Yet when he met Aubrey Higgins, all of that changed. It happened in stages, as all the best love stories do – and, though it had crept up on them both, there was no less passion in it for that. Aubrey was the first man whom Maynard Charles had outwardly admitted he loved; Maynard the first for whom Aubrey would surely have lain down and died. Later, Maynard had told Aubrey that it was because he expected to die out there – that it freed him enough to live his life the way he wanted to live it, for he knew it would not last long. For Aubrey it was different – the culmination of a lifetime seeking someone worthy enough.

They made it, together, as far as Passchendaele in that bitter year of 1917. It was in that blasted landscape, shorn of all life, that Aubrey had fallen. First, his lung punctured; then, corroded by the reefs of acrid yellow gas that floated over the battlefields. He was invalided home and nobody expected Aubrey to live. Maynard had made his goodbyes, right there in a hole in the earth, before the Red Cross crews fought their way out to bear him away. And yet, in 1918, when the Armistice came, Maynard Charles was repatriated to Britain to discover that Aubrey still lived, bedridden, but in the care of an elder sister. One of his lungs was ruined, the other under enormous strain, but by the sheer fortitude of his heart he survived.

When Maynard got the job at the Buckingham, a plan was hatched: the Park Suite, smallest of the Buckingham’s suites, was closed for refurbishment – and never reopened. It was a simple thing to smuggle Aubrey and his cases within. And here he had remained ever since. Aubrey had once spoken of himself as a princess locked in a tower – but, oh, what a tower! In springtime he could look down on the verdant green of Berkeley Square. In winter, the fire roared. The hotel provided all that he needed, in life and in love. Here he lived and here, when the time came – as surely it would soon – he would die. It did not matter to him, as long as Maynard was at his side.

Aubrey leaned over and snuffed the light again. ‘It will all look better in the morning, dear Maynard.’

‘I have asked Raymond de Guise back to the Buckingham,’ Maynard said, into the dark. It seemed something of a confession.

‘You have?’

‘I told him,’ Maynard said. ‘About Mr Moorcock. About what I do here, in the Buckingham.’

Aubrey Higgins tensed. ‘My dear, is that wise?’

‘I had no choice, Aubrey. I won’t be called a fascist in my own hotel. I won’t be a sympathiser. You recall the last time I met with Moorcock, down there in the Candlelight Club?’

‘I do.’