Letters to a Princess (11 page)

Turns out the new family had to move suddenly and their new house didn’t have a yard big enough for a dog. The woman had turned up on Tatania’s doorstep with Jock (even though she’d agreed to take him) and literally dumped him. Poor Jock the Boomerang.

‘Can you love a dog too much?’ Tatania wrote, as if I’d know the answer. I know about the other side, of loving too little. She was a bit frightened to advertise for a new owner in case a nutter or someone cruel responded.

I wasn’t missing hospital but I was missing Tatania. I loved it that she thought I could help solve her Jock problem, that she trusted my judgment. Come to think of it, I loved the idea that I could help anyone with any problem at all!

I was worried about going back to school but the fake interview was old news and kids were talking to me again. Naturally enough, there were a few bully girls who had a go at me, hissing ‘anorexic’ or ‘skeletor’ at me as I passed by. But man, did Zoë have a go at anyone she heard teasing me! And Selma and Saji were fierce in their defence of me, too. They all made me feel stronger.

Then in English a couple of girls asked me for help with their Journalism assignment and that made me feel really good. Up to that moment at school I’d thought I was only interesting by association, as an appendage to Zoë. But these girls didn’t have much to say to Zoë, yet they had heaps to talk to me about.

Zoë, in the meantime, was becoming more of a star. Even some of the teachers (not Miss Pate) made good-natured jokes about the whole interview affair.
Plus there was the admiring group of boys at the bus stop every day.

‘Why
are
you my friend Zoë?’ I couldn’t help asking her one afternoon as our bus approached and her admirers dispersed.

‘Because you’re such a dag,’ she said, throwing her arm around my shoulders and grinning at me.

Maybe that was the truth, I thought, as the bus trundled towards Bondi Beach. I’m the fall guy, sidekick, servant girl, page girl, weirdo, loser! Actually, maybe that wasn’t true. I guess I had to have something going for me if I was important to Zoë, I reasoned, remembering Tatania’s advice. She was always telling me to focus more on the positive.

Maybe life was really beginning to look up. Not only were the kids at school talking to me again, but I got asked out on a date! Seb Johnson invited me to go to the End of Year dance with him! The dance was the hot topic at school, no matter what class you were in. Who was asking whom? Who was wearing what? I’d never been to a school dance. No-one had ever asked me and I hadn’t had the guts to ask anyone. Even though lots of girls go by themselves, I couldn’t face the idea of being the loner among the happy couples. I’d always been scared that compared to everyone else I’d look—hang on, I’d promised not to say the words
fat
or
ugly
about myself ever again. But let’s say I knew I wouldn’t be a star so it had always been easier not to go. Then out of the blue Seb invited me. I wondered if Zoë had put him up to it because he’d only ever
said hello to me before. But she swore she had absolutely nothing to do with it and she was so serious I had to believe her.

This is how it happened. We were at the bus stop and Zoë was surrounded by the usual group of boys. Seb came and stood beside me. He seemed really shy and nervous but he just came right out with it.

‘Di, I’m going to the dance and wondered if you’d like to …? He spoke so softly and everyone around us was talking loudly so at first I thought I hadn’t heard right.

‘… wondered if you’d like to come with me. That is if you aren’t already going with …’

‘Oh no, Seb, I mean yes that’d be great. I mean … yes.’ I felt myself blushing right up to the roots of my hair.

He flashed what seemed to be a relieved smile at me and then he didn’t say another word. I couldn’t stop grinning when we got on the bus and Zoë guessed what was up straightaway.

Now I had only two weeks to think about a dress and shoes and my hair and my face and my figure. It did sort of put me off my food again, but not because I was unhappy. I actually felt happy and kind of light, as Tatania had said I might. But I knew I had to keep eating to stay on track.

Dear Princess Diana,

I know you have a new boyfriend whose name is not Hammond. He’s a millionaire’s son called Dodi. Babs told me and now I’ve collected some pictures of you two together.
Dodi is a great name and it’s good news for you. According to Babs you’ll find true happiness at last (although Martin had something to say about you and Dodi being of different faiths). You do look really happy in all the photos I’ve seen of you recently. Even Martin thinks so.

