‘Don’t they think I’m good enough for them?’ he demands. ‘I’m descended from Queen Victoria. I’ve close family in practically every royal house in Europe. What more do they want?’

‘Perhaps for your sisters not to be married to Nazis.’

Philip snorts and tosses his cigarette away.

‘It might help if I could get back to Greece too, but there’s no sign of that with the war on. It’s not all bad,’ Georgie tries to console him. ‘You’re only, what, twenty-three? Plenty of time to get married and in the meantime, you can sow your wild oats. Have a good time.’

That had been exactly Philip’s plan, but the King’s rejection has put him out of humour. Marriage to Elizabeth has become not a trap but a challenge, and Philip has never been one to back down from one of those.

‘Then what does Uncle Dickie want to see me for?’

Georgie spreads his hands. ‘You know Dickie. Always intriguing, the old devil.’

Which was rich coming from Uncle Georgie, Philip thinks. Both his uncles could give Machiavelli a run for his money.

‘He’ll have some plan for you,’ Georgie is saying. ‘He’s been planning a match between you and Lilibet for a long time and he’s not going to give up just because Bertie is digging in his heels. It’s a pity he doesn’t have a son of his own. It might be less pressure on you, dear boy. He thinks of himself as your father.’

Philip says nothing. Dickie is not his father. His father is not dead. He is in Monte Carlo. Perhaps Andrea’s life has been a feckless one. Perhaps he is eking out a penniless existence far from the centres of power, and perhaps he did hand responsibility for his son over to the Mountbattens without much thought, but he is still Philip’s father.

He is still the father who swung Philip up onto his shoulders, the genial, urbane man with twinkling eyes and a trademark monocle. Once he stood on trial for his life, but no one would ever guess from his amused air or the charm that makes everyone who meets him convinced they are the one person he has been waiting to see.

There is a part of Philip, a part he despises as childish, that wishes his father would keep that sense of pleasure and pride for his only son. He knows that when it comes down to it, for all his charm and fun, Andrea will always put himself first.

But Andrea is his father, and Philip loves him.

He is grateful, of course he is, to all the Mountbattens: to Georgie and Nada, and Dickie and Edwina. They were ones who came to pick him up from school, who turned up for sports day and cheered him on, and made room for a boisterous boy in their busy, glamorous lives.

How could he not be grateful? But Philip is obscurely resentful, too, for that sense of obligation that makes it impossible to walk away and refuse to be a part of any of Dickie’s intrigues.