Violet, who hadn’t needed prompting, laughed. “I’m on my fifth.”

All the women in the room laughed.

“Five husbands. Eleven children, fifteen grandchildren, six great grandchildren, and there’s a bloke at the British Legion I’ve set me cap at.” Violet applied scarlet lipstick to her mouth using the mirror on the inside of her plastic snakeskin handbag.

“You’re a dirty bugger, Violet,” said Mandy Carter, Diana’s other next-door neighbour, whose fence Prince William had brought down the night before. Mandy nursed her new baby, called Shadow, on her shoulder. Diana looked at Mandy’s clothes and barely suppressed a shudder. Stretch denim jeans with white stilettoes ugh. And that blonde candy-floss hair with more split ends than a Chinese spring onion gross. And those pale breasts spilling from that pink acrylic scooped neck top mega vulgaris.

“Your ‘usband and ‘is mam ‘ave bin a long time,” said Violet.

“Ya,” said Diana. “Is the hospital far away?”

“Two mile down the road,” said a young woman with a spider tattooed on her neck.

“I were there six ‘n ‘alf hours that time Clive broke me jaw,” said Mandy.

“Gracious,” said Diana. “Who’s Clive?”

“‘Is dad,” said Mandy, darkly, pointing to Shadow.

“I cun’t eat, cun’t smoke, cun’t drink.”

“Din’t stop yer shagging though, did it?” said Violet. “I ‘eard you and I’m two doors away.”

Diana blushed. Gracious, she was no prude, but she hated to hear a woman swear. She looked up just as Inspector Holyland passed by the dripping privet hedge. He glowered into the crowded living room. The women catcalled and the tattooed woman whistled, as though calling a taxi in London.

Holyland marched down the path. Diana picked her way through the women and answered her front door. Inspector Holyland coughed to give himself time. He had forgotten what he was supposed to call her. Was it Mrs Windsor? Mrs Spencer? Mrs Charles?

Diana waited until the policeman had recovered from his coughing fit. Eventually he spluttered, “They shouldn’t be in there,” pointing to the women in the living room. “You’re not supposed to receive any special attention.” He had got a grip on himself now. “So I’d be obliged if you’d ask them to go, madam.”

“I couldn’t possibly. It would be so rude.”

A cheer came from the living room and Violet bustled to the front door, hands in the pockets of her satin bomber jacket, an imperious expression on her wrinkled face. “We ain’t payin’ her any special attention; we’re ‘er neighbours. We’ve come to see if she needs owt doin’.”

“Oh yes,” sneered Holyland. “Do the same for anybody, do you?”

“‘S matter of fact, yes, we do,” said Violet, truthfully. “We stick together in Hell Close.”

She turned to Diana. “Right, shall we start on them cupboards?”

Holyland turned away. The records showed that Violet, her husband Wilf and seven of their adult children had not yet paid this year’s poll tax in fact, they had not yet paid last year’s poll tax. He would get his revenge.

Just then, Diana saw the shape of Princess Margaret running down the middle of the road, high heels clacking, fur coat flying, hair escaping from its elaborate top knot. She ran up to the barrier and began to grapple with a young policeman. Inspector Holyland spoke into his radio and seconds later a klaxon sounded and the street was suddenly illuminated by harsh white light.

“Christ!” said Violet. “It’s like bleedin’ Colditz.”

“It’s Margo trying to break the seven o’clock curfew,” said Diana, watching from her doorstep. It was Inspector Holyland himself who escorted Princess Margaret back to her house.

Diana heard her say, “But I must get to Marks and Spencer before they close. I can’t cook.”

Diana shut her front door and went back to her neighbours. She looked forward to putting on an apron, getting into the kitchen and rattlin’ those pots and pans, just like Little Richard ordered. She would borrow Violet’s chip-pan tonight and cook egg, chips and beans for the family. Charles would have to compromise his dietary rules until she could organise a supply of pulses. She doubted if Violet had a jar of lentils she could borrow.

As they worked, Mandy asked, “What will you miss most?”

Diana answered instantly, “My Merc”

“Merc?”

“Mercedes-Benz 500 SL. It’s metallic red and it does one hundred-and-fifty-seven miles an hour.”

“Bet that cost a bit,” said Mandy.

“Well, about seventy thousand pounds,” confessed Diana. The room went quiet.

“An’ who paid for that?”

“The Duchy of Cornwall,” said Diana.

“Who’s that?” asked Mandy.

“My husband, actually,” said Diana.

“Did you say seventeen thousand?” said Violet as she adjusted her pink hearing aid.

