EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Tragedy for Dodi Fayed's former lover as her daughter is found dead just after her 38th birthday

Dodi Fayed, who died in the Paris car crash alongside Princess Diana , will always be associated with tragedy.

Now, another of his lovers has been similarly afflicted by misfortune.

Louise Dyrbusz, who went out with Dodi in the 1980s, has 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 home in Hove,' a family spokesman confirms, describing her as 'missed beyond words by the Delicata family, her father, James Cartland, and her many friends. Her loving spirit and love of nature is her legacy.'

James – a cousin of late romantic novelist Barbara Cartland, step-grandmother of Princess Diana – was, in fact, Anna's stepfather.

'I am devastated,' he tells me amid tears. 'She was the most wonderful, loving daughter. It is dreadful beyond words.'

Adding to the sense of tragedy, Cartland had been reunited with Anna in 2021 for the first time in 23 years.

By that time, she was married to businessman David Delicata. 'Sadly, we lost touch after her mother and I were divorced,' Cartland says. 'It was wonderful to get to know her again after so long.'

Anna was a small child 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 - with no father named.

Cartland's former home, Carnfield Hall, in Alfreton, Derbyshire, featured on the Channel 4 programme Country House Rescue. 'Her mother, Louise, always refused to tell me, or Anna, who her father was,' he tells me.

Louise, who features in Tom Bower's book about Dodi's father Mohamed, Fayed, The Unauthorised Biography, was introduced to Cartland by a match-making bureau.

'She saw our marriage as giving her an entry into the upper strata of English society,' he was quoted as saying at the time of their divorce in 1998, a year after Dodi's death.

'She always pleaded poverty, but I have since found she has off-shore accounts which contain maybe hundreds of thousands of pounds.'

It's the latest calamity to befall Cartland, who was held at knife-point in his home during an attempted robbery in 2012.

He was tied up and forced to watch as the gang searched the property looking for items of value.

He managed to raise the alarm and the intruders fled, leaving some of his antiques in the garden.

Louise Dyrbusz, who was known as Louise Michaels in Mayfair in the 1980s, could not be reached for comment.