She would sometimes disappear for a whole day to Khan's apartment, where she contentedly vacuumed, did the dishes, and ironed his shirts. On the night of her birthday, she reportedly went out to meet Khan wearing her best sapphire-and-diamond earrings, a fur coat, and, underneath, nothing. Paul Burrell helped run the affair behind the scenes. If there was a lovers' quarrel, he would deliver a message to a pub where Khan hung out, near the hospital. Diana was practiced at keeping things secret. The press rarely found out about the men she was seeing if she didn't want them to.
She made trips to Pakistan whenever she could to bone up on Hasnat's heritage. Her new best friend was Jemima Khan, the beautiful 22-year-old daughter of Annabel and Jimmy Goldsmith. At the time Jemima was married to the Pakistani cricket legend Imran Khan. The two women would sit up talking late into the night about how to handle marriage to a traditional-minded Muslim. Diana asked Burrell to talk to a priest about the possibility of a secret marriage to Hasnat. The butler had a meeting with Father Tony Parsons at the Roman Catholic Carmelite Church, on Kensington Church Street, where Burrell's son was an altar boy. The priest told him it was impossible to marry a couple without notifying the authorities—let alone without notifying the fiancé, as it turned out. Hasnat Khan was aghast when he learned of Burrell's consultation and said to Diana, "Do you honestly think you can just bring a priest here and get married?"
In February 1996, Diana went to Pakistan with Annabel Goldsmith and her niece, Cosima Somerset, to visit Jemima and Imran in Lahore. The ostensible purpose of the visit was to raise funds for the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital, founded by Imran in memory of his mother, who had died from the disease. But the real purpose was to flood the zone with images that would wow Hasnat's family.
Diana's desire to impress Khan gave her new purpose. He was a serious man for whom she wanted to do serious things. She was looking for a cause that would passionately involve her, something in which her presence could produce a transformative result, as it had done in the mid-80s with aids. "She felt very strongly about getting involved with something that wasn't a ballet charity," said a friend. Mike Whitlam, then director general of the British Red Cross, had the answer. The Red Cross was among the charities Diana had dropped right after the divorce, but Whitlam understood her value and her temperament. He had seen how effective she was in ladling out soup to children in the Zimbabwe bush, but he had also taken note of why her participation on a special advisory committee of the International Red Cross in 1994 had failed. According to royal reporter Andrew Morton, Diana couldn't cope with long, detail-oriented briefings on the Rwandan refugee problem. In committee meetings she had the attention span of a fruit fly. The Red Cross was in the network of global organizations campaigning for a ban on the use of land mines, their clearance, and help for their victims. Whitlam began sending Diana photographs and reports about the devastating effects of mines that had been left uncleared after wars. He saw this as the right cause for Diana at the right time.