Third In Line

Chapter Fifty Three - Role Models

"Are you all right, ma'am?" one of the protection officers asked.

"Yep, all fine." Ellie rushed out of the shack, the smell of sweat and body odour was making the sinking feeling in her stomach all the more worse. She hated feeling this way, half a dozen of her idols descending on her house should make her feel excited, not cause her to be anxiously looking for an escape. She had to speak to Mum about this.

Ellie came back into the house and pushed through the door to the kitchen before she could be blocked from entering once again. Her uncle James stood at the counter, putting the finishing touches on a magnificent three-tiered birthday cake. He turned to her as she entered, an icing covered knife in one hand and a small bowl of cherries in the other.

"Morning birthday girl." He said, licking clean one of his fingers and moving to block her view of the cake. "You're not supposed to be seeing this."

"It's all right, Alex already let slip how big the cake was." Ellie said, distracted. "Have you seen Mum?"

James looked a bit disappointed. "She's just next door, looking after your brother."

"Oh, did something happen?" Ellie asked. Only an emergency would get her mother out of the kitchen before a birthday party, she always loved baking alongside her brother.

"He slipped and knocked over some cups, he's alright. Just a bit worked up."

Ellie nodded and headed through the kitchen. She could hear her little brother wailing on the other side of the door. "The cake looks amazing!" She remembered to say to her uncle before she left, bringing a smile to his face.

Slowly she opened the door into the living room, a huge ornately decorated space with bay windows and doors that opened into the sprawling back garden. Caterers and staff were rushing about outside, winding ribbons around the trees and putting the finishing touches in place. She couldn't hear over her brother's wailing, but it seemed like it was quite chaotic outside. Ellie searched around, finding her mother consoling her little brother, who was having one heck of a cry.

"It's all right Georgie, s'all right. Mummy didn't mean to yell at you, it's just a busy day today. All right?"

"I'm sorry Mummy, soooo sorry!" George was bawling into Kate's chest while she held him tight, desperate for him to calm down before the guests started arriving. No matter what she did, George refused to settle down. Ellie figured that Mum yelling at him must have been quite a shock, she was always very calm when it came to parenting, so much so that Ellie barely remembered being yelled at when she was younger.

Maybe royal children were never born to be wild, or growing up among all the rigid traditions and pageantry makes them instinctively well behaved. In Ellie's case, she'd always been conscious of the public eye and was therefore desperate to avoid making a tit of herself in front of everyone, but that was only once she understood what the public eye was. Maybe this age was just the worst age, where kids are independent enough to do things on their own, but still so attached to their parents that any mistake they make causes them to cry for days.

Whatever it was, she could tell that her mother was feeling a bit overwhelmed. George's twin sister Charlotte skipped joyfully into the room and started winding pink ribbons around Ellie and her mother, only to get her legs muddled up in them as she tried to complete a figure of eight. Charlotte stumbled up to her feet and tugged frustratedly on the ribbon when it wouldn't go any further, jerking Ellie and her mother around each time she pulled.

"Ellie, darling, could you take your baby sister outside?" Kate asked her. She was trying to remain level headed but it was easy to see that she was on the edge. She didn't want to yell at her kids again and Ellie wanted to help her out. She thought for a flittering moment about her anxiety, the building sense of doom she felt before a public engagement and why on earth she had to feel that way on her birthday. She wanted to ask her mum where her friends were and who all these strangers are, but now wasn't the time.