FIRST THING NEXT MORNING, RACHEL STARTED telephoning her usual suppliers to try and replenish her stock. She bought from a mixture of auction houses, antique markets and private individuals and relied on word-of-mouth tip-offs about forthcoming sales, so it made sense to get the news out that she was on a buying spree. The feedback was disheartening: there were several sales coming up in a few months’ time, but she needed stock long before then or she wouldn’t survive.
As she worked down her contacts list, she came upon the name Susie Hargreaves. At the beginning of the year Susie had inherited her family estate near Chichester, which had room after room of wardrobes, cupboards and chests full of period clothing. She had approached Rachel at an auction and invited her to the house to look through it and select items she thought she could sell. They agreed to split the proceeds fifty/fifty and the first batch of a dozen garments had sold quickly. From Susie’s excitement on being handed an envelope containing five hundred pounds, Rachel realised that money was tight.
‘I had no idea what the running costs of the house would prove to be, and how many repairs were needed. I’m afraid I’m on an economy drive,’ Susie had confessed. ‘I’m selling everything I can.’
Since then, Rachel had sold three more batches of Susie’s family heirlooms and liked to think they had become friends of sorts. She was sure Susie would agree to her picking up more stock once she heard about the break-in. Mentally crossing her fingers, she dialled the number, pen poised over her Filofax.
When Susie picked up the phone, Rachel asked whether they could make a date for her to look through more of the clothes.
There was a pause. ‘I do want to . . .’ Susie paused. ‘But I’m not sure if I’m up to it. I’m a bit of a wreck this week.’
Rachel heard a muffled sound down the phone and realised Susie was crying. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘I didn’t mean to intrude.’
‘I still can’t believe it,’ Susie sobbed. ‘I can’t seem to pull myself together. The funeral’s on Saturday and I have to go, but it doesn’t seem real. How can Duch be gone? She was so full of life.’
Rachel felt awkward. Susie seemed to have lost a friend and was assuming Rachel knew who she was talking about. ‘I’m sure it will take a while to get used to. Was she your age?’ She reckoned Susie was in her late thirties, similar to her.
‘A couple of years younger. And there are the two boys. It’s such a tragedy. I’m scared I’m going to make an awful fool of myself at the funeral because I simply can’t stop crying.’
‘That’s expected at funerals,’ Rachel soothed. ‘No one will mind.’
‘But it’s going to be on national television. The whole world will be watching. I’ll have to find a seat behind a pillar or something.’ She blew her nose hard.
Rachel was stunned as realisation dawned. ‘Are you talking about Diana? You were friends with her?’
‘Yes, I’m sure I told you. We’ve known each other since childhood. She was like a sister to me.’
Rachel hesitated, then told Susie that she had been in the Alma Tunnel the previous Saturday and had tried to fend off the photographers crowded round the car.
‘Oh my God! Did you speak to her? How did she look?’ Susie wanted all the details, and Rachel told her what little she could.
‘I spoke to her only a couple of weeks before,’ Susie said, her voice strained. ‘While she was on holiday in Greece.’ She burst into a fresh fit of crying. ‘She was happy at least. She’d had a wonderful summer.’
‘It’s just awful,’ Rachel agreed. ‘I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind and we never even met. It’s extraordinary the effect her death has had around the world. I’m sure some good must come of it.’
‘I wish I could believe that, but I’m afraid I don’t think the world is a just place.’
They agreed that Susie would call Rachel about sorting more clothes for sale once the funeral was out of the way.
Rachel hung up the phone and it rang almost immediately. Alex was on the line in buoyant mood.
‘You know it normally takes weeks of preparation before I can get a new project off the ground? Weeks of making up budgets, writing shooting scripts, attending endless meetings? Not this time. As soon as I went to Clive this morning and said, “You will not believe what happened to me at the weekend . . . and I have a hunch there’s more to this crash than meets the eye”, I got a commission straight away. He said the media has been bowled over by a tidal wave of Diana fever and there are only so many times the archive footage can be rerun.’
‘That’s brilliant, darling,’ Rachel said, trying to sound enthusiastic. It was good news for him, even though she remained dubious about the subject.
‘It means I’ll have to spend the rest of the week in London putting a team in place. I’ll come back on the last train tonight and leave early in the morning. You don’t mind, do you?’
He sounded wired, like an over-stimulated child. ‘Of course not,’ Rachel said. ‘Congratulations! I’m sure you’ll make a great job of it.’
Rachel submitted the paperwork for her insurance claim, just in case they would make an exception. She had the glass in the bathroom window replaced and security bars added so no thief would get in that way again, and even got quotes on installing CCTV, but they were prohibitively expensive; she would just have to make doubly sure the alarm was switched on every time she left the shop.
There were a couple of dreary, hopeless auctions to attend, then she spent the rest of the week redecorating the shop window and interior with items brought from her flat. She even reluctantly put some of her own clothes up for sale, so there would be enough stock for her to open the shop on Saturday. It was usually her busiest day, although Diana’s funeral was bound to affect trade.
On Thursday evening, Alex rang from London and urged her to come and see the flowers outside Kensington Palace. ‘It’s historic,’ he said. ‘Every day the sea of tributes is stretching further out from the back entrance and along two approach paths. The smell makes you reel.’
‘A good time to be a florist, then.’
‘Christ, yeah! I spoke to one in Victoria station who told me she’s had to order huge shipments from abroad because everyone arriving in London for the funeral is picking up a bouquet as they pass through.’
‘Have you talked to any of the Diana fans?’
He chuckled. ‘I’ve got the crew doing vox pops outside Kensington and Buckingham palaces. Nothing original. They all say she was a beautiful person, it’s shocking that the Queen hasn’t spoken to the nation yet, and they can’t understand why the flag isn’t flying at half-mast over the palace. And they keep repeating that they can’t believe it.’
‘Who would have predicted this reaction? I knew her face sold magazines, but this is unprecedented.’
Rachel felt incredibly sorry for Diana and the two boys who had lost their mother, but there was something about the avalanche of unleashed emotion that made her uncomfortable. It didn’t feel genuine. All the same, she agreed to join Alex on Friday evening. She could spend the day visiting charity shops in well-heeled areas like Hampstead, Kensington and Putney, where she had sometimes found bargains donated by wealthy locals. After that she’d meet Alex and pay her own respects to the woman whose last moments she had witnessed in the Alma Tunnel.