After Harry sold the huge family house in Chelsea, dispersing some money to his sons so that they, too, could enter the housing market, he purchased a bachelor pad for himself in Westminster. All the good paintings, furniture and effects were shipped to Harcourt House; insurance was cheaper in the islands. Harry didn’t think any further than that. He didn’t need to: Eva was looking after Harcourt House; he was looking after Britain; his sons were, in all ways, well endowed. It seems never to have occurred to him – reasonably slim fifty-eight-year-old that he was – that his life might end. He had a stroke while taking a shortcut to the House of Commons through Westminster Abbey gardens.

Eva inherited his entire estate.

By that stage, Eva and Harry’s relationship was tolerably polite and remote. If Harry thought of Eva at all, it was as a custodian of Harcourt House for their sons. She wasn’t going to have any more children by then – she was in her fifties. It was tax-efficient for Harry’s sons to have their mother inherit the house and its chattels. To pass it on to their sons. That was the clear expectation. Harry was thinking of his bloodline.

JEN: As soon as she got her hands on the money, she created an anonymous endowment for a Chair of Archipelago Women’s Studies, with herself named as overseer of the appointment.

JUDGE: Was she explicit with any of you about her financial arrangements?

JEN: Eva was an intensely private woman. You’ve got to understand that. She didn’t have time to go into minutiae with me. She was busy trying to end the vicious circle of the past [waves hand] four thousand years.

The core endowment was for £400,000, which was to pay for an extra salary at the college for five years. Eva’s boss at the college – one of the men dragged out of retirement to condemn her – was a mild-mannered man, island-born. He was an island success story in his way; the first person from his island (Dounsay) to attend university. He had a degree in engineering, and Eva always credited him with pioneering the successful development of wind-power technology in the islands – a big thing, for it made them self-sufficient in energy, and thus independent, in this way at least, of the mainland. The college itself put up one of the first community wind turbines, and Dr Finlay negotiated the very favourable contract with Scottish and Southern.