THE build-up to a birthday party is always better than the event itself.
Picking the venue, sending the invites and imagining yourself swirling around on the dancefloor surrounded by hordes of your best friends.
Then the day arrives and you wake up to 12 messages from pals who are suddenly “ill”, your dress doesn’t look like it did on the internet and the venue can’t find that wire they need to play your carefully curated playlist.
After all that pre-party excitement, you’re suddenly standing in a brightly lit room watching the door while making small talk with your weird second cousin, who was the only person to take the 7pm start time seriously.
Party disappointment is how I — and a lot of Brits — feel about Meghan Markle.
When she swept on to the scene five years ago, we were all excited to be invited in by this beautiful actress, who was suddenly engaged to Harry after a camping trip.
The loved-up pair hadn’t done the usual coy and carefully curated “dating” that many of the royals do. But then Harry wasn’t like many of the royals.
He was the rebellious child star of the family. Perhaps he needed this headstrong American actress to put him in line?
POWER-HUNGRY PAIR
She was going to be the fun one to watch — a newbie who wrote on bananas, hugged people and didn’t know you weren’t allowed to sit with your legs crossed.
She was a bit of all of us — or at least the ones who had never been near the dusty dorms of a British boarding school.
I was Team Markle. I welled up when I saw her step out of the car, and whooped and downed fizz as Bishop Michael Curry banged on. I wore the Meghan T-shirt, quite literally.
Then it all came crashing down. Not only were we not invited to the party, we were being manhandled out the back door and given a pummelling by the bouncer.
Before the tacky wedding merch had time to be donated to a charity shop, we were dubbed racists, misogynists and anti-American by the power-hungry pair — and not a single one of us had asked if Meghan was “OK”.
It became a very confusing time. They moved to LA, but called it Canada. They did an interview with Oprah watched by millions, but asked for privacy. They rode private jets but were worried about climate change. They didn’t want media intrusion, but signed a multi-million-pound deal with Netflix.
We Brits were spun out by the criticism, family rows, brutal accusations and Piers Morgan flouncing off set.
As much as it pains me to say, there seems to be one main source of this chaos: Meghan.
I completely understand why this American actress dipped her toe in the stuffy royal life and realised it was far too cold for her.
Who wants to be opening a sports centre that smells of sweaty feet in Bognor when you can be hugging Beyonce and touting yourself out for voiceover work on the red carpet?
Or having to make excruciating small talk with the general public instead of dining in a members-only club with an A-list bestie?
As much as we love the Queen, we can’t pretend her life is full of fun and frivolous times.
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The idea of becoming a princess might sound like a Disney film, but Meghan seemed to take one look at the painfully dull duties — and the palaces kitted out with scratchy blankets, plug-in heaters and cereal served in Tupperware — and decided that LA was the place for her.
And now she’s rejected us so viciously, it feels a bit like we lit all the candles for her and she’s blown them out, leaving us in the dark.
But hey, it’s Meghan’s party. And we’ll cry if we want to.
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