ALISON BOSHOFF: Insiders reveal the blunder over class finishing times that helped spark Harry and Meghan’s school switch. And why they might be heading back to Montecito within weeks – for good

On Thursday night there was bonhomie and business-as-usual charm at the Invictus Spirit Awards as Prince Harry reiterated his commitment to military veterans and to the games which will take place in Birmingham next summer.

The Irish Guards played at the event at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich – they are the regiment of Harry’s sister-in-law, Catherine, and their commander is the King.

That made it look as if this quasi-royal event was being undertaken with some level of royal blessing.

The question, though, hangs unspoken: just where will he and his family be calling home by the time the Invictus Games take place in July next year?

For as farce, crisis and drama continues to cling to the Sussexes, I am told by well-placed sources the extraordinary news that a return to Montecito, California – for good – has not been ruled out. Actually, it could come within weeks.

Indeed, it is apparently ‘likely’ that the family will quit the UK (again) if Harry doesn’t get the improved taxpayer-funded security which he has been demanding for years, and which an astonishing 53,000 people and rising have signed a petition to say they don’t want him to have.

Those close to the duke say that the Royal and VIP Executive Committee (Ravec) decision on security for him, wife Meghan and their children Archie, seven, and Lilibet, five, is expected ‘within days’. It was only confirmed on Monday that an assessment over the security of Harry and Meghan is now being carried out as they are residing in the UK.

The couple has been asked to document their ‘pattern of life’, specifically including the school run for Archie and Lilibet.

Harry’s belief, apparently, is that his case is unimpeachably strong in terms both of need and entitlement, and so he thinks he will get it.

I’m told: ‘It feels inevitable that Ravec will do something, that is what H [Harry] thinks.

‘He is a target not because of a lifestyle choice he made but because of who he was when he was born. He thinks that a decision will come imminently, this week or next week, and that it will be a Ravec U-turn.

‘The expectation is that the Home Office will try and play down and mute as much as they can to save face, but it is coming.’

However the duke’s friend adds: ‘If he doesn’t get [security] then I believe he will go back to Montecito for good, and that could be as soon as half-term.

‘The view is that if they don’t get security then it will have to mean that Ravec has been nobbled. The need is so clear, what else could be the explanation?

‘So if he doesn’t get it then he will take that as a sign that there are deeper elements at play. In that case then he will be safer in the US than in the UK, so he will return.’

As always, the highest drama and most intense emotional pitch seems to attend Prince Harry and his former actress wife Meghan, who were married on a glorious spring day in 2018 and left the UK rather less gloriously two years later.

After their adventures in California – a goldrush which included bonanzas from Netflix and Spotify and the publishers of Harry’s memoir Spare – the money fell away. Their deals downgraded and their Archewell charity essentially closed, they arrived in the UK on a private jet on August 27, with friends explaining that this move was all about sending their children to British schools.

American associates, meanwhile, muttered that the couple were ‘broke’.

I was told that they intend to stay in Britain until Archie and Lilibet have completed their schooling, so 13 years give or take. A serious commitment, then.

Harry certainly voiced his delight at being back in the UK this week, telling reporters at the Invictus Spirit Awards: ‘It’s wonderful to be back on British soil and really nice to see so many old faces and friends.

‘It’s been eventful, but we’re getting stuck into the work. The kids are in school. We’re happy.’

For now they are staying in a house on the estate of a wealthy friend in the Cotswolds. They think it is ‘ideal’ and apparently love it there.

Harry has said that they will be staying in the house (rent-free) until at least Christmas and despite molten torrents of estate-agent gossip, he and Meghan haven’t started house-hunting yet, which lends credence to the idea that the move isn’t absolutely inked in at this point.

The plan for their new life in the Cotswolds was apparently hastily made following an encouraging visit to Europe in July which included tea with the King and a number of days in Portugal where they have bought a holiday home.

Their British adventure has not got off to a great start, to put it mildly.

This week’s drama was the announcement on Tuesday that Archie and Lilibet had been removed from the prep school which they were enrolled in after only two days’ attendance the previous week, and were instead going to another school in a different part of the Cotswolds.

They’ve just completed their first full week there now.

