TUESDAY, 1 JULY 1997 was Diana’s thirty-sixth birthday. Rosa Monckton called and asked if she would like to have lunch. Diana declined That evening she was to be guest of honour at a gala hosted by Chanel for the centennial of the Tate Gallery, and there was much she had to do during the day. Both boys had called her early in the morning and she had opened their gifts. Her staff had not forgotten, and giant bouquets of flowers had arrived during the day (one from the Queen and another from Charles among them). There were dozens of packages from close friends and family, many hundreds from admirers, and thousands of cards. She felt she must forgo lunch to write as many personal thank-you notes as she could.
She arrived at the Tate, the museum’s pillared entrance hall hung with its striking collection of Andy Warhol silk-screen prints of Chanel perfume bottles, in a party of five, which included a bodyguard and staff. All eyes, and cameras, were on her as she entered the main reception room wearing a form-fitting, low-cut, backless, glittery black Jacques Azagury gown. Around her bare neck was the magnificent emerald and diamond choker that the Queen had given her as a wedding gift, and she wore matching earrings and bracelet, a gift from Charles after William’s birth. She carried a small bouquet of white camellias and pink roses. Never had she looked more glowingly beautiful.
She was exhilarated from the success of the auction of her gowns, which had raised $3.26 million for Aids and cancer charities. The Queen, she had been told, was appalled at the idea of her selling her clothing, and Tory critics had said that some of the dresses had been worn on official state occasions, thus were paid for by taxpayers and were not hers to sell. Others called it “a vulgar affection.” Whatever she did would be controversial, but Diana was at a stage in her life when she followed her best instincts. Selling the gowns to help her causes had felt right to her, and William had been equally pleased with the results.
William and Harry joined her at Kensington Palace on Friday, 11 July, the day they were to leave for the South of France. Diana had everything ready for their departure in one large suitcase and three small ones. Royal tours usually included piles of baggage, but gowns, hats, wraps, accessories and jewels were not needed for this trip. She was wearing a comfortable beige three-piece trouser suit and was in high spirits as the three, with their bodyguards and two members of Diana’s staff, were driven to a private airstrip to board the Harrods Executive Gulfstream jet, with its pink plush seats and green carpets patterned with pharaohs’ heads. With them were Mohamed and Heini al Fayed with their four children, aged between ten and sixteen. Diana was immediately drawn to Karim, who had been born unhearing. Diana knew sign language so they could communicate.
The flight was joyous—so many young people aboard and all looking forward to a vacation by and on the sea. There was nothing more that Diana and the boys enjoyed than sun and water sports. In addition, they would be in al Fayed’s safe compound, able to relax. Al Fayed had assured her that his forty-eight armed security guards would guarantee their safety as there were six on duty at all times.
On the party’s arrival in Nice, they were driven the short distance to the harbour at St Laurent du Var where they boarded al Fayed’s 190-foot, $32-million yacht, Jonikal, for the leisurely five-hour sea journey to St Tropez. The Jonikal surpassed any of Diana’s expectations. Of course, it was not Britannia, but it had been equipped with two pools, a gym with a sauna, and suites with marble bathrooms and gold fixtures, and a sixteen-strong crew that included a French chef, an Italian chef and two masseurs. There was a playroom for the teenagers with a soda fountain for nonalcoholic drinks. Huge bowls of exotic fresh flowers stood in every room as well as a television and a large selection of CDs. Dinner was served on deck as they followed the coastline.
Harry said he had never seen so much food before: caviar, great platters of lobsters and prawns, sweet delicacies of infinite variety. The yacht’s staff for security reasons had not been told in advance who the guests were to be. The bounty aboard the Jonikal was neither more nor less than it would have been for anyone else. A1 Fayed lived a life that the Royal Family might once have lived, but certainly not during Elizabeth II’s reign.
