You are so good and kind and efficient and it is a comfort to hear your voice on the telephone, and to know that you are seeing this thing in the right perspective. We are far luckier than so many thousands of others: I, in a job that will probably give me better chances of seeing you than if I were on active service, and you and the children, to my mind, in about the best place possible in England.

My immediate movements here are rather vague. I am unable to tell you too much, but I shall be sleeping at BP and I believe the King and Queen are too.

Speak soon, my darling,

Tommy

PART FOUR

Chapter Forty-Two

Windsor Castle, September 1940

I have decided to start a diary. I am not allowed to let George or my parents know my exact whereabouts, and I miss writing, so I thought I might jot down my memories in a small notebook – not to show anyone in particular, but more as something I may look back on in the years I hope are to come.

Bobo, Alah and I left Birkhall on the Balmoral estate back in May. We’d had the whole place virtually to ourselves for an entire eight months. The war seemed a long way away and we were safe to walk the heathered hills, bird watching, picnicking and in the warmer months, even paddling in the chuckling burns. We’ve kept as much of the war news away from the girls as possible, but Lilibet is always very keen to know more. Nonetheless we’ve edited the worst bits.

The King and Queen telephoned almost every evening when we were in Balmoral and the Princesses regaled them with stories of their adventures – the biggest one being the arrival of children from the Glasgow tenements, evacuated to the Balmoral estate farms around us: skinny little things with scuffed knees and worn shoes. I organized a picnic for some of them last weekend, thinking that sandwiches, little sausages and glasses of milk might be thoroughly enjoyed. The Princesses helped in the kitchen to put it all together and we carried it out onto the lawn. There were around twenty little people with very round eyes watching as we set it up on the trestles. But the funny thing was they were too shy to come forward immediately. Dear Margaret went straight to them, introduced herself and her sister and started offering round the plates of food as if she were at a cocktail party. There was barely a crumb left after that! Once they had eaten and drunk their fill, a game of chase was organized, followed by grandmother’s footsteps for the girls and football for the boys.

They had never been to the countryside and they found almost everything strange, but the thing that frightened them most was the noise of the trees in the wind!

How different my life would have been if I had become the child psychologist I had planned to be all those years ago. What would I have been doing now? How many of those young lives could I have changed?