Was Diana going to marry? It is a question as intriguing and
contradictory as the lady herself.
Dodi’s father contended that his son had proposed and that he had sent three cases of champagne to Kensington Palace as a toast to the bride to be. He also ardently believed that she was pregnant, a claim emphatically denied by the official coroner Dr John Burton. ‘I have seen inside her womb. I know she wasn’t pregnant.’
Others, including her butler Paul Burrell, are equally dismissive. Her friend Lana Marks claims that Diana telephoned to say Dodi would soon be history, a ‘past chapter’ of her life.
Another friend Gulu Lalvani said he joked with her about saving up for a wedding present only to be told by Diana that while she was having a lot of fun, no marriage was planned.
Other friends were concerned that she may have been making the wrong choice. Her former boyfriend Teddy Forstmann called her on the Fayed boat and asked her ‘what the hell she was playing at.’
The princess placated him by saying that the romance was simply a summer fling.
Think back now to the last images of her departing through the revolving door of the Ritz hotel late on a sultry August night in 1997. Those bodyguards, drivers and others who had seen her at close quarters over the years could gauge her mood from her body language.
She was agitated, anxious and on the verge of tears. It had been a long day and she was tired. She was keen to return to England to meet up with the other men in her life, William and Harry.
Her great friend Lucia Flecha de Lima agrees with the professional assessment. ‘That footage says it all. She looks cross and fed up.‘
A woman in love? Whatever love means. As they say…..
