Wincing, she sinks down into the pink, upholstered couch in her suite, reaches down to ease off the shiny, nude Christian Louboutin shoe with its killer four inch heel. The skin underneath has inflated into a padded blister. She sighs. At least there will be some familiar faces at this evening’s banquet.

This afternoon was a crushing bore of traipsing around, taking tea. Tea! Who likes fucking tea? Everyone knows Americans drink coffee! And she was expected to have some kind of orgasm over the tea set she was given. A tea set! Apparently it’s been made by some fancy British designer she’s never heard of. Oh yes-she went through the motions, said ‘wonderful’, claimed to know this Bridgwater person’s work. She rubs her foot. It might  make a Christmas gift for one of the staff, she supposes.

Then she’d had to trail after Don Fatso while he looked at golf trophies and had to pretend to be interested. As if! She’d have liked to have walked into Harrod’s store or to have sat in the front row at a catwalk show, or to have spent the afternoon in the spa, but no-she’d had to look at golf trophies.

No-there is still more than a week of this interminable tour before they can go home; more boring tea parties, banquets, politicians and their frumpy wives and husbands. More tedious hand-shaking, small talk, having to be entertained while he has his meetings, does his interviews, makes more embarrassing remarks.

She rises and limps to the dressing room, where rails of designer gowns swathed in dust covers jostle and shimmer, sighing as she runs her hands over the luxurious fabrics, pulling a sequinned bodice across her chest, remembering the last American wife who visited the palace and wore a cardigan. A cardigan!

Of course she’s made her own errors, like having her hair loose and wearing a floaty scarf for their arrival at that tiny, scabby airport, where she’d had to walk across the tarmac with hair and scarf across her face and then, to top it all he had to grab her hand again, like the last time and he knows how much she hates it; so at least the breeze gave her an excuse to brush his hand away and it looked like she was holding her hair back. Whenever she clicks the giant screen on there it is again-her image, her hair blown across her face, the silk scarf whipping sideways like a garrotte.

A glossy pink nail has chipped and she clucks in annoyance. Soon it will be time to ring through for a bath to be run, for the beautician to start her make-up, for the stylist to create the casual sweep of her hair, for the dresser to attend.

He’s in one of his moods this evening; pissed because he didn’t get to line up with Prince Harry and that bitch, Meghan! And not the other two, not William and Kate, either. She’s glad, though. It meant that there was no competition in the style stakes, not Kate’s skinny, model-like body, not Meghan’s dusky beauty, not either of their dewy, youthful looks. She peers into the mirror. Her own procedures have stood up pretty well to the travel and the late hours- with a little help from the beautician of course and that old hag, Camilla is no contest.

Not much more of this. Soon they’ll be back in The White House and she can go back to choosing the flowers and getting her summer wardrobe together. With luck he will be too tired and too busy to make any demands and maybe she should think about having her face re-lifted? That should string things out for a while. He can always buy some women in. She smiles into the mirror-as much as her lips will stretch…