clammy hand.
“You’ll be OK,” he whispers.
It’s like a test I have studied ten times for. I keep telling myself I’ll be OK, and yet, now that I’m here and my examination orals have begun, I am tongue-tied and frozen.
Oh God God help me.
The interview begins. Before us, the news cameras greedily lap up our every word, magnify our every deficiency . . . every pore on our face. Sweat beads upon my brow from the studio lights.
The first few questions are congratulatory about Alex’s ascension to the throne. Yvette mentions the old King’s passing and we are suitably somber. Alex talks about his father in a heartfelt way, dragging up memories of his childhood with his father. He details the anecdote, as rehearsed, about his father playing toy trains with him in the royal playroom. I find myself imagining Alex as a boy and the old King as a far younger man – sitting together on a humungous toy train as it runs round and round a track replete with toy stations and toy passengers.
So we have now established that Alex loved his father. I hate it that everything is so manipulated for the media, but we have no choice. And it’s true – Alex did love his father dearly, even if they didn’t always see eye to eye.
Alex is magnificent in front of the cameras. He’s very natural, as if he’s used to being before them all his life even if this is his first time being officially interviewed.
Yvette swivels to me. My insides turn to jelly.
“So, Liz. May I call you Liz?”
“Yes, please.”
Don’t, don’t throw me a curveball, I psyche her.
“So how did you and Alex meet?”
I take a deep breath. Alex gives an almost imperceptible nod of encouragement.
He claimed and took my body against the wall of a public hotel restroom. The men’s one, to be exact.
Do not be ashamed, I hear Madame Fournier’s voice telling me.
“I was a maid in a hotel in Chicago. Alex and his father were visiting.” Thank goodness my voice isn’t shaking . . . yet. I am looking directly into Yvette’s piercing brown eyes. “I was one of the servers at the state ball thrown that night by Alex’s father. Alex noticed me.”
“He noticed you? How?”
Wait. That isn’t supposed to be in the script. She’s throwing me a curveball. Yvette’s expression turns amused. She seems to be saying, Come on now, Liz. Don’t spare my global audience the juicy details.
If only she knew.
I remember what I wore that night – a harem’s outfit – and I blush. How do I extricate myself from this now? I’m not good at telling lies. How do I wriggle out of this without appearing like a harlot? I don’t want the world to know how intensely sexual our experiences are. I don’t want them to know about our first ‘date’, and the way he fucked me 30,000 feet above the ground.
“I was serving champagne.” I say. I don’t actually remember what I was serving that night. “I’m kind of a klutz. I spilled champagne on him.”
I groan inwardly. She’s going to totally see through that. It’s the commonest ‘meet cute’ story in the book. I should never be allowed to tell stories. Someone should lock me in and throw away the key before I embarrass myself and Alex any further.
“You did? How quaint! So what happened?” Yvette appears genuinely interested.
Oh, oh, what do I say? What do I say?
Alex interrupts, “She apologized profusely, of course. I was totally charmed. There’s something different about her, I noticed immediately. She has a refreshing, innocent beauty that I haven’t encountered very often. I mean . . . just look at her.”
His clear green eyes are filled with so much love that my heart wrenches with actual physical pain. Oh Alex, Alex . . . This is genuine. No one can fake that.
“What were you wearing, Liz?” Yvette says.
She’s trying to steer the conversation back to me. She knows I’m flustered and unpracticed and she wants my undesirable traits to come out on worldwide television. She wants this segment to be the subject of a hundred million YouTube downloads.
“I was wearing . . . a . . . a harem’s outfit.”
“A harem’s outfit? You mean, like, in the Arabian nights?”
“Yes.” I blush. It doesn’t juxtapose with ‘refreshing’ and ‘innocent’.
“With a bustier and veil and pantaloons?”
“Yes. It was the theme of the ball.”
“Would you consider it a sexy outfit?”
What is she trying to aim for here? That I’m trying to trap Alex? Yvette’s eyes are cunning. She doesn’t care if she’s selling out her future Queen. Maybe she knows something Alex and I don’t.
Oh God, I’m seeing conspiracies everywhere.
I breathe in. “It’s a harem’s outfit. No sexier than any other harem’s outfit. Every maid there was wearing one, so I didn’t exactly stand out in sexiness or anything.”
“She was plenty sexy to me,” Alex puts in.
I’m taken aback. He wants everyone to know he finds me sexy?
Then it strikes me suddenly. Of course he wants everyone to know he finds me sexy. He loves me. He wants everyone to know why he loves me, and being sexy to him is the tip of the iceberg.
Feeling more confident now, I say, “And he was very sexy to me too.”
He smiles back. A lump bolts to my throat. Alex is simply the most amazing man alive.
“And then you started dating?” Yvette cuts in. She knows what she has on camera is gold.
“Yes.”
“Describe your first date.”
That’s easy. I don’t have to lie anymore.
Together, Alex and I complement each other’s stories of our first date on the plane, leaving out the more salacious memories. We talk about our trip to Indonesia – living amongst the natives in wooden huts which are surrounded by swaying coconut trees.
Then Yvette shows a clip of Alex’s proposal to me at the airport, which was obviously taken by someone at the scene.
“This was uploaded to YouTube six months ago,” she explains. “It received one hundred and eighty million downloads. So far.”
One hundred and eighty million! I feel faint. That’s more than Justin Bieber.
Yvette says, “But there are other considerations, Your Majesty. There was the very public announcement of your engagement to Lady Tatiana of Nuernberg eight months ago.”
“Yes. My father announced it. It was one of those things that we . . . disagreed upon.” Alex looks straight into the cameras. “My father was a good, good man and he only wanted the best for me. At least, that was what he thought would be the best for me. Lady Tatiana is warm, lovely woman and she would make someone a splendid wife. It’s just that . . . I happened to fall in love with Liz.”
He gazes at me when he says this, and the rapture is unmistakable. I can almost swoon, as no doubt many women around the world are swooning now. Imagine, the most handsome and eligible bachelor in the world . . . openly declaring his love for me on live television.
Somewhere along the line, I must have done something good. Maybe I saved people in a past life. Maybe I healed old folks and performed many good deeds. How else would I be blessed with a man like Alex now? It’s almost too good to be true.
“So you are officially engaged?” Yvette’s voice is a little husky, as though the emotion has gotten to her.
