William and Kate’s plan for Harry and Meghan: So many are pushing them to bury the hatchet… but now a friend tells RICHARD EDEN their next step – and why it’s bad news for the Sussexes

Having absent-mindedly left my mobile telephone on my seat when I hurried off a London Underground train last Friday, I had a few days of enforced absence from the wider world until I could obtain a replacement after the bank holiday weekend.

The experience was disconcerting, slightly frightening, and brought home to me how addicted I have become to my smartphone, which contains everything from my emails and social media to my camera, alarm clock and banking app.

However, one sensation which did become increasingly pleasant as the hours and days wore on was the break it gave me from the relentless gossip about the return of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to this country.

If I had a pound for every tip I received about the supposed location of their new home or the school due to be attended by their children, Prince Archie, aged seven, and Princess Lilibet, five, I could buy a country mansion of my own!

It is all that many people have wanted to talk about since Prince Harry and Meghan informed a handful of friendly media outlets a fortnight ago that they were leaving California and moving back to Britain, six years after they quit royal duties to seek their fortune in North America.

The Cotswolds, where the couple had previously rented a country home, was seen as their most likely destination and it sometimes seems as if there was scarcely anyone left in the area’s 800 square miles across six English counties who had not contacted me to provide exclusive information on the Sussexes’ supposed whereabouts. If the couple thought Los Angeles was gossip central, wait until they have spent a few weeks among the country bumpkins of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire!

Two people who are determined to ignore the second coming of Meghan and Harry are his estranged brother and sister-in-law, the Prince and Princess of Wales.

Many believe that this situation cannot persist, with Prince William coming under increasing pressure to send Harry an olive branch or two.

My esteemed colleague Richard Kay argued in a compelling Voices video for the Daily Mail’s website that William can’t continue to ignore his younger brother.

‘At some stage they are going to have to engage, because they can’t not engage forever,’ Kay said. ‘I would have thought that in the first instance there would need to be a private meeting between Harry and William and presumably Catherine and Meghan, too, where they can sort of hammer out some kind of official line, even if it’s sort of grip and grin in public, but at least show there is some kind of public-spirited sense of reunion between the two.’

Kay said the estrangement could not be allowed to fester for weeks or months. ‘The public won’t stand for it,’ he said. ‘William knows that, above all, his responsibility to the monarchy, to the institution, has to take first place, so he’ll have to put whatever personal differences he has to one side.’

I rarely disagree with my friend Richard, but on this I do. The pressure being put on William and Catherine is unfair and wrong. They have been treated appallingly by Harry and Meghan and should feel no compulsion to mend fences with them. The Sussexes betrayed and insulted the couple not only in their Oprah Winfrey interview but in their Netflix series, Harry’s memoir Spare and in a seemingly endless stream of interviews that Harry gave.

A friend of William and Catherine tells me that they will go on ignoring the Sussexes. ‘It makes no difference if Harry and Meghan are in Oxfordshire, California or Timbuktu,’ the pal insists. ‘William and Catherine will continue their lives of public service. They intend to lead by example.’

A Kensington Palace spokesman declines to comment.