Spare (46 page)

By the time she landed at Heathrow my statement was everywhere. And changing nothing. The onslaught continued.

In fact, my statement generated a whole new onslaught—from my family. Pa and Willy were furious. They gave me an earful. My statement made them look bad, they both said.

Why in hell?

Because they’d never put out a statement for
their
girlfriends or wives when
they
were being harassed.

So this visit wasn’t like previous ones. It was the complete opposite. Instead of walking around Frogmore gardens, or sitting in my kitchen talking dreamily about the future, or just getting to know each other, we were stressed out, meeting lawyers, searching for ways to combat this madness.

As a rule, Meg wasn’t looking at the internet. She wanted to protect herself, keep that poison out of her brain. Smart. But not sustainable if we were going to wage a battle for her reputation and physical safety. I needed to know exactly what was fact, what was false, and that meant asking her every few hours about something else that had appeared online.

Is this true? Is that true? Is there a grain of truth in this?

She’d often begin to cry.
Why would they say that, Haz? I don’t understand. Can they just make stuff up?

Yes they can. And yes they do.

Still, despite the mounting stress, the terrible pressure, we managed to protect our essential bond, never snapping at each other during those few days. As we came to the final hours of her visit, we were solid, happy, and Meg announced she wanted to make me a special goodbye lunch.

There was nothing in my fridge, as usual. But there was a Whole Foods down the street. I gave her directions, the safest route, past the Palace guards, turn right, towards Kensington Palace Gardens, down to Kensington High Street, there’s a police barrier, take a right and you’ll see Whole Foods.
It’s massive, you can’t miss it.

I had an engagement but I’d be home soon.

Baseball cap, jacket, head down, side gate. You’ll be fine, I promise.

Two hours later, when I got home, I found her inconsolable. Sobbing. Shaking.

What is it? What’s happened?

She could barely get the story out.

She’d dressed just as I’d advised, and she’d run happily, anonymously, up and down the supermarket aisles. But as she rode the escalator a man approached.
Excuse me, do you know where the exit is?

Oh, yes, I think it’s just up here to the left.

Hey! You’re on that program—
Suits
, am I right? My wife loves you.

Oh. That’s so nice! Thanks. What’s your name?

Jeff.

Nice to meet you, Jeff. Please tell her I said thanks for watching.

I will. Can I get a picture…you know, for my mum?

Thought you said it was your wife.

Oh. Yeah. Heh.

Sorry, I’m just grocery shopping today.

His face changed.
Well, even if I can’t take a picture WITH you…that doesn’t stop me taking pictures OF you!

He whipped out his phone and followed her to the deli counter, snapping away while she looked at the turkey. F the turkey, she thought, hurrying to the checkouts. He followed her there too.

She got into the queue. Before her were rows and rows of magazines and newspapers, and on all of them, under the most shocking and disgusting headlines…was her. The other customers noticed as well. They looked at the magazines, looked at her, and now they too pulled out their phones, like zombies.

Meg caught two cashiers sharing a horrible smile. After paying for her groceries, she walked outside, straight into a group of four men with their iPhones aimed at her. She kept her head down, rushed up Kensington High Street. She was nearly home when a horse-drawn carriage came rolling out of Kensington Palace Gardens. Some sort of parade: the Palace gate was blocked. She was forced back along the main road, where the four men picked up the scent again, and chased her all the way to the main gate, screaming her name.

When she finally got inside Nott Cott, she’d phoned her best girlfriends, each of whom asked:
Is he worth this, Meg? Is anyone worth this?

I put my arms around her, said I was sorry. So sorry.

We just held each other, until I slowly became aware of the most delicious smells.

I looked around.
Hang on. You mean…after all that…you still made lunch?

I wanted to feed you before I left.

Three weeks later
I was getting an HIV test at a drop-in clinic in Barbados.

With Rihanna.

Royal life.

The occasion was the upcoming World AIDS Day, and I’d asked Rihanna, at the last minute, to join me, help raise awareness across the Caribbean. To my shock she’d said yes.

November 2016.

