I WAS HARD SEEING CHELS at Willy’s wedding. There were loads of feelings still there, feelings I’d suppressed, feelings I hadn’t suspected. I
also felt a certain way about the hungry-looking men trailing after her, circling her, nagging her to dance.
Jealousy got the better of me that night, and I told her so, which made me feel worse. And a bit pathetic.
I needed to move on, meet someone new. Time, as the doctor predicted, would fix my todger. When would it work its magic on my heart?
Mates tried to help. They mentioned names, arranged meetings, dates.
Nothing ever panned out. So I was barely listening when they mentioned another name in the summer of 2011. They told me a bit about her— brilliant, beautiful, cool—and mentioned her relationship status. She’d just recently become single, they said. And she won’t be single long, Spike!
She’s free, man. You’re free. Am I?
And you’re well matched! No doubt you two will hit it off.
I rolled my eyes. When does that prediction ever pan out?
But then, wonder of wonders, it did. We did. We sat at the bar, chatted and laughed, while the friends with us melted away, along with the walls and the drinks and the barman. I suggested the whole group go back to Clarence House for a nightcap.
We sat around talking, listened to music. Lively group. Merry group. When the party broke up, when everybody cleared out, I gave Florence a lift home. That was her name. Florence. Though everyone called her Flea.
She lived in Notting Hill, she said. Quiet street. When we pulled up outside her flat she invited me up for a cup of tea. Sure, I said.
I asked my bodyguard to drive around the block a few hundred times. Was it that night or another that Flea told me about her distant ancestor?
Actually, it was probably neither. A mate told me later, I think. In any event, he’d led the Charge of the Light Brigade, the doomed advance on Russian guns in Crimea. Incompetent, possibly mad, he’d caused the deaths of a hundred men. A shameful chapter, the polar opposite of Rorke’s Drift, and now I was taking a page from his book, bullishly charging full steam ahead. Over that first cup of Earl Grey, I was asking myself: Could she be my person?
The connection was that strong.
But I was also that mad. And I could see she knew it, read it all over my non–poker face. I hoped she found it charming.
Apparently she did. The weeks that followed were idyllic. We saw each other often, laughed a lot, and no one knew.
Hope got the better of me.
Then the press found out and down came the curtain on our idyll.
Flea phoned me in tears. There were eight paps outside her flat. They’d chased her halfway across London.
She’d just seen herself described by one paper as “an underwear model.” Based on a photoshoot done years and years before! Her life boiled down to one photo, she said. It was so reductive, so degrading.
Yes, I said quietly. I know what that feels like.
They were digging, digging, ringing up everyone she’d ever known. They were already after her family. They were giving her the full Caroline Flack treatment, while still giving it to Caroline as well.
Flea just kept saying: I can’t do this.
She said she was under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Like some kind of criminal. I could hear sirens in the background.
She was upset, crying, and I felt like crying, but of course I didn’t. She said one last time: I can’t do this anymore, Harry.
I had the phone on speaker. I was on the second floor of Clarence House, standing by the window, surrounded by beautiful furnishings. Lovely room. The lamps were low, the rug at my feet was a work of art. I pressed my face against the window’s cold polished glass and asked Flea to see me one last time, at least talk it over.
Soldiers went marching past the house. Changing of the guard.
No.
She was firm.
Weeks later I got a call from one of the friends who’d set us up at the bar.
Didja hear? Flea’s got back with the old boyfriend!
Has she?
Wasn’t meant to be, I guess. Right.
The friend told me he’d heard that it was Flea’s mother who told her to end things, who warned her that the press would destroy her life. They’ll hound you to the gates of Hell, her mother said.
Yeah, I told the friend. Mums do know best.
