I studied Clive’s face as he yammered on about everything from the logistics of the funeral procession, to the dignitaries who were expected to attend, to our innermost feelings. His slick handsomeness had tapered into something hawkish, and his dark hair had what looked like bottle-gray strands at the temples, giving him an air of gravitas and expertise that he didn’t deserve. I hoped he’d had a miserable time trying to keep up with his royal column now that he’d lost his best sources—us—and people were accordingly starting to side-eye the accuracy of his scoops, but this was a massive all-hands-on-desks news moment, as it were, and he clearly intended to maximize it.

“…and we expect to see the Prince of Wales, his sons, and Prince Edwin standing guard over the casket together,” Clive said. “But the real headline is the public reappearance of Queen Eleanor. A nation waits with bated breath for its broadly beloved…”

Nick muted the television aggressively.

“Aren’t you curious to see what b word he was going to use for her?” I teased. “Boss lady?”

“Bloodline begetter?”

“Big cheese?”

“I dare him,” Nick said, picking up his phone in what I knew he imagined was a casual way. The only new item on his lock screen—a selfie we’d taken on the edge of a cliff in Scotland—was a news alert about the weekend’s Premier League games being rescheduled out of respect.

“Are they back yet?” I asked softly.

He turned over his phone and dropped it on the couch. “No idea.”

When Marta died, Freddie had immediately been recalled from Wherever—sincerely, we didn’t know—and Richard had gone to fetch him himself from his preferred private airfield. It was a kind gesture from someone who rarely deployed them, and it made us both anxious that he knew something we didn’t, which my inner armchair psychologist suspected was why Nick’s insomnia had him up at all hours watching the same newsreel footage of his great-grandmother repackaged by different channels. Right now, the news was showing Marta and her husband, Richard, returning from a royal tour of Australia that had gone on for eight entire weeks. I’d never seen him in motion before; he was tall and fluid, almost graceful, and smiling. He didn’t at all look like a person who would drown in an ill-advised boat outing. Eleanor and Georgina were greeting them as they disembarked from the plane, looking very young and yet also vaguely old, thanks to their ’50s hairdos. Eleanor was willowy and refined, on the cusp of leaving her teen years behind, and Georgina at sixteen was already a bombshell. Their arms were intertwined, and they didn’t even unravel themselves when they curtsied to their parents.