The explanation for the flit from school given by Team Sussex to sympathetic media was couched in terms of advice from their security detail, and concerns over the ‘operational safety’ of a school run undertaken in the teeth of notoriously bad local traffic.

It transpired that their privately paid protection officers had done a dummy run in July, when schools were out and everyone was away on holiday, and had thus come back with a false view of the state of play.

Naturally, in the context of Prince Harry’s lengthy battle to get taxpayer-funded protection, commentators have been lining up to accuse him and Meghan of using his children as ‘exhibits in his safety battle’. It’s said that some parents at both the school his children were at and the one they are now attending suspect the very same thing – that the issues with traffic and security have neatly made Harry’s argument for him. Bluntly, it’s helped him make his point.

The context of the dropping out of school also matters – because it happened just as Meghan released a video on Instagram of the family’s initial days in the UK, on Sunday. Geographical features included in the video made it easy for online sleuths to confirm where they are staying.

The Daily Mail is choosing not to name any of the areas or the schools where the Sussexes are, but online the information is now circulating freely, surely adding to the security risk. And she did this on the eve of the children starting at a new school.

A friend of Harry’s reveals the full details of the ‘untenable’ school run which the Sussexes essayed twice. I hear the journey, of 30-plus miles, took two hours there and back.

The Sussexes apparently can’t believe that they weren’t even able to so much as use a bus lane to cut through the snarl-ups.

As the friend said: ‘At the moment the fact is that they continue to be seen as private citizens to the point where they can’t even drive in a bus lane.’ What’s worse – and surely embarrassing for Meghan, who likes to boast that she has a ‘freakish attention to detail’ – is that they had failed to realise when planning the daily routine that Archie finishes at 4.15pm and Lili – in pre-prep – needs to be collected at 3pm.

It’s an oversight almost as large as Meghan holding her jam tongs upside down.

A friend says: ‘They did the initial trip on a weekday lunchtime during their July visit and it felt like a long school run but a doable one.

‘But when they did it at the start of term they had rather a shock. They realised that it was going to be four hours a day minimum in the car every day. They quickly said no, that’s not sustainable.

‘What really made it untenable was that Lili and Archie had different timetables at the school. So on top of it taking hours, there was also over an hour between pick ups.’

The family had left the house at 6.45am, and the return from school journey began shortly after lunchtime.

The friend says: ‘They are quite unfazed about it to be honest. They tried it, it didn’t work, but it’s early days of schooling for the kids and early in the term and they’ve now found another school. This is a long-term plan for them, they are in it for the long haul.’

The friend adds: ‘The issue was more about traffic logistics than security, and they were stuck between the two schools anyway.

‘They went for the bigger one initially as they felt it might have more facilities and more opportunities but they were always weighing up between the two choices.

‘The one which they chose initially was further away and that looks like an error.

‘They have been taken unawares by the difficulties. They never planned to move the kids after such a short time. In the end they judged it all poorly.

‘Harry takes full responsibility for coming back to the UK without security. You know that he wants security and he feels that he needs it but this is not a sub-plot about security.

‘They came into this with their eyes wide open. It was not going to be easy – ever – as a transition. But they believe that they are doing the right thing for the children.’

Royal biographer Robert Jobson also takes the view that the security concerns and traffic issues have bolstered Harry’s continuing battle for security.

He said: ‘Harry failed at the High Court, now he is trying to strong-arm Ravec and the Home Office into giving him what he wants.

‘I suggest they buy themselves an alarm clock, set it three-quarters of an hour early and join the real world.

‘Nobody asked him to come with his family to a country he deemed unsafe. Round-the-clock security for the non-working royals will cost a small fortune.’

Dai Davies, an ex-head of royal protection, was also critical. He said: ‘The preparation for coming to this country would appear to be lax.

‘The risk historically to children, even of the monarch, has been low. Do they really have to go in a convoy to school? The whole situation beggars belief. Just because Harry’s got the arrogance to waltz back in because they couldn’t make it where they were.’

As things stand, I am told that the family will ‘definitely’ go back to their idyllic Tuscan-style, 16-bedroom home in Montecito at half-term and at Christmas.

The children will no doubt be thrilled to be back under blue skies – October temperatures are around 25 degrees – and they will be reunited with their chickens and swimming pool.

The neighbours may have sighed ‘good riddance’ – but were they just a little premature?