Margaret wished she could remember that occasion too. Oh well.

  She shook her head. “Tessa and I met before that. She flew over with Katharine a few times from Maine.”

  Amalia puckered her lips and watched Henry grasp a stick. He crawled over to a drum and went boom boom.

  “No,” Amalia said at last. “I’m pretty sure she didn’t. We wouldn’t have needed her services over here, and she was undercover as a student. It would have blown her cover.”

  “Katharine brought a friend home with her. Makes sense to me.”

  Amalia sighed. “I didn’t like Tessa back then. I thought she would be a bad influence on your sister. There’s no way she would’ve come over.”

  “You’ve got it wrong, Mum,” Margaret protested. “You just don’t remember.”

  Amalia’s face took on an expression of long suffering. “Okay. If you say so, darling.”

  “Don’t patronize me!” Margaret snapped.

  “Ask Katharine,” Amalia said. “She’ll tell you the same thing. You met Tessa for the first time at that wedding reception.”

  **

  Tessa had made a big mistake giving all of herself to Margaret that night they made love for hours after watching the sex tape. The lovemaking had been incredible, electric. Margaret even went down on her twice and could not be satiated. She couldn’t get enough of Tessa. It was like her body remembered her wife even if her mind didn’t.

  They slept in the next morning, had breakfast in bed and got in a round of delightful morning sex. Had a fun few hours with Henry.

  Then, of course, Margaret’s memory vanished in that precious two hours she napped.

  Tessa had installed a punching bag in her living room, and she grabbed her boxing gloves and started hitting the bag while Margaret watched the DVD in the fake NYC flat. Thwack, thwack, thwack!

  Tessa hit and hit and hit and at some point became aware of Amalia watching. Tessa ignored her and kept hitting and hitting. Finally, her arms gave out, and sweat blurred her vision. Tessa tore off her gloves and threw them into a corner.

  “What?” she asked Amalia.

  “Margaret’s taking this one especially badly,” Amalia whispered. “She wants you to leave her alone.”

  “Of course she does.”

  Margaret’s memory had started ticking again since that afternoon, but they were back to square one, to the point where Margaret didn’t know Tessa and was shocked to find herself married to a woman. Margaret would take Henry and go for walks and drink in the gardeners. She rarely met Tessa’s gaze and in many ways, she seemed scared of Tessa. Margaret lost weight. Her eyes took on a hollow look. She was a ghost, a woman who woke up trapped in a future she would never have chosen for herself.

  It wasn’t step one, actually. It was negative step one.

  Something inside Tessa crumbled. She wants you to leave her alone. Her marriage was beyond repair. When Tessa fell asleep at night, it was Katharine and Veronica she tried to imagine.

  Tessa thought she had it bad? She didn’t. She had to think positively. Yes, she’d lost her wife in a way, but she had options. She had two good friends, Katharine and Veronica, who would take care of her. Tessa had only one life, and she was determined to make it work somehow. She’d taken a risk, she married Margaret, and she’d never have to ask, “What if?” If she’d stayed a detective and never gotten with Margaret, she’d still be doing the same old grind. She loved being Countess of Wessex. She was able to help and inspire people on a scale that never had been possible with her old life.

  So, she wouldn’t change things. She simply had to adjust her expectations and accept a different sort of future, perhaps one with the queen and her wife instead of with the queen’s sister. How about that, huh? Margaret waking up with a future way different from the one she envisioned meant Tessa, by necessity, had to overhaul her future too.

  Margaret and Tessa went to an appearance together, something to do with endangered species. The crowd loved them

  —“Please welcome Their Royal Highnesses the Duchess and Countess of Wessex!”—a jubilant man shouted, and Margaret and Tessa ascended the stage. They gave a joint speech that they’d practiced only once because Margaret couldn’t bear to be around Tessa.

  The audience couldn’t tell about the lack of practice. The speech went off beautifully. Margaret and Tessa inspired people and raised hundreds of thousands of pounds, and all the while, it was a show, it was fake, the most fantastic fucking saddest show on Earth.

