The sunglasses arrived. Mummy found some shorts and halter tops in the hotel shop then settled down to study her script while I was banished to the pool. It was surrounded by lounge chairs, nearly all occupied by impossibly tanned bodies. I had just found a free lounge chair when a rather splendid lady came to sit beside me. Unlike everyone in shorts she was wearing a long silk gown and trailing flimsy scarves, one of which was tied around 1920s-style bobbed hair. It was hard to say how old she was, as she was wearing a lot of makeup and big sunglasses.

“Well, hello there,” she said. “I never see skin as white as yours in California. Look at you—absolute porcelain whiteness. You must have come straight from England where I’m told the sun never shines.”

“Not very often,” I agreed.

“Ah, so I’m right. You are English.”

“Half Scottish, actually.” I found I was stumbling over my words in the way I always did in Queen Mary’s presence. She was quite an overpowering lady. “Actually a quarter Scottish and a quarter German.”

“Interesting,” she said. Then she wagged a finger, bedecked with rings and red-painted nails. “I bet I know who you are. There was a whisper going around that a royal personage was coming to stay here. You must be she. Am I right?”

“No, I’m not exactly royal,” I said. “Queen Victoria was my great-grandmother, so the king is my second cousin, or is it first cousin once removed?”

“See, I knew it!” The woman gave a cackling laugh. “That’s royal enough for us out here, honey. Say, do I have to call you ‘Your Highness?’”

“Oh, no,” I said. I was about to say that “my lady” was the correct term of address but I remembered what Queenie had said about everyone being equal in America. I didn’t want to start off on the wrong foot here. “My name is Georgiana, but everyone calls me Georgie.”

The woman stuck out her hand. “Welcome to America, Georgie, honey. I’m Barbara. Barbara Kindell. I live here at the hotel and if you need anything you just ask me.”

“Thank you very much,” I stammered. We in England were not used to such friendliness. “Are you also part of the film business?”

“In a way, Georgie, honey. In a way,” she said. “I’d better let you go for your swim while I make a telephone call.”