Mikki was sure her parents blamed her for her little sister’s drowning. But hadn’t it just been the water’s fault? The water had been too deep, or perhaps too cold, and her sister had been so very small.

After the drowning, Mikki was made to take meals in a separate room. Her parents no longer bought her extravagant birthday gifts and stopped letting her have friends over for tea. Mikki knew. Mikki felt it, their condemnation, like a pressure building up behind her eyes every time she tried to breathe.

Shortly after her eighteenth, Mikki told her folks she was applying to study at Sorbonne University, three hundred miles and a Eurotunnel away, and would only be returning to the family home in London for a few weeks each year. Mikki wished to escape. It was time to move on.

“I’ll be leaving just after the ’24 Olympics have finished,” she told them one Sunday after Church.

“You’ll need to apply for a student visa,” was the only comment her mother made.

*     *     *
And it wasn’t Mikki’s fault either, was it, the most improbable event she witnessed during her first week in France as she walked parallel to the River Seine on her way back to her student digs after a long afternoon of solitary sight-seeing and museums and a trip up the Eiffel Tower?

The evening was warm but heavy with rain. Fastening her belt a little tighter around her waist—she was glad she’d worn her Mackintosh—Mikki marched on as cars streaked past her like restless ghosts, not stopping, as if oblivious to the outside world. And as a silver Audi sped by a little too fast, a little too close, it delivered a surge of groundwater all over Mikki, which caused her to look up and swear.

Mikki was unsure whether to believe her own eyes: it couldn’t be, could it, our late Lady Diana, walking down the central reservation? But Mikki knew that sometimes dark things did happen, odd things, awful events that don’t fit into reality or align with one’s desires or needs.

After steadying her nerves with a mindful breathing technique a bookish crisis counsellor had shown her years ago, she ran closer to offer help, stepping over drifting discarded paper cups demarcated with the Olympic rings and the occasional pollution-stained memorial teddy bear. On coming face-to-face with the dishevelled woman who moved like oil on water, Mikki realised it really was her. She gasped, took off her rain jacket, and draped it over Diana’s shoulders. The princess said nothing though, nothing at all, just stared up and off, into the distance, with her chin dipped bashfully to her chest.

After escorting Diana to safety at the side of the road where she collapsed onto the rain-slick pavement, gasping for air as the rest of the city held her in its indifferent embrace, Mikki dialled 112 from a pay phone, and, in broken French, alerted the authorities.

Yes, the woman was away from traffic now, no, she wasn’t drunk or on drugs, and, yes, yes, she was sure it was Diana, Princess of Wales, alive, if a tad bloody and scathed. Yes, it was without doubt the same Diana who’d crashed into the Pont de l’Alma Tunnel in a black Mercedes-Benz and died nearly thirty years ago.

The gentleman on the end of the phone asked Mikki to remain at the scene—an officer would be dispatched shortly—but as the sound of sirens screamed louder and blue light bounced off the looming infrastructure, Mikki panicked. She told Diana—blood-slick, bruised, and vacant but very much alive—to keep the coat. “Just wait here, someone is coming to help.” Mikki’s words came out staccato, too fast. Then she apologised and deserted Diana there, at the roadside, and through heavy rain, ran all the way home.

The next day, Mikki was glued to her television. Rolling news displaced regular programming on every channel. Each channel, each feature, showed at some point the same clip: Diana standing in front of the hospital, her bandages stark against her pale skin, her delicate, limp hand acting as a shield to the flashing lights as hundreds of cameras clicked at her in disbelief. She was alive. She remained silent, but she was miraculously, impossibly, alive. The headlines screamed of angels and miracles.

*     *     *
The Pont de l’Alma Tunnel had been closed to traffic ever since the officers had gently bundled Diana into a bulletproof, unmarked vehicle the night before, yet the place was still littered with media: hungry journos all hopeful to interview someone, anyone, who had a firsthand account of what had happened. Shots of the tunnel broke up inane ramblings from religious zealots and old footage from when Diana had been alive the first time. The tunnel, now taped off at either end and guarded from outside from every possible angle, became out of bounds to the public as investigations began to unfurl within. Stories and interviews from people who had known people who had known a person who may well have witnessed what had happened the night before were spewed out all day, along with the same clip of the Princess standing outside of the hospital.

Later that night, twenty-four hours or so after Mikki had abandoned Diana at the tunnel’s mouth, new footage was shared over every television network. This footage was not the same rehashed three minutes of a lost, undead Princess standing outside of the hospital. It was fresh.

