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He picks the screen up again. ‘Right,’ he says, ‘so you did get it, then.’ He starts to swipe again.
The girls have gathered at the far end of the pool and float with their elbows on the retaining wall, buttocks popping out of the water like four little peaches. Mercedes detours up there before she goes to the kitchen. ‘Girls? Do you want anything while I’m going?’
Four sunny little smiles. ‘No, thanks!’ they chorus.
He transforms when the prince arrives. The moment he sees Paulo cross the garden to open the gates, he leaps to his feet and buttons his shirt up.
Tatiana orders the girls out of the pool. ‘I’m not having you curtseying in bikinis,’ she says. ‘Show some respect.’
Mercedes thinks about the respect they’re likely to receive in return and feels slightly sick.
‘Remind me what country he’s from, again?’ says Wei-Cheng.
‘I don’t think it exists any more,’ says Sara. ‘I think it’s part of Russia.’
‘But we still have to curtsey?’ asks Gemma.
‘Well, yes.’ Sara tugs down her skirts and steps into her mules. On duty.
‘Why, though?’ asks Gemma.
‘He’s still a prince,’ says Sara.
‘Prince of what, though?’ asks Hanne.
‘He’s the Fresh Prince of Fresh Air,’ announces Wei-Cheng, and they all laugh and clatter off through the house to stand in the front courtyard.
Mercedes grins. She’s glad that these girls are still able to find humour in their lot – to laugh behind the backs of the men they’ll be kneeling to later.
Stops grinning. Oh, God. How could I have been so blind? Oh, please don’t let it be one of them, on Sunday. Please.
What are you thinking? That it’s okay if it’s some girl you’ve never spoken to?
*
She’s curious to see him. Tatiana seems so excited to have scored a prince, even if he has been long reduced, like all the dethroned monarchs and the younger sons, to professional Eurotrash.
He’s a dapper little man, despite the vestigial remains of the incest his more recent forebears have tried to breed out. A jaw like a children’s slide and fat wet lips that smack as he speaks. But his eyes are reasonably normal, if slightly protruding, and his body is straight. He wears a blazer with shiny brass buttons, as though he has just come from the marina rather than the heliport, and pale slacks, and a huge signet ring on his right hand. When he smiles, he shows oversized white teeth with big, sharp incisors.
Once he’s straightened up from the car, Tatiana starts to step forward, but Jason is there first, striding across her path, hand outstretched.
‘Your Royal Highness,’ he says, and does a sycophantic little bow. ‘Jason Pettit. We’ve met before. Last time was the Lisbon première of Give Me Your Money.’
The royal smile doesn’t waver. He has no idea who he is, thinks Mercedes. Whoever’s filling Nora’s shoes hasn’t sent out briefing notes to anyone.
‘Oh, yes,’ he says. His voice is deep and sonorous, like an opera tenor’s. She’s noticed that this is common among aristocrats. Especially among the women. Tatiana’s clipped little-girl tones mark her out as new money as clearly as her cheek implants. ‘Your film. I remember it well. I came with my cousins, I think?’
Jason Pettit reaches his outstretched hand and bows like Clark Gable. ‘Yes,’ he says.
‘Cracking film,’ he says. ‘High-rise heist, as I remember?’
Pettit looks, for one half-second, as though he’s been stabbed in the groin. But he musters his thespian skills and keeps on smiling too. ‘Wall Street fraud,’ he replies.
‘That’s right,’ says the prince, smoothly. ‘Very gripping. Tatiana, my dear!’ He turns away. ‘How are you?’
Tatiana’s not going to be managing a curtsey that low for many more years. ‘So happy you’re here, Your Royal Highness. How was your trip?’
‘Oh, fine,’ he says. ‘Giancarlo’s helicopter’s pretty comfortable.’
‘Where did you come in from?’
‘Zurich.’
‘Oh, how lovely,’ she says. ‘I love the Alps at this time of year.’
The prince turns and scrutinises the girls, who stand in a little huddle under the portico, looking terribly young and uncertain. His incisors gleam in the sunshine.
‘Well!’ he says. ‘And who do we have here, then?’
