Untold Story

by Monica Ali

  15 February 1998

  I spend my time by the window. Or I go out for a walk. The phrase I always have in mind is “to clear my head.” Some hope.

  I have been trying to weigh the reasons. Which one tops the list? I shift them around and around. She needed to go. What is the point of sifting and ordering the reasons? What difference does it make?

  Will I reach a point of clarity if I write it all down? That’s what I used to suggest to my students when they were floundering. Writing sharpens the argument. Any weaknesses in your thesis will emerge.

  The trouble is that not all of her reasons were sound.

  She believed “they” were “out to get her.” In her mind, the evidence had mounted steadily since the death of that unfortunate chap, the protection officer who was removed from his duties after their relationship was discovered. He died in a motorcycle accident. Or “accident.” She could never speak of it without making the sign for inverted commas in the air. That’s how far “they” would go. How ruthless “they” could be. Who, exactly, “they” were wasn’t always clear to me. Nor to her, I suspect. Though sometimes she did point the finger directly at her father-in-law. Never at her mother-in-law, I noted, who either by her role or her bearing remained uniquely above suspicion.

  Was it pure paranoia when she had KP swept for bugs (I had to recommend a firm), or felt along the wheel arches of her car to check for a tracking device? I’m minded to think not entirely. I too felt that the release of that taped phone conversation with a lover was a setup, aimed at balancing, so to speak, the books, when her husband was similarly embarrassed. Her thoughts went first to the children on that occasion, as they always did. But they were too young then (ten and eight, I think) to be aware, still shielded then by youth.

  I advised her emphatically against giving up royal protection, though I knew how headstrong she is and that her mind was already made up. She couldn’t stand the feeling that they were “keeping tabs” on her. She wanted to be free. And she had convinced herself that the powers that be wanted her dead. It was an assertion she came to make in my presence with alarming frequency. She spoke of it to other confidants too and it was reported—as confidants do not always live up to their name. It has been grist to the conspiracy theorists’ mill.

  “Lawrence, don’t you see?” she said to me calmly one day, when we had been walking in the KP garden and had taken a seat in a clematis-laden arbor. “I’ve always been an inconvenience to them. I won’t go quietly, and it drives them crazy. They think I should lie down and die.”

  I averred that they had certainly underestimated her. (It was always difficult not to get caught up in her worldview while in conversation—I too spoke of “they” and “them.”)

  “It’s worse than that.” She picked a purple-starred blossom and pulled its petals off. “I won’t oblige them so they are going to have it arranged. I’ll be driving somewhere and my brakes will fail. Something that looks totally innocent. When it happens, you won’t believe it, will you?”

  I was rather at a loss that first time. I think I opened and closed my mouth while failing to emit a single word. She thought that terribly amusing. “What’s the matter?” she said. “Can’t you say something? Let’s hear some of your dictionary talk.”

  16 February 1998

  I wonder if she believes it still? At the extraordinary distance she has traveled, can she see how absurd it was?

  It was not the best of reasons for plotting her escape. Even as I write that, it throws up an issue instantly. She may have been delusional, but to feel that one’s life is in constant danger is a horrible way to live. Not that she is a physical coward, quite the opposite, but the desire to remove oneself from a deadly threat, real or imagined, is totally understandable. Moreover, and more importantly, she was convinced that the boys were going to lose her, one way or another. If she didn’t go through with our plan, “they” would have her assassinated.

  There were reasons that were real enough.

  Press exposure and public scrutiny—I hardly know where to begin. She had lived with it for such a long time, why not carry on indefinitely? Perhaps that question is built on the premise that one eventually becomes immune to these things. I wonder if anyone does. We rather assume it when we see the magazines and newspapers full of personal comments on the starlets of the day. It’s the price of fame, we say to ourselves, and loose change at that.

