Strange Meeting, Part 3

Diana: The Secret Years
by Simone Simmons

(Page 3 of 3)

About that first meeting late in 1993. I remember the Princess's formal suit, her huge Chanel handbag, her wide smile and her insistence that I address her as 'Diana'. I also remember feeling that about three great truckloads of negative emotional waste were extracted that afternoon while we talked and I analysed her aura.

Some time later I was shocked to see on her traces of the scratches and scabs of recent self-mutilation. I thought I detected rakings from the evenly spaced tines of a fork in the patterns of scraping, but whatever the instrument used, all the marks would have been concealed by everyday clothes.

The public had been led to suppose that Diana's tendency to attack herself had ceased years ago. In this the public had been misled, however. A deep build-up of residual pain resulting from the end of her doomed affair with Captain James Hewitt in the early 1990s, coupled with a desperately unsuccessful attempt to form a relationship with someone else shortly afterwards, had left Diana as damaged as ever. She had recently been trying to wound herself in a misguided attempt to win the love and sympathy of a man she felt was neglecting and rejecting her.

Already emotionally weakened by the death of her father, Earl Spencer, in 1992, Diana bore the physical and emotional scars of a fragile heart broken twice in recent succession, as well as her greatest pain - the anguish brought on by the death throes of a marriage which, even as late as 1994, she still hoped could be saved.

Obviously, at our first meeting, I could only observe the Princess and silently draw some conclusions which were themselves worrying enough, even though she wasn't then marked by self-laceration. When I saw the scabs and scratches soon afterwards I still felt that I did not yet know her well enough to pass any comment; indeed, it was to be some time before I could be quite open with her. Even the surprising informality of our early meetings was unnerving. Diana enabled me to overcome most of my shyness almost at once, although despite her friendly manner I could sense, as well as see, how troubled she was.

From the start I could feel the depth and force of her tensions. I suppose I must have released some of them because at one point she smiled and said I had 'otherworldly' eyes. I could only mumble back something about how extraordinary her own eyes were. I was there to make a start - things were unlikely, I reminded myself, to be mended, let alone perfected, all at once. And yet what began as a consultation shifted over the next few years as Diana and I became close.

The remarkable thing about Diana, even during that first meeting, was that she was so receptive to ideas that other people might have dismissed. Some time later, presumably having felt that some emotional toxins had been drawn away from her body, she asked me if I could do the same for buildings, and suggested that I might clear some of the 'ghosts' of Kensington Palace one day. I wasn't ready for that yet, and neither, actually, was she. Thus, my first visit to the palace that was her home only took place after we had established the beginnings of a deep trust. She laughed in disbelief, however, when I asked for her address as we made this arrangement, and said I must have been the only person in the world who didn't know where she lived.

When my father died in 1996, for months I was too upset to work much at all. One of the people who helped me in my grief was Diana. She herself had a raw and recent memory of the death of a beloved father, in the same year in which she and Prince Charles had separated. Nor did the fact that her relationship with her father had often been stormy stem the force of her grief. Often, in fact, things are worse for the child when a parent dies before old wounds and misunderstandings have been resolved and laid to rest, buried at the funeral. In 1996, however, the tables were turned, for then it was Diana who supported me, hugged me as we wept together. No matter where she was, there was no time, night or day, at which she would not be willing to talk to me on the telephone and help if she could. She had a healer's instincts - I know this now.

There were times when I had to ask Diana 'Who's the healer here?' because I would talk to her about troubles in my own life that I seldom discussed with anyone else. She could be very supportive and took a real interest in my fears and worries, as she did in my family. I had, for instance, something of a weight problem when I first met her. I had put on weight when a serious relationship collapsed two years before I met Diana, and I was having trouble in shedding it. I could talk to her about this, and found her constructively sympathetic, observing that so great had been the emotional pain generated by the collapse of my relationship that I was holding on to my weight both in self-protection and in physical proof that my relationship had once been solid and demonstrably real. She described my weight as armour, simultaneously protecting me from further injury and repelling men so that the chance of another potentially hurtful relationship became remote. By coincidence, perhaps, I was soon able to take control of this physical problem of mine and little by little have lost much of the excess weight.

By then our relationship had altered slightly, for we had become friends and she had learned to trust me when she needed advice. I offered everything I could with all my heart, and I can never forget that it was Diana - in all her patience and generosity - who helped me to pick up my own crazy fragments, to live again and work again. For this gift of support and strength alone I will always remember her with the deepest affection, gratitude and respect.

Diana wasn't perfect. Like all humans she was paradoxical, capricious, dif cult at times, troubled, mercurial and inconsistent, as well as loyal, brave and affectionate. Recognition and acceptance of her complexities does not diminish her. I take it as a compliment that she exposed all her sides to me - as her true friend.

© 1998 by Simone Simmons.

About the Author

Simone Simmons was born in 1955 and has always lived in London where she still resides with her three cats. She works from home as an energy healer. She has also worked voluntarily for a cancer unit and shared Diana's interest in the land-mine cause, visiting Bosnia with a friend from the Red Cross.