The King had told Tommy Lascelles to issue a sharp denial of the story.

And now they’re proposing taking Elizabeth away to South Africa for three months!

‘He’s still hoping it won’t happen,’ Philip says bitterly and Elizabeth looks up.

‘It will happen, Philip. We just need to hold our nerve.’

‘Do you have to go to Africa?’

‘I asked Papa that, but he wants all four of us to go. With the war we’ve never had a chance to do a royal tour as a family, and Papa is keen for us to be together.’

‘More likely he’s keen to separate us,’ Philip says with a morose look.

It’s obvious what the King is planning. Elizabeth is to be taken away, entertained royally and given all sorts of new and exciting experiences. He is hoping distance will give her a chance to forget about Philip.

‘They want you to change your mind.’

Giving Susan a final pat, Elizabeth gets up. She is not a demonstrative person, but now she lays a hand on his arm.

‘I won’t change my mind, Philip, I promise you.’

He covers her hand with his own. ‘It’s going to be a long three months,’ he says.

There is nothing for it but to grit his teeth and do as he is told. Elizabeth’s father is the King and until she is twenty-five she needs his permission to marry. If they’re not careful, they’ll find themselves waiting five years, Philip thinks savagely. He’s sure her father would be perfectly happy to keep them waiting forever.

Indeed, the King seizes any opportunity to keep them apart. After being snapped looking into each other’s eyes at Patricia Mountbatten’s wedding to John Brabourne, Elizabeth and Philip find themselves plastered over the papers, and the king is incandescent.

‘I’d have thought as a serving naval officer you’d have understood the meaning of secret,’ he snarls, stabbing the offending photograph with his finger. ‘You might as well have sent an open invitation to the press to tittle-tattle about a possible betrothal.’ He scowls at Philip.

‘We were just looking at each other,’ Philip says, jaw clenched with the effort of not losing his temper.

The King had no such inhibitions. ‘Well, stop looking! I’ve told Tommy to deny everything and you’re not to see each other again until all these rumours have died down. Is that understood?’

So Philip is confined to a freezing Nissen hut in Corsham during the week and at the weekends he is allowed to stay at his grandmother’s dilapidated apartments in Kensington Palace, but no longer is he permitted to go to Buckingham Palace for cosy suppers, nor is he to escort Elizabeth anywhere.

It is humiliating. The unfairness of it chafes at Philip all through that long, grindingly cold winter.

The King relents enough to allow Philip to spend Christmas at Sandringham with Elizabeth and the rest of the royal family. It is a concession, but at times it feels as if he has been invited to underscore how much of an outsider he is. Oh, he gets on well enough with Margaret, although she is inclined to play silly games of precedence that make him roll his eyes. The King is wary of him and though the Queen is charming on the face of it, in private she refers to him as the Hun. Philip learns this courtesy of her brother, David Bowes-Lyon, who makes it his business to ensure Philip feels unwelcome. If Philip had been wavering before, the royal family’s evident lack of enthusiasm for the marriage only makes him dig in his heels.