Spare

They’d ultimately written him a check for a hundred thousand pounds.

I reminded him that he’d stirringly said in one interview: “They can say I’m a fat old c—. They can say I’m an untalented bastard. They can call me a poof. But they mustn’t lie about me.”

He didn’t have an answer.

But I didn’t push it.

I loved him. I’ll always love him.

And I also didn’t want to spoil the holiday.

68.

It felt glorious to watch an entire country fall in love with my wife.

South Africa, that is.

September 2019.

Another foreign tour, representing the Queen, and another triumph. From Cape Town to Johannesburg, people couldn’t get enough of Meg.

We both felt a bit more confident, therefore, a bit more courageous, just days before our return home, when we strapped on the battle armor and announced that we were suing three of the four British tabloids (including the one that printed Meg’s letter to her father) over their disgraceful conduct, and over their longstanding practice of hacking into people’s phones.

It was partially down to Elton and David. At the end of our recent visit they’d introduced us to a barrister, an acquaintance of theirs, a lovely fellow who knew more about the phone-hacking scandal than anyone I’d ever met. He’d shared with me his expertise, plus loads of open-court evidence, and when I told him I wished there was something I could do with it, when I complained that we’d been blocked at every turn by the Palace, he offered a breathtakingly elegant work-around.

Why not hire your own lawyer?

I stammered: You mean…are you telling me we could just…?

What a thought. It had never occurred to me.

I’d been so conditioned to do as I was told.

69.

I rang Granny to tell her beforehand. Pa too. And I sent Willy a text.

I also told the Bee, giving him advance notice of the lawsuit, letting him know we had a statement ready to go, asking him to please redirect to our office all the press inquiries it would inevitably trigger. He wished us luck! It was amusing, therefore, when I heard that he and the Wasp were claiming to have had no advance warning.

In announcing the lawsuit I laid out my case to the world:

My wife has become one of the latest victims of a British tabloid press that wages campaigns against individuals with no thought to the consequences—a ruthless campaign that has escalated over the past year, throughout her pregnancy and while raising our newborn son…I cannot begin to describe how painful it has been…Though this action may not be the safe one, it is the right one. Because my deepest fear is history repeating itself…I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces.

The lawsuit wasn’t covered as widely as, say, Meg’s daring to shut her own car door. In fact, it was barely covered at all. Nonetheless, friends took note. Many texted: Why now?

Simple. In a few days the privacy laws in Britain were going to change in the tabloids’ favor. We wanted our case to be heard before a crooked bat was introduced into the game.

Friends also asked: Why sue at all when you’re riding so high in the press? The South Africa tour was a triumph, coverage was wildly positive.

That’s the whole point, I explained. This isn’t about wanting or needing good press. It’s about not letting people get away with abuse. And lies. Especially the kind of lies that can destroy innocents.

Maybe I sounded a bit self-righteous. Maybe I sounded as if I was on my high horse. But shortly after announcing our lawsuit I felt energized by a ghastly story in the Express.

How Meghan Markle’s flowers may have put Princess Charlotte’s life at risk.

This latest “scandal” concerned the flower crowns worn by our bridesmaids, more than a year earlier. Included in the crowns were a few lilies of the valley, which can be poisonous to children. Provided the children eat the lilies.

Even then, the reaction would be discomfort, concerning to parents, but only in the rarest cases would such a thing be fatal.