‘Everything you do for me has turned me into who I am’

Thomas Markle talks to Caroline Graham and shares his cherished mementos of the daughter he’s so desperate to see

Meghan’s loving cards to the father desperate for a Christmas reunion

THEY are touching, heartfelt notes in elegant handwriting, sent from a devoted daughter to the ‘Daddy’ she clearly adores. In one she vows: ‘All I want to do is make you proud… and I promise, no matter what, I’ll do it.’ In another she thanks her father for taking ‘the best care of me’ and adds: ‘I love you to no end.’ For Thomas Markle, estranged father of Britain’s Duchess of Sussex, the treasured words are a painful reminder of the bitter rift and ‘wall of silence’ between him, his pregnant daughter and Prince Harry, the son-in-law he has never met.

While Meghan and Harry will spend their Christmas at Sandringham with the Queen, Prince William and Kate, the upcoming festive season fills Mr Markle with dread as it will be his first Christmas without a card, call or visit from his beloved youngest child.

‘I have been frozen out and I can’t stay silent,’ he said last night. ‘I have made dozens of attempts to reach my daughter via text and letters, but she and Harry have put up a wall of silence. They have done what they once told me not to do – they are believing everything negative that has been written about me. So I am reaching out to them, once again, to try to correct the lies and get the truth out there.

‘Everyone says, why don’t I just shut the f*** up? That Meghan can’t speak to me because I’ll give away secrets. But that’s bull **** . I’ve been accused of every terrible thing you can think of. In one magazine they had an awful story about Prince Charles right beside one about me. But no one is shunning Prince Charles.’

This is just his fourth interview since the fallout with Harry and Meghan after he staged paparazzi pictures shortly before the couple’s wedding in May and then suffered two heart attacks, preventing him walking his daughter down the aisle at St George’s Chapel, Windsor.

Today, in a wide-ranging interview with The Mail on Sunday, Mr Markle, for the first time, categorically rejects some of the most ‘grievous’ lies against him and produces evidence in the form of photographs, medical statements and even a faded plane ticket that he says proves he is telling the truth:

THE LIE: He ‘faked’ his heart attacks out of embarrassment over the staged paparazzi pictures to give himself an excuse not to travel to Britain for the wedding.

FACT: He produces a stack of private medical bills, a hospital discharge letter citing ‘heart failure’ and a list of medications prescribed to prevent future heart attacks: ‘I had two heart attacks, the second of which the doctor called a widow-maker and nearly killed me.’

THE LIE: He failed to attend Meghan’s first wedding in 2011 to film producer Trevor Engelson at the beach resort of Ocho Rios, Jamaica.

FACT: Mr Markle produces a picture of himself and Meghan, taken just moments before he walked her down the beach alongside ex-wife Doria, the only member of Meghan’s family to attend the royal wedding. He even kept his business-class plane ticket to the nuptials.

THE LIE: Meghan and her father were never that close.

FACT: Mr Markle has ‘hundreds’ of notes and cards from Meghan, who lived solely with him from the age of 11 until she went to university: ‘People are trying to rewrite history. Meghan and I were as close as a father and daughter could be right up until her wedding to Harry. Then it all fell apart.’

THE LIE: Mr Markle ‘sold out’ his daughter and has been quoted giving his opinion on recent negative stories about her, including that she brought Kate to tears in a row over the bridesmaid outfit for Princess Charlotte at Meghan’s wedding.

FACT: ‘I’m not selling stories. People make things up and my daughter and her husband believe the lies, the one thing they told me never to do. They think I’m giving hundreds of interviews. That’s rubbish. I am not perfect, I made mistakes but my punishment does not fit the crime. Even murderers get visits from their daughters in jail.’

Sitting in a hotel room close to his home in Rosarito, a beach town just across the US-Mexico border, Mr Markle said he has repeatedly reached out to Meghan to try to heal the rift.

‘I have sent several texts. Her number hasn’t changed and they haven’t bounced back,’ he says.

‘I’ve pleaded with her to pick up the phone. I wrote her a two-page letter and sent it by certified mail via her representative in Los Angeles. I asked her why she was believing the lies. I also pointed out the royals haven’t always been perfectly behaved. I wrote that I’ve never played pool naked, nor have I dressed up as a Nazi [a reference to Harry’s infamous pictures in Las Vegas in 2012 and the time that he wore a crude imitation of a Nazi uniform, including a swastika armband, in 2005].

