Tilly Maguire and the Royal Wedding Mess Read online

  Dedication

  To Sally,

  for teenaged you

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Tilly Maguire stares at her reflection in the change-room mirror, mildly hysterical. She grabs her phone and searches frantically for the email from the London PR firm, hoping the details about tonight will have magically changed in her favour. As in, disappeared. But, no. Dress code: still ‘black tie’. Arrival time: seven!

  It’s six-thirty now. Or five-thirty tomorrow morning, Melbourne time. What even is ‘black tie’, anyway? And why does everything she’s trying on seem to fall so far short of it?

  She’s been awake more than thirty-six hours and has lost track of everything: time, place, purpose in life. Her fashion sense is clearly AWOL, too, though the mirror has alerted her to the fact she’s wearing something next-level hideous.

  A store employee actually startles when Tilly emerges from behind the curtain. She literally jumps back. That’s when Tilly knows it’s not just that this dress doesn’t work. It’s totally gone on strike. It’s the kind of dress that gets an invitation to an A-list charity ball, only to clock off and march in protest with a placard, screaming: ‘What do we want? DEFINITELY NOT THIS!’

  ‘OMG,’ Tilly whispers. ‘Stop anthropomorphising clothes like a lunatic.’

  ‘What?’ the girl replies, bristling.

  ‘No! Not you! I’m the lunatic! Sorry! I’m due at a charity ball at the V&A Museum in twenty-six minutes . . .’ It sounds like a lie but isn’t one.

  The store assistant reaches slowly for her phone. Is she calling security? ‘No!’ Tilly says, lunging towards the girl and clutching her shoulders. ‘You have to understand, I haven’t slept since I left Melbourne a million years ago. And I’ve got absolutely nothing to wear. Except this.’

  The girl’s eyes widen as Tilly’s voice becomes increasingly shrill and her skin gets prickly.

  Is it hot in here? It’s December, and practically snowing outside. How can she be this hot? Maybe she’s sick? Planes are full of germs! She takes her hands off the girl’s shoulders and starts fanning herself while she walks up and down the mirrored corridor outside the change-room cubicles, muttering the self-talk mantras her psych promised would be soothing during an anxiety episode, except they’re totally not working.

  The assistant looks skittish.

  Sound normal, Tilly, she tells herself. Don’t scare off your only hope.

  ‘That dress . . .’ The girl’s sentence trails off as she takes in the sight and searches for a suitable adjective. There isn’t one, in the entire English language. Their eyes meet in the mirror. Surely she must register Tilly’s desperation? Yes. Yes, she does. Tilly can sense her own panic attack a mile off, and there’s no doubt about the one that’s brewing, the longer she stays caught in the tentacles of a fashion-induced crisis, cornered by seventy-percent-off merchandise, tired remnants from last season and the ugly truth.

  ‘I’ll see if we have anything,’ the girl offers unrealistically, like it’s totally normal for people to shop here for last-minute fancy ball attire on a Friday night. Tilly did have the perfect dress, obviously, fully approved by Henrietta from the PR agency during the Skype briefing about the internship before she even left home. But that dress is currently squashed in a suitcase over an ocean somewhere en route to England. It’s a casualty of the thirty-hour, all-stops, ‘backpacker special’ her parents had scraped together funds for, with help from the ‘buy and swap’ page on Facebook and Tilly’s savings from her weekend job in a cafe. Even thinking about that job, which she doesn’t even like, she’s bowled over by a sudden pang of homesickness.

  This is all so new. She should have let Henrietta know about her luggage going missing. Henrietta would have fixed the dress issue efficiently. But Tilly’s anxiety had talked her into thinking it was easier to search every shop in London for an imitation of the approved dress than make a phone call. Or create waves. Tilly avoids making phone calls and waves almost obsessively.

  The shop assistant is not gone long and Tilly knows why. She’s already traversed every single store in the street. And Oxford Street is long. She’d have snapped up that first dress in Forever 21, even though it’s a million times more pastel and floaty and sparkly and dress-like than anything she would ever wear IRL (in real life). But this is an unpaid internship, so it was either buy a pretty dress for one night or eat for six weeks. And Tilly loves food.

  ‘There’s this?’ the assistant says when she returns to the cubicle. It’s definitely a question and not a statement. She flourishes a long, emerald-green thing, with about ten thousand layers of voluminous tulle and a strapless, corset-style bodice. Is she joking?

  ‘It’s sort of boho chic,’ the girl explains dubiously.

  Tilly might not know much about fashion, but she knows enough to understand that boho chic was very Mary-Kate Olsen, circa 2005, and this dress is definitely not that. Nor is it V&A Museum chic, circa twenty minutes from now. It is no kind of chic at all. Ever.

  ‘I’ll take it!’ she hears herself gush. This is how it feels to totally give up. ‘Can I buy it now and change into it here?’

  The assistant glances at Tilly’s wayward auburn ringlets, styled by the long-haul flight. ‘I’m doing a night course in beauty therapy,’ the girl reveals hesitantly.

