Spare

His voice, so much like his brother’s, was an instant comfort. It made me happy, even though Thomas wasn’t happy. He, too, was struggling, he said. Going through a divorce, other challenges.

The conversation went inexorably to that original challenge, the wellspring of all challenges, Henners. Thomas missed his brother so much. Me too, I said. Man, me too.

He thanked me for speaking at an event to raise money for Henners’s charity.

Wouldn’t miss it. That’s what friends are for.

I thought of the event. And the pre-event panic attack.

Then we reminisced, randomly. Thomas and Henners, Willy and me, Saturday mornings, lounging around with Mummy, watching telly—having burping contests.

She was like a teenage boy!

She was, mate.

Going with Mummy to see Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Me and Henners mooning the security cameras at Ludgrove.

We both started laughing.

He reminded me that Henners and I were so close, people called us Jack and Russell. Maybe that was because Willy and I had Jack Russells? Oh I wondered where Henners might be. Was he with Mummy? Was he with the dead from Afghanistan? Was Gan-Gan there too? I was jolted from this train of thought by the sound of Thomas screaming.

Boose, mate, you OK?

Angry voices, a scuffle, a struggle. I put the phone on speaker, shot down the corridor, up the stairs, burst into the police room. I shouted that my mate was in trouble. We leaned over the phone, listening, but the line had already gone dead.

It was obvious: Thomas was being mugged. Luckily he’d just happened to mention the name of the restaurant where he’d had dinner. It was in Battersea. Plus, I knew where he lived. We checked a map: there was only one logical route between those two points. Several bodyguards and I raced there and found Thomas on the side of the road. Near Albert Bridge. Beaten, shaken. We took him to the nearest police station, where he signed a statement. Then we drove him home.

Along the way he kept thanking me for coming to his rescue.

I hugged him tightly. What friends are for.

63.

I was given a desk at Wattisham Airfield, which I hated. I’d never wanted a desk. I couldn’t bear sitting at a desk. My father loved his desk, seemed pinned to it, enamored of it, surrounded by his books and mailbags. That was never me.

I was also given a new task. Refine my knowledge of the Apache. Perhaps on the way to becoming an instructor. That was a job I thought might be fun. Teaching others to fly.

But it wasn’t. It just didn’t feel like my calling.

Once again I broached the idea of going back to the war. Once again the answer was a hard no. Even if the Army was inclined to send me, Afghanistan was winding down.

Libya was heating up, though. How about that?

No, the Army said—in every way they knew how, officially and unofficially, they denied my request.

Everyone has had quite enough of Harry in a war zone.

At the end of a typical working day I’d leave Wattisham, drive back to Kensington Palace. I was no longer staying with Pa and Camilla: I’d been assigned my own place, a flat on KP’s “lower ground floor,” in other words, halfway underground.

The flat had three tall windows, but they admitted little light, so the differences between dawn, dusk and midday were nominal at best. Sometimes the question was rendered moot by Mr. R, who lived directly upstairs. He liked to park his massive gray Discovery hard against the windows, blotting out all light entirely.

I wrote him a note, politely asking if he might perhaps pull his car forward a few inches. He fired back a reply telling me to suck eggs. Then he went to Granny and asked her to tell me the same.

She never did speak to me about it, but the fact that Mr. R felt secure enough, supported enough, to denounce me to the monarch showed my true place in the pecking order. He was one of Granny’s equerries.

I should fight, I told myself. I should confront the man face-to-face. But I figured—no. The flat actually suited my mood. Darkness at noon suited my mood.

Also, it was the first time I was living on my own, somewhere other than Pa’s, so on balance I really had no complaints.

I invited a mate over one day. He said the flat reminded him of a badger sett. Or maybe I said that to him. Either way, it was true, and I didn’t mind.

We were chatting, my mate and I, having a drink, when suddenly a sheet dropped down in front of my windows. Then the sheet began to shake. My mate stood, went to the window and said: Spike…what in the…? Falling from the sheet was a cascade of what looked to be—brown confetti?

No.

Glitter?

No.

My mate said: Spike, is that hair?