I want to marry you.

Philip wants to marry her, Elizabeth.

By mutual consent, they don’t talk about the future. It is too uncertain for now, so they talk about the past instead. About the time they met at the Royal Naval College before the war.

‘I thought you were a show-off,’ Elizabeth tells Philip, tucking her tongue into her cheek.

‘I can’t help it if I beat you at croquet,’ he says. ‘Admit it, you were impressed by me.’

‘Only by how greedy you were,’ she says.

Philip grins and links his hands behind his head so he can lie back. ‘When did you first realise that your life was going to be different from everybody else’s?’ he asks, wriggling his shoulders into a more comfortable position. ‘Was it at your father’s coronation?’

Elizabeth rests her cheek on her bent knees and thinks about it for a while. ‘Before that,’ she decides. ‘I was taken to Westminster Hall to see my grandfather lying in state. It was a horrible night. Dark, wet, bitterly cold.’

She wore a black coat and a new black velvet tammy. She remembers stroking the beret and thinking how soft it was before she had to put it on. Bobo instantly tutted at the unconsciously jaunty tilt she achieved and straightened it to a more sober angle.

‘I remember driving past all those people, standing in silence, a long queue that went on and on and on, like a great snake,’ she tells Philip. ‘I asked Mummy what they were doing and she said they were waiting to pay their respects to Grandpa England.’

The huge medieval hall yawned before Elizabeth as they paused at the entrance and let their eyes adjust to the gloom. It was very dark, lit only by the candles on a raised platform where her grandfather’s coffin was draped in the Royal Standard, and the silence pressed around them like a blanket. She was glad to hold her mother’s hand, Elizabeth remembers that. She remembers other things, too: their footsteps on the stone floor; the damp, suffocating smell of the flowers piled up around the platform.

‘The coffin was on a dais,’ she goes on. ‘Papa was standing at one corner, Uncle David, Uncle George and Uncle Henry at the others.’

‘Keeping vigil?’

She nods. ‘I remember how completely still and silent they were. It was so strange. I looked at Uncle David and I couldn’t believe it. He was normally so restless. Always shrugging or frowning or smiling or lighting a cigarette … Margaret and I used to love it when he played with us. He was funny and kind to us.’ Elizabeth swallows, reminding herself that her uncle is persona non grata with her parents now. ‘Anyway, it seemed extraordinary to me that he could stand so still. He didn’t move so much as an eyelid. I was looking straight at him, too.’

‘Were you sad?’ Philip asks after a moment.

‘I don’t think I really realised that it was Grandpapa in the coffin so I didn’t cry.’ She wouldn’t have been allowed to cry in any case. ‘I was sad when he died, though. He was a wonderful grandfather. He used to get down on all fours and play with me.’ A reminiscent smile curves her mouth. ‘He had a parrot called Charlotte, and he gave me Peggy, my first pony. I know Papa used to find him daunting, but he wasn’t like that with me.’