"I'm so sorry" Josie mumbled in an almost inaudibly soft voice, her eyes dancing between Ellie and her mother. Ellie's nerves jumped up a gear once she realised her nifty magazine shield was no longer useful, but she was too unsettled to see that, of the two of them, Josie was now the embarrassed girl that didn't know what to do with herself.
"Should I curtsey?" Josie asked, but neither Kate or Ellie could surely say who she was asking. "I should curtsey" the girl quickly answered her own question and proceeded to slowly dip into an awkward and frantic curtsey. It was all too obvious to Ellie, who had been curtseying for as long as she could remember, that Josie was immensely inexperienced in such a formal greeting.
Josie's feet were all over the place, and her knees were visibly shaking. In fact all that was stopping her from falling on her bum was Ellie's own hand. Ellie noticed her losing her balance and instinctively reached for Josie's hand and pulled her back onto steady footing. It wasn't something she'd imagined doing just moments before when she was crippled with fear, but now, perhaps with her mother beside her, she was a little more confident. More able to show her protective instincts that she had been nurturing ever since Alex was born.
Josie's skin was boiling, her hands clammy and moist, almost enough for Ellie to lose her grip if it wasn't for years of training in maintaining grace and balance. The girl made sure she was steady, looking eager to put her attempted curtsey behind her, but definitely appearing a lot less confident than before. Josie seemed to be sinking into a shell, much different from the bubbly and excited girl that had confidently approached her.
Ellie was feeling different too, like she wasn't hiding herself anymore. Just being herself and not protecting her identity, even if she was still a little shy. There was something about a girl who was shy and scared that made Ellie a bit more encouraged to talk, to poke and prod until eventually that person started to open up. Whether it was a normal trait that everyone shared, or if it was just something that was specific to herself, she knew that Josie shared the same trait too. Otherwise she wouldn't have joined her at the magazine stand in the first place.
I guess she wasn't expecting me to be one of the royals she reads about. Of course she wasn't. Silly.
"You okay?" Ellie asked her, unsure of what else to talk about apart from Josie's sweaty hands.
"Yes... Your Highness... Ma'am" Josie replied, letting out a deep breath and smiling nervously. "I'm just kind of... startled"
"You don't need to be, dear" her mother piped in all smiley and warm. "We're just shopping like everyone else"
"I really didn't expect to see people like you shopping here... I mean, you're royalty!" Josie blurted out, exasperated as she pointed at the rows of magazines alongside her and Ellie.
Ellie looked once again at the rows of magazines alongside, pretty sure that she caught her mother turning her head to look as well. Each magazine had a cover photo that was glitzy and glamorous, with bright lights and striking colours that made her family look more like gods than real people. The photos were nothing like the candid snaps that her parents had of them on their IPhones, but at least in those ones they actually looked human.
Her mother smiled but shook her head. "We're really not as glamorous as those pictures suggest. Ellie here always..."
"Mum!" Ellie prodded Kate's leg harshly, interrupting her mother before she said too much. One look at her mother's mischievous smirk and she knew it would have been something embarrassing.
"I wasn't going to say anything!" her mother replied, ruffling her hair and then resting her hand on Ellie's shoulder.
Josie seemed to be calming down as she watched the banter between Ellie and her mother, but her discrete snort of laughter quickly put the two royals' focus back on herself. "You two really aren't what I thought you'd be like" Josie uttered nervously.
"Well I hope that's a compliment" Kate replied, appearing slightly taken aback but you could tell she wasn't insulted.
"Oh, no no no!" Josie stuttered. "It is a compliment... its just, you're so... normal! Like pleasantly normal!"
Josie's words offered a strange sort of calm for Ellie, for she was the first person outside of her family and household that had ever called her normal.
"Really?" Ellie asked, a hopeful smile forming on her lips.
"Yeah, I thought... Well, you don't want to know what I thought you might be like in person" Josie answered, her nerves slowly fading. She still seemed a little cautious, as if she felt anything she said could be construed as an insult by Ellie or her mother.
Kate let out an amused little giggle as she knelt down to Josie's height. "What's your name sweetheart?"
"Um, J-Josephine. But my friends call me Josie" the redhead answered, apparently surprised Ellie's mother would even ask that question.
"And how old are you Josie?" Kate pressed further, but gently, for more information.
"I'm fifteen on Monday" Josie replied excitedly.
"Well Josie, let me tell you a secret about us" Ellie's mum carefully reached out and rubbed Josie's arm. Ellie knew her mother always enjoyed talking to young people, getting to know them and building friendships. Kate's cuddly nature always made it so much easier for people to talk to her.
"It's not just us. Our whole family is, basically, like any other family in the world. Anything your family does, our family probably does too. I like to wear sweatpants around the house, my husband is terrible at baking cookies, my daughters listen and dance around to Taylor Swift songs from six years ago and we all enjoy a nice evening spent on the couch watching T.V together. You don't have to be afraid or nervous around us because you think we're different"
"But you're still the Duchess of Cambridge and Princess Eleanor" Josie explained glumly.
"Well maybe in public, but you know us as just Eleanor and Kate, your neighbours from Bucklebury" Kate reassuringly squeezed Josie's arm and smiled warmly.
