BY PURE CHANCE THE 2017 Invictus Games were going to be in Toronto.
Meg’s backyard. Perfect occasion, the Palace decided, for our first official public outing.
Meg was a bit nervous. Me too. But we had no choice. Has to be done, we said. We’ve hidden from the world long enough. Also, this would be the most controlled, predictable environment we could ever hope for.
Above all, once we did a public date, it might reduce the bounty on our heads among the paps, which at that point was running at around a hundred thousand pounds.
We tried to make the whole thing as normal as possible. We watched wheelchair tennis from the front row, focused on the game and the good cause, ignored the whir of cameras. We managed to have fun, to crack a few jokes with some Kiwis sitting beside us, and the photos that appeared the following day were sweet, though several in the British press slammed Meg for wearing ripped jeans. No one mentioned that everything she wore, down to the flats and button-down shirt, had been pre-approved by the Palace.
And by “no one,” I mean not anyone at the Palace.
One statement, that week, in defense of Meg…it might’ve made a world of difference.
