Diana, William, and Harry by James Patterson

Author:James Patterson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2022-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 95

July 1, 2007

London

Hello, Wembley!” Harry greets the 63,300 fans who’ve turned out at the glass-and-steel stadium for the July 1 Concert for Diana, in addition to the five hundred million people in 140 countries potentially watching on live television.

“If it goes wrong,” he’s told the BBC, “it’ll be very nerve-racking.”

A standing ovation shakes the preshow jitters off the “ginger Bob Geldof,” as William calls his brother, after the organizer of the July 1985 Live Aid concert.

That show was held at the old Wembley Stadium, where their mother talked and laughed backstage with George Michael and Elton John—who’s tonight’s opening act. The Concert for Diana is held in the new Wembley Stadium, built on the site of the original, which Prince William officially opened a few months earlier in his role as Football Association president.

William says of today’s show, “This event is about all that our mother loved in life, her music, her dancing, her charities and her family and friends.”

The crowd cheers, ensuring that the next six hours of music by Diana’s favorites, from Rod Stewart to Duran Duran, will fulfill the princes’ wish to give her “the best birthday present she ever had.”

Today, she would have been forty-six.

A luminous portrait of Diana by Mario Testino is projected onto a jumbo screen rising from the stage. It’s almost as if she can hear her friend Elton John singing the lyrics to “Your Song.” My gift is my song, and this one’s for you.

Between the pop performances, the English National Ballet dances a scene from Swan Lake, and Josh Groban leads a medley of Andrew Lloyd Webber show tunes.

Wearing a white three-piece suit with a black tie and backed by a full choir dressed in black, Sean “Diddy” Combs opens his performance with remembrances of Diana. “So beautiful. So graceful. So compassionate. So royal. An incredible mother.”

Between verses of “I’ll Be Missing You,” with its samples of “Every Breath You Take” by the Police, he pauses to address the boxed seats where the princes are sitting.

“Prince William, Prince Harry. We love you. We respect you.”

The brothers clap and dance, cheering along with the audience as Combs says what everyone is feeling. “We miss you. Our princess.”

Harry has his girlfriend, Chelsy Davy, on one side, and his brother, William, on the other. Kate Middleton is also there, two rows back. She and William quietly reconciled around a month ago but are keeping it from the media. Or trying to, at least—the Sun photographer Arthur Edwards, sitting in the royal box with his wife as a guest of the princes, spots William and Kate tucked away in a corner, deep in conversation. “Looks like it’s on again,” his wife says of the couple’s romance.

As the twenty-four performances draw to a close, William is called back onstage.

“Thank you to all of you who have come here tonight to celebrate our mother’s life,” he tells the audience. “For us this has been the most perfect way to remember her, and this is how she would want to be remembered.

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