At dinner, Stephen and Ginie sat David and Wallis on their table with Stephen’s cousin, August Courtauld, and his wife, Mollie. David asked for the candles to be moved so he could see Wallis at all times. He was mesmerised by her, but there was something sad about him, under all his glamour and charm.

Wallis was a southerner with exquisite manners and a particular talent for understanding people. She found out about the interests of her neighbour, August, in no time at all and while they ate roast beef sliced and interleaved with foie gras, she had him telling everyone about his part in the famous Arctic Air Route Expedition to Greenland.

Ginie was extremely fond of August. He was brave, modest and handsome as a film star, with chiselled features and thick, brown hair swept to the side.

‘We were trying to map a shorter route to fly the Atlantic,’ he explained. ‘We also wanted to maintain a weather station on the summit of the ice cap through the year. I volunteered to stay on the ice cap on my own and keep the weather station going, while the others went back to base camp to replenish supplies and equipment. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was to remain alone in a small tent for five months because of terrible weather.’

Wallis’s hand went to her mouth. ‘Oh, my word,’ she said softly.

‘How did you keep occupied for all that time?’ asked David.

‘Well, every four hours, I dressed up and crawled out to read the weather instruments,’ said August. ‘In the tent I read, played chess against myself, and designed my dream yacht.’

‘And you thought about me,’ Mollie added, with calm good humour. She had a thin, sweet face, thoughtful eyes and short hair cut in the latest style. Though despite her dainty looks, she had enough steel in her soul to meet the challenges of being an explorer’s wife. She had spent their honeymoon on a camel in the Sudan, sailed off the Scottish and Norwegian coasts in August’s tiny yacht and had climbed mountains in Greenland with him.

‘Of course I did, darling.’ August smiled. ‘Without you in my mind, it would have been intolerable.’

Ginie could not conceive what unspoken urge had lain behind August’s decision to stay on the ice cap alone. To her, being cut off from every sign of life in a frozen world, without even a blade of grass or a fly to look at, the only sound your own blood pounding in your ears. . . It would have been a fate worse than death. Stephen said that perhaps August had wanted to test himself, to find where his true limit lay. Perhaps he intended it to be a kind of penance for the privilege and wealth he was born into. Stephen had spoken with such certainty that Ginie realised he must have felt the same way in the trenches.