About ten o’clock that evening, the Jonikal docked in St. Tropez next to al Fayed’s two-masted schooner Sakhara in his private harbour at Castle Sainte Hélène, his vast estate with indoor and outdoor swimming-pools, roof gardens, tennis courts, miles of private beach, a forty-six-room main house and eleven-room guest “cottage,” which Diana and the boys occupied. There were also comfortable staff quarters.
In July the sun rises in a spectacular blaze on the Mediterranean and Diana, William and Harry rose early. By nine they were on the beach racing to see who would be in the water first It was Diana, crashing into the waves head high as though it was her life. Soon the paparazzi were to be seen bobbing about in their small boats a distance away as Diana sunned herself on the deck of the Sakhara before lunch. In England, the papers were printing critical articles about her exposing the two princes to Mohamed al Fayed, but her host could not have been more generous or warm-hearted, or the atmosphere at the castle more convivial. William and Harry had immediately made friends with the younger al Fayeds. Heini’s brother and sister-in-law had now arrived with their children and it was a real family gathering, in contrast to the chilly visits Diana had endured at Sandringham or Balmoral for so long.
Two days after she arrived in St Tropez, al Fayed’s son by his first wife arrived. Emad “Dodi” Fayed’s* mother, Samira, was dead. She had been the sister of billionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. Dodi’s parents had divorced when he was only two and al Fayed, like Johnnie Spencer, had won custody, and like Diana, Dodi had grown up without his mother. Unlike her, though, he had seldom seen Samira until he was an adult His father claimed that this had brought him and his son closer than most fathers and sons, and the bond between them was evident when they were in each other’s company—although it evoked speculation. Was there too much dependence of the son on the father? Was Dodi always dancing for al Fayed’s attention? An aura of sadness clung to Dodi despite his apparent free spirit, undeniable charm, and ability to laugh easily—often at himself. It was evident in his searching dark eyes and the way a smile at times would play wistfully at the corners of his mouth.
Diana and Dodi had met eleven years earlier when he had played polo with Prince Charles. Since then, they had met at galas and premières, and had exchanged casual conversation. In the last six months their paths had crossed more frequently and they had flirted openly with each other. But then Diana often enjoyed playing the flirt with an attractive man without serious interest. Dodi was involved in the film industry and had co-produced and financed several films, including the Academy Award-winning Chariots of Fire. The press had never been kind to him: he was al Fayed’s son, he was too rich, he was the nephew of an arms dealer, a good-looking guy who had dated film stars like Brooke Shields and Bridget Fonda, a playboy caught on his daddy’s money-belt. Most of it was true, but Dodi Fayed was also sensitive, brighter and more talented than given credit for, and he was emotionally bruised.
Diana became attuned to this quickly. They spent that first afternoon on the Jonikal with the rest of the house party, although after lunch they found a quiet corner in which to talk. They remained apart from the others for several hours. He reminded her a little of Hasnat Khan. They were of the same faith, both exotic with good looks who spoke with a hint of an accent in a mellow, intimate voice. Dodi’s eyes were a deep liquid brown, like richly brewed coffee. His manners were impeccable. The scent he wore was tinged with a light spicy aroma, and he had remarkable hands. Much of her tension dissolved with his touch. Unlike Hasnat Khan, though, Dodi Fayed was used to celebrity. He understood how it could be used to further his own agenda.
Both Diana and Dodi have said that they discovered quickly how much they had in common, that their histories were so similar. “One immediately sensed the chemistry between them,” a crew member noted. For Diana, this was certainly true: within an hour of their first private conversation, she had felt she could confide in him. She shared her painful childhood memories, the fear of abandonment she had known as a small child when her mother left home; her father’s seeming indifference to her unhappiness.
