Al-Fayed was then in the power position and sat next to the Queen in the royal box and they presented the prizes to the winners together. The clear and undisguised message from the Palace was that this could no longer happen. Not now Diana was being photographed in the South of France cavorting with Al-Fayed’s son. However, Prince Edward took great care to emphasise that the Diana issue had nothing to do with it, instead saying it was the other matters involving Al-Fayed at the time that might cause the royal family embarrassment. In particular, the ‘cash for questions’ scandal, in which he claimed to have paid various MPs to ask questions in Parliament on his behalf, even though they did not declare the income, was a cause for concern.

Diana fell into Dodi’s arms after a dialogue was opened through the English National Ballet, of which she was patron, and Al-Fayed finally met the princess and befriended her. She liked him – or so she told me. She found his naughty sense of humour and Anglo-Saxon terminology amusing. She had been undecided as to where she would take her boys for their summer holidays when he suggested she avail herself of his St Tropez villa, with its secluded beach and state-of-the-art security. The rest just fell into Dodi’s hands from there.

That all ended on the night of the accident. There was now no chance of an Al-Fayed–royal family link – so much so that instructions were sent to the morgue in London’s Townmead Road that the two bodies were not to lie side by side when they were brought back from France for the coroner to examine. Dodi’s body arrived first, having been transported by helicopter to Battersea heliport. While the body was examined, officials, police and Al-Fayed’s team waited around nervously. There had been a directive issued to the police that the bodies were not even to be in the mortuary at the same time, so there was huge pressure on the coroner to complete Dodi’s post mortem before Diana’s body arrived. Finally, the hearse carrying Dodi turned slowly out of the gates of the mortuary just as the hearse with Diana turned in.

On that Sunday morning after church, Charles had flown to Paris aboard an aircraft of the Queen’s flight, accompanied by Diana’s sisters, Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes, Sir Robert’s wife, and his press secretary Sandy Henney. Charles had ruled that it would be better if the princes did not accompany him on this mournful mission, and they remained at Balmoral in the care of the Queen and Prince Philip. They also had the company of their favourite cousin Peter Phillips, their father’s old nanny Mabel Anderson, who was also staying at the castle, and Tiggy Legge-Bourke, Prince Charles’s child helper that Diana so disliked.