‘I even hand-delivered a letter to Doria asking her why our daughter won’t speak to me. Everything has been met with a stony silence. Their silence means people continue to attack me and write lies about me.’

Mr Markle says he has been surprised by a spate of recent negative stories about his daughter that portray her as a petulant diva.

One claimed she reduced a staff member to tears with her 5am demands and another said she wanted to spray air freshener around ‘musty’ St George’s Chapel – a request rejected by the Queen.

Perhaps the most damaging claim concerns an alleged rift between Meghan and Kate, who is said to have been ‘reduced to tears’ by Meghan’s demands over Princess Charlotte’s bridesmaid gown and who later, allegedly, reprimanded Meghan for ‘berating’ a member of her staff.

Kate is said to have told Meghan: ‘That’s unacceptable. They’re my staff and I speak to them.’

Meghan’s father says he is baffled by the reports. ‘I don’t recognise this person,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘The Meghan I know was always sweet, kind, generous. She was always demanding but never rude. I don’t want to say or do anything to hurt my daughter but I worry she is going to hurt herself.’

Mr Markle, a retired Emmy

Hollywood lighting director, adds: ‘Meghan grew up on set. I taught her to have respect for the crew. They can make you look good or awful. I don’t pretend to know what she’s like now.

‘She bends the rules. She’s good at that. But this acting up is new. She’s never been rude to me before. I can’t believe I’ve done anything severe enough to be treated this way by her.’ Indeed, he believes his bond with Meghan is ‘unbreakable’ – a point illustrated by two cards from his treasured collection.

Meghan trained as a calligrapher and wrote wedding invitations to help support herself through the early days of her acting career, a skill highlighted in her cards to her father, which are written in elegant cursive script.

‘I loved getting cards from Meghan,’ Mr Markle says. ‘She wrote me hundreds of little cards and notes through the years. Sometimes they were for special occasions, other times just little notes she would leave around the house. I’ve still got a Post-It Note on my fridge which says, “I love you Daddy.” I see it every day. I got a card every Valentine’s Day.’ He pulls one Valentine’s card from a manila folder. It shows a picture of a chubby baby holding a daffodil with a touching message: ‘Daddy… I don’t express as often as I should how much you mean to me. Everything you do for me has turned me into who I am and I am so grateful. All I want to do is make you proud… and I prom-award-winning ise, no matter what, I’ll do it. Thank you for everything daddy. I love you with all of my heart now and forever. Love Bean’ – a reference to his childhood nickname for her.

Over the years, Mr Markle ‘willingly’ spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on his daughter, sending her to private school and even cashing in Facebook shares to help pay for her first wedding.

A Christmas card showing a llama and the words ‘Fa-La-La Llama’ arrived at Mr Markle’s Mexican home just a couple of years ago, by which time Meghan was a successful actress, earning $50,000 (£40,000) an episode on the hit TV show Suits. The card contained $2,000 for him to put towards a holiday. She wrote: ‘Daddy, Because you have always been so generous with me and taken the best care of me it brings me so much joy to be able to give you this this Christmas. I love you to no end. Meg.’

For Mr Markle, the prospect of never speaking to his daughter again is unbearable: ‘I’m hurt by what’s happened but I’m not going to stay silent.

‘My life has been turned upside down since my daughter met Harry. When they announced her pregnancy I had seven paparazzi on my doorstep night and day for seven days. They rented the house next door.

‘Their treatment of me is harsh, hurtful and unforgiving. I’m being punished for things I didn’t say.

‘I’m trolled on the internet by one guy who sits in his mother’s basement spewing lies about me. Twitter is the worst but I can’t avoid it.

‘I don’t read things but then people send them to me anyway. They say I faked my heart attacks, that I wasn’t at the first wedding. It’s all bull **** . Meghan and I never had any problems before this.

‘If she would just speak to me, things could be different. I love Meghan very much. I want her and Harry to have a beautiful, healthy baby and a great life.

‘But I want them to stop believing the lies.’

Does he believe he and Meghan will ever be reunited?

He shrugs. ‘Maybe. Some day.’