Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(54)
Once Megan had finished filming it was Harry’s turn to join her in Toronto. Unlike Meghan, who’s normally the camera-ready girl sitting in business class in her jeans, chinos, and black tailored blazer, a cashmere scarf on her shoulders, quietly reading The Economist while listening to Petit Biscuit or Christine and the Queens on her designer headphones, Harry is the boy in a beanie, traveling head down, avoiding eye contact. Fortunately, unlike in London, Paris, and New York, there is no paparazzi culture in the Ontario capital, so life was more relaxed for the couple, and once again they were able to continue with their relationship outside of public or media scrutiny.
Apart from an SUV containing plainclothes police that was parked unobtrusively on her tree-lined street in the affluent neighborhood of Seaton Village, there was no obvious sign that a member of the royal family had come to visit.
With its wooden floors and light-painted walls, Meghan’s open-plan property has the feel of Southern California, a trick that is hard to pull off on a dull October afternoon in Toronto. Unlike Nottingham Cottage’s relatively utilitarian interior, the rented property is suitably luxurious, with a cinema room, a high-end eat-in kitchen, three bedrooms, and two bathrooms. Her rescue dogs, Bogart and Guy, had the run of the house and despite having a kennel outside the pair often slept on Meghan’s king-sized bed. When Harry came to stay, doubtless she dressed them in the Union Jack jumpers she bought to amuse her royal boyfriend.
Meghan would also throw barbecue parties for friends who were “in the know,” such as Jessica and Ben Mulroney, on a small deck, or they went to Soho House for drinks.
Housed in an elegant Georgian building in the west of the city on Adelaide Street, the club provided the cozy corners and intimate bars where the couple could escape with Meghan’s closest friends. Here they could enjoy the Italian-style cuisine or venture onto the rooftop terrace for panoramic views of the downtown skyline.
For much of the time they just hung out, Meghan cooking dishes fit for a prince, mainly pasta and her signature roast chicken. At Halloween, the eve of Meghan’s collection for Reitmans hitting the stores, they met at Princess Eugenie and Jack Brookbank, who were in Canada on holiday, at Soho House for supper before Harry donned a mask and went trick-or-treating with his girlfriend.
It was a fun and carefree evening, but their days of secrecy and privacy were coming to an end.
Meghan and Harry were about to be unmasked.
11
A Very Public Romance
On a briskly chilly but blue-skied day at the end of October 2016, Camilla Tominey, the royal editor of the Sunday Express, was cheering on her young son in a Sunday league soccer match. Much to his mother’s delight, the six-year-old was on the score sheet.
Some hours earlier his mother had scored, too, breaking the biggest royal story of her career. Under the headline HARRY’S SECRET ROMANCE WITH A TV STAR, and billed as a “Royal World Exclusive,” she told her readers that Prince Harry was “secretly dating a stunning US actress, model and human rights campaigner.” Her story went on to detail the romance between the queen’s grandson and Suits actor Meghan Markle. It quoted a source as saying that Harry is the happiest he has been in years.
Her editor, Martin Townsend, was equally happy, so thrilled with the royal exclusive that he shared it with the Sunday Star, sister paper to the Sunday Express.
The story was gold dust. And Camilla was absolutely confident of her source. For once the newspaper decided against placing a courtesy call into the press office at Kensington Palace. The fear was that the palace would put out a statement, thus spoiling their scoop.
It was just like the old days of Fleet Street, the one-time newspaper capital of Britain. Normally Sunday newspapers have a gentleman’s agreement where they swap their first editions so that if a rival has missed a story, they have a chance to catch up for later editions. Not this night. Townsend decided to deliberately delay printing the first edition of the paper so that none of his rivals were in a position to match their scoop. Late on Saturday night frantic calls from journalists were being made to Kensington Palace when word spread that the Express had landed “a big one.” Camilla’s agitated competitors were met with “No comment” by the duty press officer. Off the record, Prince Harry’s communications director, Jason Knauf, an aggressive American, was reluctantly admitting that the article “had a ring of truth about it.”
Within minutes of the Sunday Express story breaking, social media went into meltdown as bloggers, royal enthusiasts, Suits fans, and online newspapers worldwide spread the news. Overnight Meghan Markle went from being a moderately well-known actor to one of the most famous people on the planet.
When the story became public, Harry was staying with Meghan in Toronto. After he took a call from Jason Knauf to tell him their cover had been blown, he and Meghan poured themselves a glass of wine and toasted each other. But the celebration came with a sober warning, Harry telling Meghan: “Our lives will never be the same again.”
At least they no longer had to hide from the world. Nor was the actor going to lose her mischievous sense of humor over this dramatic development in her life. Just hours after the story broke, she posted a cryptic photo on her Instagram site of two bananas cuddling, with the caption “Sleep tight xx.” The photograph which showed the bananas spooning—lying next to each other like a pair of spoons—attracted thousands of likes from her followers, who realized what she was alluding to. One user posted “Princess Meghan Markle,” while another wrote, “Is this a message for your red-haired Prince?”