Welcome to the via Dianarosa, the trail of tears. Two hours of tender recollection, a hint of worship perhaps. Who knows? For who can resist the Original London Walks's description, loaded with mischievous ambiguity? "Diana, Princess of Wales. She Awrote poetry on our souls. And made us wonder. And then the heavens cracked open and claimed her." I turned up early, agog with wonder. I checked the heavens. The sky was (portentously?) royal blue with flecks of cloud. The sun looked booked to play all day.
Early arrivals included Jim, an ex-pat from Adelaide, Rose from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Mo from Macclesfield, who'd come down for the Princess's curtain call three years ago.
"When Elton sang in the abbey - England's Rose - oh!, I just cried," Mo remembered, while Rose recalled how she got wind of the crash from her neighbour, who phoned that morning gulping back tears. "Can you believe she's really dead?" said Jim. We paused. We pondered. We nodded. Queen of Hearts. By now the pilgrims, outside the Green Park Underground station, (south side exit, nudging the Ritz), our point of departure, were looking around for one of the brochure's promised guides. Would it be Desiree - "drop dead glamorous" - or Helena, the "young, Oxford-educated historian"? Jim had his fingers crossed for Desiree whose credits included time spent as a "model and cult film actress," and whose world overlapped Diana's. "Hi, my name's Desiree," said the svelte, overdressed ash-blonde in the long, loose raincoat, umbrella and baseball cap. She purred. She was from Virginia. Jim was melting.
We flocked, 40 of us now, in Desiree's wake, departing the Ritz, where Charles brought Diana on one of their earliest public engagements, along the pathway that edged Green Park, to stop outside the London home of the Earls of Spencer, where Diana presumably frolicked in the garden as a child. The house is august and grandly pillared, and currently rented by Jacob Rothschild. Across the park, on a winter's day when the trees are bare, from Buckingham Palace Queen Elizabeth II can enjoy unimpeded views of this Georgian pile of Portland stone, and treasure her memories of Diana.
Jacob Rothschild threw a party here a year after Diana's death, to celebrate Charles's 50th birthday. Camilla came too. Desiree reminds us that when they first met in their early 20s, Camilla had propositioned the prince with the fond reminder that her great-grandmother, Alice Kepple, had had a supporting role in the sex life of Edward VII. "How about it?" Camilla inquired. The rest is a tale of hearts and horses.
So, chasing the ghost of Diana's unrequited love, we scuttle off towards the palace itself to enjoy a replay of the balcony scene - Desiree's breathless recall of the post-nuptial royal snog. "I can't get into this caper," Charles muttered, hearing the crowd yell: "Give her a kiss!". But his brother Andrew cajoled him further. "Charles turned towards mother," Desiree confides, "and she gave just a nod. A royal command." The performance ensued to a roar of approval from below. For Diana, the writing was on the wall. Years later a picture of this scene appeared on billboards promoting the use of contraceptives, The slogan? - "Appearances can be deceptive." When Desiree utters the word "deceptive" she art-tic-u-lates it so clearly that you are dazzled by the perfection of her teeth. Her bite is sharp. It grows fiercer and sweeter the farther we travel, a point not lost on the largely Diana-devoted pilgrims.
Outside Clarence House, the Queen Mum's residence, Desiree waxes unamused when recalling Diana's introduction, prior to the wedding, to life with the royals. "When she arrived there was no one to greet her." Desiree pauses to let this snub assume full weight. The thought occurs that if only Diana had been a corgi - or a horse - the Queen Mother's presence and whiskey-stained smile would have come guaranteed. "But," Desiree continues, "when she finally went to her bedroom she found a note with an invitation to meet for lunch." It was from Camilla.
The scene is delicious. We picture Camilla leaning forward, sweetly enquiring if horses, polo, and killing foxes are Lady Di's thing - this to a woman who fell off a pony and shattered her arm at the age of eight, and formed an aversion to all things equine ever after. As Desiree tells it, the scene is poisoned with a current of swirling gothic malintent. Did Diana see through it? Her answer signals to Camilla that the affair with Charles is guaranteed safe passage if kept under wraps, in a world where horse-sweat is the perfume of the day.
Diana was rare in the eligibility stakes: an aristocrat, a protestant, and a virgin, aged 19, and English to boot. She became Charles's brood mare. Then things turned sour. For queen, the unthinkable came to pass. . .
And so we arrive at St James's Palace, where the unthinkable - the divorce - was at last stitched up in the prince's office on February 28th, 1996, described by Diana as "the saddest day of my life". It was here, in this palace, her corpse lay in state, in September 1997. Desiree paints that week as a tragedy-of-errors. The queen arranging to have Diana brought to a mortuary for commoners on Fulham Road, not wanting Charles to fly to Paris. Charles, defiant on both counts, insists the princess be given her due. The queen provides six books of condolence - the total number signed by the nation on the death of George VI. (In the end 2000 were required). At Crathie that Sunday, at Royal worship, Diana's death goes unremarked. "Most likely the only church in Britain where this would have happened," Desiree says. "Young Harry was puzzled. He asked his father if he was certain that Mummy was dead."
"It's hard to picture her dead," says Mo, as we veer away towards Piccadilly, reaching at last the flower-bedecked portal of Annabel's night club in Berkeley Square where Di and Fergie attempted to gate-crash Prince Andrew's stag "do". They'd picked the wrong club, but stayed on to booze, and were duly snapped by the papparazi.
By way of a couple of royal jewellers shops, and a bookshop by royal appointment, we arrive on the grass at Hyde Park, across the road from Mohammed Al Fayed's flat, 60 Park Lane. "And here, the people came to mourn her," Desiree says, and she gestures expansively towards the lawns, recalling the day the funeral lit the world with sorrow (this stuff is getting to me now). A silence ensues. Desiree smiles. Then comes applause. The sound of poetry writ on our souls? I remove my shoes and rub my feet.