Spare

Most days I didn’t care what people called me. Most days I thought: Don’t care who I am, so long as it’s someone new, someone other than Prince Harry. But then an official package would arrive from London, from the Palace, and the old me, the old life, the royal life, would come racing back.

The packet usually arrived in the everyday mail, though sometimes it was under the arm of a new bodyguard. (There was a constant changing of the guard, every couple of weeks, to keep them fresh and let them see their families.) Inside the packet would be letters from Pa, office paperwork, plus some briefs about charities in which I was involved. All stamped: Att HRH Prince Henry of Wales.

One day the package contained a series of memos from the Palace comms team about a delicate matter. Mummy’s former butler had penned a tell-all, which actually told nothing. It was merely one man’s self-justifying, self-centering version of events. My mother once called this butler a dear friend, trusted him implicitly. We did too. Now this. He was milking her disappearance for money. It made my blood boil. I wanted to fly home, confront him. I phoned Pa, announced that I was getting on a plane. I’m sure it was the one and only conversation I had with him while I was in Australia. He—and then, in a separate phone call, Willy—talked me out of it.

All we could do, they both said, was issue a united condemnation.

So we did. Or they did. I had nothing to do with the drafting. (Personally, I’d have gone much further.) In measured tones it called out the butler for his treachery, and publicly requested a meeting with him, to uncover his motives and explore his so-called revelations.

The butler answered us publicly, saying he welcomed such a meeting. But not for any constructive purpose. To one newspaper he vowed: “I’d love to give them a piece of my mind.”

He wanted to give us a piece of his mind?

I waited anxiously for the meeting. I counted the days.

Of course it didn’t happen.

I didn’t know why; I assumed the Palace quashed it.

I told myself: Shame.

I thought of that man as the one errant steer that got away that summer.

43.

I don’t recall how I learned about the first man trying to sneak onto the farm. Maybe from George? While we were out mustering?

I do remember that it was the local police who nabbed the intruder and got rid of him.

December 2003.

The police were pleased with themselves. But I was glum. I knew what was coming. Paps were like ants. There was never just one.

Sure enough, the very next day, two more crept onto the farm.

Time to go.

I owed so much to the Hills, I didn’t want to repay them by ruining their lives. I didn’t want to be the cause of them losing the one resource more precious than water—privacy. I thanked them for nine of the best weeks of my life, and flew home, arriving just before Christmas.

I went straight to a club my first night home. And the next night. And the next. The press thought I was still in Australia, and I decided their ignorance gave me carte blanche.

One night I met a girl, chatted with her over drinks. I didn’t know she was a page-three girl. (That was the accepted, misogynistic, objectifying term for young topless women featured each day on page three of Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun.) I wouldn’t have cared if I’d known. She seemed smart and fun.

I left the club wearing a baseball cap. Paps everywhere. So much for carte blanche. I tried to blend into the crowd, walked casually down the road with my bodyguard. We went through St. James’s Square and got into an unmarked police car. Just as we pulled away, a Mercedes with blacked-out windows jumped the pavement and swiped our car, nearly slamming head-on into the rear passenger door. We could see it coming, the driver not looking ahead, too busy trying to shoot photos. The story in the papers the next morning should’ve been about Prince Harry nearly being killed by a reckless pap. Instead it was about Prince Harry meeting and supposedly kissing a page-three girl, along with much frantic commentary about the horrors of the Spare dating…such a fallen woman.

Third in line to the throne…dating her?

The snobbery, the classism, was nauseating. The out-of-order priorities were baffling.

But it all greatly enhanced my sense of joy and relief at running away. Again.

Gap Year, Part Two.

Days later I was on a plane to Lesotho.

Better yet, it was decided that I could take along a mate.

The plan, once upon a time, had been to go with Henners.

In his stead I now asked George.

44.

Lesotho was beautiful. But also one of the grimmest places on earth. It was the epicenter of the global AIDS pandemic, and in 2004 the government had just declared a medical disaster. Tens of thousands had fallen to the disease, and the nation was turning into one vast orphanage. Here and there, you’d glimpse young children running about, lost looks on their faces.

Where’s Daddy? Where’s Mummy?