THREE WEEKS LATER I was getting an HIV test at a drop-in clinic in Barbados.
With Rihanna.
Royal life.
The occasion was the upcoming World AIDS Day, and I’d asked Rihanna, at the last minute, to join me, help raise awareness across the Caribbean. To my shock she’d said yes.
November 2016.
Important day, vital cause, but my head wasn’t in the game. I was worried about Meg. She couldn’t go home because her house was surrounded by paps. She couldn’t go to her mother’s house, in Los Angeles, because it too was surrounded by paps. Alone, adrift, she was on break from filming, and it was Thanksgiving time. So I’d reached out to friends who had a house sitting empty in Los Angeles, and they’d generously offered it to her. Problem solved, for the moment. Still, I was feeling worried, and intensely hostile towards the press, and I was now surrounded by…press.
The same royal reporters…
Gazing at them all, I thought: Complicit.
Then the needle went into my finger. I watched the blood spurt and remembered all the people, friends and strangers, fellow soldiers, journalists, novelists, schoolmates, who’d ever called me and my family blue bloods. That old shorthand for aristocracy, for royalty, I wondered where it had come from. Someone said our blood was blue because it was colder than other people’s, but that couldn’t be right, could it? My family always said it was blue because we were special, but that couldn’t be right either. Watching the nurse channel my blood into a test tube, I thought: Red, just like everyone else’s.
I turned to Rihanna and we chatted while I awaited the result. Negative.
Now I just wanted to run, find somewhere with Wi-Fi, check on Meg. But it wasn’t possible. I had a full slate of meetings and visits—a royal schedule that didn’t leave much wiggle room. And then I had to hurry back to the rusty Merchant Navy ship taking me around the Caribbean.
By the time I reached the ship, late that night, the onboard Wi-Fi signal was barely a pulse. I was only able to text Meg, and only if I stood on the bench in my cabin, phone pressed against the porthole. We were connected just long enough for me to learn that she was safe at my friend’s house. Better yet, her
mother and father had been able to sneak in and spend Thanksgiving with her. Her father had brought an armful of tabloids, however, which he inexplicably wanted to talk about. That didn’t go well, and he’d ended up leaving early.
While she was telling me the story the Wi-Fi went out. The merchant ship chugged on to its next destination.
I put down the phone and stared out of the porthole at the dark sea.
