Spare

There was a pressing issue with her legal case against the tabloids. The Mail was up to its usual tricks. Their first crack at offering a defense had been patently ridiculous, so now they were trying a new defense, which was even more ridiculous. They were arguing that they’d printed Meg’s letter to her father because of a story in People magazine, which quoted a handful of Meg’s friends—anonymously. The tabloids argued that Meg had orchestrated these quotes, used her friends as de facto spokespeople, and thus the Mail had every right to publish her letter to her father.

More, they now wanted the names of Meg’s previously anonymous friends read into the official court record—to destroy them. Meg was determined to do everything in her power to prevent that. She’d been staying up late, night after night, trying to work out how to save these people, and now, on our first morning in the new house, she reported abdominal pains.

And bleeding.

Then she collapsed to the floor.

We raced to the local hospital. When the doctor walked into the room, I didn’t hear one word she said, I just watched her face, her body language. I already knew. We both did. There had been so much blood.

Still, hearing the words was a blow.

Meg grabbed me, I held her, we both wept.

In my life I’ve felt totally helpless only four times.

In the back of the car while Mummy and Willy and I were being chased by paps.

In the Apache above Afghanistan, unable to get clearance to do my duty.

At Nott Cott when my pregnant wife was planning to take her life.

And now.

We left the hospital with our unborn child. A tiny package. We went to a place, a secret place only we knew.

Under a spreading banyan tree, while Meg wept, I dug a hole with my hands and set the tiny package softly in the ground.

83.

Five months later. Christmas 2020.

We took Archie to find a Christmas tree. A pop-up lot in Santa Barbara.

We bought one of the biggest spruces they had.

We brought it home, set it up in the living room. Magnificent. We stood back, admiring, counting our blessings. New home. Healthy boy. Plus, we’d signed several corporate partnerships, which would give us the chance to resume our work, to spotlight the causes we cared about, to tell the stories we felt were vital. And to pay for our security.

It was Christmas Eve. We FaceTimed with several friends, including a few in Britain. We watched Archie running around the tree.

And we opened presents. Keeping to the Windsor family tradition.

One present was a little Christmas ornament of…the Queen!

I roared. What the—?

Meg had spotted it in a local store and thought I might like it.

I held it to the light. It was Granny’s face to a T. I hung it on an eye-level branch. It made me happy to see her there. It made Meg and me smile. But then Archie, playing around the tree, jostled the stand, shook the tree, and Granny fell.

I heard a smash and turned.

Pieces lay all over the floor.

Archie ran and grabbed a spray bottle. For some reason he thought spraying water on the broken pieces would fix it.

Meg said: No, Archie, no—do not spray Gan-Gan! I grabbed a dustpan and swept up the pieces, all the while thinking: This is weird.

84.

The Palace announced that a review had been conducted of our roles, and of the agreement reached in Sandringham.

Henceforth, we were stripped of everything but a few patronages.

February 2021.

They took it all away, I thought, even my military associations. I’d no longer be captain general of the Royal Marines, a title handed down by my grandfather. I’d no longer be permitted to wear my ceremonial military uniform.

I told myself they could never take away my real uniform, or my real military status. But still.

Furthermore, the statement continued, we’d no longer be doing any service whatsoever for the Queen.

They made it sound as if there’d been an agreement between us. There was nothing of the sort.

We pushed back in our own statement, released the same day, saying we’d never cease living a life of service.

This new slap-down from the Palace was like petrol on a bonfire. We’d been under media attack non-stop since leaving, but this official severing of ties set off a new wave, which felt different. We were vilified every day, every hour, on social media, and found ourselves the subjects of scurrilous, wholly fictional stories in the newspapers, stories always attributed to “royal aides” or “royal insiders” or “palace sources,” stories clearly spoon-fed by Palace staff—and presumably sanctioned by my family.

I didn’t read any of it, seldom even heard about it. I was now avoiding the internet as I once avoided downtown Garmsir. I kept my phone on silent. Not even vibrate. Sometimes a well-meaning friend would text: Gosh, sorry about such and such. We had to ask such friends, all friends, to stop informing us what they’d read.