Princess Diana told one of her closest friends just days before she was killed with her lover Dodi al-Fayed that she needed marriage "like a rash on my face," an inquest into their deaths was told.
Lady Annabel Goldsmith, 73, said she would never forget those striking words because it was one of the last things Diana ever said to her before being killed in a high-speed Paris car crash in August 1997. Because Diana's relationship with Dodi had been splashed all over the newspapers, Goldsmith asked her laughingly: "You are not doing anything silly are you... You are not doing anything silly like rushing off and eloping or getting married?"
According to Goldsmith Diana replied: "Annabel, I need marriage like a rash on my face."
But Diana did say "she was having the most wonderful time and that she had never been so spoilt," Goldsmith said. Asked about the quip about the rash, Goldsmith replied: "I took it to mean that she was not serious about marriage to Dodi. "She might have been having a wonderful time with him - I'm sure she was - but I thought that her remark that she needed marriage like a rash meant, you know, that she was not serious about it."
Dodi's father Mohamed al-Fayed, owner of the Harrods luxury store in London, says Diana and his son were killed by British security services on the orders of Philip, Queen Elizabeth's husband and father of Diana's ex-husband, Prince Charles.
Fayed alleges the killing was ordered because the royal family did not want the mother of the future king having a child with his son. He says Diana's body was embalmed to cover up evidence she was expecting a baby.
The inquest was told that French police investigating the crash never once suggested that their deaths were anything but a tragic accident.
Retired Detective Chief Superintendent Jeff Rees, the liaison officer between Paris police probing the deaths and Scotland Yard police headquarters in London, said he kept posing that question every time he met French detectives. He said the answer he got every time "was always an unequivocal 'No'."
The inquest, expected to last up to six months, was opened after major British and French police investigations.
They both concluded Diana and Dodi died because their chauffeur, Henri Paul, was drunk and driving too fast.