FIVE
DODI'S PSYCHIATRIST TELLS ALL

Those of us who met Diana can vouch for it, and the rest of us know it's true: She brought magic into all our lives and we loved her for it. She'll always be what she wanted to be—the Queen of our Hearts.

—Diana, Queen of Our Hearts
News of the World
Special Souvenir Photo Album,
September 1997

"IT WAS THEN," Major Nye told Trixi Brunner, "that I realised a lifetime ambition and bought myself a good quality telescope with the object of fulfilling those two fundamental human needs—to spy on my neighbours and to look at the stars. But Simla seems a long time ago. I often wonder why they resented us so. After all, they didn't have a nation until we made them one. It was either us or some native Bismark. Much better we should get the blame."

"I believe they used to call that paternalism." Trixi could not help liking this sweet old soldier.

"Quite right," Major Nye squared his jaw approvingly.

His nasty locks bouncing, Mo swung round on the swivel gunseat. "Can I ask you a personal question?"

Trixi adopted that open and agreeable expression which had become so fashionable just before the outbreak of armed hostilities. "Of course," she said brightly.

"How much time do you spend actually making up?"

"Not that long." She smiled as if she took a joke against her. "It gets easier with practice."

"But about how long?"

"Why do you ask?"

"It would take me hours."

"Hardly half-an-hour." She softened.

"What about retouches?"

"I really don't know. Say another half-hour or so."

"What about clothes? I mean, you're always very nicely turned out."

"You mean getting dressed?"

"And deciding what to wear and everything. Say you change two or three times a day."

"Well, it's not that long. You get used to it."

"An hour? Two hours?"

"Some days I hardly get out of my shirt and jeans."

"How long is a break in St Tropez?"

"What do you mean? For me? A couple of weeks at a stretch at best."

"And how much time a day do you spend working for others?"

Trixi frowned. "What do you mean 'others'?"

"Well, you know, lepers and all that."

"That's hardly work," said Trixie. "But it does involve turning up and posing."

Major Nye patted her gentle shoulder. "The public is very generous in its approval of the rich," he said.

"It's the poor they can't stand," said Mo. "What I want to know is how many big-eyed children will starve to death just because Kim the Stump got all the photo-opportunities? Why isn't there more fucking anger? There's only so much charity to go round!"

"And nothing like enough justice." Major Nye turned his chair towards the car's tiny microwave. "Anyone fancy a cup of tea?"

He peered through one of the observation slits. A gentle mist was rolling over the picturesque ruins of Highgate. Marx's monument had sustained some ironic shelling. You could see all the way across the cemetery to Tufnell Park and beyond it to Camden, Somers Town, Soho and the Thames. It was a quiet morning. The gunfire was distant, lazy.

"Do you think it's safe to lower our armour?"

SIX
Now You Belong To Heaven

Then, amazingly, the masses who had prayed and sung the hymns, wept deeply as the service floated over London, began to applaud... Once the hearse had passed, each and every one of us went home alone.

Leslie Thomas,
News of the World,
7th September 1977

SOMETHING IN JERRY was reviving. He flipped through the latest auto catalogues. He felt a twitch where his genitals might be.

Rover Revenges, Jaguar Snarlers, Austin Attackers, Morris Wolverines, Hillman Hunters and Riley Reliants all sported the latest tasty fashions in firepower. Their rounded carapaces and tapering guns gave them the appearance of mobile phones crossed with surgical instruments. They were loaded with features. They were being exported everywhere. It made you proud to be British again. This was, after all, what you did best.

But the politics of fashion was once again giving way to the politics of precedent. Jerry felt his stomach turn over. Was there any easy way of getting out of the past?