  Seriously? Does she not register Tilly’s punctuality crisis? They can’t discuss this girl’s career path! Not now, when Tilly has a distinguished occasion to be at even if, at this point, she looks like she’s barely equipped to attend a high-school social.

  ‘I’m finishing my shift,’ the girl goes on. ‘Maybe I could do your makeup quickly? Or fix your hair?’ She stands there, triaging Tilly’s problems and her expression is transparent: you badly need help.

  Only, there�
�s no time. And besides, Tilly already did her makeup at the duty-free counter during the three-hour layover in Singapore. When was that, fifteen hours ago? Nineteen? Impossible to tell when she’s crossed eleven time zones.

  She had a quick shower in a grimy cubicle at Heathrow when she realised her bags were missing, and changed into an overpriced ‘I heart London’ T-shirt she’d been forced to buy in a souvenir shop, but she hadn’t washed her hair. Too challenging to fix without a dryer and some heavy-duty curl tamer and a fairy godmother.

  Shoes! She makes an impulsive detour on the way to the cash register to grab a pair of bargain-bin, metallic-look wedges, and scoops up a fake diamond necklace and a cheap silver clutch. They don’t go. None of it goes, but it’s the best she can do in an emergency.

  She pays for the stuff, then dashes back to the change room, rips off the tags and steps into the dress, wriggling it over her hips and inching the zip up at the back, long arms bending like a contortionist’s. She shoves her feet into the sandals, tips her head upside down and tries to run her fingers through her hair to un-mat the curls a bit, then flicks herself upright. Done.

  She stares at herself in the mirror. It’s official, then. Tilly Maguire will be attending a charity event with royalty wearing a Rocky Horror Show costume.

  The shoes pinch her feet before she’s even left the change room. And what is she going to do with the clothes she’d taken off at the airport, after wearing them for almost two days straight? She can hardly show up at an event like this with a plastic bag full of rank clothes. Can she?

  As she passes the cosmetics section, she sprays herself liberally in about the fifth different designer perfume she’s sampled today, hoping the shower washed off the other four. Emerging into the chilly night air, she wishes her budget had stretched to a wrap or something, because all she has is this white puffy jacket with a fake fur-trimmed hood from Kmart.

  Curls blow across her face while she scans the area for a charity bin. There’s nothing. A homeless woman sits hunched in an alcove of the shop next door, only a few steps away. She looks about Tilly’s size. What’s the etiquette . . .?

  ‘Er, sorry,’ Tilly says, realising this is a bad idea before she’s even fully crouched down to meet the woman at eye level. ‘Would you like my change of clothes? Except I haven’t washed them. You’d actually be doing me a favour. I have to go to a, er . . .’

  Shut. Up. Do not start bragging to a homeless person about going to a charity ball! What is wrong with you?

  Does she imagine it, or does the woman actually roll her eyes? Her gaze drops to Tilly’s cleavage, which, despite there not being a lot of it, appears to be spilling out of the overly tight bodice in an eye-boggling way. Lesson learned. No crouching in this dress!

  It’s ten to seven and she is definitely going to be late. How far away is this stupid museum? Tilly checks the app on her phone. The easiest route is by cab, but she can’t spend even more money after the un-budgeted-for shopping spree. There’s the Tube, which should get her there for about two pounds, whatever that is in Australian dollars, so, as much as she feels like a total freak, she scoops up as many folds of green tulle as she can, hightails it along Regent Street and flies down the stairs into Piccadilly Circus station.

  Within two minutes, she’s crammed herself amongst the weary, Friday-night office workers on the next train, trying to look as inconspicuous as it’s possible to be in a scary green dress. If her fellow commuters are appraising her, they’re keeping their critiques to themselves. No one smiles. They pull into South Kensington station just after seven.

  Running up the steps and into the street, Tilly checks the app again and realises it’s still a six-minute walk to where she needs to be. No way is she doing that in these heels. She pulls off the shoes and carries them, and her clutch, and her puffy jacket and, given there’s no such thing as ‘fashionably late’ when you’re a jet-lagged PR intern who’s snagged an unwanted last-minute invitation for a front-row seat to see how the super-rich live, she absolutely bolts for it.

  Chapter 2

  Gleaming black cars snake patiently along Cromwell Road, approaching the towered entrance of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Everyone else is fashionably late, it seems. Tilly is unfashionably out of breath. And hot.

  She forces her tender feet back into the too-tight shoes, which seem to have shrunk, unless it’s her feet that have swollen? Yes! That would be it. From the flights. And all the running. And the anxiety.

  She hobbles towards a security guard at a temporary security gate set up for the event. ‘Sorry, I’m Tilly Maguire,’ she begins. She’s standing at a weird angle and breathing heavily, because she’s got a stitch.

  ‘No need to apologise,’ the man says crisply, drawing attention to one of her worst habits.

