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Basement Files: Di Another Day

In his tell-all book A Royal Duty, butler Paul Burrell reveals a host of steamy secrets about the life of Princess Diana. But perhaps no revelation has been more shocking than Burrell's claim that Diana foresaw her own early and tragic death by car accident in a letter she gave him for safekeeping. Here for he first time, the entire contents of Princess Diana's letter.

Dear Paul,

I'm asking that you keep this letter safe among your private belongings, its contents safe in the vault of your trusted heart. I apologize in advance for all the skullduggery, but I simply don't know where else to turn. Over the past few weeks, I've been visited by recurring dreams so troubling, so premonitory, I thought it best to entrust them to paper, to you, and to posterity.

Were these nightmares less real in their feeling, less dire in the warning, I can assure you'd I'd never relate them to another soul. In fact, maybe I shouldn't. I wish more people understood how poorly dreams translate in the retelling. Is anything more horrid than sitting down to lunch with a trusted friend only to be told that she's endured a lurid nightmare which must be immediately and exhaustively recounted? Please, I want to scream, if we are ever to be friends again, do not make me sit through the Byzantine twists and turns of a dream that, however horrifying to you, will bore me to absolute death.

Instead I nod agreeably, aware that such trials are the small tollbooths on the motorway of friendship. But before she's described the first hint of troubled sleep, my eyes have glazed with indifference. "I'm riding in a vintage Jaguar," she'll say. "An XK120, I think. At the wheel is a giant lizard, though one rather deft at heel-toe double clutching. He's vile to behold, slimy and scaly, with large teeth that hint at sudden and violent appetites. But the strange thing is, the lizard is my brother Colin. And yet it's not. Do you know what I mean?"

And then they always stop and look at me so earnestly, as if I'm supposed to gasp and bring trembling fingers to my lips, sealing them against the leak of terror from my soul. But it's all so absurd. Look, I want to say to them, no matter what happens in the next five to seven minutes between you and this lizard, it's never going to frighten me. Ever. Do you understand? I don't doubt that it woke you in terror, that it had you turning on lights, radios and TVs to chase the horrid images from your mind...but none of that will translate in the retelling. None of it.

How is it people don't understand this? Why do these persist in recounting their dreams? Nightmares affect us because they're private screenings in the dark theatre of our mind. And since I can't gain admittance to the same theatre, there's no point giving me a light-of-the-day matinee retelling. This is a film that doesn't prosper by word of mouth. You're urging your friends to sit through a completely different movie and then wondering why they're not similarly affected? Why? Because you're nowhere near the projectionist your neurons are. Simple as that.

So don't keep pausing during the story and searching my features for stunned expressions. You'll find none. Don't ask me what it could all possibly mean, as I have neither insight nor interest. And don't make me puzzle through the monstrous out-of-sequence bits. "Wait, I'm getting this wrong. The lizard had already killed my mother before we got to the midget party. I think. Yes, he had, because his tuxedo was soaked in blood while we waltzed. Or was that later?"

Well, again, I don't know, because your subconscious had the manners and good sense to keep this all private. And I'm begging you to follow its lead. Look, you've sat through stories of your friends' nightmares and found your mind wandering toward shopping lists, old lovers and suicide. You know how dull and leaden they can be. Didn't you vow at such moments never to bore another as you've been bored?

Of course you didn't, because you think yourself incapable of boring another. You think you have better taste, better dreams and better narrative skills than those of your friends. This absurd pride of ownership takes over and you assume your nightmares will be fascinating in the same way that other people's children are ill behaved, but yours are adorably free-spirited. Well, you're wrong. On all counts.

And recounting these dreams is really just a perverse form of bragging. Oh, look how vivid is my imagination, how dark my psyche. Do you not marvel at my ability to carry on with such pitiless torment roiling my soul? No, I don't marvel. In fact, I can barely contain my impulse to reach across this table and slap your earnest face. This is the exact same way I feel when I call you and you insist I talk to your 3-year-old. Neither the charm nor the horror ever translates, and both should be done entertained briefly, if at all.

Having said that, I'd be a fool to now relate the details of my own dream. It's enough to say that at dream's end, I'm riding in a miniature car, one in which I'd never normally fit. With me are 10 or 12 clowns. There's a horrid wreck with shattered glass and twisted metal. One clown slumps forward, his face depressing the horn in constant blare. Worse, the steering column in turn depresses the horn in the clown's nose and these dual klaxons of horror escort me toward eternity. I know, it's all quite stupid, but it frightens me.

Love,

Diana