Maybe our lives are paralleling in a way. Not that I have a boyfriend exactly. But I’ve been dying to tell you the good news about the school dance that I’m going to—with a date! His name is Seb Johnson. I feel all over the place as I write this just remembering how amazed I was when he asked me. And how cute he is and how I thought a few times that maybe he liked me, but then I couldn’t imagine anyone liking me. Not really.

Babs is helping me find a dress and Graham’s given me some money towards it. (I don’t want to wear Zoë’s dress that I had for the wedding—no way!)

I love your new hairstyle and I’m asking the hairdresser to copy it! I’m getting lots of blonde streaks too. Do you mind? Hmm, as if you’d give a damn. I’m not exactly direct competition for you on the social scenes of London, Paris or New York, now am I?

I’d like to, but there’s no point in me even trying to copy your clothes. The whole fashion world follows you, I know, but it’s a bit beyond my savings and Graham’s generosity.

It must be funny knowing that anything you wear—from a choker to a brooch—will become an immediate craze. I love that lizard brooch I spotted you wearing in those fabulous Vanity Fair photos. Guess what Zoë did when I told her?—she found a diamante lizard brooch for me at the Paddington markets! Even though it’s missing a few stones, it’s the cutest thing and I’m wearing it to the dance, of course.

Anyway, I hope you’re as happy as you look. As I’ve said before, you deserve to be!

Your happy friend,

Diana Moore

PS. You might be interested in the latest Jock Bulletin. In the end it was Martin who solved the problem for Tatania, and not by suggesting she read the Bible either! Martin told me that the police use German shepherds either on patrol or at the airport as sniffer dogs and that they might be interested in Jock. So I convinced Tatania to call her local police station and a young officer went round to see Jock. Tatania was worried that Jock’d be too docile and miss his chance, but the officer said they liked good-natured dogs.

Jock behaved perfectly, growling and rolling over at the right times. He’s a bit of a show dog, really. Anyway, the officer loved him so Jock’s gone off to train as a police dog!

‘Who’d have thought Jaok would end up in the police force?’ I said, after I’d told Babs and Martin about Jock’s farewell. I was trying to praise Martin but all he said was, ‘The Lord works in mysterious ways,’ as if Jesus himself had given Martin the idea about the police!

Anyway, it’s a good ending and makes me wonder if life isn’t on the up and up, as Babs would say. I hope it is for you, too!

A week before the dance I went to Paddington markets in search of a bracelet to match the brooch Zoë had given me. When I got home I could hear Marcus on the phone. I tried to make it down the hall without some snide comment from him. No such luck.

‘Her pin-up’s carked it!’ he yelled down the phone to his mate. ‘Yeah, it just came on the news. Oh you know, do you? Well hang on, I’m just telling Ugly Di here. Hey you, your pin-up, that Princess Di chick, well she’s dead.’

‘You bloody liar,’ I flashed at him, treading carefully—he could swing a mean punch no trouble. But I could hear the TV and the radio blaring and it confirmed the worst.
Princess of Wales … heart massage for two hours … died in a Paris hospital … car crash … pursued by …

My heart was beating in a weird new rhythm, like when they told me about Mum. And my stomach was churning in that oh-so-familiar way, the same as when
I try to eat with no appetite. I thought I was going to throw up.

I leaned against the door of my room and I looked right into the eyes of Princess Diana. She stared out at me from all the posters on my wall. I felt like screaming, screaming, screaming but instead I put my hand across my mouth so Marcus wouldn’t have the satisfaction of hearing me, and I just stood there. But not for long.

‘You were in shock, sweetie,’ Babs said when I told her how the room had begun to swing around me and how I had to slide down onto the floor and let the sobs come out.

Graham had tried to be kind but managed to get it all wrong as usual. ‘It’s a pity, she was such a good-looking woman, that one! But it’s not like you
know
her or anything. Not really.’ Nice one, Graham.

Babs, on the other hand, always manages to say the
right
thing. ‘Some girls go crazy for film stars at your age, darl. But for you there was only one star—apart from your mum—and that was her, the English princess. So for you it
is
like you’ve lost a close friend.’ And she hugged me and patted me just the way she had when Mum died.