“Like me, like me,” he had echoed, and told her how he had cried at nights for his mother, how his father had sent him away to school at seven and how, at seventeen, he had been given his own apartment at 60 Park Lane in London, which he still occupied, a Mini Cooper, a twenty-four-hour chauffeur, bodyguards, and a warning that he was always to be cautious because an enemy of his father might try to kidnap or murder him. Born in Egypt, he had spent his life between England, Egypt, France and the United States, and never thought of himself as an Arab, although he was often described as such by the press. Yes, he was rich. And yes, there was an ex-wife, and there had been many more women than the tabloid press had reported. But there had never been that one great love. Diana was immensely drawn to him.
The following day, 14 July, was Bastille Day and there was a party on the Jonikal and the boat dropped anchor offshore near Nice where everyone could see the splendid firework display. Diana and Dodi, his arm about her waist, stood at the rail of the upper deck and shouted as each rocket exploded in the night sky, the flash brilliantly reflected in the dark blue of the sea. Later Diana called her friends in London on her mobile phone—the much older Lady Elsa Bowker, who had become a close confidante, and Rosa Monckton. Her voice vibrated with happiness.
She did not know, though, that Kelly Fisher, the tall, beautiful, willowy Calvin Klein model, was close at hand. Kelly had been Dodi’s girlfriend for over a year and was in St Tropez also on a yacht belonging to al Fayed. She had come to the South of France with Dodi, wearing a $200,000 diamond and emerald engagement ring, with which he had recently presented her, and she had told her parents that they would be married on 9 August. Dodi had refused to introduce Kelly to his family, who knew nothing of this liaison. He had told her that she could not join him on his father’s yacht “because the Princess wants privacy.” Kelly was an intelligent woman who had made a success in a highly competitive field and she was not unaware of Dodi’s womanizing history. But she was in love, too, and wanted to believe that Dodi was telling her the truth.
But Dodi was dazzled by Diana. On 15 July Diana rang Rosa Monckton to tell her that “there was a karma that was drawing them closer.” Diana strongly believed in mystic signs and it had occurred to her that Dodi’s appearance in her life at this time was such. She further remarked to Rosa that she felt “suddenly uplifted. We’ve each suffered a great deal of personal pain and somehow it makes us feel not so all alone.”
That afternoon Diana, accompanied by the boys, Dodi, his bodyguard, the imposing Welshman Trevor Rees-Jones, and two of al Fayed’s security men, went to see an ancient Romanesque church. Having made her way from the car through the gathered media—there had been a leak by staff to the press—she removed her sunglasses and her amazing blue eyes fixed on the church’s famous bust of the saint for whom the town is named.
She knew something of the history of the area, for it was her habit whenever she visited somewhere new to read about it. The legend ran that St. Tropez had been martyred under Nero. His body was set adrift in a boat with a dog and a cock that were to feed upon it. But they left it untouched, and an angel steered the boat to the shore of what was now the Gulf of St. Tropez. Diana was greatly moved by the idea of an angelic presence hovering over the water to protect the corpse. The sea gave her a keen sense of freedom, and she had always felt that her much loved Grandmother Spencer was looking down on her, guiding her away from danger and into safe, if uncharted waters and so the myth, with its vague similarities, had intrigued her.
With one of al Fayed’s men leading, she entered the church flanked by Dodi, William and Harry. The boys were dressed casually in sneakers and jeans, looking relaxed, tanned and healthy. Each member of the small party lit a candle and said a short, silent prayer. Then, English guidebook in hand, Diana led the others around the interior of the centuries-old church. She was in no hurry to go out into the blazing sunlight where a pack of hustling paparazzi impatiently awaited her. Here, she could be the private Diana.
When Diana and her party were ready to leave, two bodyguards stood by the doors ready to intercept the crush of photographers waiting for them to emerge. Sunglasses in place, shoulders squared, Diana started forward. William and Harry were in front of her, a bodyguard on each side, Dodi and Trevor Rees-Jones behind them. She stepped out into the glare of the stifling hot day. Click, click, click went the cameras as newsmen shouted to get her attention. Instead, she glanced over her shoulder at Dodi. “That’s tomorrow’s front page,” she said, but a smile eased across her face.