  **

  Tessa had to try one more time to reconnect, though. She could not give up without doing that much. Two weeks after Margaret “re-woke,” Tessa attempted something she had several times in previous months—to re-enact one of her dates with Margaret.

  For the original date, she and Margaret went to Central Park for a picnic lunch. With Margaret wearing a baseball cap pulled low and her hair in a ponytail, they were able to eat in peace, gaze into each other’s eyes, hold hands, kiss, watch the people, dogs, ducks and so on.

  That Saturday morning, Tessa woke up and decided to try another date re-creation. The picnic one floated into her mind. She called down to the kitchen and asked the staffers to put together what Tessa and Margaret ate that day several years ago: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Stax potato chips, Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies, orange slices and twenty-ounce bottles of Coke and water. Tessa had no idea if some of these items were available in the UK, but the kitchen staffers would figure something out.

  She knocked on Margaret’s door and suggested a picnic. They still had that same baseball cap Margaret wore, a Yankees cap, and Tessa, now famous as well, put on her own. They strolled over to Hyde Park, and security officials loosely thronged them.

  Tessa carried the basket, and Margaret kept her eyes straight ahead of her, taking small steps with the cane. It was a glorious late-May day in London, the skies blue with plump white clouds and the grass green and vital.

  “Here,” Tessa suggested, choosing a spot early so Margaret could conserve her energy. Tessa spread the red-and-white-checkered blanket. She and Margaret sat. A couple of security officials had a picnic a few feet away, while the others blended in as people watchers, Frisbee throwers and folks living their lives.

  She wants you to leave her alone.

  It was very similar to that day in Central Park a week before they became engaged. Even the occasional cloud turned out in the same shape. Tessa refrained from pointing any of this out because in Margaret’s place, Tessa wouldn’t want someone saying to her, “Oh, there’s a cloud that kind of resembles a swan like there was the first time,” and peering hopefully, wanting her to remember.

  Margaret unwrapped her sandwich and began to eat.

  “Did you sleep well?” Tessa asked.

  “Yes. Did you?”

  “I did.”

  Tessa took a bite of peanut butter and jelly. Way too sugary. Having undergone a dietary upheaval a few years ago after becoming Countess of Wessex and eating the finest, most freshly prepared foods, this sandwich chock full of sugar failed to hit the spot for Tessa.

  She pressed on gamely, taking another bite. Meanwhile, Margaret put hers down.

  “Not hungry,” Margaret said.

  “You look pretty today.” In her own pale, wraithlike way, Margaret did, but she was a far cry from the glowing, robust woman she had been at Central Park. She’d lost at least five pounds the past two weeks. Waking up married to a woman would do that.

  “Thanks. So do you.”

  A third horrid bite.

  “So,” Margaret said. “Did we once go on a date here or a date like this one?”

  “Yes. Central Park in Manhattan. How did you know?”

  Margaret wrinkled her nose. “I have a faulty memory, but I’m not stupid. There has to be a reason we’re eating this food and wearing Yankees caps. Anyway, nothing is coming back.”

  “We will make new memories,” Tessa said, but the words sounded hollow even to her own ears.

  A pair of bare-chested men in their early twenties passed by. Margaret’s gaze flickered to them and right back to Tessa.

  “Let’s look,” Tessa said. She scooted up to sit next to Margaret, and they had a prime view of the young men’s abs and chiseled butts. One wore blue shorts. The other wore orange shorts, and he bent to get a Frisbee from his gym bag. Tossed the Frisbee to his partner. The blue-shorts guy had thatches of wiry hair on his chest, while orange-shorts guy had a chest better shaved than Tessa’s legs.

  “Good-looking men,” Tessa murmured. “They’re hot.”

  “Suppose so,” Margaret mumbled.

  A third man, more of an artsy-looking type, ambled by. A bushy beard sprouted from his face, and he sported a softer body than the other two men. He talked on his cellphone.

  “Or is he more your type?” Tessa asked.

  “Can we not?”

