He is here in Monte Carlo to pick up Prince Andrea’s effects, but first he has to make the acquaintance of Comtesse Andrée de la Bigne. They have arranged to meet at the Café de Paris, which in other circumstances Philip would have enjoyed. The café is decorated in the belle époque style, with its elaborate light fittings and ornate décor, although its glory is faded like so much else after the war, and there is an air of faint desperation to its customers. Their once-fashionable clothes are shiny with use and threadbare beneath the women’s furs.

Of course, he is not one to talk, Philip thinks, wiggling his big toe under its latest darn.

He’s not sure why he feels so nervous. He can hardly remember his parents living together and although Princess Alice still thinks of herself as Andrea’s wife, his mother has been serenely accepting of the comtesse’s role in his father’s life. It is not as if the comtesse has been a secret either. The war might have made communication difficult, but letters have been going backwards and forwards via neutral countries. Even his grandmother, frosty-eyed in her apartment at Kensington Palace, had shown herself remarkably well-informed about his father’s affairs and had issued dire warnings when Philip had told her he was going to Monaco.

‘Don’t expect an inheritance,’ she said. ‘That woman will have sucked him dry. Such women generally do.’ She waved cigarette smoke from her face with a harsh, wheezing cough. ‘Be careful she doesn’t get her claws into you, Philip. You don’t want any association with that kind of woman getting back to the palace. If you take my advice – which I know you won’t because you never do – you’ll leave well alone. Your father was a wastrel.’

Philip and Mike have barely finished their martinis when there is a stir at the door. They look up and Mike’s jaw drops. Philip rather suspects he looks equally dazzled. A woman of a certain age is standing there, accepting the attention as her due. She is striking rather than beautiful, svelte and superbly elegant in a tight-waisted pale blue suit and a chic hat set at precisely the right angle. She has a presence that cannot be ignored: having cast a dazzling smile around the room, she gives a gracious nod of acknowledgement and her gaze settles on Philip who without thinking gets to his feet. The smile warms and she glides over to their table.

‘Oh, how like your father you are, dear boy,’ she greets him in a husky voice. ‘I would have known you anywhere.’

‘Comtesse …’

‘No, no, you must call me Andrée,’ she insists. ‘We are practically family, are we not?’ Her gaze turns to Mike, who actually blushes. ‘And who is this handsome fellow?’

Before Philip quite knows what has happened, she has settled them on either side of her, summoned a waiter without appearing to lift so much as an eyebrow and ordered a bottle of champagne.