Important day, vital cause, but my head wasn’t in the game. I was worried about Meg. She couldn’t go home because her house was surrounded by paps. She couldn’t go to her mother’s house, in Los Angeles, because it too was surrounded by paps. Alone, adrift, she was on break from filming, and it was Thanksgiving time. So I’d reached out to friends who had a house sitting empty in Los Angeles, and they’d generously offered it to her. Problem solved, for the moment. Still, I was feeling worried, and intensely hostile towards the press, and I was now surrounded by…press.

The same royal reporters…

Gazing at them all, I thought:
Complicit
.

Then the needle went into my finger. I watched the blood spurt and remembered all the people, friends and strangers, fellow soldiers, journalists, novelists, schoolmates, who’d ever called me and my family blue bloods. That old shorthand for aristocracy, for royalty, I wondered where it had come from. Someone said our blood was blue because it was colder than other people’s, but that couldn’t be right, could it? My family always said it was blue because we were special, but that couldn’t be right either. Watching the nurse channel my blood into a test tube, I thought: Red, just like everyone else’s.

I turned to Rihanna and we chatted while I awaited the result. Negative.

Now I just wanted to run, find somewhere with Wi-Fi, check on Meg. But it wasn’t possible. I had a full slate of meetings and visits—a royal schedule that didn’t leave much wiggle room. And then I had to hurry back to the rusty Merchant Navy ship taking me around the Caribbean.

By the time I reached the ship, late that night, the onboard Wi-Fi signal was barely a pulse. I was only able to text Meg, and only if I stood on the bench in my cabin, phone pressed against the porthole. We were connected just long enough for me to learn that she was safe at my friend’s house. Better yet, her mother and father had been able to sneak in and spend Thanksgiving
with her. Her father had brought an armful of tabloids, however, which he inexplicably wanted to talk about. That didn’t go well, and he’d ended up leaving early.

While she was telling me the story the Wi-Fi went out.

The merchant ship chugged on to its next destination.

I put down the phone and stared out of the porthole at the dark sea.

Meg, driving home from
set, noticed five cars following her.

Then they started chasing her.

Each car was driven by a man—shady-looking. Wolfish.

It was winter, Canada, so the roads were ice. Plus, the way the cars were spinning around her, cutting her off, running red lights, tailgating her, while also trying to photograph her, she felt sure she was going to be in a crash.

She told herself not to panic, not to drive erratically, not to give them what they wanted. Then she phoned me.

I was in London, in my own car, my bodyguard driving, and her tearful voice brought me right back to my childhood. Back to Balmoral.
She didn’t make it, darling boy.
I pleaded with Meg to stay calm, keep her eyes on the road. My air-controller training took over. I talked her to the nearest police station. As she got out of the car, I could hear, in the background, paps following her to the door.

C’mon, Meghan, give us a smile!

Click click click.

She told the police what was happening, begged them for help. They had sympathy, or said they did, but she was a public figure, so they insisted there was nothing to be done. She went back to her car, paps swarming her again, and I guided her to her house, through the front door, where she collapsed.

I did too, a little. I felt helpless, and this, I realized, was my Achilles heel. I could deal with most things so long as there was some action to be taken. But when I had nothing to do…I wanted to die.

There was no real respite for Meg once she was inside her house. Like every previous night, paps and so-called journalists knocked at her door, rang the bell, constantly. Her dogs were losing their minds. They couldn’t understand what was happening, why she wasn’t answering the door, why the house was under assault. As they howled and paced in circles she cowered in the
corner of her kitchen, on the floor. After midnight, when things quietened down, she dared to peep through the blinds and saw men sleeping in cars outside, engines running.

Neighbors told Meg they’d been harassed too. Men had gone up and down the street, asking questions, offering sums of money for any tidbit about Meg—or else a nice juicy lie. One neighbor reported being offered a fortune to mount, on their roof, live streaming cameras aimed at Meg’s windows. Another neighbor actually accepted the offer, hitched a camera to his roof and pointed it straight at Meg’s backyard. Again she contacted the police, who again did nothing. Ontario laws don’t prohibit that, she was told. If the neighbor wasn’t
physically
trespassing, he could hook the Hubble telescope up to his house and point it into her backyard, no problem.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, her mother was being chased every day, to and from her house, to and from the launderette, to and from work. She was also being libeled. One story called her “trailer trash.” Another called her a “stoner.” In fact, she worked in palliative care. She traveled all over Los Angeles to help people at the end of their lives.