  This is my only “insider” knowledge: she never took it in her stride. After the announcement of the end of her marriage (the formal separation, I mean) the hounds of hell were unleashed. “Put your fucking head up and act like a princess,” a photographer screamed at her. He couldn’t get the shot he wanted because she had her face turned to the ground. She cried on the telephone. The paparazzi started saying vile things to her in order to get her to cry. The shot would be more valuable if she had tears in her eyes. Or if she flew at them in a rage. Just rise above it, I used to advise her. As if she could act like a robot, as if she were not entitled to the ordinary human emotions.

  I was with Gail one Saturday morning (shortly before we split up) and we stopped off at the newsagent’s to buy a newspaper to read in the café over breakfast. When I turned around from the counter after paying for the Times, Gail was reading the front page of a tabloid. “So mean,” she said, shaking her head. She opened the paper to have a look at the inside photo spread. “I don’t know.” More head shaking while she perused the text. She closed up the paper and handed it to me, thinking perhaps that I would want to purchase it. I put it back on the stand. I couldn’t help reading the headline over once again: PRINCESS LUMPY LEGS.

  They’d got a shot of her running from her gym to her car in a pair of Lycra shorts. It was her daily routine: a short drive from KP to the public gym, an early morning workout sandwiched between two quick games of cat and mouse with photographers, going in and coming out. Cellulite was alleged. I knew the call would be coming, and come it did. I took it outside on the pavement and watched Gail through the plate-glass window, sipping her cappuccino.

  Did it hurt? Of course it did. The pettiness didn’t make it any easier. “Even for that,” she said, “they come after me.”

  When I was working for her, I used to think that if only she had a proper public relations staff, these things would never happen. We’d be able to protect her. Turn her into Marlene Dietrich, a royal version of an old-fashioned movie star. Envelop her in mystique and ice-cool iconography. Control the agenda and set the tone.

  But we don’t live in that kind of world any longer. And she isn’t that kind of woman. Dietrich’s bisexuality remained secret for the greater part of her life. Lydia, as I must get used to calling her, when she wasn’t having her secrets exposed, got busy exposing them herself.

  That impulse grew and grew. Not all of it was bad. She spoke about her bulimia in a way that was truly courageous. My admiration scaled new heights. Every time, however, she revealed herself emotionally, she upped the ante. She turned herself into “fair game.”

  Nothing was out-of-bounds. And Lydia fed the monster that came close to destroying her. At first she thought that she could tame it, train it, make it roll over and beg. It was apparent that was not so. Yet she was compelled to feed it more and more. Certainly, she liked to see photographs of herself in the newspapers. She looked at them all, more or less every day, and it was to her chagrin when she did not appear. Certainly, she played tactically when she could, using or creating a photo opportunity to curry favor with the public, or to steal the limelight from her ex-husband. A junkie might shoot up an extra dose to get through a difficult occasion but that does not, I’m afraid, make him any less of an addict.

  It frightened her. “There’s only one way for it to stop,” she said. “As long as I’m here, it will just go on and on.”

  17 February 1998

  Lydia, Lydia, Lydia.

  There—like a lovesick teenager.

  I am merely acclimating myself to her new name. It
will trip more easily off the tongue when I see her for what I have no doubt will be the final time.

  I am a little too tired to write today.

  18 February 1998

  My headache was blinding earlier today, but I seem to have recovered this afternoon. I use the term recovered somewhat loosely, of course.

  She won’t stay in North Carolina. I don’t know where she’ll go next, but I gave her some suggestions and, more importantly, emphasized the places from which she should stay away. Old haunts, basically. The Hamptons, Martha’s Vineyard, New York. I am quite convinced that no one would recognize her, but if she saw one of her friends that would be unfortunate for her.

  I developed a cover story for her to use with her neighbors. It had the beauty of simplicity. She had divorced recently from an American man (I forget where I suggested she say they had lived, but somewhere far enough away not to invite questioning), and wished to enjoy some solitude and countryside before moving back to England. As a couple they had driven through this part of the state once and she’d been struck by how pretty it was.

  Lydia said, “Oh God, you do make me sound dull.”

  I replied that she was free to embellish as she saw fit.

  “I’m going to do exactly what you tell me to do,” she said.

  I said that would be a first, and she smiled.

