BRITAIN:One of Princess Diana's friends cast new doubt on the suggestion that she was about to marry her companion Dodi al-Fayed at her inquest in London yesterday when she told the jury that in their last telephone conversation a week before the Paris crash that killed them, Diana had said: "I need marriage like a rash on my face."
Lady Annabel Goldsmith, widow of Sir James Goldsmith, reiterated the claims of Rosa Monckton, another of Diana's friends, that she was still getting over the ending of her relationship with the heart surgeon Hasnat Khan when she went on holiday with al-Fayed in August 1997.
Following last week's disclosure of two affectionate letters between Diana and Dodi, as well as part of her earlier correspondence with the Duke of Edinburgh, Goldsmith told the inquest at the high court that the princess often wrote in extravagant terms.
"She would write to me: 'My darling Annabel' . . . she was always very - well, effusive is the word."
Goldsmith added that their last telephone conversation had taken place just over a week before the crash, and that she had quizzed the princess about photographs in the press showing her close to
al-Fayed.
"I said to her laughingly, "You are not doing anything silly are you?'
"I meant, you are not doing anything silly like rushing off and eloping or getting married, and she said: 'Annabel, I need marriage like a rash on my
face', which was a very Diana-ish expression . . . and those were the last words I
ever spoke to her."