‘I been cleaning for her, if you must know. Scrubbing her carpets and getting elbow deep in her latrine. She has a townhouse down on the river. It was her husband’s, but now he’s gone. Well, we had that in common, me and Mrs Adelman. I’d been cleaning her unmentionables all summer long before we got to nattering one night. It was her that suggested it. That she might go up to the old Buckingham and seek you out. Mrs Adelman had a son too. Lost him in the War – so when she heard about my two boys, neither one of them seen their mother for years, well, she was mortified on my behalf. So I told her – go on up there, but he doesn’t call himself Ray Cohen no more. No, he fancies himself Monsieur de Guise . . .’

‘It’s my stage name, Mother.’

Real name too, thought Raymond – though he had long ago decided he would not tell his mother of the day he’d filed the papers with Somerset House and had his new name officially recognised. His ma would think it a slight, an insult to her dearly departed husband – and she did not deserve that. How could she possibly understand a world like the Buckingham Hotel – where, if Maynard Charles were to see a lowly name like ‘Ray Cohen’ on his accounts each month, questions would be asked? To be taken ser-iously as a man of consequence, Georges de la Motte had once told him, one needs to inhabit the role – even when one is not in the ballroom. It was advice a younger Ray Cohen had taken to heart.

And besides, he thought, a Jewish name like mine? In a hotel owned by Lord Edgerton and frequented by all his Union friends? No, that would never work.

Raymond wandered back into the kitchen. His aunties, May and Rebecca were camped around the tiny table, making a point of pouring tea into dainty china cups. Only the best for someone as fancy as Raymond de Guise! When Raymond took one, it tasted bitter and stewed, as only the best Cohen family tea could.