‘I hoped it would be nice for you to have a word from home,’ Elizabeth says.

Home. That word always settles like a stone in the pit of Philip’s stomach. Everyone uses it so easily. Home. It has so many connotations of comfort and security, of familiarity and belonging. Somewhere you can be yourself, where you do not have to sing for your supper or watch what you say. At least, that is how Philip imagines a home. He hasn’t had one since he was a small boy in Paris.

Not that he will tell Elizabeth that. He wants her to think of him as strong and steadfast, not as a little boy longing for somewhere to belong.

‘It was indeed,’ he says instead, and she flushes a little with pleasure.

‘I’m glad. It’s good to feel that something I can do makes a difference. I feel so frustrated sometimes that I’m not allowed to do more for the war effort. I’ve asked Papa if I can volunteer for the ATS, but he thinks it’s safer for me to stay here, where all I can do is knit for the Wool Fund.’ She makes a face. ‘And I hate knitting! I do try, but I am very bad at it.’

Philip laughs. ‘All I can say is that the comforts we get – the socks and scarves and things – are all very welcome.’

‘Still, I wish I could do more. Other girls my age are out there, doing their bit.’

Philip thinks of the ruined streets, the houses where wallpaper flutters sadly from exposed walls. Of the grime and the grind of daily life and the looters lurking in the shadows. Of groping through the dark or tensing at the stutter of sirens breaking into their inhuman wail. Listening to the desperate fire of the anti-aircraft guns as the searchlights rake across the night sky. Worse, hearing the fiendish whistle of bombs falling and the eerie second of silence before the air explodes.

Once, he and his cousin David were weaving their way carelessly back from a nightclub when they came across a house that had suffered a direct hit only minutes before. They had gone to help but they had been drinking and had probably got in the way. Philip doesn’t remember much about it, only the sight of a disembodied hand lying as if discarded in the smoking rubble. One finger pointed right at him as if accusing him, though of what Philip couldn’t tell. For a moment he can almost smell the stink of smoke and terror.

He is not stumbling around a bombsite now, Philip reminds himself. He blinks himself back to the present – Windsor Castle, a drink in his hand, a princess to court – to find Elizabeth looking at him. Her eyes are very clear, very blue. They seem to see far more than they should.

He musters a smile. ‘Don’t wish to be out there. It isn’t safe.’

‘You’re out there.’