Meghan Markle has opened up on the moment she discovered that a fire had broken out in the room her newborn son Archie was sleeping in during a trip to South Africa.
The Duchess of Sussex recounted the horrifying story in the first episode of her long-awaited first episode podcast, which was released on Tuesday.
She described how the incident had left helpers "shaken" and "in tears".
Speaking to friend and tennis star Serena Williams on Archetypes, Meghan explained she had been visiting Nyanga, a predominantly black suburb of Cape Town, with Prince Harry in 2019 when the incident occurred.
She said: "We landed with Archie. Archie was what? Four and a half months old, and the moment we landed, we had to drop him off at this housing unit that they had had us staying in.
"He was going to get ready to go down for his nap.
"We immediately went to an official engagement in this township called Nyanga, and there was this moment where I'm standing on a tree stump, and I'm giving this speech to women and girls, and we finish the engagement, we get in the car, and they say 'There's been a fire at the residence.'"
In disbelief, Meghan recalls asking, "What?" to which personnel responded: "There's been a fire in the baby's room".
Meghan continued: "I can't believe we haven't talked about this.
"And so we're in the car. We had just landed what? An hour or two hours before.
"Racing back. We get back and our amazing nanny Lauren, who we had all the way in Canada. Lauren is in floods of tears. She was supposed to put Archie down for his nap, and she just said: 'You know what? Let me just go get a snack downstairs.'"
"Lauren is from Zimbabwe, and we loved that she would always tie him up on her back with a mud cloth and her instinct she said 'let me just bring him with me before I put him down.'"
She added: "In that amount of time that she went downstairs, the heater in the nursery caught on fire.
"There was no smoke detector. Someone happened to just smell smoke down the hallway, went in, fire extinguished. He was supposed to be sleeping in there.
"And we came back, and of course, as a mother, you go, Oh, my God, what?
"Everyone's in tears. Everyone's shaken. And what do we have to do? Go out and do another official engagement.
"I said this doesn't make any sense. Can you just tell people what happened?"
Meghan said she believes that after the incident, the focus was on how things looked rather than how Harry and she felt in that moment as parents.
She said: "I think optically, the focus was on how it looks instead of how it feels and part of the humanising and the breaking through of these labels and these archetypes and these boxes that we're put into is having some understanding on the human moments behind the scenes that people might not have any awareness of and to give each other a break.
"Because we did– we had to leave our baby."
The eventful September trip was the first the couple had shared since the birth of Archie Harrison and saw the Duke and Duchess meet anti-apartheid activist Bishop Desmond Tutu.
Their visit to Nyanga was to meet with The Justice Desk, a group that teaches self-defence and empowerment to vulnerable children, many of whom have suffered trauma.
READ NEXT:
Family of man injured in freak trampoline accident to 'say goodbye' after diagnosis
Change to rules on Irish roads agreed as motorists warned ahead of school return
Woman in her 90s locked in room by gang of six men in horrifying burglary
Get breaking news to your inbox by signing up to our newsletter
