Love Blinds

The next day at 5 AM, the alarm clock on the wooden bedside table went off in Natalie’s ear. She jumped at the sound, as she always did (her father used to tease her about it when he was alive) and turned to turn it off. Noticing her door was open slightly, Natalie sat up in bed to see who/what was in her room and if anything had been taken during the night, most likely by Beatrice to make her day even more unpleasant. For once, she found that the reason was less sinister and was just due to Princess (not named by her) coming in during the night and curling up beside her bed. Natalie reached over and picked up the Tortoiseshell kitten, who she secretly called Tabby, and let her curl up between the covers while Natalie got out of bed and walked across her cream carpet to the mirrored wardrobes that made up the wall opposite her bed. She reached to the very back of the wardrobe to retrieve a battered old suitcase which she took out and dropped on the bed. She may have done this with a little too much vigour as Tabby bounced once into the air, gave her a look which, if given by a human, would have been “Idiot!” accompanied by an eye-roll. Natalie gave an apologetic look and then set about delicately opening the zip that had been opened numerous times across all five continents. She opened the lid, and marvelled, as she did every time she opened it, at how well her father had guessed what she would look like. Her father had guessed an outcome such as this when he died, so had left her a whole horde of things to make use of. Among these things were a couple of suitcases full of clothes, mainly dresses for special occasions. Natalie picked out a coral coloured dress that was low cut and had a flowing skirt that billowed out around her knees. There. Pink, sort of, not too OTT and just right for meeting the Queen. The rest of the ‘family’ had already met the Queen, but not her. Natalie had, conveniently enough, been in Scotland on, what turned out to be a wild goose chase, when that event took place. She heard from Michael that the Queen had actually asked after her and had told Arlene to bring Natalie next time. Natalie guessed that was the only reason she was being allowed to attend this event.

With the suitcase back smuggled in the wardrobe, Natalie took a shower and got changed into a pair of jeans and a red T-shirt just for while she made breakfast (she would get changed into the dress later). The house did have a maid, Julie, but Julie was only, technically, supposed to clean. However, somehow the sweet old thing ended up making most of the dinners and doing practically everything else as well. Sometimes Natalie insisted on taking over and allowing Julie to only do the work she was paid for. Today was one of those days; in fact, she had told Julie not to even think about coming to work today and to have a day off. She made her way down the spiralling staircase, her hair still in a towel from going in the shower. She entered the kitchen doing her normal skip and jump across the black and white tiles as she had always done since she was able to walk and, after almost dropping all the trays and waking everybody up, she managed to put the croissants in the oven, ready to be cooked. She made a pot of tea and took it, along with 2 teacups and a plate of toast and butter, up the stairs to her mother and David’s room. She made herself presentable by drying her hair and putting it up using bobby clips, otherwise that would be yet another thing her mother would be on her case for, Arlene hated messy hair. Being asked to wake her mother up was a task that even David avoided if he could. The likelihood of you living to tell the tale could be compared to Daniel’s chances in the lion’s den, except he had guardian angels to help him; she had no such hope.
“Mother,” Natalie called quietly through the door as she opened it a crack and slipped through the opening she had made. This call was ignored, or at least appeared to be ignored. Natalie placed the tray which held the tea things down on a dressing table (one of many) and went to nudge her mother until she woke. She was rewarded with being sworn at softly and almost being slapped, however, if Natalie didn’t wake her mother up, she would be in much more trouble later if they didn’t make it to Buckingham palace on time. Eventually, her mother came to the land of the living and Natalie was free to get on with her other ‘chores’, otherwise known as running the house. During the next 2 hours, she made breakfast, conversed with the immigrant milkman in Italian for 5 minutes (one of the few things she was better than Beatrice at doing) and paid most of the bills. At 7:30am, Natalie looked up from the gas bill and decided that, since Beatrice had spent the last 2 hours already getting ready (guessing from the banging around upstairs), that she should also.

Now upstairs, Natalie unburied her dress from where she had hidden it in her wardrobe, and pulled it over her head. She took the Bobby clips (Kirby-grips) out of her brunette locks and shook them loose until her wavy hair fell down and cascaded across her shoulders. She found a long light blue coat to cover her dress until they reached the palace (one time she didn’t wear a coat, Beatrice ‘accidently’ knocked a can of coke over her). That was only going to the Christmas dance at school years ago when her mother had only been courting Michael; this time could be a whole lot worse. After applying a thin layer of make-up, Natalie made her way down the white marble spiralling staircase into the shinning, again white marble, foyer. Michael was the only one waiting in the foyer, it was quarter to nine and still there was no sign of the rest of the ‘family’. He looked really sharp, with his newly ironed suit (admittedly she had done the ironing, but he had had it dry cleaned) and wearing the red tie that Natalie had given him for Christmas. Michael gave a wolf whistle as she reached the last step and he came towards her to take her arm and lead her towards the massive door.
“You look really nice Natalie.” She put one eyebrow up at him as he whirled her round on the spot as if they were dancing.
“I can tell we’re turning into brother and sister when you tell me I look ‘nice’.”
He gave a chuckle, “Please don’t tell me you’d rather be told that you are ‘the most beautiful and perfect creature on the planet’ like Beatrice does!”
It was her time to laugh now.
“At least not by you, Michael!” They both giggled as Michael swept her into a comedy dip and back up as they both heard a crash from upstairs, a scream from Arlene, and a responding shout from David, followed by more of the same. Michael looked at her and rolled his eyes at her. She understood, and responded.
“I’ll drive.”