I’ve got to go through with this. I’ve got to bear it. It doesn’t matter how humiliating it is, how mortifying. I have to let them do what they can. Do the best they can.
But it wasn’t for her. It was for the man who had married her to keep Ben safe, the man whose reward was to be saddled with a wife in a marriage that all the world would call by the only word that suited it—grotesque.
A man like Prince Rico, the Playboy Prince, accustomed to the most beautiful women in the world falling for him—now married to a woman like her.
She opened her eyes. The arguing stopped instantly. She looked around at the sea of faces, all watching her expectantly.
She took a deep breath.
‘Please,’ she said, ‘just do the best you can.’
Then she shut her eyes again—and kept them shut.
‘We need another tower,’ Ben instructed.
Rico considered the masterwork on the terrace table. Then nodded.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I’ll fit one inside this corner. How’s the painting coming along?’
‘Good,’ said Ben. He was industriously washing stonegrey paint across the expanse of large cardboard box that had been transformed into a fort to house an army of brightly coloured plastic knights in armour which had, to Ben’s ecstasy, been ordered off the internet to be delivered by courier the following morning. Ben’s impatience for their arrival had been such that on their return to the terrace from the beach and the pool Rico had been driven to suggest they make a fort for the knights to live in when they arrived. Its construction also helped to divert Ben from the fact he had not seen his mother all day.
Anxiety nagged at Rico.
Was she going to be all right? It was late afternoon already, but he knew that beauty treatments took for ever, and the fact that she had been incarcerated all day did not surprise him. But how was she coping with it all?
Well, it couldn’t be much longer, surely?
He reached for the scissors and began the tricky business
of cutting cardboard for the requisite tower. He needed diverting as well.
‘Is Mummy still trying on new clothes?’ Ben demanded
‘It takes ladies a long time,’ said Rico. ‘And to do their hair and things.’
‘It doesn’t take Mummy long,’ Ben countered. ‘She’s always very quick.’
‘Now that she’s got to be a princess it will need to take longer,’ Rico answered.
Ben stared down the long terrace towards where the bedrooms opened on to it. Then, suddenly, his expression changed.
‘Mummy.’
He dropped the paintbrush and pushed his chair back.
Rico looked up.
And froze.
Ben was hurtling along the terrace towards her as Lizzy stepped gingerly out through the French windows from her bedroom.
‘Mummy—Mummy, you’ve been ages! We’re making a fort, Uncle Rico and me. For the soldiers—they are knights in armour. They’re coming tomorrow, in a special van, and they are a present for being good. And we’re making a fort for them. Come and see—come and see.’
He seized her hand and started to pull her along. She tottered momentarily, uncertain of her balance on the sandals that, although low-heeled, seemed to consist of nothing but two minute strips of leather.
‘Come on, Mummy,’ Ben said, impatient at her slowness.
But the last thing on earth she wanted was to go where he was leading her.