Captured on camera this time, another Diana emerged, another drifting Queen of Our Hearts. The nation watched on, astonished from many different angles, as a second Diana gracefully walked out of the tunnel’s portal.

Out she walked with the same unkempt elegance as Mikki had witnessed the night before, her eyes wide, but vacant, as though she had just awakened from a dream.

“Diana?” the thick crowd of reporters whispered, then shouted.

But Diana Number Two, her figure an uncanny echo of the first, said nothing.

The world convulsed with shock. Journalists shouted questions, their voices rising above the rain which continued to fall. “Who are you?” news anchors asked, and the cameras clicked and flashed, capturing the ethereal figure standing silently before them.

The press swarmed the scene, of course they did, before this second Diana was taken away with a heavy police and army escort, and the world gasped again.

In the twenty-four hours that followed, the world paused, and the city trembled, though it was hard to truly say why. Diana was surely not a threat to anyone, but the world knew that the dead usually remained dead—Jesus, Son of God, had been the only other person known to resurrect. And although Diana symbolised many things to many people, Diana wasn’t Jesus, was she? Diana surely couldn’t be a relative of the Lord.

A sense of something unwelcome settled in the air. But no one dared to speak of it aloud.

*     *     *
By the third evening, there was not so much a sense of global disbelief, but more an inkling of international fear. Mikki hadn’t left her bedroom where she’d remained gripped by the screen. From her digs, she watched her television as a third Diana appeared. Princess Diana Number Three, her hands trembling, her blue eyes wet around the edges. And, just like the others, this Princess too remained silent and held out her hand in calm protest and turned away from invasive microphones and intrusive questions thrust in her direction.

To the rest of the world, perhaps, according to those interviewed in between rotating footage of all of the new Dianas, the Pont de l’Alma Tunnel had become less a piece of infrastructure and more a wound, leaking out something awful, shelling out grief and memories of grief, the cobblestoned road running through it sleek with an unknown, hidden purpose. Mikki, quietly, watched on, breaking only to glance at a treasured photo she kept by her bedside: her and little sister years ago, held forever together, smiling, in an ornate filigree frame. But Mikki wasn’t smiling now. And Mikki wasn’t upset. She just felt empty inside.

By the fourth night, disbelief and a scratching of fear had given way to utter dread, according to the media. From her room, wrapped in her quilt, Mikki stared at the news feed as another Diana appeared from the tunnel. This one also looked weak, as she stood there in the rain, as all the ones who’d come before had, and her tears came harder than the rain, streaking her face like delicate fissures. She also spoke to no one. She didn’t need to. Her presence was enough to silence the crowd and drain the last of the light from the wet night sky.

Each night, another Diana. Seven by the week’s end. They were multiplying like reflections in a broken mirror, each one carrying unbearable weight. Each new Diana seemed to reflect a different aspect of grief: the calm acceptance, the silent rage, the trembling sorrow, and the hollow stare of one who had seen too much and had no way to process it. In their eyes, the sadness of the world began to see itself.

The phenomenon continued. Paris became a mausoleum. Bouquets of wilting flowers clogged every public space; under the shelter of the entrance to the tunnel, candles burned until wax puddled in the gutters. The city drowned beneath the collective mourning of a world that had forgotten how to stop. Mikki barely left her room apart from brief trips to the shop through the rain to purchase food. She watched her television all day and night, did her best to speak to no one. She just lay there, eating processed snacks, trying to stay hydrated, following the news.

And, of course, more news rolled in, from all corners of the globe. Nations erected monuments in Diana’s honour; children in far flung villages the other side of the planet recited Diana’s name as though it were prayer. And all the while, in Paris, and in every other country, the rain never ceased.

Like the nightly appearance of a new Diana, the rain became a constant presence—impossible to ignore and impossible to escape. It soaked into every stone, every human soul, carrying with it the load of the unbearable loss of the original Diana and the spiralling confusion of her frequent nightly reappearance.

News anchors stumbled over phrases like divine intervention and second chance. People spoke of fate, of destiny, of forces beyond comprehension. But the city of Paris did not speak. It never did. It simply endured. No one knew why it was happening. People only stared at the new Diana each night, and clung on to a world where the certainties of life, and death, felt suddenly, inexplicably fragile.

All the time, Mikki remained tight in her room, not crying, not really sleeping, just numb, and just watching, always watching, as the rest of the world dipped into a mass, hysterical period of lament. The presence of the Dianas reflected back every sorrow humanity had ever carried. People wept openly in the streets and strangers clung to one another in grief. It was as if the entire world had become a funeral procession that never ended.

