There was distress and despair in the Shankill, where once there had been street parties to celebrate her wedding. The road which had been bedecked with red, white, and blue bunting when Diana married Prince Charles 16 years ago was grey and gloomy yesterday evening.
The rain fell incessantly but nobody seemed to notice. Families, still dazed and numb, sat watching the news, unable to comprehend that she was dead. Charles and Di mugs still sat proudly in many china cabinets.
"I can't believe it," said Geordie Campbell. "She was a great wee girl, a real looker but down-to-earth. She didn't have an easy time. Charles treated her badly but when she met Dodi I thought, `Good luck to her, she deserves it.' But she never got a chance to enjoy her new life."
Sarah Graham, a pensioner, said Diana had never let her problems get the better of her. "She always had a smile and a kind word for everybody and she was a great mother. She reared those two boys on her own and she did a great job. They were always immaculate and well-mannered. My heart goes out to those lads now, left without their mother."
Liz McCormack said Diana was not "snobby or reserved" like the other royals. "She reached out to people. She had so much love to give. You could see that in her face."
May Blood, a community worker, met Diana at a garden party in Hillsborough Castle and had been stunned by her beauty. "She was the sort of woman you kept looking at even when she had passed by." Ms Blood said that at first she didn't believe the news of the accident. "I couldn't sleep and I put on the radio and they said Diana was dead. I sat up in bed and thought, `You've got it wrong.'
"There was great celebrations on the Shankill at her wedding. We had ice cream and jelly at the street parties and all the estates tried to outdo each other with the bunting. Everybody had a wee souvenir. Somebody gave me a silver bell with the royal couple's photo on it."
But Diana wasn't just a distant figure, Ms Blood added. "She was a commoner when she married Charles and we thought, `She is one of us.' She spoke out for ordinary folk. She was a warrior on our behalf. She did a lot of work with drugs and young people. She had tremendous courage, she broke the mould.
"She was a great role model for other women. I'm shocked that she is dead. I went to church this morning and I was crying. Lots of other people were crying, too. Everyone feels as though a friend has died."
Ms Blood reckoned Charles would find it very difficult to recover from her death. "Despite all their troubles, I think he still had a wee sneaky feeling for her. It's lucky he has Camilla to comfort him. He's a very sensitive man, he will feel Diana's death deeply."
Lynda Walker, who stood for the Women's Coalition in the council elections in the Shankill in May, praised Diana for taking up unconventional causes. "She campaigned for AIDS sufferers and against landmines. She stuck her neck out. Sometimes her comments were a bit naive but her heart was in the right place." There are plans to set up a book of condolences on the Shankill.
Across the west Belfast peace line on the Falls Road, there wasn't the same depth of pain and grief but most people were still saddened by Diana's death.
"She had everything to live for," said Anne Martin. "She was beautiful, she had two healthy kids, she seemed to have got over her earlier problems and she had found a new man. It's an awful tragedy."
Bernadette Donnelly said that, while the British royal family was not exactly popular on the Falls, Diana had been the most acceptable member. "You felt that she wasn't really one of them. She was more like a film star or something.
"She wasn't stuffy and she didn't look down on you. She was really glamorous and modern. There were no street parties around here when she got married but certainly nobody I know would have wished her any harm."