Ali’s unhappy princess is desperate to extract herself from the media circus. We are not told exactly why, apart from her sense that she has become increasingly dangerous to her children. When her desperation becomes overwhelming — all too evident in episodes of bulimia and self-immolation — she decides to take the situation into her own hands. With the help of a loyal private secretary, a man with a convenient past as a spy in Her Majesty’s Secret Service, she makes it look as if she simply drowned one night while on a swim — as if she disappeared into the black, shark-infested waters of the Atlantic. Fleeing through the boondocks of Brazil, she dyes her hair brown, acquires a wig and a pair of dark contact lenses, has plastic surgery to alter her nose and hires a voice coach to “rough up her accent.”
If you can sustain credence through all that, sail on. In time, you will be rewarded with a dragon.
Diana arrives in the United States as Lydia Snaresbrook, a divorcee who would rather not talk about her past, a heartbroken young mother who has elected to leave children behind rather than stay in an abusive marriage. She is a tragic figure whom small-town American housewives can readily understand. And so we begin our story:
“Once upon a time,” starts this princess’s tale, “three girlfriends threw a little party for a fourth who had yet to arrive by the time the first bottle of Pinot Grigio had been downed. Walk with me now across the backyard of the neat suburban house, in this street of widely spaced heartlands, past the kid’s bike and baseball bat staged just so on the satin green lawn, up to the sweet glow of the kitchen window, and take a look inside. Three women, one dark, one blonde, the third a redhead — all in their prime, those tenuous years when middle age is held carefully at bay. There they are, sitting at the table, innocent of their unreality, oblivious to the story, naively breathing in and out.”
The three friends, in other words, are oblivious that the woman for whom they are waiting is a princess in distress. Which is good because Lydia needs nothing so much from them as their ignorance.
Kensington, which Lydia chooses for the ironies of its name, is a sleepy little town somewhere in the United States. Lydia finds a part-time job at the canine rescue center; she acquires a modest house on a quiet street. Soon, fitting seamlessly into American life, she adds an adoring mutt named Rufus and a strong, silent boyfriend named Carson, both of whom mercifully ask no questions. Her new friends in Kensington say things like “Where the heck?” and “Jeez Louise!” and eat Pop Tarts for breakfast. One can’t help wondering how Ali, who is a Bangladesh-born Londoner, arrived at this artless picture of America.
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