The royals - Kitty Kelley [244]
During her protracted divorce negotiations, Fergie had been accused by the Palace of “insane extravagance” for running up expenses of $3 million. Details of her expenditures—$6,500 for twenty pairs of shoes and $85,000 for twelve dresses—were leaked to the press. After they were published, the Palace announced that the Queen would not pay the Duchess’s bills. A spokesman said, “She lives beyond her means—and ours.”
Fergie admitted she was “paranoid” about the courtiers. She started carrying a shredder with her wherever she traveled. And she stopped keeping a diary because she was afraid someone might expose her private life. “Andrew used to write me wonderful letters from the ship, but I haven’t kept them,” she told her friend David Frost, the television interviewer. “I did for a bit, in the bank, but then I thought the bank would be robbed.”
Diana, who also used shredders for mail and scramblers on her telephones, subscribed to Fergie’s conspiracy theory. She, too, distrusted the courtiers, including her brother-in-law, and believed they were trying to destabilize her. “They think we were crazy to start with,” she joked to Fergie, “but we didn’t get crazy until we married into this family….”
During their marital separation, both young women consulted psychiatrists, and both were put on antidepressants. Straining under the restrictions of being royal wives, both had taken lovers, who betrayed them for money. Now emotionally fragile and frightened about their future, the two women turned to their astrologers, numerologists, and spiritualists for help. But many of these celebrity-by-association gurus also sold them out. After Diana learned her beautician, her palmist, and her zone therapist were writing books, she stopped seeing them and told friends she could not rely on anyone around her. “She’s alone, and she’s so lonely,” said fifty-three-year-old Lucia Flecha de Lima, who had become close to Diana after her 1991 tour of Brazil. “She doesn’t know whom she can trust.”
Fergie hired lawyers to stop publication of books by her former chef, her former psychic, and her former lover’s business partner. But she was unable to prevent her former butler from selling his recollections of her and John Bryan splashing in the tub together. “Their lovemaking in the bath was always very noisy,” the butler said. “Fergie would squeal her head off.”
The Duchess and the Princess later joined forces to fend off the press. No longer members of the royal family or receiving public money, they fought for their privacy. They filed a criminal complaint and sought an injunction against photographers who trespassed on private property in the French Riviera to take pictures of them on vacation. They hired lawyers to notify Britain’s Press Complaints Commission that they would not tolerate further invasions of their privacy, and Diana obtained an injunction against a freelance paparazzo she claimed was stalking her. She filed an affidavit with the court, saying: “He seems to know my every move. I shall suffer undue psychological pressure and become ill.”
Feeling betrayed by everyone around them, both women kept track of insults in the press and made lists of reporters who could be trusted—short lists. They phoned each other when negative stories appeared and discussed what to do. Fergie usually chose the direct approach and called the offending writer.
“She rang me from London,” said New York Post columnist Cindy Adams, “to bitch about my saying she’d been late for people her last visit.”
In that case, the phone call was effective. On her next trip to New York City, the Duchess invited Cindy Adams to tea, and the columnist was elated. She told her readers: “I adored… Her Skinny Highness.”
Still, the list of trustworthy reporters was shrinking. Diana, who had once complimented the Daily Mail’s Lynda Lee-Potter for her perceptive feature stories, dismissed her as a hack when she said the Princess was addicted to praise.
“She’s off the list,” said Diana. She also scratched Chrissy Iley of the Manchester Evening