Dodi Fayed, who died in the Paris car crash alongside Princess Diana, will always be associated with the tragedy.
Now, another of his lovers has gone through the same misfortune.
Louise Dyrbusz, who dated Dodi in the 1980s, lost her daughter, Annabelle Delicata, who was found dead in East Sussex last month, shortly after her 38th birthday.
“Our beloved Anna died tragically at her home in Hove,” a family spokesperson confirms, describing her as “missed beyond words by the Delicata family, her father, James Cartland, and her many friends.” Her loving spirit and her love for nature is her legacy.’
James, cousin of the late romance novelist Barbara Cartland, Princess Diana’s step-grandmother, was, in fact, Anna’s stepfather.
Louise Dyrbusz, who dated Dodi (pictured) in the ’80s, lost her daughter, Annabelle Delicata.
Diana, Princess of Wales (pictured, right) and her companion Dodi Fayed walk on a pontoon in the resort of St. Tropez on the French Riviera in 1997.
“I’m devastated,” he tells me through tears. ‘She was the most wonderful and loving daughter. She is terrible beyond words.
To add to the sense of tragedy, Cartland reunited with Anna in 2021 for the first time in 23 years.
At the time, she was married to businessman David Delicata. “Sadly, we lost touch after her mother and I divorced,” Cartland says. “It was wonderful to meet her again after so long.”
Anna was a little girl when her mother married Cartland, an antiques expert, in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, in 1987, a few years after her relationship with Dodi ended. Anna’s birth had been registered by Louise in Southwark, south London, in January 1986, without naming her father.
Cartland’s former home, Carnfield Hall, in Alfreton, Derbyshire, featured on Channel 4’s Country House Rescue. “His mother, Louise, always refused to tell me or Anna who his father was,” he tells me.
Louise, who appears in Tom Bower’s book about Dodi’s father Mohamed Fayed, The Unauthorized Biography, was introduced to Cartland through a matchmaking office.
“She considered our marriage gave her access to the upper echelons of English society,” he said at the time of their divorce in 1998, a year after Dodi’s death.
“She always claimed poverty but I have since discovered she has offshore accounts containing perhaps hundreds of thousands of pounds.”
It is the latest calamity to befall Cartland, who was held at knifepoint in his home during an attempted robbery in 2012.
They tied him up and forced him to watch as the gang searched the property for valuable items.
He managed to raise the alarm and the intruders fled, leaving some of his antiques in the garden.
Louise Dyrbusz, known as Louise Michaels in Mayfair in the 1980s, could not be reached for comment.