Then I decided I should be more concerned about me. At least she had a place of her own to live. At least she didn’t have royal family connections to live up to. I wondered where I’d go now. Would she expect me to move out immediately? In which case I’d have no choice but to take the next train back to Scotland. Oh golly, I thought. Castle Rannoch with winter coming, lashed by gales, gloomy beyond belief. I’d have to write to Fig to see if they’d have me, since it was now no longer my home. And if she said no . . . I turned away from the window, trying not to think about it. Mummy said I was welcome to stay in Germany, but I didn’t fancy that either—not the way things seemed to be going there these days.

Either way, I’d have to start packing up my things. I’d need to collect Queenie from her parents’ house, which would mean an excuse to visit Granddad. That thought made me smile. I’d been visiting my grandfather on a regular basis while I’d been in London. I suppose I should add that I’m talking about my mother’s father, the retired Cockney policeman who lived in a semidetached with gnomes in the front garden, not the fierce Scottish duke who married a princess. The Scottish grandfather died before I was born, thank goodness, and it’s said that his ghost still haunts the battlements of Castle Rannoch.

But my living grandfather was one of my favorite people. He always made me welcome, even though he had very little himself. Another thought crossed my mind: wouldn’t it be lovely if I could stay with him for a while? I pictured waking to the smell of bacon cooking, sitting drinking tea in his tiny kitchen, chatting with him by the fire. I sighed. Unfortunately I knew this would be frowned upon. It had been made quite clear to me that it would create great embarrassment to the family if the newspapers got wind of it. Royal in Reduced Circumstances. Her Highness Eats Down the Fish-and-Chip Shop. I could see the left-wing newspapers would have a field day.

Really my family was too tiresome. I couldn’t take a job that might embarrass them. I couldn’t stay with the one person who wanted my company. And yet they offered me no financial support. How on earth did they expect me to live? I knew the answer to that one immediately: I was expected to make the right sort of marriage to some half-mad, chinless European princeling—the sort who get assassinated with monotonous frequency. They had introduced me to a couple of candidates and I had turned them down, much to everyone’s annoyance. But there are some lengths a girl won’t go to to put a roof over her head.