MARILYN SPENCER      

Marilyn Spencer changed her name years ago but from what she couldn’t quite recall. It seems odd to be looking at it all now as if from so very far away. ‘Spence’ they’d called her in what she had renamed The Adoration Years.

Her father, absent, had always called her ‘his little princess’ and that had kind of stuck too.

Princess in Trouble screamed the cheap tabloids; Princess on trial and then simply Princess Dead. ‘Lived her life like a fairytale,’ they cheeped romantically.

‘More like a f...... nightmare,’ said those who knew her.

I suppose it all really got started, the bad press that is, when she married that upstart husband of hers, Henry ‘The Ape’, and he was pure Neanderthal. 

‘Why marry?’ her friends had asked at that particular time in her career when she was becoming so well know. But, Marilyn or ‘Spence’ badly wanted the whole Hello ritual and that was possibly a large decision factor. We actually say that she was ‘well known’, but it’s funny how the human mind can look retrospectively with such fondness and a golden tinge and yet distort its images with such clarity. In reality she was only ‘well known’ as a bit of a bit part actress, if you get my drift. Oh, and not forgetting that she was also heiress to that famous high street store. Okay, Spence was young, gawky, cute, nubile, naive and considerably dumb. Dumb until she opened that scarlet orifice of hers to its full capacity whereupon she displayed her well appointed crowns to perfection and spilled. 

Yes, she spilled the dirt like a river all over that ‘husband’ of hers while keeping her decorum well hidden behind those dark and grudgingly lowered eyelids. And the ghosts had clawed hungrily at the windows, begging to be allowed a point of entry. At the time of ‘that’ interview she’d applied the kohl with such artistic precision that she was more than well prepared for the tears which could become a waterfall which might convert to a torrent and where the whole damned lot would break, which of course they did in dark and sudden blackness.

‘You see, there’s more than one of us in this story,’ she’d replied to the gentle, probing, emotionally intelligent interviewer.

Well Honey, get real because we already know that. Hello. And I don’t mean the magazine.

I guess that’s when Henry knew it was time to tunnel for the exit and divorce was not on the cards this time. She was shovelling the shit like there were no tomorrows and if this continued he would never make President. Yes, she’d just have to go, being the proverbial millstone around his neck. And anyway, he was itching to marry Seymour the true love of his life; now all he had to do was get rid of Spence, but how?

He spoke to a couple of guys in the know and there were a number of late night assignations. Together they went through the sordid details; a possible drug overdose? How about suicide? (well, she’d always been pretty unstable) An accident? But whatever it was it had to be totally and utterly untraceable. Henry couldn’t afford any stains on his character or anywhere else for that matter.

‘You just gotta do something about that missus of yours,’ quipped some guy from the senate.

‘Or you young sir won’t stand a chance in the next round...’

And Henry’s already in his mid forties so not that young in anyone’s books, but hell he wanted to wear the crown real bad. And wear it with Seymour by his side sans abdication. He’d have to bide his time, he’d have to wait it out; wait for Spence to make the moves and construct her own fatal trap, after all with the size of that mouth of hers she’d fall into it soon enough. Well, she loved to binge as much as she liked to talk and in your face with all those fancy clothes of hers acquired from every corner of the known planet. She loved to shop; London, New York, Chicago, Paris, Rome, San Fran and then she’d suddenly go and chuck it all up in some charity bin, just like that. She was a strange one alright who always managed to look ‘drop dead gorgeous’ or at least that’s how the paparazzi seemed to portray it all. She scrubbed up and sparkled for the press and my how she feted them, pouting and teasing and how they all lapped it up like gone off cream. 

And then there was that embarrassing little incident where that silly childlike voice of hers breathed out Happy Birthday straight after dinner and to all those people. It made Henry squirm to think about it now and how she’d called him ‘Mr President’, when he wasn’t.   Being of an impatient nature, he allowed his temper to get the better of him, shouting obscenities at his advisors, reputedly throwing more than just words around when all he wanted was her gone and yesterday couldn’t have been  soon enough.

One of these advisors, unbeknown to her, accompanied Spence on ‘that’ Harrods trip and suggested the long, flowing and intricately beautiful Shantung silk scarf which apparently complimented her violet eyes. Pretty as a picture: claimed the press when she was seen dangling from the arm of a very well known foreign playboy who Henry ‘The Ape’ dubbed ‘Doughboy.’ 

Spence and Doughboy: Doughboy and Spence: Will they marry? The headlines screamed.

Unfortunately she saw herself as untouchable, as if she could walk on water, giving that all knowing smirk on her cat like features and spouting out about ‘some big news on the way.’ Typical Spence, typically stupid, over large mouth, too many teeth, grit for brains.

Everyone remembers that last picture of her; everyone remembers where they were when they heard the news. It was a pure Kennedy moment. That same scene played over and over again as she left the hotel, trapped for a second in one of those revolving doors, dressed in  virginal white. Proceeding gracefully towards her death, caught on CCTV with that long silk scarf, the one which matched her eyes, wound just a little too tightly around her perfect neck. 

We watched her climb into the convertible, all legs, high heels and swirling skirt which the breeze gently teased as if on cue. Then the self same silk scarf caught in the breeze, which had sprung from nowhere, wafting out behind her like an ensign. Signing her off as it caught abruptly in the wheel and neatly snapped her neck; death by misadventure and killed by her very own haute couture. A very public execution indeed.

‘Mm...’ mused Henry. ‘So like my poor Catherine before her. But then it’s not always a good idea for history or her story to repeat itself too often.’ And he smiled to himself before he said grace.