Alongside deep sadness and fear, a strange, solemn global unity developed. Nations paused their wars and communities embraced. But grief is a double-edged blade, and with a new Diana appearing each night, soon it began to cut too deep. The constant sorrow grew unbearable. The mourning, like a swollen river, began to overflow its banks and the beauty of grief curdled into resentment.

*     *     *
A year passed, three hundred and sixty-five Dianas had walked out of the tunnel, but only the first hundred or so had been blue lighted away. Around this time, Mikki was kicked out of university and returned home to stay again with her parents. They’d moved her belongings into the tiny bedroom and there, she lay in her bed, as she had done in Paris, only leaving her room to gather enough sustenance to keep her body functioning. Like a ghost she operated, drifting from her room to the kitchen and back. Continuously, she followed the news. To her, and many others, it became an obsession.

The French police didn’t have space for any more Dianas and the British government took a long time to decide how they should react. Over two hundred Dianas wandered aloof around Parisian streets and alleys, and each evening, from the tunnel which had had to be reopened for “financial purposes,” another princess drifted out.

“Enough,” whispered the people, eventually. They’d given up trying to find a cause and the question of how was this happening shifted fully to why. The tunnel and its produce make us all feel so bad.

It began slowly, with whispers in government halls and editorial rooms. The Dianas were too many, their presence too overwhelming. “Send them home,” the Average Joe yelled. They were disrupting life, pulling the world into an endless metaphorical night, so laws were passed. The Dianas were rounded up and deported, herded into a detention centre, Camp Diana, on the outskirts of London.

At first, there was outrage from more liberal-hearted folk. Protests erupted, voices cried out for compassion. But soon, even those voices fell silent. The world yearned for normalcy, for a life where they could laugh without feeling the weight of a thousand tragedies pressing on their chests.

And of course, the camp became a prison, a place from which the Dianas were not allowed to leave. Each new drifting princess, no longer a media fascination, was deposited and left there and, over a period of time much shorter than you would think, forgotten about; forgotten by everyone except a few folk of aristocratic descent and Mikki. A distant noble had initially taken in the first Diana, Diana Number One, but, in a one-off news’ conference, he’d declared the situation unsustainable: “Diana, if it is indeed Diana, never speaks. Taking her in has created ‘insurmountable tension’ between my wife and me.” The word “divorce” was bandied about by the press for a fortnight or so, which at least gave brief relief from the coverage of the Tunnel. The wellborn kept away from media attention after that, choosing to barricade themselves into various grand buildings up and down the country.

In their military-run base, the Dianas stood behind iron bars, each in her own numbered cell, their collective eyes still wide with that same haunting mixture of decorum and sorrow. They did not age. They did not die. They simply existed, eternal embodiments of grief, waiting for a world that no longer had room for them.

And the world moved on. Monuments were taken down, streets renamed again. The Dianas were a relic of a time no one wanted to remember, and when a new Diana emerged from the tunnel, she was met not with cameras and bouquets but with the same cold silence with which she greeted the world. Passersby averted their eyes, hurried their steps. People stopped going near the Pont de l’Alma altogether. The tunnel became a dark scar on the city, a place avoided in hushed fear. The rain still fell there though, every day and night, but it felt colder, more deliberate in its descent. The news channels turned their attention to other stories, of re-emerging wars and political unrest and local burglaries and the side-effects of injectable weight loss drugs, as if trying to help the world forget by wrapping them up in some other pain. But still, the Dianas kept coming.

*     *     *
But Mikki remembered Diana, her Diana, Diana Number One. And Mikki had grown to feel responsible over time for abandoning that first Diana. What if she’d handled things differently? What if she’d stayed, and had managed to get Diana to talk? Maybe she could have found out why this was happening. Maybe things wouldn’t have turned out the way they had— Yes, Mikki thought of that first Diana for most of her waking moments. But when she slept, fitful nightmares filled her head: dark dreams of never-ending rain and her little sister.

One day, on a whim—or perhaps guided by some unseen force—or perhaps triggered by the sad iced bun with a solitary candle in the top that her mother had brought up to Mikki’s room the night before to celebrate her twenty-first birthday—Mikki woke up and too declared, “Enough. Enough of whatever this is,” and decided to make her way to the forgotten camp.

For a few quid, in an attempt to generate revenue to keep the facility operating humanely, one could take a trip inside. Not that anyone did, other than the occasional bored tourist wanting to get out of the perpetual rain.

But Mikki sensed a calling, so off she set, out into the rain.