The photographers paid little attention to Dodi. “He was just another guy,” a member of the French press corps said. This was a reasonable reaction, even for members of the media. Dodi was not an outsider. His father was Diana’s host His presence during Diana’s visit did not seem in any way unusual, as all the other members of his family were there.
On her divorce, Diana had insisted on forfeiting the twenty-four-hour security she had previously received from the Royal Protection Squad, although she still used official bodyguards at public events, or when her sons were with her. She wanted a semblance of normality in her life, to be able to get around more on her own. It was not long before she realized that this had been a grave error of judgment It was not that she feared danger from a potential assassin or lunatic. It was the frenzied pursuit of the press that terrified her.
The al Fayeds and their guests spent the next few days sunning themselves and being pampered. Every morning, at about eleven, Diana either went for a swim or jet-sided, often with the boys, off the beach that fronted the al Fayeds’ pink-stuccoed villa. They usually boarded the yacht for lunch and for an afternoon excursion. With each passing day her relationship with Dodi intensified as they spent more and more private time together. The paparazzi had still not realized that Diana was embarking on a new romance, but they were an invasive presence. They even used their long-range lenses to photograph her hundreds of yards away, sunning on the roof terrace of al Fayed’s house. One morning when she and the boys were swimming near the villa, a boatload of photographers drew as close as they could and began to shout at them.
“Hey, Diana! Hey, Wills!” they called.
“I can send my son to a good public school next year if you just look this way!” an English photographer yelled. William was very upset and went back to the villa. Diana got into a small boat docked at al Fayed’s pier. Still wearing her wet, faux-leopardskin bathing suit, she drove it out to the surprised tabloid hacks, who were mostly British. “Could you please leave my boys in peace?” she demanded, her voice clarion clear. “William really gets freaked out” She recognized one of the men and addressed him personally. “And you’ve been particularly unfair to my host and cruel to me. Mr. al Fayed was my father’s best friend.” She was referring to an article in an English tabloid that week that rather blatantly accused al Fayed of attempting to use Diana to break into the British establishment.
“What can I do to say I’m sorry?” he replied. “Fifty roses? A hundred roses?” At that moment a photographer leaned forward precariously to get a shot of her in this feisty mood and lost his balance. As soon as she saw that he could swim, she laughed. “I wish I had a camera so that I could have had that shot!” Then she started the boat and as it began to move through the water she called, “Expect a big surprise with the next thing I do!”
The men looked at each other. Everyone was puzzled. “Always the tease,” one said.
Her affair with Dodi Fayed had begun, and after four days she confessed to Rosa Monckton, “I am in love with him and I know he is with me.” The couple sat up talking every night until two or three A.M. They walked along the beach, went for midnight swims. They exchanged confidences. They trusted each other. She believed that the man the world thought of as a suave playboy, “a man whose idea of work was showing up for the Harrods polo team—store and team both owned by his father,” and whose idea of home was a jet plane or a yacht, was more than that. The close proximity of Kelly Fisher remained unknown to her, as did the fact that over the first few days Dodi had returned to his “fiancée’s” side. Dodi gave Kelly Fisher a cheque to cover her expenses and suggested she return to California where he would join her. Kelly was still not convinced that she should leave. “Is it the Princess?” she insisted. He denied any romantic attachment: he was escorting Diana on a request from his father. Kelly did as he asked.
Relieved, he continued his romance with Diana. Her effect on him was both nurturing and seductive. They laughed together over simple things. Diana loved a good joke, could tell a dirty one as well as any man, and was an excellent mimic. “She was lively, fun and in excellent spirits,” a close member of al Fayed’s party commented, “and we were not blind to the fact that the two had fallen in love.”
