I had known her since she was a bump. Her mother had been one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen and my first love. Now here she was, Diana's daughter, poised and elegant sitting opposite me in an expensive London bistro.
I met Diana when we were both just eighteen. Her parents moved to the small seaside town where I grew up and she joined my school at the start of the Autumn term. She was achingly beautiful and all the boys were awed by her. I was raised by a house full of women. My mother, grandmother, four sisters, dad and me. Six beautiful women in one house. So I was quite blasé about the female form by that age and that's what gave me an edge over my tall, handsome classmates.
I introduced myself to Diana on day-one and invited her to the school dance the following week. Quite how I managed to seduce the most desirable girl in the school is still a mystery. It certainly didn't make me any friends. But within a few weeks we were inseparable.
We shared our virginity with each other one sunny summer afternoon. It wasn't a great success but we were so in love that it hardly mattered. Both sets of parents must have known about it almost straight away but even if they weren't entirely happy about it they didn't make a fuss.
The next year and a half passed in a blissful haze. We made love constantly and still found enough time to study and pass our A levels with good enough grades to ensure we'd get the University places we wanted.
Unfortunately we would not be studying together, she was a gifted musician and writer. She would be studying at Leeds -- one of the premium music academies at that time. I would be going up to Cambridge to study physics.
We parted at the start of the autumn term with great sadness. It felt like I couldn't live a day without her. But of course I did. I plunged into my university course and lost myself in a world of mathematics and physics.
When we met on the first day of the Christmas break we could barely keep our hands off each other. We spent the absolute minimum time saying hello to our families then leaped into bed. She was rough and demanding. I had bruises and had lost some some skin when we finally took a break for tea. We shagged almost non-stop for four weeks. Our families were mostly tolerant and a bit amused -- apart from my younger sisters who were completely outraged of course.
As the end of the holiday approached she became withdrawn and sulky. Her love-making was as passionate as ever but her temper was short. She was no longer the lovely, sunny optimist of the previous summer. She talked about giving up her course and moving to Cambridge but I talked her out of it. I thought she'd never forgive me if she lost her dream to follow me. On our last day she was fierce and desperate as we made love. Afterwards she sat in my lap and cried and cried.
We met at the start of the Easter break. I knew immediately that something was very wrong. We made love that evening in my bed. She seemed almost not there. Afterwards we slept. When I awoke she was absent. I sat up. She was curled up on my easy-chair watching me. She was closed up tight, seemingly holding herself in. I knew then that somehow I had lost her.
"What's wrong my love?" She started to cry silently. Trembling as she struggled for self control.
"I've betrayed you!"
"You've been experimenting?" I suddenly realised that she'd been having sex with other men. That was why she'd changed. I felt very hurt and desperate at that point but I had to keep her. "I can understand if you needed a bit of relief but It needn't matter to us if we don't let it."
"I've fallen in love with someone else. I can't be with you anymore."
It seemed my world had ended. We talked for an hour and I knew for sure that I couldn't win her back. She was feeling very guilty and would never allow me to forgive her.
We tried to keep the worst of it from our parents. We had brought them together and they had become close friends. So I knew that Diana would always be present in my world and that I would have to accept her with her new man.
I saw her at the start of the long summer break. He was with her. He was older than her and had finished his degree. He had a position with a college in the US to teach music. She had quit her course to be with him. She was also pregnant. They married in a register office so that she could get a long-stay visa. No guests -- not even her mother. Then she was gone.
They were in the states for five months. But it "didn't work out" for him. So they were soon back in the UK, homeless and jobless. She took a job in a florist and he became a minor banker. She was just a shadow of the confident, radiant beauty that I'd kissed goodbye and sent off to University, full of hope, not much more than a year before.
Her daughter Catherine was born in December, she was as beautiful and sweet as her mother.
Over the next few years I saw a lot of them at family events. She and I became friends again and even quite close. But the passion had died in America. Her husband and I were never more than wary rivals. He knew what I had been to Diana and he was resentful and bitter. I never said anything to him about my love-affaire with Diana. That was private and I didn't want to share a moment of my memories with him.
He was suspicious of my motives and daily expected me to reclaim Diana for myself. I think I could have had I tried but I knew that, however that came out, Diana would be hurt. So I never tried -- I loved her.
The great joy was that I really got to know Kate. She had inherited her mother's intellect and humour to go with her stunning beauty. She was sharp and sassy in conversation. We had epic pun matches that left the rest of her family groaning in pain. I treated her as an adult while her father treated her like a doll and everybody else treated her as child. Diana looked on. She seemed pleased that I was close to Kate and never intervened no matter how vehement our debates became.
So it went for ten years. Diana at twenty eight looked weary and worn-out. Her husband treated her badly. Not violent but very spiteful. He'd started fucking around three years after they married and made little attempt to hide the fact.
Diana was sad and lonely when she was nudged into the path of a speeding car by a careless rollerblader. It took her two days to regain consciousness and two weeks to die. Her husband visited her in hospital once; while she was still unconscious.
Kate and I were with her when she died. We held her hand and cried together for a while. Afterwards I took Kate to her grandmother's. Her father was there. He got very abusive and told me never to see his daughter again. When I left, she was crying in Diana's mother's arms. I suspected that I'd never see her again. I didn't go to Diana's funeral.
Now here she was, buying me lunch.
I'd had an email from her inviting me to lunch at one of my favourite restaurants. Despite her father's disapproval she had come to visit me regularly since her mother died. She'd been living with my mother since her father pissed back off to the states the year after. Every few months she'd spend a few days at my London flat and 'do the sites' etc.. I'd pick her up from the station and take her home with me. Then I'd take her to lunch and put her on the train home. She'd had her own room in my London flat for years.
What made this visit unusual is that she'd initiated it herself. In the past she'd got my mother to make the arrangements.
This time was also unusual because it was only a few weeks since I'd last seen her at her 18th birthday party. She'd emailed me and made the invitation to meet her in the bistro for lunch -- very mysterious. As a late birthday present I'd had a spare key cut for the flat. I handed it over at the start of lunch and told her that, now she was an adult, she could come and go as she pleased.
She gave a little squeal and plastered herself against me in a big hug. The kiss on the lips that she gave me was not so chaste as I thought it should be and I broke away quickly so that she wouldn't notice the effect that she was having on me.
Over lunch the conversation was about her university application. Although she was herself an accomplished musician, she'd resolved to follow me into physics and she'd applied to my old college. I thought she stood an excellent chance of a place.
She was happy, relaxed and vivacious. She was so like her mother that my heart ached. I experienced a horrible rush of loss and loneliness such as I hadn't experienced since Diana's death. She saw it in my face and held my hand across the table while I fought back unexpected tears.
She spoke my name -- she'd dropped the 'uncle' the day her mother died.
"Alan -- I know this will hurt you but I need to talk with you about mother." I gulped. "My life is moving in new directions and there are things I need to do before I leave home."
