The royals - Kitty Kelley [261]
Dressed in a black dress, hat, and gloves, and carrying a big black purse, she appeared with Prince Philip and moved haltingly among the crowds gathered outside of St. James’s Palace. She maintained a certain distance from people in the lines but, despite her discomfort with small talk, those nearby seemed to appreciate her effort.
Obviously affected by his former wife’s death, Prince Charles had flown to Paris with her two sisters to bring Diana’s body home. Charles looked forlorn at the London airport as he stood next to her coffin, which had been regally draped with the royal family’s standard. An honor guard of the Royal Air Force hoisted the box and carried it into the chapel at St. James’s Palace, the Prince’s private residence in London. Charles left immediately to return to Balmoral to be with his sons, William, fifteen, and twelve-year-old Harry.
Diana’s brother, the Earl Spencer, read an impassioned statement from his home in Capetown, South Africa, and accused the press of killing his sister. He said editors who fed off her image were bounty hunters with blood on their hands.
“I always believed that the press would kill her in the end,” he said, “but not even I could imagine that they would take such a direct hand in the death, as seems to be the case.”
No public reaction came from Diana’s mother, Frances Shand Kydd, who lived alone in Scotland. Sadly, she and Diana had not been speaking. Their fragile relationship had fallen apart months before when Mrs. Shand Kydd, sixty-one years old, gave an interview to Hello! magazine. She had talked about Diana’s childhood, her eating disorders, and her relationship with Prince Charles. Although she criticized both the Prince and Princess of Wales for their television confessionals, Diana’s mother would not take her daughter’s side in the breakup of her marriage. Nor would she speak out against the Prince of Wales. In fact, she seemed oddly pleased that Diana had been stripped of her royal title in the divorce, saying that liberation from the exalted status was “absolutely wonderful.”
Diana complained to a friend that she felt betrayed by her mother and expressed “complete shock” to another friend, Richard Kay, the Daily Mail reporter, about the private details revealed. Diana also told him she was “bitterly disappointed and let down” by Hello! magazine, which had not given her advance notice about the story. She said she felt she had a special relationship with the publication since 1994, after it bought—but never published—topless photos of her in Spain. But after the interview with her mother, Diana banned Hello! photographers from covering her next charity appearance. The Daily Mail capsulized her reaction to Hello!’s how-do-you-do with this front-page headline on May 28, 1997: “DIANA FURY AT MOTHER’S STORY.”
Several weeks later, the Princess again talked to Richard Kay. This time she confided her disgust with the Duchess of York, and on August 2, 1997, the Daily Mail dutifully ran a full-page feature: “THE REAL REASON WHY DIANA REFUSES TO TALK TO FERGIE.” The off-and-on friendship between the two women had finally foundered when Fergie claimed in her autobiography that she had contracted foot warts after borrowing a pair of Diana’s shoes.
“But there is much more than this tasteless revelation behind Diana’s animosity,” said the newspaper. “Sadly, it has spread to Diana’s children, especially fifteen-year-old Prince William.” Apparently, the young man felt increasingly