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but permanently, it appeared to Diana, standing between herself and her husband, was the cause of endless fights and her ever-worsening bulimia. The illness sapped her strength and confidence, and she was barely able to speak to other members of the family, but amazingly no one but Charles even seemed to notice. More amazing still, from Diana’s point of view, was that she found herself just as much in love with her prince as at the outset.
    The public had never doubted it. They believed wholeheartedly in the fairy-tale aspect of the romance and marriage, exactly as it had been presented in the press, and their demand for fresh information about the new Princess of Wales was unprecedented. Bewildered newspaper editors, faced with the daily call for more pictures and stories, were starting to accept that Dianamania was here to stay.
    All that was required to make reality match the public illusion and turn the marriage into a brilliant success was an injection of romance from Charles, and a frank admission from him that Camilla had been dumped for good. Tragically for them both, and for a nation of well-wishers, Charles was emotionally too miserly to make the effort. Diana had to make do with his hurtful indifference and his heartbreaking but categorical refusal to end his relationship with Camilla.
    The princess’s private secretary, Patrick Jephson, was later to conclude that her approach to love had been conditioned by long-suppressed traumas in her early life. They had permanently damaged her ability to give or receive love. Suicidal because of her desperate need for help, confused by the contrast between Charles’s callous insensitivity and the public’s deification of her, an extremely unhappy Diana flew to London early in October to seek professional counseling. The doctors and psychologists who were called to examine her at Buckingham Palace diagnosed various tranquilizers to stabilize her condition. Diana refused to take any of them. She did not need drugs, she told them. She needed time alone with her husband to work things out, and she needed regular affection. The doctors insisted but Diana refused.
    It was an impasse only broken when the princess discovered she was pregnant. Long before his birth she had something to thank William for, she would remark years later. With her condition confirmed, there was no question of her taking drugs, Diana told the doctors triumphantly. They might harm her unborn baby—possibly their future king.
    Being pregnant produced an immediate surge of hope and optimism in the princess, who truly believed it would provide the elusive catalyst which would inject the missing spark into her marriage. But, as on most other occasions when she hoped her marriage would take a turn for the better, she was to be bitterly disappointed.
    Having survived the honeymoon and the temper tantrums of the woman he now compared to an alien being, Charles was also in need of a reassuring cuddle and the unrestrained and undemanding affection of someone who loved him unreservedly. Only one woman could fulfil these needs for Charles: Camilla Parker Bowles.
    Thus, on November 2, 1981, three days before the world learned that his wife was expecting their first child, Charles was back in the arms of his mistress, with whom he had secretly arranged a rendezvous during the meet of the Vale of the White Horse Hunt near Cirencester. It was never a real contest: Camilla’s voluptuous curves versus Diana’s skeletal form; the passionate, sexually arousing grown-up woman versus the bashfully uncertain, naive, sexually unskilled ingénue. After four months in denial, Charles was again in the secure embrace of his one great love—and he determined never to be separated from her again.
    Diana did not discover that Charles had renewed his adulterous relationship with Camilla for another eight months, after the birth of Prince William in June 1982, but she seemed to know, instinctively, that he was being unfaithful, and