Perhaps vestiges of her jealousy of Georgina St Cyr’s closeness to Ned remained. Before the last port decanter and cocktail trolley had circulated, she had somehow agreed to let the family ‘help’.
In hiding as she was, Astrid Westover’s diary was otherwise empty. She arrived for morning coffee forty-eight hours after being invited, before the young princesses headed off for their skiing holiday. She emerged from her car wearing a multi-hued faux fur coat that the girls instantly recognised from a popular fashion brand created by one of their friends, and paused with her back to the house for a moment, unaware that the family were watching from one of the windows in the saloon.
‘I think she’s taking selfies,’ Eugenie said.
‘Someone will have to tell her not to post them.’
When she entered the saloon, the Queen was fascinated to see that, close up, she looked as flawless as an airbrushed model in a magazine. Whatever makeup she was wearing, it seemed to smooth her face into doll-like simplicity. Her forehead was unnaturally unlined and her lips had the fish-like appearance that the Queen was increasingly noticing among her younger female acquaintances. Sophie Wessex had told her this was a ‘trout pout’, and the Queen had yet to be convinced that the exaggerated contours were preferable to one’s natural flesh and bone. She wondered what Astrid looked like underneath. However, the girl had great poise and, taking in the roomful of waiting royals, she sank into a deep curtsey.
‘Your Majesty,’ she murmured, in a deep, contralto voice that the Queen had not expected. ‘Thank you so much for the invitation. I brought you jam.’
Astrid dug around in the basket-like handbag she had brought with her and handed two jars of something rather gloopy and disconcertingly violet to the nearest footman. Like many before her, she must have read that Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, had won over the family with her first Christmas present of home-made jam. Many was the jar the Queen had received since. She was rather wary of them. The thing was, Catherine was really rather good at making jam, and that was a key feature.
The Queen saw Philip’s eyebrows rise by about a millimetre. She hoped her family would behave themselves.
Astrid continued to drink in the room, squealing slightly when her eyes lighted on the grand piano.
‘There’s the jigsaw! You still have one! Ned told me all about it. He adored Sandringham. It was such a special part of his childhood.
