Logically, May didn’t see why she shouldn’t, but she was old enough to know that logic didn’t have a lot do with royal marriages. Maudie being allowed to marry Frank would be just as unthinkable as she, May, being allowed to marry Eddy, or Georgie.

Aware that such an idea would never enter Eddy or Georgie’s head and that, even if it did, it would never get off the ground, she said carefully, ‘I think Looloo was lucky in that, as the eldest daughter of the heir to the throne, permission was given for her to marry into the aristocracy instead of to a fellow royal; and I’m sure Fife being a Scot, and his owning half of Scotland, had a lot to do with it, where Granny Queen was concerned. It’s such a great pity that your childhood closeness to Frank has been allowed to grow into a serious romance, Maudie. And for that, Frank is to blame.’

‘No, it isn’t. Not really. Frank took a lot of chasing, before he began feeling the same way about me as I do about him. And it’s all so unfair, May. Looloo is unbelievably happy with Fife. Georgie has now recovered from his heartache over Julia Stoner and fancies himself in love with Missy – a result of all the leaves that he has spent with the Edinburghs on Malta – and if she’ll have him, there will be no objections at all to his marrying her. And dear, darling Eddy is at last in love with someone he will be allowed to marry.’

May missed her step and stumbled.

‘And so why,’ Maudie continued as May regained her balance, ‘can’t I marry Frank? I don’t give tuppence about him being semi-royal. It isn’t as if I’m ever going to succeed to the throne. Eddy, Georgie, Looloo and Toria are all in front of me, when it comes to that – and so it doesn’t matter a fig that Frank isn’t of equal birth.’

‘Who,’ May said, as a crowded horse-drawn bus rattled nosily past them, ‘is Eddy in love with?’

‘Aunt Louise says all this fuss about whose grandfather or grandmother married beneath them, resulting in their children and grandchildren being ineligible to reign, is a lot of bosh and should be struck from off the Royal Statute Books. That is, if it is written in them, which I assume it is.’

‘Who,’ May said again, ‘is Eddy in love with?’