There is no doubt either that the p

There is no doubt either that the press really preferred the Princess Di of the past. In Angola, Christina Lamb talked to the "royal hacks" in the bar of Luanda's Hotel Presidente and heard them "wistfully recalling previous jaunts to Klosters and Barbuda, and longing for the Diana of old who went to balls and banquets and wore Versace instead of flak jackets." They found that Diana again only a few months later, when Al Fayed's yacht docked in Porto Cervo, in Sardinia, and Diana and Dodi went shopping. Diana came back to the Jonikal with armfuls of cashmere sweaters, because Dodi had bought her every color they had. She told Rosa Monckton she found his conspicuous consumption embarrassing, but that did not prevent her from making herself demeaningly complicit. Her mother became frantic at being unable to communicate her deep feelings of unease at the pictures appearing at home. Frances made repeated calls to the Queen Mother's page, William Tallon, a favorite of Diana's, begging him to try to talk her daughter into breaking her silence when she got back. Tallon had no success. Frances told an old family friend at this time, "I cannot see the sun shining on my daughter's head again."

The murder of the flamboyant fashion star Gianni Versace in South Beach, Florida, on July 15, while Diana was on Al Fayed's yacht, was a meteor shower in the exploding sky of her final summer. Versace had bridged the gap between fashion and celebrity, just as Diana had bridged the gap between royalty and celebrity. Versace had turned hooker style into high fashion, adopted by movie stars and rock icons in the 80s and 90s. Even a princess could feel exciting in his clothes. He had sent Diana trunkloads of his slinky gowns for nights when she wanted to make a splash. "He was killed," wrote La Repubblica, "like a prince laid low in his own blood, with one hand outstretched toward his oil paintings, his tapestries, his gold." Diana at first assumed that the killing (which turned out to be the work of a gay psychopath) was a terrorist assassination. Dodi's bodyguard Lee Sansum found her on the deck of the Jonikal very early the next morning gazing sadly out to sea. "Do you think they'll do that to me?" she asked him. She made up with Elton John at Versace's funeral in Milan, sitting beside him and Sting and patting Elton's hand comfortingly.