Prince Harry reveals heartbreaking moment he was told about Diana’s death and says he pretended she was ‘hiding’
PRINCE Harry says he and brother Prince William were given locks of their mum’s hair after her death.
In his autobiography Spare, he also recalls the moment he was told his mum, Princess Diana, had died in a car accident in Paris in 1997.
Harry reveals how his father Charles sat on the edge of his bed.
He says Charles said: “Darling boy, Mummy’s been in a car crash.
“There were complications. Mummy was quite badly injured and taken to hospital, darling boy.
“He always called me “darling boy,” but he was saying it quite a lot now. His voice was soft. He was in shock, it seemed.”
He continues: “With a head injury. They tried, darling boy. I’m afraid she didn’t make it.”
Harry also revealed that Charles “didn’t hug” him, but put his hand on his knee and said “It’s going to be OK”.
Harry, then just 12, also speaks candidly of his struggles to come to terms with his mother’s death, believing she was just “hiding”.
He writes of how that day — Sunday, August 31 — they went to Crathie Kirk church in Balmoral.
On their return people had gathered on the streets and Harry and the family stepped out. He says he “reached for my father’s hand, for comfort” at that moment.
Harry goes on to detail the torment that went on inside his head as he grappled with the fact that his mum had gone.
He says how he thought she may have “staged an accident as a diversion and run away”, describing it as a “ruse, so she can make a clean start”.
Harry writes: “At this very moment she’s undoubtedly renting an apartment in Paris, or arranging fresh flowers in her secretly purchased log cabin somewhere way up high in the Swiss Alps.
“Soon, soon, she’ll send for me and Willy. It’s all so obvious! Why didn’t I see it before? Mummy isn’t dead! She’s hiding!”
He describes the days after her death when he and William were “kept from the TV” and with “no one saying anything”
He added: “If anyone talked about anything, I didn’t hear them.
“The only voice I heard was the one droning in my head, arguing with itself: She’s gone. No, she’s hiding. She’s dead. No, she’s playing dead.”
‘SHE’S HIDING’
Harry said even when his Aunt Sarah gave him “proof” that she was dead by giving him a lock of his mum’s hair — he still thought it couldn’t be true.
He writes of how the brothers were presented with two tiny blue boxes and asked to open them and see what was inside. Unsure what it was, Harry said his aunt told him it was Diana’s hair.
“Aunt Sarah explained that, while in Paris, she’d clipped two locks from Mummy’s head,” Harry writes.
“So there it was. Proof. She’s really gone.
“But then immediately came the reassuring doubt, the lifesaving uncertainty: No, this could be anybody’s hair.
“Mummy, her beautiful blonde hair intact, was out there somewhere.
“I’d know if she weren’t. My body would know. My heart would know. And neither knows any such thing. Both were just as full of love for her as ever.”
Elsewhere, Harry details how days after his mother’s death they had to greet crowds paying their respects to his mum outside Kensington Palace.
And he tells of how despite feeling devastated, he could not cry.
Writing about the walkabout, he says: “Why were all these people crying when I wasn’t — and hadn’t?
“I wanted to cry, and I’d tried to, because Mummy’s life had been so sad that she’d felt the need to disappear, to invent this massive charade. But I couldn’t squeeze out one drop.
“Maybe I’d learned too well, absorbed too deeply, the ethos of the family, that crying wasn’t an option — ever.”
Harry also claims that he and William were dissuaded from jointly asking for an investigation into Diana’s death to be reopened.
He wrote: “Especially the summary conclusion, that our mother’s driver was drunk and, as a result, that was the only cause of the accident. It was simplistic and absurd. Even if the man had been drinking, even if he had been drunk, he wouldn’t have had any problem driving through such a short tunnel.
“Unless paparazzi were following him and dazzled him. Why had those paparazzi got off lightly? Why weren’t they in prison? Who had sent them? And why weren’t those people in jail either?
“What other reason could there be apart from corruption and cover-ups being the order of the day?
“We agreed on all those questions, and also what we should do next. We would issue a statement, asking jointly for the investigation to be reopened.
“We might call a press conference. Those who decided dissuaded us.”