Of course he had grown out of overt displays of emotion at a young age. Seared into her memory was the first time they’d left him at school, aged just seven, trussed up in his stiff new uniform. In the car on the way and again when they’d arrived, he had given her strict orders: Just a quick hug, okay, Mum, and NO TEARS. And the same had applied to school holidays. After a few days he would let his guard down – but then, as if he was preparing her for what was to come, he would terrify the life out of her by climbing the tallest trees and crossing the lake when it froze. Once he’d come back drenched and half frozen, almost hysterical with delight after the ice had cracked. Nothing had fazed him even then. He simply had no sense of fear.

But now that he was sitting at the table with the untouched coffee in front of him, that was what she was seeing in his face: fear.

He scanned the familiar kitchen landscape, the timeless Welsh dresser with the blue and white ‘Old Luxembourg’ Villeroy & Boch dinner service, passed on by his grandmother and, miraculously, still complete, though one of the soup bowls displayed multiple joins from its surgery when, aged four, he used it as a soldier’s helmet. He looked at the clock, a rectangular Dutch antique with a twisted barley-sugar pole on either side of its face, and a soft chime that measured out life at home in reassuring quarter-hours, the parquet floor, pleasantly worn but good for another century, and the black retriever resting its chin on his thigh: Horace, one of a long line of more or less identical animals that had graced the Buckingham kitchen since he’d been in a high chair. Thank God some things never changed. Except that everything just had.

He looked at her. ‘I’m done – it’s over.’ There was something cold in his gaze that Mary didn’t recognize. She was bewildered – she had no idea what he was talking about. ‘The Regiment – I’m out.’

As she took this in, two opposing emotions went into battle inside her. This was the day she had secretly prayed for, that one day he would just outgrow it and there would be life beyond all the anxiety. She had hoped at one point that Delphine would bring it about, but the relationship hadn’t changed anything.

So she was happy – for herself. She knew the Army was his whole world. He’d always made it clear that was where he was headed, that nothing else would do – so if he was quitting, something completely unprecedented must have happened. Unless it was quitting him – in which case he would be devastated.

‘Well, that’s . . .’ now she had started she had to finish ‘. . . it’s – I’m sure you know when the right time—’