What Kate told my close source makes me deeply worried as Meghan and Harry return to the UK… William now faces the biggest decision of his life: ROBERT JOBSON

Harry and Meghan’s sudden decision to resettle in Britain has led many in the US to believe the King is sicker than anyone has admitted.

I am told that is not the case. He was diagnosed with cancer. He is still in treatment. He is still working. True, nobody has spoken of remission.

He is a sick man. But a brave one. That much is true. And people understand why a son would want to be closer to his father now.

Sir Clive Alderton, the King’s principal private secretary and his most senior courtier, has just resigned and leaves in May. Harry did not like him. In his memoir Spare he was the man identified as ‘the Wasp.’ Could this be how Charles can now clear the way for the prodigal son to return?

It now looks as though he is.

The couple leave California before the end of the month for a private house outside London, possibly the Cotswolds, where they stayed during their recent visit. Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lilibet, five, start at a British school in September. They are keeping Montecito and the villa in Portugal.

No family enrolls two children in British schools in a fortnight. There is a process. There are registrars, headteachers, months of quiet groundwork behind it. The King was told on Sunday. By then there was nothing left for him to decide.

The Palace is guiding quietly, and not on headed paper. Gives them a get out.

The King welcomes seeing more of his grandchildren.

For the Sussexes, nothing changes in the arrangement. Private individuals, non-working royals, no duties resumed.

They were at Highgrove in July. Charles met up with Archie and Lilibet for the first time since 2022. The Palace called it a private family occasion. Reports say the move was not discussed. Really? Hard to believe.

On May 2 last year, Harry told the BBC he could not see a world in which he would bring his wife and children back to Britain. He had just lost his appeal over police protection, after suing his father’s government. Now we are fifteen months on.

Better to have him inside than outside. Inside there is some control.

The alternative is two courts in one country. One serving, one selling. That is a constitutional problem, not a family one.

Archie is sixth in line to the throne. Lilibet is seventh. Their father is fifth. Children that close to the crown cannot live here unguarded. A narrow, defined working role is the one route by which the security question answers itself.

Until September, Archie is an all-American boy with a British title, thousands of miles from an institution he could theoretically be asked to serve. From September, he is a child in a British classroom, with British friends, his Californian twang disappearing with every term. Monarchy runs on familiarity.

William and Catherine will go on carrying out engagements on behalf of this country. On some of those days, his brother will be working, too, on his own account. What Harry does is worth more because of who his brother is. No arrangement fixes that.

William faces the biggest decision of his life and he does not yet have the job. Whatever is settled now, he reigns inside it.

Christmas is a public test.

In the season of goodwill. The walk to St Mary Magdalene. Cameras on the path. If Harry is living in England with two children in British schools, the invitation stops being a courtesy and becomes a decision. Leave him off the path and the family looks unforgiving. Put him on it and the photograph says the last six years never happened.

Can William walk beside him?

On September 10, 2022, they walked together outside Windsor Castle, the four of them, four days after the Queen died. Crowds. Flowers. Cameras. Afterwards Catherine told a close source of mine it was ‘the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.’

If that was what it cost her then, with the country watching, nothing about December is easy. Rebuilding takes two people who want it rebuilt. I see one.

There is a debt outstanding first. In Spare, Harry slammed Queen Camilla. He wrote that she had ‘sacrificed’ him ‘on her personal PR altar.’ Camilla kept quiet. The debt to his brother has not been paid either.

The Palace should say so on the record, not in whispered advice. The terms of 2020 stand.

Before the school gates.

Before the walk to church. Harry stands up and says sorry, to his father, brother and British people.

Chances of that, given his record for contrition, are slim. But if the monarchy is going to unite it is essential.

Robert Jobson is the author of The Windsor Legacy.