  “I’m trying to—”

  “I know what you’re trying to do,” Margaret said. “I don’t want to! It’s weird.”

  “Okay.”

  Margaret opened her bottle of water and drank. Tessa did the same from hers.

  “You feeling okay about Monday?” Tessa asked. They had an appearance at a zoo gala in the evening.

  Margaret shrugged. “Sure.”

  “We have an appearance at—”

  “I remember! The zoo gala.”

  “Sorry. Habit.”

  “Break it.”

  Tessa tore a furious fourth bite from her sandwich. “I’m trying,” she said, chewing angrily. “For months now, I’ve had to—”

  “Can we try to relax and pretend we don’t know each other? Like we’re strangers meeting for the first time?”

  “Yes.” They had, of course, done this multiple times already in the preceding months to no achievable end. Not that Margaret remembered.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” Margaret said instead of introducing herself under a different name.

  “Oh.” Hyde Park was beautiful but severely lacking in toilet facilities. “There are toilets over there,” Tessa said, not ready yet to give up on the picnic.

  “I know.” Margaret got to her feet and ambled off with the cane. Some of the security officers followed. She returned about twenty minutes later and said, “Can we go?”

  “I’d really like to stay,” Tessa said, more out of obligation than genuine desire. “We can try the strangers game.”

  “No. Let’s go.”

  **

  A few hours later, Margaret found Tessa in the nursery and said, “Sorry about earlier. Making us leave.”

  Tessa had come in from playing outside with Henry. The past few days, Margaret had developed a love-hate affliction for watching her wife play with their son. Tessa didn’t know it, but Margaret often gazed out the window when Tessa took Henry outside.

  Tessa’s body was everything Margaret’s was not—lean, quick, limber, one hundred percent functional. She could run, bend, crawl, roll and play with their son, and Margaret loved seeing the delight on both their faces. Tessa was wonderful with Henry, sweet and gentle yet stern when she had to be. Their interactions almost made Margaret forget what she and Tessa had done to the other Henry.

  What could Margaret do with their baby? Read to him. Feed him. Hold onto his stroller and walk him very slowly. That was it. She felt a complicated mix of emotions toward Tessa, to say the least. On the positive side, Tessa was an incredible mother. She was pleasant, even kind, to the staffers. She got along well with Margaret’s family. She was beautiful, fit and healthy. She was smart. She was considerate of Margaret’s feelings, even trying to check out men with her during their picnic lunch.

  She obviously believed that Margaret had yet to remember about them killing the king, and Tessa loved Margaret deeply. Living this life, them being distant from each other, hurt Tessa. Margaret only had to think back to Tessa bursting into tears that first afternoon to remind herself of this.

  Margaret watched Tessa tousle Henry’s hair with her long strong fingers and pick him up as if he weighed practically nothing. In some strange way, she wanted to be the one on the receiving end of Tessa’s gifts. Being in bed with Tessa…it would be fun. Even though they’d done that awful thing to Margaret’s father.

  “Let’s do the strangers game,” Margaret said. “After the nanny takes Henry.”

  **

  The day before, Margaret had lunch with Kissy Kissbridge. She told Margaret about her ex-husband who cavorted all over town with his new girlfriend. Their divorce had been horrible, but he was all she could think about. Fucking him. Slamming him against a wall and having her way with him. She wanted to wipe that smug smirk off his face.

  All this information she shared unprompted.

  “What’s Tessa like?” Kissy asked a few minutes later. Kissy had gone to the wedding and had met up with Margaret a few times since then, but Margaret, of course, remembered none of that. She explained about her memory issues in broad strokes, and Kissy, thankfully, didn’t press too much or pull a pitying face.

  “Tessa is great,” Margaret said, preferring not to say anything bad about her wife. “She’s great with Henry.”

  “I’m talking about in bed!” Kissy cried with a braying laugh.

  Margaret wondered if her cheeks burned red. “She’s good there too.” And she most likely could be, judging from her strong hands, agile body and sexy face. Margaret’s formerly sore nipples tingled.

