“Okay. Your life is public and pressured in ways I can’t even imagine. Where do you go when you don’t want to think about any of it?”

Edgar looked serious, but I couldn’t tell if I’d gone too far or if he wanted to be specific.

“At the palace, there’s a tiny room in a wing that’s barely used. It was a nursery. I don’t have that many memories of time alone with my parents. But there was a period when I was so young that I still didn’t know how odd my life was. And my mum and my dad would wear old clothes, and they’d read to me, and sometimes we’d all dance to my mum’s favourite disco songs. After they died, the room was closed, and all the furniture’s under dustcloths. I think my grandmother, and her advisors, felt it wouldn’t be healthy to let my brother and I wallow in the past and our loss. And maybe they were correct, because that room has a haunted quality. But sometimes, after I’ve given some precarious interview or spent an evening being blankly gracious with someone whose politics I loathe, I need to go there, by myself. Just to lie on the couch and look up at the ceiling and be completely quiet. To imagine, just for an hour, that no one can find me. And to see my parents not as tragic historical figures, but as I remember them, giggling and happy. And whenever I leave that room, I feel not just calm, but—as if I’ve reconnected with who I really am.”

Of course I wanted to cry, and I felt honored, but even more, I was scared, because I never wanted to hurt this man, or betray him in any way. Sure, he was impossibly rich and famous in such a singular, untouchable way, but oh my God, his parents had died when he was ten years old. And he didn’t seem bitter or angry, but he was understandably guarded, and sweet, and lost.

“Sorry about all that. I let things get a bit somber . . .”

“No, that room, that nursery, it sounds so special . . .”