It was true. I felt as if I had a special affinity with Princess Di. Of course I had crushes on film stars and random guys on the bus home, but I never felt for any of them what I felt for her. Princess Diana was my idol! She was extraordinary and yet ordinary. Her beauty was one thing but it was the everyday things that made me like her so much—how modern she was; how she had a real connection with people; how she played with
her kids in public like no other royal person had ever done; how she wasn’t afraid to let people see that she was unhappy sometimes.

‘A star has burned out,’ Babs said in that dramatic way of hers. ‘We’re going to miss her and all those fabulous frocks, Di!’

‘She walks in the footsteps of Jesus,’ Martin had commented. For once I agreed with him because it was comforting to think that Diana might be with someone loving and be somewhere calm. At least that!

At school, Zoë and I hugged each other and cried just the way we did when a friend of ours had died in a swimming accident last year. We didn’t talk about anything else that first day. Even my Maths teacher, who’s a pretty tough nut, admitted she was upset. In every lesson, every teacher said something.

‘My dad said she’s a twentieth-century icon, whatever that means,’ we heard someone say in the playground. Another girl, who was drying her eyes, said, ‘But I just want her to be here. I want to see her playing with her kids. I want her to be alive again!’ I knew what she meant, but the longing I felt seemed even bigger than that because it was mixed up in the longing I had for Mum. Samantha Harris, the bitchiest girl in my year, couldn’t help making a snide remark to me. ‘You must feel pretty bad about that Zeigler stuff now, huh?’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, you know—it probably caused trouble and pressure with Dodi if it made the papers over there, which it probably did.’

‘Not!
’ Zoë answered emphatically. She turned away, grabbing my arm.

‘Nobody else would buy that remark, she’s such a bitch!’ Zoë whispered furiously. ‘As if we’re to blame for Princess Diana’s death!’

At home I made sure I didn’t say a word to Marcus. He seemed to be having a great time as more and more news came through. He kept butting into my room to tell me another detail he’d heard. He wanted to gloat over my misery and I had no way of locking him out.

‘They say the driver had a high alcohol reading. They say that the driver had flashlights go off in his face. They say she was conscious when they took her out of the car. She’s a global phenomenon now!’ (As if she wasn’t already, nerd, I wanted to say.) But I was too choked up. ‘Get the hell out of here!’ I screamed instead, and made a mental note to ask Martin to put the biggest, fattest bolt on my door as soon as he could.

I combed through all the media myself over the next few days. I think I was trying to find some sense in Diana’s death. There was none and the headlines made me sick. The press were trying madly to direct the guilt somewhere, anywhere. The first targets were the paparazzi. Then it was the royal family, especially the Queen. Headlines blazed about the family’s lack of compassion—well, that was how it looked until they flew the flag for her and went to look at all the tributes to Diana outside Buckingham Palace. There were masses and masses of flowers and letters. Then the press started blaming the driver. They even had a go at the public who the press said contributed to the Di frenzy by
buying their papers and magazines. Talk about shifting blame!

Zoë was outraged. ‘The press treated her with a total lack of feeling,’ she raged. ‘They were the ones pursuing her, gloating over any slip-up she made. Well, there’s been a tragic slip-up all right! And plenty of press.’

I suddenly thought about Hammond Zeigler and what he’d think of Diana’s death. Who knows, maybe the universe stirred in some peculiar way just then? But more about that later.

Finally, it was Saturday night and I was going out with Seb Johnson. But it was also the night of Diana’s funeral. ‘Life goes on, Di,’ Zoë said, although she admitted to feeling flat and a little bit tacky about going to the dance.

‘But let’s try to have a really good time at the dance anyway. I’m taping the TV broadcast of her funeral service. We can watch it at my place and have a good cry on Sunday.’

I wasn’t sure about going to Zoë’s place, as I hadn’t seen her mother since that awful interview at school. I didn’t know if Bee would even want me in their house. But in the end I agreed. Graham had said he’d record the funeral for me but I couldn’t think of anything worse than having to watch it with him and Marcus. Still, if Bee threw me out, at least I knew I could see it at home.

‘Oh, Di, who in the hell will ever be able to wear designer clothes the way she did? We’ll just have to
work towards it I guess …’ It was Zoë on the phone again. ‘Now, you’re coming to the dance aren’t you?’