  “She looks like she is!” Kissy said, hooting with laughter. “How is it, being with a woman? Lots more orgasms, I bet. Ralph used to satisfy me well enough in the early days, but in our last years, he was like a stuck pig.”

  “There are more orgasms to be had, yep.”

  “Oh, so coy you are!” Kissy sighed. “Well, that’s what I need to do. I’ll find myself a girlfriend. Now that’ll make him jealous!”

  Margaret’s body needed sustenance. She hadn’t been like this as a teenager. She could gaze upon boys and men for hours, and the only stirrings she felt were in her heart and stomach.

  She stirred a lot now in that place between her legs. So much so, it became painful. She tried rubbing herself down there to relieve the ache, and she’d buck and buck, getting close to climax and then gradually taper off without ever having peaked. It was frustrating and increased her desire for sex.

  The issue remained: How does one proposition a potential sexual partner, especially if she is your estranged wife with whom you plotted your father’s death, your wife whom you never undress in front of and don’t ask to sleep in the same bed with you?

  The evening of the lunch with Kissy, Margaret went to the door that would lead into Tessa’s cheerful suites. Pretend you are a man, Margaret. What would a man do if he were in the bedroom of a woman he wanted sex with?

  She knew one answer: He would take his pants off.

  Another answer: He’d climb on top of her.

  A third answer: He’d grab her hand and guide it to his penis.

  A fourth answer: He’d curl up next to her and press his erect penis against her leg or arse.

  Memory flashes returned to Margaret, and they made her wince. Margaret before Alec, her being so needy for sex that she grabbed various body parts belonging to various men.

  No. Shit. She’d keep her stupid hands to herself and leave Tessa alone. She didn’t deserve to be pawed at.

  Wait, Margaret! Think a minute. She is your wife. You have a bit more leeway. She might be fine with you pawing at her.

  Margaret collected a deep breath and knocked. No answer. She opened the door and stepped inside. The suites were dark. Ten p.m., and Tessa wasn’t in.

  Margaret checked the nursery. Only Henry there.

  She checked the suite ten minutes later. Still no Tessa. Okay. Fine. That gave Margaret the opportunity to do something romantic. She returned to her own suite of rooms, Tessa’s faux NYC flat, and got on the phone to the kitchen.

  “Ma’am,” the man on the other end said.

  “Hi, this is Princess Margaret.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’d like to…can someone bring flowers up? And other romantic things like chocolates and candles.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Give me thirty minutes.”

  After the items arrived, Margaret arranged them on various objects: the flowers on the bed, the boxes of chocolates on both bedside tables and the five candles on the dresser drawers. She lit the candles and turned the lights off. Too dark, creepy and minimal, like the workings of her mind. Margaret turned the lights back on and left the candles burning. Time to try Tessa again.

  Margaret checked the other suite. No Tessa—still!

  She tapped out a message on the phone she’d recently acquired from security: Where are you?

  Tessa replied a few minutes later: I’m with your mother. Do you need me?

  Margaret sat on her bed in Tessa’s fake flat and Xed out of the message. Great. With Amalia. The image of mother-in-law and daughter-in-law playing cards, drinking beer and telling tall tales popped into Margaret’s mind. Margaret and Tessa may have been sort of estranged, but it didn’t carry over to Tessa and Amalia. The two women got along fabulously, leaning into each other and laughing at the same jokes and even, sometimes, finishing each other’s sentences. It was like they were the ones married to each other.

  Must be nice to have intact memories.

  Margaret lay back on the bed. No, she replied, giving up on Tessa for the night. Let her have fun with cards and beer and Amalia.

  The next day, Tessa invited her to the picnic in Hyde Park and wanted to check out men with her. Sweet but…no. Just no.

  **

  Tessa couldn’t have gotten through Margaret’s downward spiral without Amalia. Way back when, before Tessa married Margaret, she met with Amalia as Katharine asked her to. Margaret went with her, the both of them dreading the encounter with the queen mother.