  19 February 1998

  Dr. Patel asked me about her this morning. “Tell me something about your former employer,” she said.

  I wasn’t sure to whom she was referring, so I gave her a quizzical look. At least I attempted it. I have noticed in the mirror recently whilst brushing my teeth that I am unable to raise my eyebrows. I don’t know why that should upset me but it does.

  “Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Wales.” Dr. Patel is a great one for formalities. She insists on addressing me as Dr. Standing and I have given up encouraging her to use my Christian name.

  I said that the HRH title had been stripped away after the divorce. Dr. Patel received the news as a personal blow.

  As far as I’m aware, I have never mentioned this part of my curriculum vitae to my tumor doctor. I asked her how she knew.

  “I see your brain scans,” she said. “It’s all up there. All your history.”

  I laughed and laughed. Quite disproportionately, but she seemed pleased. Why, Dr. Patel, I said, I do believe you have made a joke.

  “Was she a good mother? Or was it all posed for the cameras?”

  It wasn’t faked, I said.

  Dr. Patel nodded. She accepted me as an authority on the subject. Then she reverted to business and suggested I start thinking about either a live-in carer or a hospice for the final days.

  Do I have to start thinking now? I asked.

  “Not now,” she said, “but soon.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Grabowski knocked on the car window, and the kid, who was reading a newspaper spread over the steering wheel, startled before rolling it down.

  “On a stakeout?” said Grabowski. He gestured to the back of the station wagon, the camera bags on the backseat, the ladder poking out of the trunk.

  “John Grabowski?” said the kid. He wore a white T-shirt with a cartoon bunny and a slogan—HIP-HOP IS DEAD. It was tight enough for Grabber to see the outline of his nipple ring.

  The car was parked outside the bed-and-breakfast when Grabowski walked back after lunch at the bakery. He wondered if the kid had gone inside and scared Mrs. Jackson with his piercing, and what he had said to her.

  “I take it Tinny sent you.”

  “No,” said the kid, getting out of the car. “Told me where you were. But he didn’t send me. I wanted to meet you—the legendary Grabber Grabowski.” He held out his hand.

  Grabowski ignored it and looked up the street. He didn’t like the idea of being seen with this kid who had paparazzi written all over him, although around here they wouldn’t know a pap if he bit their noses off. Still, it made him uncomfortable.

  “Let’s go,” said Grabber. “We’ll take your car.” Best get the car shifted, because there was one person (maybe) who’d know just what she was looking at if she walked by.

  “There’s a bar over in Gains that you’ll like,” said Grabber, going around to the passenger side.

  He didn’t know any bar in Gains but they’d find something. Then he’d find out what was going on. He had an idea already, put it together pretty much the instant he saw the car.

  Tinny had called him again. “What’s up, Grabber? What’s holding you? I’m telling you, man, I’ve got more work than I can handle. You know what’s going on around here?”

  He reeled off a list. An actress back in rehab, a pop princess shaving her hair, the heiress to a hotel chain booked for driving while under the influence and about to be sent to jail.

  “This year, listen to me, man, 2007 is going down in history. It’s the year of girls going wild. You coming down to get a piece of the action, or what?”

  Grabber said he was on his way.

  “That’s what you said last time.” Tinny paused. “What are you doing? What’s got you by the balls in—where’d you say?—Kensington?”

  Grabber had spun him a line, but Tinny smelled something. That’s why Grabber had found this rat boy staking out the B and B.

  The kid was wasting his time. Grabber, most likely, was wasting his time. Over the last few days he’d thought about nothing but Lydia. He’d followed her home from work. He’d followed her when she went into town on Wednesday at lunchtime, and down the street where she bought sandwiches, and then to the clothing store. What did he have so far? Same height, same build, same swing in her step. When she was leaving the kennels, she called out to the old gray-haired lady, and her voice was not the way he remembered it. Not so different, but not the exact same way. Her laugh, though, sent a shiver down his spine. Sometimes you had to think with your spine in this job.

  They were in Gains now and he had to look out for a bar. “Take a right,” he said. “I think it’s down here.”

