Of course she doesn’t mind.

Elizabeth wishes often that she had been warmer the last time she and Philip met. Marina invited the royal family to lunch soon after that Christmas, and Philip had been there. The trouble was that Elizabeth had found out by then that he had not been spending New Year with friends, as he had said. He had spent it with one friend, Hélène Foufounis.

David Milford Haven had told her all about it on Boxing Day when he had come to say goodbye. He had been drinking all evening and was swaying slightly, his eyes unfocused.

‘Hélène is really special to Philip,’ he had said, slurring his words. ‘They’ve known each other since they were children. She’s a great girl.’

It had been a salutary reminder to Elizabeth that there were other people in Philip’s life, including ‘great girls’ who knew him really well. She was jealous of the unknown Hélène, she realised, testing out the feeling. She couldn’t remember ever feeling jealous before – why would she? – but Elizabeth recognised its pinch straight away.

The fact that she knew that it was irrational and unfair only made the pinch sharper. Philip had not forsworn other friendships, other love affairs. They had agreed to write, that was all.

Once, when she and Margaret were quite small, before Papa became King, Crawfie had taken them for swimming lessons with Miss Daly at the Bath Club. The first day they had both been apprehensive and had clung to Crawfie’s hands. There had been a girl standing on the highest board, poised to dive. Elizabeth can still remember the echoing shouts, the mingled smell of chlorine and damp wood, remembers gasping as Miss Daly gave the word, and the girl bounced on the board and executed a perfect swan dive into the pool.

‘I shall never be able to do that,’ she had said, awed at the girl’s bravery.

‘Oh yes, you will,’ Miss Daly had said with a laugh. ‘That girl is blind, so if she can do it, you certainly can.’

Elizabeth often thought about what it must have been like for that girl to climb up the steps and walk along the board without being able to see what she was doing. Had imagined the bravery of taking the leap into the unknown. Meeting Philip again that Christmas felt in an obscure way as if she were walking carefully along a high board and getting ready to dive, but when she heard about Hélène, she lost her nerve. She crept back along the board to safety and climbed back down to the ground.

She hadn’t given up, just as she hadn’t stopped asking to join the ATS, but she had protected herself. She would not be too warm with Philip, she had decided. She would not make a fool of herself. She had her pride, after all.

It has been good to write, though. Elizabeth feels as if she knows Philip better now and she longs to see him again.