Elizabeth has been watching and learning. She has seen how her mother makes every single person she talks to feel special, but she has seen, too, the harried expressions of the officials responsible for moving the royal party along and keeping to the punishing schedule. On more than one occasion Elizabeth has had to prod her mother’s heels with the point of her sunshade to hurry her up.

This will be her future. It is less daunting than it once seemed. South Africa has given Elizabeth a new confidence. Her genuine interest in the country has helped her relax and it is easier now to talk to people. She will always be shy, but sitting on the horse under that acacia tree, Elizabeth feels a sense of purpose click into place, as if for the first time she fully understands the destiny that awaits her.

It will not be easy, Elizabeth thinks, her eyes on the far horizon, but she will be able to do it. She is nearly twenty-one, nearly an adult. She will accept the role that fate has given her, she vows. She cannot bear to think of a time when her dear Papa will be gone, but she will be Queen one day, and she will make him proud.

Chapter 32

The King’s nerves are so frayed that in the end it is a relief to return to Cape Town in time for her twenty-first birthday. Elizabeth wakes on 21^st April to the sound of unfamiliar birds peeping and whistling in the lush garden of Government House and she lies for a while, wishing she could escape for a gallop the way she was able to from the train. But the programme for her day has been agreed months in advance and Elizabeth will do as she is told.

That evening she is to broadcast a birthday message to five hundred million of her father’s subjects across the British Commonwealth and Empire. The speech has been written for her, but it is so much what she wants to say that Elizabeth has tears in her eyes when she reads it. Now, on her birthday morning, she picks it up from her bedside table and reads it again, murmuring the words to herself: an unwavering faith, a high courage, a quiet heart.

That morning she is overwhelmed by gifts and congratulatory messages from all over the world, so many that Margaret has to help her open them. The coffee table in front of her is littered with diamonds – earrings and badges and brooches and necklaces – all glinting in the sunlight between the opened telegrams. One gift though she keeps to last: something small and heavy that Philip has sent.

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ Margaret asks.

‘Not now,’ says Elizabeth, turning it between her hands, smiling at the thought that Philip has remembered her. She wants to keep it until she is quite alone. ‘I’ll take it upstairs with me.’

Leaving the diamonds on the table, she carries Philip’s parcel upstairs and sits on the bed to open it. It is beautifully wrapped with a ribbon and a small card that she pulls out to read first.