3-77（在线收听）

77.

The question was: Where to live?

We considered Canada. By and large it had been good to us. It had already come to feel like

home. We could imagine spending the rest of our lives there. If we could just find a place the press

didn’t know about, we said, Canada might be the answer.

Meg got in touch with a Vancouver friend, who connected us with an estate agent, and we

started looking at houses. We were taking first steps, trying to be positive. Doesn’t really matter

where we live, we said, so long as the Palace fulfills its obligation—and what I felt was its implicit

promise—to keep us safe.

Meg asked me one night: You don’t think they’d ever pull our security, do you?

Never. Not in this climate of hate. And not after what happened to my mother.

Also, not in the wake of my Uncle Andrew. He was embroiled in a shameful scandal, accused

of the sexual assault of a young woman, and no one had so much as suggested that he lose his

security. Whatever grievances people had against us, sex crimes weren’t on the list.

February 2020.

I scooped Archie from his nap and took him out to the lawn. It was sunny, cold, and we gazed

at the water, touched the dry leaves, collected rocks and twigs. I kissed his chubby little cheeks,

tickled him, then glanced down at my phone to see a text from the head of our security team,

Lloyde.

He needed to see me.

I carried Archie across the garden and handed him to Meg, then went across the soggy grass to

the cottage where Lloyde and the other bodyguards were staying. We sat on a bench, both of us

wearing puffer jackets. Waves rolling gently in the background, Lloyde told me that our security

was being pulled. He and the whole team had been ordered to evacuate.

Surely they can’t.

I would tend to agree. But they are.

So much for the year of transition.

The threat level for us, Lloyde said, was still higher than for that of nearly every other royal,

equal to that assigned the Queen. And yet the word had come down and there was to be no

arguing.

So here we are, I said. The ultimate nightmare. The worst of all worst-case scenarios. Any bad

actor in the world would now be able to find us, and it would just be me with a pistol to stop them.

Oh wait. No pistol. I’m in Canada.

I rang Pa. He wouldn’t take my calls.

Just then I got a text from Willy. Can you speak?

Great. I was sure my older brother, after our recent walk in the Sandringham gardens, would

be sympathetic. That he’d step up.

He said it was a government decision. Nothing to be done.