3-82（在线收听）

82.

We found a place. Priced at a steep discount. Just up the coast, outside Santa Barbara. Lots of

room, large gardens, a climbing frame—even a pond with koi carp.

The koi were stressed, the estate agent warned.

So are we. We’ll all get along famously.

No, the agent explained, the koi need very particular care. You’ll have to hire a koi guy.

Uh-huh. And where does one find a koi guy?

The agent wasn’t sure.

We laughed. First-world problems.

We took a tour. The place was a dream. We asked Tyler to look at it too, and he said: Buy it.

So we pulled together a down-payment, took out a mortgage, and in July 2020 we moved in.

The move itself required only a couple of hours. Everything we owned fitted into thirteen

suitcases. That first night we had a quiet drink in celebration, roasted a chicken, went to bed early.

All was well, we said.

And yet Meg was still under loads of stress.

There was a pressing issue with her legal case against the tabloids. The Mail was up to its

usual tricks. Their first crack at offering a defense had been patently ridiculous, so now they were

trying a new defense, which was even more ridiculous. They were arguing that they’d printed

Meg’s letter to her father because of a story in People magazine, which quoted a handful of Meg’s

friends—anonymously. The tabloids argued that Meg had orchestrated these quotes, used her

friends as de facto spokespeople, and thus the Mail had every right to publish her letter to her

father.

More, they now wanted the names of Meg’s previously anonymous friends read into the

official court record—to destroy them. Meg was determined to do everything in her power to

prevent that. She’d been staying up late, night after night, trying to work out how to save these

people, and now, on our first morning in the new house, she reported abdominal pains.

And bleeding.

Then she collapsed to the floor.

We raced to the local hospital. When the doctor walked into the room, I didn’t hear one word

she said, I just watched her face, her body language. I already knew. We both did. There had been

so much blood.

Still, hearing the words was a blow.

Meg grabbed me, I held her, we both wept.

In my life I’ve felt totally helpless only four times.

In the back of the car while Mummy and Willy and I were being chased by paps.

In the Apache above Afghanistan, unable to get clearance to do my duty.

At Nott Cott when my pregnant wife was planning to take her life.

And now.

We left the hospital with our unborn child. A tiny package. We went to a place, a secret place

only we knew.

Under a spreading banyan tree, while Meg wept, I dug a hole with my hands and set the tiny

package softly in the ground.