The Red Headed Woman In My Bath

 I had the speakers set to "threshold of pain" as I stepped into the shower.

I knew that the Queen was not to be long with us and I wanted to hear, and to sob when I heard, the inevitable.

But the spray from the shower was too white noise loud.

I couldn't hear the NPR stream that usually fills my house (I have speakers in the ceiling everywhere).

When I stepped out of the shower, the white noise gone, I heard.

I knew immediately, even before absorbing intelligible words, what had happened as I had showered; those un-absorbed words were delivered with a BBC accent.

So I knew.

And I sobbed - I am sobbing as I write this - and sadness descended.

"What's wrong with you there; why are you crying and why are you naked"?

Said a voice. 

I gasped.

I thought I must be hallucinating or conjuring a living, breathing image from the BBC.

Because that was what she sounded like.

Except.

There was an ancient twang to her English.

But I put that out of my mind.

The voice was from a person who had just entered the bath from the hall door.

She was young - 18 or so - fair and totally carrot topped.

I knew not what to do, let alone, what to say.

I was, after all naked - she had called that correctly - albeit, I felt that being naked in my own bath was my thing, not hers.

She came fully into the bath and seemed really unconcerned about my nakedness; apparently that had been just a conversation starter.

"Well she did it; not only did she out-reign me, out govern me and outthink me, she out loved me; her people loved her deeply and are really sad; I just came from the Council; the President has said that even his people really loved her and are really sad; and they were once our enemy, although after my time".

Without thinking I blurted "Elizabeth"?

She looked at me as one might regard a spider or some other loathsome insect.

But she spoke.

"Elizabeth".