The yawning disbelief and horror: that could not be Cecile with her dancing eyes and burble of laughter shut up in that box.

He swallows down the memories. What is the point of wallowing in them? What’s done is done.

‘Margarita, Dolla – that’s Theodora – and Sophie – we call her Tiny – are still in Germany.’ Philip’s voice is even. All three were married to senior German officers. ‘For obvious reasons, I haven’t seen them for a while.’

‘That must be difficult for you.’

Philip isn’t going to admit to finding anything difficult. Isn’t that what Gordonstoun and the war has taught him? You get on with what you have to do. You don’t wring your hands and complain about your lot.

‘The war is difficult for everyone,’ he says almost curtly. ‘We are not the only family divided by war.’

Elizabeth glances at him. ‘I know,’ she says coolly. ‘My grandfather and Kaiser Wilhelm were cousins.’

The Great War had taught the British royal family to be chary of their German relations. They had changed their name to Windsor and insisted that the Battenbergs, descended from Queen Victoria and British to the back teeth, forfeit their princely title.

‘Your sisters’ German husbands will be your biggest handicap,’ Uncle Dickie warned him. ‘Distance yourself from them as far as possible.’

Why should he distance himself even further from his own sisters? God knows he has little enough family life to look back on, Philip thinks bitterly. His father is in Monte Carlo, his mother in Athens.

‘I see now why you think I am lucky,’ says Elizabeth. The wind is slapping the ends of her scarf against her chin and she wrestles with the slippery material as she attempts to retie it. ‘And I am. I have a family and a home.’

‘I haven’t had a home since I was nine,’ Philip is appalled to hear himself say, and he scowls, hunching his shoulders against the cold. He can feel her clear eyes on his profile and cringes inwardly, sure she has heard the bitterness edging his voice.

‘Is that when you were sent to school?’

‘Yes,’ he says stiffly, still ashamed of what he let slip. He is supposed to be charming Elizabeth, not telling her sob stories of his childhood. ‘Until then, we were living in Paris but it was a somewhat hand-to-mouth existence. Pretty ramshackle, in fact.’

That was better. Make light of the whole business. Because he had been happy at Saint-Cloud. Why wouldn’t he be? He’d been just a boy, oblivious to any undercurrents. His pretty mother’s favourite, an adored autumn child. Indulged by his genial father and fussed over by his older sisters even as they accused him of being spoilt. Nanny Roose had been the only sensible figure in the household.

‘Then … my mother became ill,’ he goes on. He doesn’t want to brush his mother under the carpet. Elizabeth must surely be aware of the times Princess Alice spent in sanatoriums, in any case. Still, he has the sense of stepping onto quaking ground.