I see you putting on your brave face, waving and shaking hands on your final engagements like a teacher on the last day of term before the summer holidays. It’s all smiles for the little shits but you can’t wait to be off, can you? The screaming, barely-continent toddlers in the tabloid press have harassed and wailed at you all year and all you want to do now is bugger off to Canada for six weeks to bury your head in a snowdrift.
It’s been a wild fortnight, hasn’t it? Since your shock announcement that one would be doing one’s best to quietly vanish it feels like the shit’s been flung at the fan with an overwound trebuchet. It’s all the desperately irrelevant print media can focus on, frothing themselves up in to the sort of frenzy that in a more civilised time would have led to a rabies diagnosis and a quick trip round the back of the shed. One has well and truly put the cat among the peasants, with the royalists positively up in arms and spitting feathers because the Downton Abbey of real life has thrown up a plot twist they don’t like.
It’s a very British scandal, giving us all the high-society soap opera drama we could possibly hope for. Family rifts, elaborate costumes, couch-fainting and to top it all off, a blatant villain to focus all of our patriotic rage on. Your wife, who the press definitely haven’t been racist towards, with her ‘exotic DNA’ and her ‘nearly straight outta Compton’ upbringing. The bloke from Lewis hasn’t seen anybody actively chasing her with a pillowcase on their head so that’s all fine then, because subtle and structural forms of othering and racism definitely don’t exist. He would know, wouldn’t he? He’s got a mediocre album to shift from the back of the anti-woke bandwagon, which makes him the most qualified expert on racism in the country right now.
One knew it would never work out, Harry dear, bringing that ghastly clawing socialite into the inner circle. It’s a simple question of breeding, isn’t it? And there’s nothing less racist than questioning someone’s breeding. Priti Patel even spoke up to vindicate the press and a Conservative home secretary definitely wouldn’t have any kind of ulterior motive for minimising the weaponised xenophobia of their allies in a heavily Brexit-supporting media.
The circus feels thoroughly bizarre if you don’t have a dresser full of commemorative plates and couldn’t muster a shit to give after three packets of Dulcolax and a hefty straining session. It’s a very odd sensation, wondering just how anybody could look at the current royal family and then point at Meghan Markle as its biggest villain.
You just want out, don’t you, Prince Harry? It’s all too much, the crushing tedium of royal responsibility and the never-ending cycle of press harassment that has hounded you and those you love since the day you were born. They’ll never leave you alone and despite saying for years that you didn’t much fancy being a conventional royal, they’re going to scapegoat your wife for your joint decision. There’s only one place you can go where nobody will ever find you.
I see you, Prince Harry, rain lashing your face as you duck your head, pushing your way through a throng of paparazzi who shout your name and set off camera flashes in your face. I see you wince, blinded by the glare, pawing desperately at the glass door and fumbling for the handle. I see you push against it with your shoulder, plunging over the threshold into sanctuary.
I see you look back through the glass, a hundred muffled voices beyond it murmuring their confusion at each other. I see their furious, contorted faces scowling as they wander aimlessly around the street, looking under cars, peeking in windows. They’re completely baffled as to where you went, despite watching you push open a door mere seconds before. There’s a glamour on this place, a fog that renders you invisible. You’ll be safe here, Prince Harry.
I see you walk into the restaurant, removing your sodden coat as a waiter points you to your table. I see you sit down, your face erupting in a smile as you clasp hands with a beaming Meghan across the formica. I see you gaze into her eyes over the pepper mill, Archie giggling in a high chair next to you both. It’s not much, this place. It’s noisy with the clattering of cutlery and the murmur of quiet conversation and it smells of garlic and cheese. It’s not much, but it’s safe, and the prying eyes and apoplectic scorn of John Gaunt will never find you here.
It’s a Pizza Express in Woking, Prince Harry, and nobody ever remembers seeing a royal here.
I see you, Prince Harry. I fucking see you.
