Richard Windsor

Richard Windsor is Lola’s deceased father and the husband of Mayumi May. He never appears directly in the surviving narrative evidence; instead, he is reconstructed through Lola’s memories, the press coverage surrounding his cremation, and the material consequences of his death. His significance lies in the contrast between public grandeur and private absence: he was a billionaire with a prestigious surname and substantial businesses, yet Lola remembers him as someone who played virtually no part in raising her.

Identity and Public Image

Richard’s surname is itself part of his constructed public identity. He was distantly related to the royal family through his mother, and he adopted her last name “for obvious reasons,” allowing the Windsor connection to accompany his business and social status. The name therefore carries inherited prestige as well as personal branding. Lola’s account presents him as a business tycoon whose wealth placed the family among New York’s elite, even though the narrative gives no indication that he used that position to create an intimate family life.

His marriage to Mayumi May further embedded him in a world of celebrity, fashion, philanthropy, and conspicuous luxury. Mayumi had been an actor and former top model, and their household was surrounded by designers, famous guests, and competitive displays of wealth. Richard’s public identity was consequently inseparable from the spectacle surrounding his wife. The family’s status was visible everywhere, but the emotional life behind it was nearly empty.

Death and the Media Spectacle

Richard’s death is revealed after his cremation, when Lola wakes on Saturday to a house filled with condolence cards, bills, personal mail, and tabloids. The front page of People magazine features Mayumi beneath the headline “Mayumi May bids farewell to husband,” with an interior promise of exclusive photographs. The article concentrates on Mayumi’s custom-designed Giovanni mourning dress rather than on Richard himself. Lola notices that the report does not even bother to name her father, as though the identity of the man Mayumi married were secondary to the image of Mayumi performing grief.

The funeral and its aftermath expose Richard’s strange place in the family mythology. His death should have created a moment of mourning, but it becomes another media event organized around Mayumi. The household’s most expensive objects, including the Ron Arid stainless steel sofa on which Mayumi sits, reinforce the atmosphere of polished artificiality. Lola cannot determine whether Mayumi is grieving because her mother’s impassive, perfectly composed expression is also her ordinary appearance. Richard’s death therefore fails to restore emotional reality to the family; it merely supplies a new occasion for public display.

The following day, Mayumi holds an event honoring Richard at Miro, an exclusive New York restaurant associated with Forbes 500 figures and Hollywood royalty. Lola learns about it through E! News rather than through her mother. Television coverage broadcasts the arrival of famous guests almost like an Academy Awards ceremony, turning the memorial into a spectacle of celebrity attendance. Richard is nominally the person being honored, but the event’s visible subject remains Mayumi’s social prominence.

Family Absence and Financial Legacy

Lola’s memories make clear that Richard’s central characteristic as a father is absence. She states that neither parent truly raised her or played a meaningful role in her life. A live-in nanny handled the practical work of childhood, while her parents paid for the nanny and later for Lola’s college education. Financial provision functioned as a substitute for affection. Richard is included in the structure of that neglect even though Lola specifically remembers Mayumi’s cruelty more vividly.

Richard’s wealth also produces a bitter contradiction. Lola is the only daughter of two billionaires, yet she must work hard to support herself. Her parents stopped supporting her financially when she turned eighteen, or at least Mayumi did, while Richard remained personally uninvolved. After his death, Lola learns that his money and businesses had been left in Mayumi’s name. His fortune therefore does not become a means of independence for Lola; it remains under the control of the mother who already dominated the family’s public and private life.

This arrangement intensifies Lola’s sense that Richard was never truly available to her. His money was present, his surname was present, and his social authority was present, but his fatherhood was not. The inheritance is thus less a gift than another reminder of exclusion: even the material legacy associated with him passes through Mayumi rather than reaching Lola directly.

Relationship with Lola and Posthumous Consequences

Lola does not describe a distinct emotional bond with Richard. Her strongest statements about him are categorical: he had “literally played no role” in her life, and the parental contribution she received was effectively limited to money. That absence shapes her adult identity. She grows up in an extravagant environment among wealthy people competing to outdo one another, but unlike others in the same social circle, she develops almost no confidence or belief in herself.

After Richard’s cremation, Lola seeks recognition from Mayumi and finds none. She watches Mayumi’s televised press conference, hoping her mother might mention her or the family. Instead, Mayumi speaks only about herself—how she is coping and what she plans to do—and Lola is omitted entirely. Richard’s death has opened no path toward reconciliation; it only confirms the family pattern in which public mourning is visible while private connection is absent. Lola decides to cut ties with Mayumi, even while acknowledging that Mayumi might not notice the separation.

The contrast between Richard’s home and Lola’s workplace clarifies what his wealth failed to provide. She longs to return to the hospital, where the surroundings are modest and people speak when something is needed. There, she has no expectation of affection and is therefore not disappointed. At home, by contrast, she had expected love and received pocket money. Richard’s paternal legacy is consequently measured not by what he left behind, but by the emotional deficit his absence helped create.

Narrative Function and Legacy

Richard functions as an absent center around which the family’s conflicts turn. His death triggers the public memorial events, exposes Mayumi’s narcissistic control of the family narrative, and prompts Lola to sever the relationship that has defined her childhood. Yet the narrative deliberately keeps Richard indistinct. The reader learns about his royal connection, business wealth, marriage, death, and financial arrangements, but not about his private voice, habits, or inner life. He is presented as a socially legible figure and an emotionally unknowable father.

That flatness is significant rather than accidental. Richard’s public identity is built from surfaces—an inherited name, billionaire status, elite connections, and a famous wife—while Lola’s testimony supplies the human consequence of those surfaces. Even the obituary-like media treatment reduces him to “husband,” making his own name disappear beneath Mayumi’s brand. His final narrative role is therefore paradoxical: he is powerful enough to shape Lola’s circumstances through wealth and absence, yet powerless to control how completely the people around him replace his memory with spectacle. Richard Windsor survives in the story as a surname, a fortune, and the unanswered question of what a father might have been if he had actually been present.