Paps scaled the walls and fences of many patients she visited. In other words, every day there was yet another person, like Mummy, whose last sound on earth…would be a click.

Reunited.
A quiet night at Nott Cott, preparing dinner together.

December 2016.

Meg and I had discovered that we shared the same favorite food: roast chicken.

I didn’t know how to cook it, so that night she was teaching me.

I remember the warmth of the kitchen, the wonderful smells. Lemon wedges on the cutting board, garlic and rosemary, gravy bubbling in a saucepan.

I remember rubbing salt on the skin of the bird, then opening a bottle of wine.

Meg put on music. She was expanding my horizons, teaching me about folk music and soul, James Taylor and Nina Simone.

It’s a new dawn. It’s a new day.

Maybe the wine went to my head. Maybe the weeks of battling the press had worn me down. For some reason, when the conversation took an unexpected turn, I became touchy.

Then angry. Disproportionately, sloppily angry.

Meg said something I took the wrong way. It was partly a cultural difference, partly a language barrier, but I was also just over-sensitive that night. I thought: Why’s she having a go at me?

I snapped at her, spoke to her harshly—cruelly. As the words left my mouth, I could feel everything in the room come to a stop. The gravy stopped bubbling, the molecules of air stopped orbiting. Even Nina Simone seemed to pause. Meg walked out of the room, disappearing for a full fifteen minutes.

I went and found her upstairs. She was sitting in the bedroom. She was calm, but said in a quiet, level tone that she would never stand for being spoken to like that.

I nodded.

She wanted to know where it came from.

I don’t know.

Where did you ever hear a man speak like that to a woman? Did you overhear adults speak that way when you were growing up?

I cleared my throat, looked away.
Yes.

She wasn’t going to tolerate that kind of partner. Or co-parent. That kind of life. She wasn’t going to raise children in an atmosphere of anger or disrespect. She laid it all out, super-clear. We both knew my anger hadn’t been
caused
by anything to do with our conversation. It came from somewhere deep inside, somewhere that needed to be excavated, and it was obvious that I could use some help with the job.

I’ve tried therapy, I told her. Willy told me to go. Never found the right person. Didn’t work.

No, she said softly. Try again.

We left Kensington Palace
in a dark car, a completely different and unmarked car, both of us hiding in the back. We went through the rear gate, around 6:30
p.m.
My bodyguards said we weren’t being followed, so when we got stuck in traffic on Regent Street, we hopped out. We were going to the theater and didn’t want to draw attention by arriving after the show had
started. We were so intent on not being late, on watching the clock, that we didn’t see “them” trailing us—in brazen violation of stalking laws.

They shot us close to the theater. From a moving vehicle, through a bus stop window.

The shooters, of course, were Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber.

We didn’t love being papped, especially by those two. But we’d managed to elude them for five months. Good run, we said.

The next time we got papped was a few weeks later, leaving dinner with Doria, who’d flown in with Meg. The paps got us, but missed Doria, happily. She’d turned to go to her hotel, we’d turned with my bodyguards to go to our car. The paps never saw her.

I’d been quite nervous about that dinner. It’s always nerve-racking to meet a girlfriend’s mother, but especially when you’re currently making her daughter’s life hell.
The Sun
had just recently run a front-page headline:
Harry’s girl on Pornhub.
The story showed images of Meg, from
Suits
, which some perverts had posted on some porn site.
The Sun
didn’t say, of course, that the images were used illegally, that Meg knew nothing about them, that Meg had had as much to do with porn as Granny had. It was just a trick, a way to bait readers into buying the paper or clicking on the story. Once the reader discovered there was nothing there, too late! Ad money was in the purse of
The Sun
.