‘Yes, I did.’

‘Well …?’ Sandra prompts.

‘Well what?’ says Philip, deliberately obtuse.

‘How was it?’

‘Very pleasant.’

Sandra and Freddie exchange a frustrated glance. Philip has a fair idea that Uncle Georgie will have dropped hints about the letter he wrote but he has no intention of indulging their curiosity. He is fond of his Greek relations but they are all the most appalling gossips. Mind you, Uncle Dickie isn’t much better.

‘And the little princess?’

‘Margaret? She’s a bright kid. Very spoilt and sulks if she’s not the centre of attention, but when she drops all that, she can be charming.’

‘I meant Elizabeth,’ Freddie says. ‘As you well know!’

‘Elizabeth is not so little any more,’ says Philip.

Elizabeth has been writing to him, as she promised she would. He likes to lie on his bunk and read her letters. Her image creates a pool of quiet that momentarily isolates him from the vibrating engines, the clanking of metal, the groaning of the propeller shafts and the sound of two-hundred-odd men barking orders, grumbling, joking, and farting. Elizabeth’s quietness is obscurely restful. It is as if some quality in her absorbs some of his restlessness and smooths down his rough edges.

He writes back, better letters than before. He’s aware that he has taken a misstep somewhere along the line. He’s seen her only once since Christmas, at Coppins, when Marina invited him and the royal family to lunch in early January. Then, the tentative understanding he thought he had reached with Elizabeth seemed to have stalled. She was polite but her guard was up once more. Philip wishes he knew why.

All he knows is that he was relieved when her first letter came.

But he doesn’t feel like confiding any of that to Freddie and Sandra.

He grins instead and picks up his glass once more. ‘So, what’s happening tonight?’ he asks.

‘We’re all going to the Gezira Club.’ Tacitly accepting the change of subject, Sandra inspects him over the rim of her cocktail glass. ‘I hope you’ve got something to change into, Philip – you’re absolutely covered in dust!’

The war has divided so many families that Philip is glad of the chance to catch up with some of his. The Greek royal family are close, perhaps because their exile leaves them rootless, dependent on each other for a sense of home. Greece isn’t home, certainly not as far as Philip is concerned. He was little more than a baby when his parents packed him into an orange crate for a panicky flight from Crete.

In 1935 the Greeks voted for restoration of the monarchy and Uncle Georgie had returned to his throne after twelve years of exile. The following year, he had arranged for the remains of King Constantine, his father, his mother Queen Sophie, and his grandmother Queen Olga – all of whom had died in exile – to be brought from the Russian chapel in Florence for reburial in the family ground at Tatoï. Philip was given special leave from Gordonstoun to attend the ceremony.