*     *     *
As she entered the large tatty building, taking note of the internal layout from a map at the entrance and paying the machine her small fee, she realised she hadn’t really spoken to another person other than her mother and father for weeks, wasn’t even sure if she could formulate proper sentences. What was she going to say to her Diana, when their eyes finally met?

The cells were arranged in descending order, with the most recent Diana the first one she encountered. But this wasn’t the Diana she needed to visit; Mikki felt this in her heart. Mikki snaked her way down the long ground floor corridor as fast as she could. The Diana’s watched her with their solemn eyes, unblinking, unchanging. Some of them gripped and shook their iron bars. Others turned away and tossed themselves like graceful leaves onto their identikit basic beds as she walked past. Mikki felt the weight of their gaze, the unbearable sorrow that radiated from them like cold light. Most of the Dianas, ageless and unyielding, stood behind their grills, close to their grills, with eyes as steady as the rain that continued to fall outside. Their silence was palpable, a language of grief Mikki recognized intimately, and she wasn’t quite sure, herself just numb inside, exactly how this all made her feel.

She made her way up each staircase and along the dimly lit corridors and followed the faded signage, until on Level Twenty-Three she found the Diana she was looking for, her Diana, Diana Number One.

Mikki stood and looked at Diana, still lost for words, quite unsure what to say. She hadn’t thought this far ahead, hadn’t come prepared with a speech. She just knew she had to be there, had to visit her Diana.

Diana #0000001 moved closer to Mikki. Diana’s body, pressed against the bars, was so frail, a fractured artefact, and her sad, sad, face was a pale echo of something both divine and human.

“I see you,” Diana Number One whispered, her voice as gentle and tender as a sacred hymn. Mikki inhaled sharply and took a step back. A solitary tear rolled down the Princess’ drawn cheek. “You’re safe, my darling girl. I’m not going to hurt you–how could I? Trapped here, behind these cruel bars.” Mikki stepped in again closer and placed her hand up against Diana’s raised palm and touched Diana’s fingertips with her own through a gap in the metal rails.

“I’m sorry,” Mikki said, and then it came to her, what she needed to say. “I’m so sorry I abandoned you, on the roadside when you needed my help.”

Mikki felt grief rise within her, a tide she had kept at bay for too long. Tears streamed down her face as she broke contact with Diana’s hand and fell to her knees. And in that moment, she thought she understood, perhaps: The Dianas were not a curse but a gift—a reminder that grief, though painful, is also a testament to love. Grief is what is left to remind us of connection, of the spaces left behind.

Diana said nothing else, just drifted back over to her narrow bed where she lay down gracefully, like a swan. Then she turned her back to Mikki and sighed.

“Thank you, Your Royal Highness,” Mikki curtseyed as she spoke, “for your thoughtful words.” Then Mikki, tears webbing down her face, turned her own back on Diana and made her way out of the building, only to find it still raining outside. But as the rain fell, to Mikki, it felt lighter, as though the sky itself had learned to let go.

*     *     *
That night, a creature of habit, from her bedroom, Mikki clicked on the news. A new story came at eleven pm, live from Paris, from under Alma’s Bridge. The rain had finally stopped and no Diana had emerged from the tunnel that evening. No Diana, after nearly four years. “Could this mean no more harbingers of sorrow?” the news anchor posed, a broad grin upon his face. “Have we finally seen the last of miserable old Lady Di?” Mikki hadn’t stopped crying since she’d returned from the Diana detention centre, but paused from her sobbing to stand up and switch the television off. It’s over, she thought, exhaling slowly as she got back into bed. Maybe she’d get some rest that night. Maybe now the bubble of her own grief had been burst open, she could finally reach a state of dreamless sleep. How soft Diana’s palm had felt against hers, how encouraging the sound of the Princess’ voice had been.

Mikki thought back to the dank night they’d first met, at the tunnel, in Paris. The image of the tunnel which had been on the television every day for years and had haunted her ever since, though still dark and ominous in her mind’s eye, perhaps now held the promise of passage.

*     *     *
The next day, Mikki set off to the lake a few miles from her family home. She wanted to say goodbye to her sister properly, and now seemed like a good enough time, the right time, seeing as how for the first time in years the rain had ceased. She hadn’t visited the spot since the drowning, all those years ago. Perhaps Mikki was ready to face the world again? Perhaps now, she could find some direction, a purpose, despite the grief she now felt and would always feel? Maybe, as something to focus her energies on, she could campaign for the release of all those poor Dianas? There must be space in society for them somewhere, she thought, especially now the situation has come to some sort of conclusion, been ringed off, contained?

