My grandfather looked at me, then started laughing, a wheezy laugh that turned into a nasty cough. “Oh, you’re a proper treat, you are. Teach you how to light a fire? Bless your little heart, I’ll come up to Belgravia and light your fire for you, if that’s what you want. Or you can always come and camp with me.” His eyes twinkled with glee at the thought of this. “Can you imagine their faces if they knew that the thirty-fourth in line to the throne was living in a semidetached in Hornchurch?”

I laughed too. “Wouldn’t that be fun? I might just take you up on it, except that it would only make the queen speed up with her arrangements to ship me to some royal aunt as a lady-in-waiting. She thinks I need training in how to run a great house.”

“Well, I expect you do.”

“I’d die of boredom, Granddad. You can’t imagine how dreary it is, after all the excitement of a season, all those coming-out parties and balls, and now I’ve no idea what to do next.”

The kettle started to whistle and he made the tea. “Get yourself a job,” he said.

“A job?”

“You’re a bright girl. You’ve been well educated. What’s to stop you?”

“I don’t think they’d approve.”

“They’re not supporting you, are they? And they don’t own you. It’s not like you’re taking public money to carry out royal duties. You go out and have fun, my girl. Find out what you’d really like to do with your life.”

“I’m sorely tempted,” I said. “Girls are doing all kinds of jobs these days, aren’t they?”

“Of course they are. Only don’t go on the stage like your mum. She was a nice girl, properly brought up, until she got those stars in her eyes and went on the stage.”

“She certainly made a success of it, didn’t she? Bags of money and married a duke?”

“Yes, but at what price, ducks? At what price? Sold her soul. That’s what she did. Now she’s clinging on to those good looks for dear life, dreading the day that no man is interested in her anymore.”

“She bought you this house, didn’t she?”

“I’m not saying she hasn’t been generous. I’m just saying it changed her whole personality. Now it’s like talking to a stranger.”

“I agree,” I said, “but then I never really knew her. I gather she’s with a German industrial baron now.”

“Ruddy German,” he muttered. “Pardon my language, love, but just talking about them gets my goat. And that new chap, that Hitler. He’s up to no good, I can tell you. He’ll want watching, you mark my words.”

“He may be a good thing for them. Help get the country back on its feet again,” I suggested.

He scowled. “That country deserves to stay where it is. It don’t need no encouragement. You didn’t serve in the trenches.”

“Neither did you,” I reminded him.

“No, but your uncle Jimmy did. Only eighteen he was and he never came home.”