The Princess wanted to meet at Claridge’s.
‘We could have tea,’ she suggested, ‘and no one will know what we are talking about.’
She had already told me that she had read Sold and one or two other books that I had written.
‘I think the world needs to understand that these problems afflict women from all levels of society,’ she said, ‘not just those at the bottom. I think perhaps it might even be worse for the women like me in royal families. There is even more control; even more restrictions. We can talk about all these things when we meet.’
The Princess had enjoyed a great many privileges. She was educated at an American university and she held down a good job within the government of her country, but she had still had to fight – sometimes actually trading physical blows – against male members of her family who had wanted to marry her to a man from another royal family, and who did not approve of the way she lived or dressed or talked.
‘I am one of the lucky ones,’ she said as a waiter poured out the tea, ‘one of the ones who have been able to escape. Most are not so lucky. My mother never even went to school. She cannot read a word.’
My experience over the coming years was to bear this out. A fellow ghost once told me of a client in a similar position to the Princess who hired her and they managed to get all the way to a completed manuscript, with the support of her apparently benevolent husband. When the moment came to publish, however, he put his foot down and the ghostwriter did not hear from her again. I guess he had been humouring his wife all along, not believing that she would ever get as far as talking to publishers. I did not hear from my Princess again either.