“Seventy thousand,” bellowed Philomena Toussaint, the only black woman in the room. There was silence.

“For a car?” Violet’s chins wobbled in indignation. Diana dropped her eyes. She didn’t yet know that the women cleaning her kitchen, whose clothes she despised, had bought those clothes in charity shops. Violet’s 38 DD bra had been bought for twenty-five pence at Help the Aged.

Mandy broke the silence by saying, “I’d miss the bleedin’ nanny.”

This reminded Diana that she hadn’t seen William or Harry since her visitors had arrived. She called upstairs but there was no answer. She looked outside into the sad-looking back garden, but the only sign of life was Harris ingratiating himself with a cross-breed alsatian belonging to Mandy Carter. The two dogs circled each other. The little and the large, the commoner and the aristocrat. The alsatian was called ‘King’. Diana ran outside, calling, “William, Harry.” It was nearly dark. Bare bulbs showed as Hell Close prepared for night.

“The boys have never been out in the dark before,” said Diana. The women laughed at this new evidence of the boys’ pampered existence. They regularly sent their small children to the Indian shop for late night groceries. Why keep a dog and bark yourself?

“They’ll be playing somewhere,” comforted Violet. But Diana would not be placated. Throwing on a silk parka, she strode out in her cowboy boots to search Hell Close. She finally located them playing battleships in front of the gas fire with their grandfather at Number Nine. She watched through the window until Harry saw her and waved. Prince Philip was wearing pyjamas and a dressing gown. He hadn’t shaved and his hair hung over his ears in sparse strands. A tin of baked beans with a jagged open lid stood on the William III silver table.

“Charles telephoned,” Philip shouted through the window. “They’re still at the hospital. Can’t ask you in; bloody front door won’t open. Bloody back door key’s lost.”

Diana took the hint and went back to her domestic tasks. When the kitchen cupboards had been thoroughly cleaned out, the women broke for tea and Silk Cuts.

“That should keep them at bay for a bit,” said Violet.

“Keep what at bay?” asked Diana.

“The cockroaches. We’ve all got ‘em. Nothin’ gets rid of ‘em. You could fire a Polaris missile at ‘em an’ the buggers’d still come back three days later.” Violet shifted gear. “Right, what you need now is linin’ paper, before you put your food in.”

Diana had nothing suitable, so Violet banged on the wall which divided her living room wall from Diana’s and shouted, “Wilf! Bring yesterday’s paper round.”

Diana heard a muffled reply and soon Wilf Toby stood at the front door. He was an unusually tall man with powerful shoulders and huge feet and hands. The sort of man who is described in court as ‘a gentle giant’ by defence barristers. But Wilf Toby was not a gentle man. He had chronic bronchitis and his constant fight for breath made him irritable and morose. He feared death and lived each day timidly, as though it was to be his last. He felt that Violet ought to pay him more attention. He thought, she spends more time in other folk’s houses than she does in her own. Hearing Wilf’s ragged breath comforted Diana, for she now knew what the strange noise was that had kept her awake and terrified last night. It was Wilf, breathing next to the party wall.

Wilf looked at Diana and it was love at first sight. He’d never seen such a beautiful woman up close, in the flesh. He’d seen her photograph in the paper every day, but nothing had prepared him for the fresh face, the soft skin, the shy blue eyes, the warm damp lips. All the women Wilf knew had hard, rough-looking faces, as though life had battered them mercilessly. As Diana took the newspaper from him, he looked at her hands. Pale, long fingers with rosy nails. Wilf longed to hold those fingers. Would they feel as smooth as they looked?

He scrutinized Violet, his wife of four years. How had he ended up with her? But he knew how. She had hunted him down. He hadn’t stood a chance.

“Well, come in or go out, you great big gorm face. You’re letting the cold in.” Listen to how his wife spoke to him. No respect.

Diana smiled and said, “Please come in.” Normally, nothing would have induced Wilf to leave the doorstep and enter a house full of Hell Close women, but he had to see Diana, listen to her lovely voice. She spoke beautiful, she really did.

The presence of a man in the house subdued the women. Even Violet modulated her voice as she folded pages of The News of the World and lined cupboards and drawers. Diana saw flashes of headlines.

POUND ‘SAVAGED’

The pound was said to be in a critical condition last night after suffering what one financial expert described as ‘a brutal attack’ by foreign currency dealers. “It was a savage beating,” he said.

This followed the ‘double whammy’ of Jack Barker’s landslide victory at the polls on Thursday and the abolition of the monarchy on Friday. The Governor of the Bank of England has appealed for a period of calm.