Spare

The music struck up, we turned and faced the front. We spent the entire length of the performance (Cirque du Soleil) squeezing each other’s hands, me promising her in a whisper:

Trust me. I’ll keep you safe.

61.

I woke to a text from Jason.

Bad news.

What is it now?

The Mail on Sunday had printed the private letter Meg had written to her father. The letter that Granny and Pa urged her to write.

February 2019.

I was in bed, Meg was lying next to me, still asleep.

I waited a bit, then broke the news to her softly.

Your father’s given your letter to the Mail.

No.

Meg, I don’t know what to say, he’s given them your letter.

That moment, for me, was decisive. About Mr. Markle, but also about the press. There had been so many moments, but that for me was The One. I didn’t want to hear any more talk of protocols, tradition, strategy. Enough, I thought.

Enough.

The paper knew it was illegal to publish that letter, they knew full well, and did it anyway. Why? Because they also knew Meg was defenseless. They knew she didn’t have the staunch support of my family, and how else could they have known this, except from people close to the family? Or inside the family? The papers knew that the only recourse Meg had was to sue, and she couldn’t do that because there was only one lawyer working with the family, and that lawyer was under the control of the Palace, and the Palace would never authorize him to act on Meg’s behalf.

There was nothing in that letter to be ashamed about. A daughter pleading with her father to behave decently? Meg stood by every word. She’d always known it might be intercepted, that one of her father’s neighbors, or one of the paps staking out his house, might steal his post. Anything was possible. But she never stopped to think her father would actually offer it, or that a paper would actually take it—and print it.

And edit it. Indeed, that might have been the most galling thing, the way the editors cut and pasted Meg’s words to make them sound less loving.

Seeing something so deeply personal smeared across the front pages, gobbled up by Britons over their morning toast and marmalade, was invasive enough. But the pain was compounded tenfold by the simultaneous interviews with alleged handwriting experts, who analyzed Meg’s letter and inferred from the way she crossed her Ts or curved her Rs that she was a terrible person.

Rightward slant? Over-emotional.

Highly stylized? Consummate performer.

Uneven baseline? No impulse control.

The look on Meg’s face as I told her about these libels rolling out…I knew my way around grief, and there was no mistaking it—this was pure grief. She was mourning the loss of her father, and she was also mourning the loss of her own innocence. She reminded me in a whisper, as if someone might be listening, that she’d taken a handwriting class in high school, and as a result she’d always had excellent penmanship. People complimented her. She’d even used this skill at university to earn spare money. Nights, weekends, she’d inscribed wedding and birthday-party invitations, to pay the rent. Now people were trying to say that this was some kind of window into her soul? And the window was dirty?

Tormenting Meghan Markle has become a national sport that shames us, said a headline in The Guardian.

So true. But no one was shamed, that was the problem. No one was feeling the slightest pang of conscience. Would they finally feel some if they caused a divorce? Or would it take another death?

What had become of all the shame they’d felt in the late 1990s?

Meg wanted to sue. Me too. Rather, we both felt we had no choice. If we didn’t sue over this, we said, what kind of signal would that be sending? To the press? To the world? So we conferred again with the Palace lawyer.

We were given a runaround.

I reached out to Pa and Willy. They’d both sued the press in the past over invasions and lies. Pa sued over so-called Black Spider Letters, his memos to government officials. Willy sued over topless photos of Kate.

But both vehemently opposed the idea of Meg and me taking any legal action.

Why? I asked.

They hummed and hahed. The only answer I could get out of them was that it simply wasn’t advisable. The done thing, etc.

I told Meg: You’d think we were suing a dear friend of theirs.

62.

Willy asked for a meeting. He wanted to talk about everything, the whole rolling catastrophe.

Just him and me, he said.

As it happened, Meg was out of town, visiting girlfriends, so his timing was perfect. I invited him over.

An hour later he walked into Nott Cott, where he hadn’t been since Meg first moved in. He looked piping hot.

It was early evening. I offered him a drink, asked about his family.

Everyone good.