Meghan had finally arrived where she wanted to be and the fun had really begun.
CHAPTER 4
Nowadays, news travels almost at the speed of light. Pre-internet, stories that broke on a Sunday had to wait until the Monday for other newspapers to pick them up. Afternoon papers were never published on weekends. The result was that the public always had to wait until Monday morning for the full account only newspapers provided. This was true even when a major event, such as the death of the Princess of Wales, occurred.
The internet changed all of that. Within hours of the Sunday Express revealing Meghan’s existence in Harry’s life, all the major publications had cobbled stories together and posted them on to their web pages. The degree of information, all positive, was impressive. At the time, no one thought anything of it. The producers of Suits were expected to have an efficient publicity department, and Meghan had positioned herself with the practised eye of the true professional in such a way that she would emerge glowingly. Nevertheless, publications as disparate as People Magazine in the US and the Daily Mail in England had access to such flattering, in-depth information about Meghan within moments of the story breaking that it begged the question: Who was fashioning the narrative behind the scenes?
The existence of The Tig did not trigger the suspicion that Meghan herself might be pulling the strings for the marionettes to jump the way she wanted. Most journalists assumed that actresses are too dumb to write their own lines, much less fashion their own narrative. The Tig, they assumed, was written by someone else, and always had been.
Yet there were clear clues that the timing might not be completely accidental. Meghan had dumped Nelthorpe-Cowne the week before, and Monday 31st October 2016, the day after the Sunday Express leak, the Vancouver Sun ran a story about her promoting her five-piece collection of spring dresses, all items under $100, for the Canadian chain-store Reitmans. Although Meghan was too canny to mention Harry by name, her profile had surged so exponentially in the previous twenty four hours that when she said, ‘my cup runneth over, and I’m the luckiest girl in the world’, she was verifying her status as Harry’s girlfriend. This point was driven home that same day by People magazine, which would soon be revealed to have special access to her, as it delivered the message to the world that ‘Prince Harry is so serious with actress Meghan Markle that an engagement could be in the not-so-distant future, insiders suggest.’ The headline stated, ‘Prince Harry Has Already Introduced Meghan Markle to Prince Charles…’ meant that the information could only have come from Harry or Meghan or someone very close to them.
The question to ask was: Whose interests were best served by confirming that Meghan was Harry’s girlfriend and they were involved in a serious relationship? Having myself been a victim of leaks to the press, and having lived through the extraordinary nineties when Diana Wales would tip various writers off, then present herself as the victim of hounds, I have developed a nose for a plant. Sometimes, the information imparted in a story is so personal that it can only have come from one of the people involved. As soon as I saw the personal details in those stories, I could tell someone very close to the couple had been the source. Knowing how Harry hates the press, whom he blames for his mother’s death, and knowing that he had no motive for leaking the news of his relationship with Meghan, I tried to get to the bottom of things. I therefore rang up Adam Helliker, then the social columnist of the Sunday Express and someone I have known, liked and respected for decades. Adam told me, ‘the tip off came in the age old way. From a servant.’
This did not explain the detail in the other stories, but for the moment I was content to let matters rest. Until you have enough information to come to a considered conclusion, it is always best to keep an open mind.
Unsurprisingly, Harry and Meghan’s romance became worldwide news, with publications everywhere digging for the nuggets which would give each of them an edge over their competitors now that the Sunday Express had broken the story.
There can be no pretence that some countries looked more favourably than others upon the potential of a mixed-race American actress marrying into the British Royal Family. Her colour was always going to be an issue. Even though it was a plus in Britain, the US, Canada and many other Commonwealth countries, in other, less progressive states, especially in cultures where there was little intermingling between the colours, classes and creeds, it was always going to be viewed through another prism.
There was also the issue of Meghan’s past as well as her position as an actress. Although the British press chose to present her as a major star, and one moreover covered in respectability, the press in many other countries took a more jaundiced view. Their reservations might have seemed outdated to us, but to them, they were valid. These were based upon the traditional values they still held dear, even if we no longer did. In their scheme of things, it was unseemly for a man of one class to consort with a woman of another, unless she is a tart with whom he is having an affair, in which case it is conducted out of sight. Anything more serious would be unacceptable. If you added the difference in colour into the mix, this created a whole new dimension.
While we in the West took the view that these were old-fashioned and offensive viewpoints, and that relationships such as Harry and Meghan’s could only advance the cause of interracial inclusivity as well as social cross-pollination, the more bigoted
