Being Margaret by Q Kelly

Author:Q Kelly [Kelly, Q]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Katharine

It was Treadie who alerted me to Tessa and Margaret meeting up in New York. He’d retired from his European basketball career and was back in the Big Apple working at his father’s corporation.

I was playing with Veronica and Alexander in our nursery and thinking about the reports I’d read Friday from the prime minister on a new program to reduce homelessness when the text landed.

Check this out, Treadie said. Margaret’s hanging with Tessa. He linked to an article from a gossip website. It’d collated images and posts from various social media accounts. For example, a screenshot from the Facebook account of library assistant Langford Browne showed Margaret and Tessa hunched over a poetry book.

Well, I thought it odd. More than odd. They barely knew each other, and I was still reeling from Margaret’s letters. Emma had delivered mine the night before, saying that they’d really upset Mum and that we should wait a day or two before settling on a course of action. I’d been tempted to call my sister anyway but, in the end, held back.

Hanging out with Tessa, though? Interesting. I knew that Tessa and Emma met at my wedding and had a fling. Margaret may have met Tessa a few times because of that. I made a note for Banks, my personal secretary, to find Tessa’s personal cellphone number. He didn’t work weekends, and I tried to avoid it whenever possible as well.

The next day, I went ahead and called my middle sister even though Emma, Mum and I had yet to discuss our approach. Privileges of being queen.

I reached Margaret about one p.m. her time. “Hi,” I said, keeping my voice a notch above neutral but not too cheerful. “How are you doing?”

“I’m good,” she said.

“We found your letters.”

“Oh.”

I rubbed my nose and wandered to the window. I’d retreated to my study for the call, and the window overlooked the palace gardens. They didn’t have much to show on this overcast November evening. A stray cloud floated by in the otherwise empty sky.

“Margaret, we love you,” I said carefully. “All of us. What bad thing did you do that you need to atone for?”

“That’s—I told you in the letter not to ask.”

“Okay. We’ll talk about it later. I want you to know there’s nothing you could do that would make us hate you.” A couple of years ago, Margaret accidentally spilt soda on the carpet in her study. For some strange reason explainable only by the misfirings of her brain, it devastated her. She sobbed, she dragged a table over with her weakened body and tried to use maroon-coloured marker to conceal what she’d done.

None of it came close to camouflage, but in her mind, I suppose it had. When Nurse noticed the stain, Margaret cried and cried and apologised. I could recite a list of other examples of “bad things” Margaret had done that her brain magnified and exaggerated.

No answer. “Margaret?”

“I’m here,” she said.

“Are you having fun in New York?”

“Yes.”

New York was all Margaret been able to talk about the past month, and now she had nothing to say.

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