  ‘I’m with Roche PR,’ she explains, trying to sound more decisive. ‘I’ve got an e-copy of the event briefing on my phone. Wait, I’ll find it. Sorry! I just flew in from Australia this morning. I mean, I don’t even know if I’m on your list.’ She hopes she isn’t.

  ‘Do you have some photo identification, Miss Maguire?’ the guard asks, frowning at her puffy jacket and fluorescent yellow phone case. What’s his problem? Henrietta had shipped her the latest iPhone, ready loaded with the company’s internal comms app and access to their social media accounts. Of course she’s going to put a case on it! She’s terrified she’ll drop it and smash another screen. While the guard is inspecting her newly minted provisional licence and adding her details into the system, he quips, ‘Nice night for a jog?’

  She feels herself getting hotter, more than she already was, as an expensive black car draws up beside her. The driver seems full of his own importance, and acts like she’s just standing there making casual chit-chat with the guard – like she’d ever do that in this emerald monstrosity of a dress and accessories that look like a five-year-old dug them out of a dress-up box! The driver hands over a VIP version of the invitation, on a stiff card bearing the museum’s distinctive logo.

  How dare this guy push in! She was being served first! And she still has to stagger along the rest of the pathway by foot to the entrance. She glares at the driver, who ignores her. It makes her fume.

  ‘Don’t mind me!’ she says, under her breath. ‘I’m nobody. Just Tilly Maguire: slightly deranged gap-year student, currently interning in upper-class faux pas.’ The words escape her mouth, more loudly than she realised, before her jet-lagged brain can stop them. What is she doing, making a scene before she’s even inside the building? Hopefully they didn’t hear her.

  The guard and the driver are both staring now, and she hears the back window of the car rolling down. Great. She glances at who is inside, but it’s just some wealthy young guy in an impeccable suit, with impeccable good looks and an impeccable smirk spreading across his dark, impeccably symmetrical features. Not that she pays much attention.

  ‘Well, Tilly Maguire, I’ll escort you to the red carpet,’ he announces authoritatively. He assumes without question she’ll accept this invitation, and flings open the back door of the car to prove it, but Tilly doesn’t accommodate boys’ assumptions. Not even boys who look like him and get driven about like this. She will not get into a car with this person, on principle. She’d rather walk in bad shoes!

  ‘You may go through, Miss Maguire,’ the guard says. ‘You too, Mr Guthrie.’

  As painful as it is to walk even a small distance, Tilly strides off without a backward glance. She hears a door slam and the car drives past her, a little too recklessly, she notes, and up the road with the others.

  When she eventually reaches the steps at the entrance, light pouring out of its imposing, arched window, the Guthrie guy is nowhere to be seen. Thankfully, because she’s nearly in tears over the way her shoes are biting, and about how extraordinarily unprepared she is for this. The internship. The A-list. People. Life in general.

  She reminds herself she’s here because her creative fire burns stronger than the flames of
her anxiety. She wishes she’d written that, but it’s a quote she saw on Instagram once and screen-shotted to remind herself not to run away at times exactly like this. She’s here, a million miles out of her element because she wants to be a real writer. Not just someone filling a Twitter feed with inane soundbites. Not just the editor of the school magazine, or the winner of It GiRL magazine’s short-story award. Not even just as the owner of the formerly anonymous blog that miraculously caught the attention of Roche PR and went viral for a nanosecond, landing her here, at this ball, as this intern. All of that is a start, but she wants to write proper books. Books with 50,000 words or more, which is scary enough but not nearly as terrifying as being here. Alone. She has to stop thinking about it. She’s about three seconds off having one of her full-blown panic attacks.

  Just as she sets foot on the stairs, wondering if she looks as inelegant as she feels, she almost trips over a fold of tulle at the front. Almost. She mentally congratulates herself on the way she’s steadied her dismount with the cool expertise of an Olympic gymnast. How clever, to have averted a Jennifer Lawrence–like, red-carpet face-plant! Well done, Till—

  Oh nooo!

  She feels the unambiguous snap of a cheap strap on a bargain-bin sandal.

  The shoe falls loose and she steps clean out of it. Unable to halt her forward momentum, she has no choice but to leave the shoe stranded forlornly on the red-carpeted steps in her wake. Oh, God. Really?

  She spins around to collect the shoe, but it’s already too late. Someone has swooped on it. Not just someone, she realises, with a galloping sense of astonishment, but – Reuben Vaughan.

  The Reuben Vaughan: pop star. Heartthrob. Founding member of top international boy band, Unrequited, and – perhaps most relevantly – Tilly’s former celebrity crushee.

  More of an ‘obsessee’, if she’s completely honest about it —

  For an entire summer, when Tilly was thirteen and he was seventeen, she’d changed her name to Matilda Vaughan. She’d been crazy about him, in that unapologetically devoted way that means you squeal loudly at incredibly unsociable times. Like when you’re being introduced to some random who shares the same first name as him – squeeeeall! Or when your teacher innocently says a word that happens to be part of some massive in-joke for the fandom, and you respond the way any real fan would and get sent to another lunchtime detention for your weird outbursts.