There was little space to sit down and write, but Nancy cleared an area upon the bedside table and, using her bed as a chair, set herself up with inkpot, pen, and a leaf of paper she’d purchased from the hotel store. She’d been putting it off too long already. So she began:

Dearest Frank,

I hope you know how much I have been thinking about you! I keep thinking of you in front of a roaring fire, with a mug of Cadbury’s cocoa, something sweet to send you off to sleep. But I wonder if it is like that, now that I’ve gone off to London and you are left to fend for yourself? I hope that you’re not in the Green Man most nights, and that you haven’t forgotten the little pleasures of life. An early bed. Toast and fresh butter for breakfast. The tin bath filled to the brim in front of the fire . . .

I am ashamed that almost a month has passed and I haven’t written. But Frank, life at the Buckingham Hotel takes over every inch of you! This is a different world. You couldn’t even imagine anything as posh as the grandest Buckingham suites that Mrs Moffatt, our head housekeeper and a lady, has shown me. Can you believe that every Buckingham suite has its own bathroom, its own electric lights, its own telephones? I can’t begin to say! Grandest of all is the Atlantic Suite. There’s a Russian man, Nikolai Alexeev, so wealthy he’s called the suite his own for seven long months! In fact, Mr Alexeev lives his whole life in hotels like the Buckingham, ever since his exile from the revolution in Russia. From one hotel to the next, he crosses the continent and pens his romances from the typewriter he sets up on its stand. Such a life, dear Frank! Here at the Buckingham he lives with Grusinskaya, a ballerina who has become his wife. This morning she caught my eye as Mrs Moffatt and I came to attend to the suite. To be lost and beautiful is such a sad thing.

There are others. One of the girls I work with, Ruth – you would like her, Frank – says she’s seen queens in their under-drawers. We are all waiting on King Edward himself. Rosa – she’s Ruth’s friend – says she passed him once in reception, because he has been bringing his Mrs Simpson to dine here since before he was King. The hotel is throwing a masquerade ball in his honour for New Year. I hope I get to catch a glimpse . . .

I wonder if Father would have found a way to be proud of me. I think perhaps he wouldn’t have believed what his little girl was doing! Do you remember, Frank, his final words? ‘It is hard to make your way in the world,’ he said, ‘but make your way you must’.