The lake looked the same as it had nearly fifteen years ago: vast, bleak, cold. She sat by the water’s edge on top of a knitted blanket with a Thermos of tea and a packet of gingernuts and looked out. “Goodbye, Lilliana,” she whispered, and then the right words came to her again, “I’m sorry.” And there, out in the centre of the large body of still, grey water: a scruff of wet hair, a face, a neck, a chest. Her sister, Lilliana’s chest. Out of the water, towards Mikki, her sister rose, her eyes lit like blue stars, her skin pale like the clouds. Lilliana was soaking but dressed exactly as she had been—the red sundress—all those years ago, before the pair of them had set off for a picnic by the lake, before Lilliana’d had a tantrum and had insisted on going swimming and had fought Mikki off in her attempt to hold her back.

“Lilliana? Lilliana?! Is that you?” Mikki stood and strode out with open arms towards the water as her sister moved, like oil, oil through water, through and out of the water, towards Mikki.

“It is you. Lilliania!”

And it was Lilliana, Mikki’s eight-year-old sister, it was, it really was. Lilliana. Lilliana, bruised and vacant, her blue eyes wide, looking up at Mikki hazily through thick black lashes, as if she’d just awoken. But Lilliana did not speak. Lillliana’s head tilted downwards slightly, her chin dipping bashfully to her chest as if she had something to hide—

Mikki waded in, took her sister’s hand, and led her out of the lake and back to the grass, the both of them shaking greatly. On the lake’s verge, on the blanket, Mikki took off her jacket and draped it over Lilliana’s shivering shoulders and sat at her sister’s side. Lilliana still said nothing. But Mikki wouldn’t dare leave her sister’s side; wouldn’t leave her there, again, with the silence of the water, to sink back into the water.

Mikki hugged her sister. Shaking, crying, shocked, Mikki felt she was being gifted a second chance. And she wouldn’t run away, scared off by splashes and screams as the water pulled her sister under again, like she had done all those years ago.

Mikki promised Lilliana she’d sit and wait, right there, until her sister became silent no more. She’d remain by her side even if her sister never spoke again, like she hadn’t last time, when Mikki had watched on, watched on, watched on, from the back of her mother’s car as three firemen dragged Lilliana’s body—lifeless, limp, and blue—out of the lake.

Mikki would stay by her sister this time. For as long as it took for the water on her skin to dry and for the words to flow again from her mouth, which she hoped they would, because this time, her sister was breathing. Lilliana had a little colour returning to her cheeks, Mikki was sure she did; was certain, wasn’t she, that she could see a hint of pinkness there below Lilliana’s eyes, on her otherwise wan visage? They sat there together, side by side. “I’m sorry,” Mikki said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Mikki apologised until her throat and her own words ran dry. Lilliana’ll speak eventually though, won’t she? Surely she will, just like Diana had done, she thought.

With the blanket huddled around them, the sisters sat there, by the lake, until the sun sank and the moon shone. And Mikki sat there with Lilliana until the sun rose the next day, until the balled sun judged down on her like the light at the end of a tunnel. She promised herself she’d wait an eternity to hear her sister speak, and in a way, she already had.

The tea long drunk, and the biscuits gone, Mikki noticed how tired, how vacant her sister looked. Perhaps she needed more food, and warmth? Perhaps now was time to go home and break the news, the good news, yes, Mikki was certain it was good news, to their parents. As Mikki looked at her watch—nearly twenty-four hours had passed since she’d first arrived at the lake—the Heavens opened and again, the rain began to fall. “Come on sis,” Mikki said, her words draped with hesitance, “let’s get you back to Mum and Dad’s.” They’d understand. Surely, they’d understand and be glad that Lilliana was back. Lilliana nodded slowly and as Mikki helped her up from the ground, Lilliana pointed out to the water, to the centre of the lake, as a scruff of wet hair broke its rain-dappled silvery skin; a scruff of wet hair followed by a wan face, a neck, a red-clad chest.

Time slowed down for Mikki. Her breath caught in her throat as Lilliana Two, with empty blue eyes, her small body bruised and scathed, waded towards them, out, out, of the water.

*     *     *
And that evening, beneath the Alma Tunnel in Paris, where shadows murmured and rain water once more sang, another Diana emerged. This Diana carried a candle which retained its flame despite the harsh precipitation, and her figure floated forwards like a sigh through mist. She moved, a secret born of moonlight, drifting past a mother who, with eyes as wide and as grey as the sky, turned to her child and whispered, "Do not look, my love, do not let your gaze meet with the illusion," and bade the child to turn toward the horizon where the world was safer, where reverberations of the dead lost before their time had not yet come to harrow.