Marion, an 11-year-old Belgian girl the Princess befriended just weeks before that fatal car crash, shares her personal recollections of Diana with Hello! It was April 1997 when Marion, the daughter of a local golf course worker, met Diana on the island of Barbuda.
One morning, while the Princess was playing tennis, the little girl walked past the court and picked up one of her stray balls. “When I said, ‘Hello, Princess Diana,’ she immediately said, ‘Oh no, I’m on holiday. I don’t want you to call me Princess, just call me Diana!” With this chance encounter, the little girl struck a friendship with the princess. In the two weeks and three days that followed, Marion was rarely separated from Diana and sons William and Harry.
