Backhoe driver and panty factory worker Sasha treated Prince Harry with a respect he didn’t show her

Just before Prince Harry lost his virginity to a horse-loving girl in a field behind a pub, there was a Gwyneth Paltrow film called Sliding Doors.

“Have you ever wondered what could have been?” demanded the trailer.

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Gwyneth was seen catching her train and coming home to find her boyfriend in bed with another woman.

Then, in an alternate reality where she misses her train and comes home ten minutes later, she finds him with his pants on and his lover gone.

We live in a universe of infinite possibilities, Gwyneth’s film suggested.

Our lives revolve around random twists of fate.

And in Sasha Walpole’s tale of Harry’s lost virginity – forced upon her after the red-haired love machine cheekily kissed her and recounted their five-minute pairing in his autobiography Spare – one can’t help but wonder what must have been for Prince Harry could.

In one life you’re drinking shots with an older girl who really likes horses.

And in another, you have herbal tea with a woman who is happy to show Oprah Winfrey her organic chickens.

In one life you swallow shots in a rural Wiltshire binge.

And in another, you’re knocking on your family and country in a California mansion.

In one life you are the Prince Harry we knew and loved.

And in another you wake up wailing, my poor little me from Montecito, California.

“A woman faces a choice between a man she’s always loved and a man she just met,” reads the Sliding Doors trailer.

And in Sasha Walpole’s candid, touching revelations, we’re offered a tantalizing glimpse into the fate Harry might have had had he made different choices.

BITTER REMOVED

We should be grateful to Sasha.

Today she was thrust into the global spotlight by a prince who spat out the truth about his journey without giving anyone else a thought.

Sasha, 40, has been dubbed Spare’s “elder woman.”

But one day before her 19th birthday, she was hardly The Graduate’s Mrs Robinson anymore.

But her memories of that five-minute love affair resonate with everything Harry has turned his back on.

Never before has a romp in a meadow been remembered with such sweetness and generosity!

The teenage prince and the slightly older teenage groom who had just been heartbroken by her first boyfriend were friends.

Sasha tells a tale of shots, Marlboro Light-flavored kisses and passion with no regrets.

As Harry sits brooding in his mansion, spitting out his endless well of bile and resentment, bitterly estranged from his family and the country that loved him, here’s a look at Harry Windsor’s own sliding doors.

Would it have been different if Harry kept getting slapped on the bottom by girls who liked horses?

Of course they would!

The path Harry has taken — the California husband who hangs out in a chicken coop with Oprah Winfrey — feels like a disastrous wrong turn.

In a universe of infinite possibilities, there is a twist that Harry hasn’t taken.

It would have led him to a different life from the one he lives today among America’s progressive billionaires.

Harry was never one of the boys. Harry was never ordinary.

He was never just a good guy. Not even in his army years.

Not really, because growing up in the bosom of the British royal family bestows a life of unimaginable privilege, luxury and entitlement.

Harry was pampered and protected and cuddled every second of his life.

Even as he lost his virginity, Harry’s royal security anxiously searched for him in a blue Ford Fiesta.

Yet the most beloved members of the royal family somehow manage to keep at least one foot firmly planted in the real world.

Prince William and Kate do. Prince Andrew doesn’t.

Mike and Zara Tindall do, despite sharing their back garden with Zara’s mother, Princess Anne.

And our Queen made it, despite 70 years on the throne.

When Her Majesty addressed the nation at the height of the pandemic, she was undoubtedly one of us.

A hereditary monarchy functions because of this semblance of royal normality.

The monarchy would not work – and we would have become a republic years ago – if the royal family were not ultimately undeniably human.

Harry appears human in Sasha Walpole’s revelations.

Harry seems so terribly American these days that he always spits out his truth to the superstar creeps who hang on his every word.

This son and brother of kings would never be ordinary. Harry will never wake up at night worrying about how he’s going to pay his bills.

He would always take his unimaginable privilege for granted.

But he didn’t have to end up as the woke, whining sorrel he is today.

He went through the wrong sliding door when he met his future wife.

For all his particular pleas for his sanity, he never seems to think about what his outpourings, whether to spare or to admirers like Oprah and James Corden, do to the mental well-being of others.

Had he thought about what writing in detail about the loss of his virginity would mean for Sasha Walpole’s life, even if she was not named?

Had he ever thought for a second how her children, her parents, or her husband might feel if it all came out?

SELF AVERAGE ROAD

This is what those of us who once held Harry in high esteem now find it hard to stomach.

He doesn’t seem to care about anyone but himself.

Sasha Walpole treated Harry with the respect he didn’t show her.

She behaved decently.

There is no doubt that she would have buried the story of Harry’s virginity if she had been allowed to.

By writing about their brief but significant bonk, Harry has sparked worldwide speculation about Sasha’s identity.

If he’d kept his cake hole shut, no one would ever have known.

The hypocrite Harry says “everyone has the right to privacy” unless he presumably chooses to invade it.

But former panty factory worker Sasha, a driver of one- and three-ton excavators, behaved with honor.

And this is the world Harry has turned his back on forever.

This is the path that is not walked.

Yes, the world of horses and pubs and kisses that taste like Marlboro Lights.

But there’s something else that Harry gave up when he got involved with America’s awakened billionaires.

What about honor, decency and discretion?

What about the instinct to protect those you care about?

What about the common humanity?

Who knows where he goes from here.

The lucrative, self-pitying path Harry has chosen looks suspiciously like a dead end.

Will he really spend the rest of his life belittling the royal family, the UK and the evil British press?

Is that all he has to look forward to?

He would never be married to Sasha, but there’s a whole way of life and a whole world he turned his back on when he became Prince of Montecito.

It was fun. It was a bit of a laugh. And it was good.

Sasha’s loving, touching revelations read like a postcard from a lost world, a glimpse of a fading street photo that was never taken. It’s too late now.

Harry has to jump to the tune of his American company paymasters.

Now he has to fill the next 50 years with something approaching meaning. Good luck with all of that, Harry!

But Sasha Walpole’s heartwarming story reminds us that a path has not been taken.

It led to a life where even a prince can stand with one foot in the real world.

And if Prince Harry had been smart enough to choose that path, he would almost certainly be a far happier man today.

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