"But my friends call me Ellie" Ellie added.
"That they do" her mother gave her an approving smile.
"Ellie" Josie breathed a sigh of relief as she said her name, as if she'd broken some sort of barrier between them just with one word.
Ellie herself always felt much more comfortable when people called her by her name, unless it was a large man wielding a camera. It just felt more personal than her title, or any nickname that the papers or the people came up with for her. In her mind she was just Ellie.
"Well, um, if you're just some of my normal friends from Bucklebury, maybe you could uh, come to dinner at my house tonight?" Josie asked hesitantly. It was easy to see that she just wanted to go back in time and take all her words back, but she remained silent.
"Oh my" her mother replied, genuinely surprised by such a question "I'm afraid we can't. Not tonight unfortunately as we're having a family dinner at my parents' house"
Ellie could tell that Josie was disappointed. Her whole expression seemed to instantly droop down, going from excited to upset in the blink of an eye. Ellie did exactly the same thing whenever she learned her dad wasn't going to be home for dinner, or her parents wouldn't be returning from abroad on the day they said they would, or when Alex took the last chocolate muffin from the fridge. So it was generally a feeling that she knew quite well.
There wasn't really anything they could do, the whole reason they'd gone shopping in the first place was because they needed stuff for dinner, so there wasn't any way they could just ditch her family and go have dinner with a family she didn't even know. Even so, Ellie still felt an urge to make sure Josie didn't leave disappointed.
In the shopping trolley next to her, she spotted her mother's purse with her phone poking out the top. "We could take a photo together" she announced, the idea filling her with a giddy sort of joy that she hadn't felt at any point during their day out in Bucklebury.
"Really? We could?" Josie asked excitedly. She seemed to think she couldn't be any luckier, but in truth having her picture taken with fans was something that Ellie and her family were used to doing. More so during walkabouts as opposed to the magazine aisle of a small town supermarket.
"Oh of course dear, it's no trouble" Kate explained casually.
Upon hearing her mother's approval, Ellie snatched the phone from her mother's purse, only for Kate to snatch it right back almost immediately. "It's better if we use Josie's phone, sweetheart" her mother advised her, carefully putting the phone back in her purse.
Ellie nodded quickly, realising she couldn't just pass around her mother's phone to strangers, even if they were as nice as Josie was. "Just to make things easier" her mother added, winking at Josie.
They didn't need to discuss why using her mother's phone would be problematic, since it was pretty obvious. Even in her fangirling daze Josie understood the reasons they had to be discreet, and either didn't realise they didn't trust her completely or she just wasn't offended by it.
Thankfully her mother was right in assuming that Josie was like most teenage girls and had her own phone, complete with a sparkling silver case that made Kate's IPhone look quite ordinary in comparison. Josie quickly swiped away to hide her phones background as the three of them huddled together to fit into frame, but her red hot cheeks made it obvious her background was something embarrassing.
Kate stood just behind them, with her hands on their shoulders and her smile glowing. It was just like one of the countless pictures Ellie had with her sister, except this time her sister was a red head and almost four years older than her.
"Thank you guys so much for this" Josie stammered as she held the phone out in front of them and took the picture.
It was strange to think that only a few minutes ago she was cowering in fear from this girl, but now Ellie was thinking she'd really made a friend out of Josie. She'd normally be nervous being so close to a commoner, but with the whole royalty thing put to one side, to see it as just two people meeting in a supermarket, Ellie felt much more comfortable just being herself.
For the small amount of nerves that she still felt, her mother's presence was enough to balance things out.
"Can I put this on my blog?" Josie asked as they separated.
"Well I... I suppose that would be alright" Kate replied, gently patting Josie's arm.
Josie practically hopped like an excited little bunny when Kate answered, fiddling with her phone a little bit more before almost throwing it back into her jacket pocket due to the raw adrenaline that seemed to be pumping through her.
"Just one more thing" her mother said, interrupting the girl's revelry "Can I have your address?"
"My...address? Why would you need that?" Josie asked, her joy quickly turning into confused fear as the nervous atmosphere from before suddenly returned.
"Well so we can send you a birthday card, of course" Kate explained as the bubbly, adrenalized mood reappeared as quickly as it had vanished.
Josie excitedly nodded her understanding and proceeded to jot down her address on a notepad that Kate pulled from her purse. She carefully drew hearts above her I's and added little curls to end of each letter, lingering much more than she needed to but Ellie and her mother remained patient.
Once everything was sorted, her mother gently persuaded Josie that they needed to be leaving soon and the girl reluctantly left them, turning and waving at them several times before disappearing into another aisle. Ellie felt sad to see her go, but also somewhat relieved. Josie had turned out to be very easy to talk to, enough for her to think they could really be friends if the family stayed in Bucklebury for longer than a weekend.
Still, she knew she'd need to spend a lot more than twenty minutes talking to Josie before all the barriers broke down, and she finally felt like she was one normal person talking to another.
"Did you see the background on her phone?" Ellie asked her mother, smirking cheekily as they moved down the aisle towards the checkout.
"I did" Kate grinned down at her "There are lots of girls who love your Uncle Harry in that white uniform"