So one day he found her crying
Coiled up on the dirty ground
Her prince finally came to save her
And the rest you can figure out
But it was a trick
And the clock struck twelve
At 17 she falls in love so hard and fast its completely terrifying.
His name is Alexander Beckworth, but everyone calls him Beck, and everything about him is perfect.
He is Robbie's new best friend from University and he comes to stay with them in Monaco. Because Robbie is the sensible one her father trusts him to take care of her and Liam so they are allowed to holiday together without her parents.
Beck is studying to be a lawyer and he's intelligent and completely charming. He's 21 – two years older than Robbie and he's taken two years off after school to work for his father's business.
She didn't know what to do around him, how to act, what to say or do. Her normal sarcastic, haughty royal air deserts her and she is mostly quiet when he's around.
Much as she wants to she doesn't have to impress him because for her, just being in the same room as him and being able to watch him and hear his voice is enough. She thinks its too much to hope or dream that he could possibly like her back too.
On the third day they're at Monaco Robert meets an Italian girl who he wants to spend every moment with. He disappears off most of the time, leaving just Beck and Liam and Lenny at the villa.
She and Beck actually become friends and her nervousness wears off a little but she is still dazzled by him, especially when he says things to her that make her feel special. He tells her how Robbie says she's going to be epic and how she's a star.
She sleeps with him one evening when Liam's out with a mate and it's a complete disaster. He does everything right, is a complete gentleman but she has no idea what to do. She doesn't tell him she's a virgin, because she's not technically and he might be able to tell, but she has no real experience of men beyond kissing. At first because he's gentle its not so bad, but when he is on top of her and inside her it reminds her of before and the feelings are so painful that afterwards she has to rush to the bathroom. She locks the door and collapses on the floor into a flood of messy tears. Eventually she pulls herself together, wipes away her tears, fixes her makeup and emerges back out and denies that there was anything wrong in the first place, but he's not stupid and can see that she's upset. He wraps his arms around her and holds her tight that night and the feeling of protection he provides makes her almost start to feel better.
The next morning they are leaving, her and Liam going their separate way back to school and Robert and Beck on to Milan. He takes her outside to the pool to speak to her. The first thing he says to her is that he thinks she's so beautiful and that she's precious to him causes her heart to feel like its going to burst.
But there's a but which makes her crash down to earth. He thinks she's too young for this. Robert's his best friend he doesn't want to do anything which would hurt her. He says he shouldn't have started last night at all.
To her, he makes it sound like its finished before it even began, and she takes her broken heart back to school. If he thinks she's too young, she vows to grow up for him. She gets a fake ID which has no currency most places because everyone in England knows her face and knows that she's at school. She persuades two of her friends to come to Paris with her and they manage to get in to a club. She's young and rich and privileged so drugs are easy to come by. Paris, and drugs, and drinking all become a weekend habit pretty quick, and within two months she's on her final warning at boarding school. A month later she is expelled. She is enrolled in another school but expelled two months later. Her mother decides to send her to a finishing school in Switzerland but that only lasts seven weeks and she emerges, unfinished, home in disgrace and still with the same bad habits she left with.
In his first year at MI5, James takes on seven different identities. He starts off as Andrew Smart, a posh boy from Bristol who's dabbling in drug dealing with the Russian Mafia. Next he's a people smuggler from the East End, then he's undercover working in a corrupt MP's office, then he's working in a London Bank to see if they're guilty of insider trading. There's still more assumed identities, more lies and more fake back stories.
Everything they've taught him comes into play when he's in a role. He practices knocking people out with a pinch to the neck, he slips something into a drink if he wants to search inside someone's bedroom, he seduces a Cabinet Minister's frumpy secretary to get access to his laptop. He is good at what he does because he can spin a web of lies to make others believe he's whatever they want him to be. He studies people intently to discover their weaknesses, then uses this against them like the master manipulator he is becoming.
He gets a kick out putting criminals away, and serving his country, but deep down he know that he also likes the games, and the lying and the manipulation.
The only thing that makes him wonder if he can keep doing this forever is that at the end of the day, when the comes home and peels off an expensive suit, discards his wallet with whatever false credit cards are inside it, he feels like he doesn't really know who he is anymore.
When she sees Beck next she's 18 and she's totally transformed herself. She wears lots of makeup, dresses in short back skirts and she smokes and drinks and takes far too many drugs. She's not the same inexperienced girl she was eight months ago, she's had two boyfriends and three one night stands. Now she's a tabloid favourite, 'the Party Princess." She's at University studying art and history, and no one can claim she hasn't grown up.
That year is the best time of her life, because she has Beck (well, sort of). They see each other every couple of weekends when he can manage some time off from University. Once she sees Beck again the wild behaviour becomes less wild. The drugs become recreational and she doesn't use them every day because he is the only high she needs and it makes her deliriously happy just to touch his face, and listen to his voice and have him hold her.
They don't talk about the future. He tells her she's young and she still has a lot of growing up to do. He doesn't want her to feel like he's stifling her. Liam and Robbie know about them, but her parents don't until they are splashed across the front of the tabloids holding hands. Her mother doesn't approve, but them when does she ever approve of anything her daughter does. Her mother has old fashioned ideas that royalty marries royalty and Beck is from a good family but they're not titled or royal.
Beck wants to travel the world when he finishes University. Although it hurts her, she lets him go, because she knows what its like to feel caged and she wants him to be free. They make plans for her to join him at Christmas.
Beck emails her from Australia, and South America, then America and finally Canada. He decides to stay in Vancouver and work there for a year and he lands himself a job in a law firm.
After he's been there four months, Robbie goes over to stay with him for two weeks. Robbie emails her to say they've been skiing and getting drunk and taking in Canada's sights and she's wildly envious, but contents herself with looking at flights so she can visit Beck in six weeks time at Christmas.
Robbie returns home looking worse for wear, but like he's had a great time and she badgers him to tell her everything about Beck and his life in Canada. Robbie goes quiet and takes her hand and she can tell he's about to tell her something she won't like.
When she hears Beck's met a girl in Canada and their engaged it feels like her heart stops beating.
Six months later Beck gets married and Robbie goes over again to be Beck's best man. She's invited but she just can't bring herself to go and watch the man she loves marry someone else. She sees the photos on Facebook and it hurts so much to see Beck looking so happy on his wedding day. Whatever his wife feels for him, she knows that she doesn't love him like she does, because her feelings are so strong and true.
She goes out and parties much too hard, gets wildly drunk and ODs in the early hours of the morning at a Parisian nightclub. This is how her first bodyguard gets himself fired.
Beck is the second crack in Eleanor.