No one could have been outwardly happier than al Fayed himself. Dodi had caused him great anxiety, always living beyond his generous allowance. Time and again al Fayed had covered Dodi’s debts. He had little regard for his son’s career as a film producer: he felt that Dodi’s contribution had been on a financial level and that he had not been an active participant even in Chariots of Fire, one of the few investments made by Dodi that had reaped financial rewards. At the age of nearly forty-two, Dodi was unmarried and childless. His reputation as an international playboy suggested to al Fayed that his son was not ready to help him manage his empire. But if Dodi could win Diana’s hand … Al Fayed was something of a romantic, but he had strong personal reasons—his hope that through Diana he might finally achieve his desire for a British passport—for encouraging his son in his wooing of the Princess. And in this area he had faith in his son’s abilities.
The courting had begun, and not just of Diana but of William and Harry too. Dodi rented a discothèque where the young princes ate pizza and showed considerable skill on the dance-floor. William, who was self-conscious about his height, loosened up while learning disco steps from Diana. Neither he nor Harry had ever been to a disco before and it was a heady experience, although Diana was heard to comment that she wished security concerns had not made it obligatory for the public to be excluded. She was ecstatic, though, that her sons were comfortable with Dodi, who took them with her to an amusement park—in public, this time, but with al Fayed’s security men in attendance. There, they crashed around on bumper cars and later had a picnic in a secluded spot on the beach outside the al Fayed villa.
They parted at midday on 20 July, after hearing about the shocking murder in Miami Beach of Diana’s friend the fashion designer Gianni Versace, who was gunned down by a lone assailant on the front steps of his magnificent home. Diana was distraught as she boarded the Harrods jet with the boys to return to London, where William and Harry were to join the Queen, the Princess Royal and her husband, Prince Edward and his girlfriend Sophie Rhys-Jones, and their cousins Peter and Zara Phillips aboard the Britannia. Prince Charles would meet them in Scotland, where they would spend time at Balmoral. Meanwhile, Diana departed for Milan to attend Versace’s funeral.
Dodi offered to go with her, but they decided that that would alert the press to the depth of their relationship. Instead, they planned a reunion ten days later, with a private cruise on the Mediterranean, again on the Jonikal.
Diana believed that she had found love, but she wanted to be sure that on Dodi’s part it was more than infatuation. They planned to meet in Paris, then cruise for five days off the coast of Sardinia and determine whether or not a deeper relationship was viable. Diana knew she could not keep the press at bay once she joined Dodi on the Jonikal, but she was ready for that. She had learned how to use the press to her advantage, and now she wanted them to know how happy she was, how desirable as a woman, and, with someone who loved her, how little Charles and his family could hurt her.
Not everyone close to her approved of her decision to holiday alone with Dodi. Friends felt she should have insisted on having her own bodyguard in attendance. Then there was the obvious backlash of bad publicity. Al Fayed was not a popular figure. Dodi was not a man of any consequence, and he was a Muslim. The Palace would pounce on that if ever the relationship were to become serious. But Diana was a long way from making any commitment. She just knew that Dodi made her feel loved and cared for.
Shortly before they began their cruise Kelly Fisher, now back in Los Angeles, hired the American lawyer Gloria Allerd, known for her strident advocacy of women’s rights, to represent her in a breach-of-promise suit against Dodi. As yet this had not been leaked to the press, but Dodi had been notified of Kelly’s intention. He and Diana spoke twice daily and he told her of the possibility that Kelly would sue. He claimed vehemently that he had never promised to marry her, and although she had come with him to the South of France, she had done so of her own volition. Two days after he had joined Diana on the Jonikal, he had told Kelly she should return home. When he had given her the cheque to cover her expenses and she had departed, he had believed that was the end of it. Diana accepted this and went on with her plans.
On the morning of 31 July, she prepared to leave London to meet Dodi in Paris. In the hallway outside her sitting room were two suitcases with the pink Princess of Wales identification tags (each member of the Royal Family had their own colour code—the Queen’s was gold), waiting to be collected. She was in exceptionally high spirits. And for once, she was looking forward to the future.
*Dodi did not use the prefix “al” before his surname. It designated an honorary title, to which he said he was not entitled.