When I looked again, Abbey’s eyes were fluttering shut, her lips slightly parted as though in provocation for a kiss, and the last good thing in my life had just begun to dribble away.
For the first time in his long and privileged existence (with the regrettable exception of an indiscretion during his university freshers’ week, kept from the media only by the application of an improbably large donation from the royal purse) the Prince of Wales woke up the following morning without the faintest idea of where he was or why.
As soon as he came to after a peculiarly troubling dream (something about a little boy and a small gray cat) he felt the first flailings of panic. Struggling into an upright position, he surveyed the room in which he had woken — small, functional, yet dimly familiar. Beside him, on the floor by the sofa on which he had presumably passed the night, was a little heap of items which had nothing whatsoever to do with his life, stock props from the horror reel of someone else’s existence — tourniquet, syringe, a vial of bubble-gum pink liquid. It was around this time that the prince realized that he was wearing nothing more than his boxer shorts (florid, festooned with hearts and pineapples, purchased by Silverman at Laetitia’s request). Arthur had no memory of having stripped off his clothes and realized that someone must have done it for him. It was only when he noticed Mr. Streater, face-down on the bed and dressed in a silver thong which flossed insouciantly between his buttocks, that Arthur Windsor remembered the sight of the needle, the fizz of the liquid in his veins.
His emotions upon this realization were complex. Naturally, there was shame, a certain amount of humiliation and a large portion of self-chastisement, but there was also — and this was something that the prince was able to admit to himself only much later, when events had sucked him in, seemingly beyond the point of no return — a sneaking, secret pleasure, the shuddering joy of the forbidden.
Arthur retrieved his clothes from where Streater had abandoned them on the floor and began to dress himself. As he struggled on with his shirt, he noticed the neat, professional puncture mark on his left arm — the first, we are grieved to have to tell you, of the many which were to come — and felt a spasm of disgrace and self-pity. More than once his eyes drifted across the room and alighted upon Mr. Streater’s bottom, the smoothly pert contours of which he compared to his own sagging, hemorrhoid-ridden posterior and felt a swell of sadness.
Taking care to close the door as softly as possible, the prince tiptoed from the room and headed back toward his own. Aware of his wretchedly disheveled appearance, he moved as fast as he could, keeping his head down low, praying he would attract no attention. Relieved to find that there was no one on guard outside his quarters, the prince locked himself inside, took a shower and tried to make himself presentable, whilst all the while a hideous lust was dragging at his soul, hectoring, pleading, begging to get it what it needed.
The prince felt a flare of concern. Where was Silverman? Why had he not come to find him last night? And, worst of all, why was he not here now, to dress him? Arthur Windsor could count the number of times in his adult life when he had been forced to clothe himself on the fingers of a single hand.
He sat on the bed, reached for the telephone and dialed Silverman’s private number. It rang incessantly without reply. Confused, the prince rang through to the Clarence House switchboard.
“Hello?” The voice was young, female and, like the majority of her generation, tinged with the taint of estuary.
“This is the Prince of Wales.”
“Good morning, sir.”
“To whom am I speaking?”
“This is Beth, sir.”
“Ah yes.” The prince had a vague memory of false nails and hoop earrings. “Good morning to you, Beth. I’m trying to get through to Mr. Silverman. But he doesn’t seem to be picking up his telephone.”
One moment, sir.”
There was a click and a pause before Beth spoke again. “His private line’s working fine, sir. I’ll look into it and get back to you.”
“Many thanks to you, Beth. I’m most grateful.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The prince set down the receiver, paced, vacillated, chewed his fingernails, watched the little hand on his watch go 360 degrees, then picked up the telephone again. He tapped in a number which rang interminably before it was answered.
His wife sounded out of breath. “Who is this?”
“Laetitia?”
“Arthur? Is that you? Where have you been?”
Strangely, Arthur thought he heard a male voice on the other end of the line. His wife’s breathing seemed to grow heavier. “Darling? What are you doing?”
“Nothing. I’ve just woken up.”
“Nothing? Is that the truth? Is there something going on I don’t know about?”
“Of course not. I told you. Anyway, shouldn’t I be the one asking you that question?”
Arthur heard what sounded like a grunting sound on the other end of the line. “I rang to ask for your help,” he said, disgust pushing its way into his voice.
“I’m so sorry, Arthur. This isn’t really a good time. I don’t feel at all well. I’ve got to go.”
Without warning, the line went dead.
Forced, without Silverman, to make his own decisions, the prince had picked out a charcoal-colored suit and was dallying by the mirror, trying everything he could to make himself appear less pop-eyed and exhausted, when the telephone rang again.
“Laetitia?”
“It’s Beth here actually, sir.”
“Beth?”
“We spoke a moment ago, sir. I’m calling from the switchboard.”
“Beth! Of course.”
“I’ve located the whereabouts of Mr. Silverman, sir.”
The prince brightened. “Splendid. Where is he?”
There was a moment’s hesitation. “He’s in the Princess of Wales’s quarters, sir. He’s with your wife.”
Arthur crept along the corridor which led to the large suite of rooms occupied by his wife, unsure of what he would say to her, struggling, like some Canute of infidelity, to hold back the tides of suspicion. The prince was not a man who sought or thrived on confrontation. If things had turned out differently, we suspect that he would have said nothing at all and done his best to ignore the telltale signs, perhaps returning to his apartment to wallow in melancholia. But, as you shall see, that is not how events unfurled.
When the door to his wife’s suite was unlocked from the inside, Arthur scurried back along the corridor, pressed himself flat against the wall and peered around the corner.
The door opened and Silverman strolled out, chased by the laughter of the prince’s wife. He tried to remember the last time he had made Laetitia laugh like that and came to the knife-twist conclusion that he never had. Not once.
Silverman was saying something impossible. It was hard to tell at such a distance and the prince was no lip-reader, but it looked like an invitation. An invitation and a promise. The equerry winked in a manner which we can only think of as salacious.