  There was that guy who was obsessed with Jackie Onassis. She had an injunction taken out against him, and he wasn’t allowed within fifty feet of her. He kept on taking her photo. Every day he’d turn up at her apartment building. He ended up back in court. He still couldn’t stop. The guy was nuts. But Grabber knew how he felt.

  “There it is,” he said. “You park. I’ll line up the beers.”

  The kid jangled into the bar and pulled up a stool. The way he walked, loose-limbed, like his bones didn’t join together, got on Grabber’s nerves.

  “What d’you want to know?” said Grabber.

  The kid grinned. “Like, I don’t know. Wanted to meet you. Hear the stories—how you got some of those, like, really famous pictures.”

  It was bullshit. No wonder Tinny wanted him in LA. This kid couldn’t grease his own arse with an entire pack of butter.

  “Yeah,” said Grabowski. “Which ones?”

  “You got the ones of her pregnant in a bikini, right?”

  “Listen, Bozo,” said Grabber.

  “It’s Hud, actually.”

  “Listen, Hud, I didn’t take those shots. That wasn’t me.” It riled him, but this kid didn’t have a clue. He’d grown up in an age when actresses posed naked with swollen bellies on the covers of magazines. He couldn’t imagine the stink those pictures had caused. Grabber had been on the island. He could have taken the shots but he hadn’t. He did have some principles.

  “Right,” said the kid. He scratched uneasily at his nipple ring.

  “Let’s cut the crap. Tinny sent you, didn’t he?”

  Rat boy chewed it over. “Yeah,” he said. “Tinny says you wouldn’t be here unless there was something going down. You got a scoop on something, is what he says.”

  Grabowski took a pull on his bottle. “And he told you about those pictures. Did you even know who she was?”

  Hud shrugged. “Just about.”

  “Well, Tinny’s memory is obv
iously cracked. But stick around. LA’s got nothing on Kensington.”

  “Really?” said the kid, leaning forward. He had long dark eyelashes like a cow’s. His tongue showed when he talked. Grabber resisted the urge to tweak that nipple ring right off.

  “Yeah, really. Might look like Hicksville but I’ll tell you what’s going on.”

  “We can work as a team,” said the kid.

  “As long as it goes no further,” said Grabber. “Don’t even tell Tinny. We don’t want word getting out.”

  “I swear.”

  “Know the place I’m staying?”

  “The bed-and-breakfast?”

  “You’re smart. Madonna is in the next room.”

  The kid twitched. But it wasn’t enough to get him going. Madonna, he’d have snapped her plenty of times.

  Grabowski looked down the bar as if to check he wasn’t being overheard. “She’s there, and guess who she’s banging.”

  “Who?”

  “Swear on your mother’s life.”

  “I swear. You’re not going to regret this, I promise you.”

  “We’re a team now,” said Grabowski. “You’re not going to let me down.”

  “Damn it, we’re a goddamn team.”

  “I’m trusting you,” said Grabowski, putting his lips up close to the kid’s ear. “She’s banging Hugh Hefner.” He let that sink in. “Hugh Hefner, Santa Claus, and the seven fucking dwarves, in the Kensington bed-and-breakfast. Don’t tell anyone.”

  There was a long pause while rat boy decided how to take being treated like the jerk that he was. Then he laughed. “Shit,” he said. “I told Tinny. I told Tinny this was dumb. I drove all this fucking way. I got straight in the car and fucking drove. Only stopped when I had to piss.”

  Grabowski decided he was being too hard on the lad. He was only Tinny’s foot soldier, after all.

  They had another beer and then another one, and Grabowski, in spite of himself, found that he was glad of the company. He’d spent too long on his own. Maybe that was why he was chasing ghosts all over town.

  They talked cameras and lenses. The kid wanted to know what he used. Canon, always, for everything from 35 to 500 millimeters, Canon power drives, Quantum Turbo battery, Nikon flashgun. The kid said he used a PalmPilot sometimes. The targets never even knew they’d been snapped. He thought he’d invented photographic subterfuge.