MEG, DRIVING HOME FROM set, noticed five cars following her.
Then they started chasing her.
Each car was driven by a man—shady-looking. Wolfish.
It was winter, Canada, so the roads were ice. Plus, the way the cars were spinning around her, cutting her off, running red lights, tailgating her, while also trying to photograph her, she felt sure she was going to be in a crash.
She told herself not to panic, not to drive erratically, not to give them what they wanted. Then she phoned me.
I was in London, in my own car, my bodyguard driving, and her tearful voice brought me right back to my childhood. Back to Balmoral. She didn’t make it, darling boy. I pleaded with Meg to stay calm, keep her eyes on the road. My air-controller training took over. I talked her to the nearest police station. As she got out of the car, I could hear, in the background, paps following her to the door.
C’mon, Meghan, give us a smile! Click click click.
She told the police what was happening, begged them for help. They had sympathy, or said they did, but she was a public figure, so they insisted there was nothing to be done. She went back to her car, paps swarming her again, and I guided her to her house, through the front door, where she collapsed.
I did too, a little. I felt helpless, and this, I realized, was my Achilles heel. I could deal with most things so long as there was some action to be taken. But when I had nothing to do…I wanted to die.
There was no real respite for Meg once she was inside her house. Like every previous night, paps and so-called journalists knocked at her door, rang the bell, constantly. Her dogs were losing their minds. They couldn’t understand what was happening, why she wasn’t answering the door, why the house was under assault. As they howled and paced in circles she cowered in the corner of her kitchen, on the floor. After midnight, when things quietened down, she dared to peep through the blinds and saw men sleeping in cars outside, engines running.
Neighbors told Meg they’d been harassed too. Men had gone up and down the street, asking questions, offering sums of money for any tidbit about Meg— or else a nice juicy lie. One neighbor reported being offered a fortune to mount, on their roof, live streaming cameras aimed at Meg’s windows. Another neighbor actually accepted the offer, hitched a camera to his roof and pointed it straight at Meg’s backyard. Again she contacted the police, who again did nothing. Ontario laws don’t prohibit that, she was told. If the neighbor wasn’t physically trespassing, he could hook the Hubble telescope up to his house and point it into her backyard, no problem.
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, her mother was being chased every day, to and from her house, to and from the launderette, to and from work. She was also being libeled. One story called her “trailer trash.” Another called her a “stoner.” In fact, she worked in palliative care. She traveled all over Los Angeles to help people at the end of their lives.
Paps scaled the walls and fences of many patients she visited. In other words, every day there was yet another person, like Mummy, whose last sound on earth…would be a click.
