Meghan, my birthday present to you… a couple of dwelling fact, writes LIZ JONES

Meghan turns 43 on Sunday. Forty-three! No longer an ingenue – she is a mother, a wife.

Surely now she can start to act like a grown-up. Mend some bridges, step back, take the higher ground?

Meghan hasn’t spoken to her father, who has just turned 80, since before her 2018 wedding. She seems to drop friends willy-nilly. Her business ventures are erratic. All the posing with women she barely knows smacks of the playground.

Harry seems isolated from his old friends and his family – let’s not forget a family still reeling from the cancer diagnoses of King Charles and the Princess of Wales.

Landmark moments such as birthdays cause all of us to take stock.

What’s really important, we ask: wealth, trappings, looks – or seeking deeper meaning to our lives, be it in small spheres such as family or the large as in public service?

Perhaps this birthday will give Meghan such a moment to reflect. What should I change?

I like Meghan, and if I was one of her closest confidantes, I would – kindly! – tell her that to me she can come across as insecure: always a hand on Harry’s arm, keeping him close.

A lot of behaviour stems from being a star, of course, even a small one.

Actors are strange creatures, always alert to a slight, a lowering of their name on a billboard. I can’t overstate the extent to which even a simple meet and greet must be thoroughly oiled and invisibly managed by minions.

The royals know how to do this. The people around Meghan do not.

That’s why some of her appearances seem so amateur: over-dressed for a film premiere in Jamaica, showing too much skin in Nigeria, under-dressed in white shorts and flats for a parade of veterans.

It’s strange to think that, when she married Harry, she could do no wrong. She looked beautiful at the wedding and her second bridal gown by Stella McCartney was edgy and inspired.

Her charitable choices were sound: a cookbook to raise money for the Grenfell tragedy, for example.

Her allegiance to the Mayhew animal charity was spot on in contrast to the taste for blood sports shown by many royals.

She was a new broom: warm and informal. Her beagle, Guy, sat next to the late Queen on the way to her wedding rehearsal.

Meghan once brought Hollywood glamour and, yes, a touch of endearing brashness (she one got into a car ahead of the Queen) into a family that was looking very old, very pale and stale.

It all went very wrong, of course.

She accused the royals of, if not racism, then unconscious bias leading to the famous ‘recollections may vary’ comeback from the Queen. Another nadir: mockingly re-enacting a curtsy to the Queen for the benefit of Netflix subscribers.

These actions caused her popularity to plummet, and led not only to the estrangement from the royals, but from us Brits as well.

That’s why I’d tell her that her birthday this weekend is a chance for a reboot.

The duchess certainly needs it.

I doubt that Meghan could believe her luck riding in that pale blue vintage E-type Jag on her wedding day, en route not just to the reception but a new life of unbelievable privilege. She seemed in awe, that day, seduced by our pomp and circumstance.

Actress years are like dog years, remember – all that fear of rejection, of growing too old.

And in that moment, Meghan knew that being a royal trumped an alternative life, even that of A-listers, like Jennifer Lawrence, say, or Beyonce.

Yet she threw it all away. Do you regret it now, I’d ask her?

My suspicion is that Meghan wishes Harry were a stronger character than he is.

Harry, too, has a birthday coming up – his 40th, on September 15.

But he still seems like a child: petulant, used to getting his own way but now routinely thwarted.

Meghan has been used to alpha-male producers, directors, masculine stars, even her blokey dad, an award-winning Hollywood lighting director.

I’d tell Meghan that to me she and Harry seem to have people around them who do not provide the best advice, who may fear standing up to them. Which all, of course, comes back to that insecurity I sense in them both.

This state of affairs must change.

For her birthday, I think Meghan needs a dedicated stylist who knows what he or she is doing. And she needs to make a real difference with some new good causes, not just seemingly pie-in-the-sky business ventures.

It’s time, too, to make amends with Catherine. Meghan must look at the respect and space given to her sister-in-law and think: ‘Why am I not deserving of that?.’

Women fight. Women make up. Women get on with it. Not warming to a female in-law is hardly a reason to maintain this froideur, I’d tell her.

Megxit has been portrayed as some kind of easy ride, an escape.

But the reality? Like being dumped in a barrel of ice. California is all about status, and celebrity. Walking down Kensington High Street, Meghan would stop traffic. In LA, she is not the only famous person in town. She’s a smart woman. She knows this.

It’s time for her and Harry to swallow their pride, and come back home.

Of course Meghan’s made mistakes, but let’s get those ‘misdemeanours’ into perspective.

Accusing the Royal Family of being archaic and suffering unconscious bias? Surely Charles’s description of his childhood was damning and hurtful for his parents? And his betrayal of Diana is worse than anything Meghan has done! But Charles came back from his errors and humiliation. So can Meghan if she has a good heart.

I really hope she uses this birthday to step back. Take her time. Grovel a little, if she has to.

Again, as a sympathetic girlfriend I could gently say to her that I think the one quality she lacks is self-awareness.

How am I coming across? What could I do better? She needs help to look at the bigger picture. Figure out what she wants to do.

I, for one, hope she does write a memoir.

Perhaps only then will we understand her and maybe even forgive her for taking Harry from us.

We Brits are generous and magnanimous. I’m sure we wouldn’t hesitate to welcome Meghan back into the fold. But she needs to make the first move.