Georgie Wales came up to them. ‘I don’t do dancing,’ he said to Marie-Louise, red-faced with embarrassment, ‘but I’ve been told it would be awfully remiss of me not to have a birthday dance with you.’

Marie-Louise giggled. ‘Thank you, Georgie. I’ll make it as painless as possible.’

Dolly then asked May to dance and, after Dolly, she had a satisfying number of other dance partners, including an uninspiring older German cousin of Marie-Louise’s, who never spoke a word to her and smelled unpleasantly of pear drops.

Because the dancing was taking place in a room far smaller than a ballroom, she was always aware of who else was on the makeshift dance floor. Missy seldom left it; even Uncle Bertie danced with her. Eddy had one dance with Marie-Louise and then danced only twice, both times with Hélène. After their second dance together they disappeared in the direction of the main drawing room.

After her dance with Uncle Christian, and feeling in need of a breather, May went in search of a glass of lemonade and Maudie. After a lot of looking, she found her standing at the set of French windows that Eddy and Hélène had been standing by earlier in the evening.

Maudie gave her a sad smile. ‘My poor broken heart doesn’t know how to mend itself. Do you know where Frank has gone, May? Have you heard anything from him?’

May shook her head. Frank had always been a poor letter-writer, but his not having let their distraught mother know where he was, or for how long he intended to be away, suggested a thoughtlessness that she wasn’t going to forgive lightly.

‘From as far back as I can remember, I always imagined I would one day marry Frank,’ Maudie said bleakly, ‘and now that I know that’s not going to happen, I don’t think I’ll ever marry anyone. Have you ever felt that way about anyone, May? Have you ever met someone you absolutely knew you could build your life around?’

May hesitated, and then she said slowly, ‘Yes, I have.’ She couldn’t possibly reveal that person as being Eddy, but there had been someone else who, although she had never had a crush on him, she knew she had liked and admired enough to have built her life around. That had been Thaddeus. She confessed, ‘It was someone I met when I was living in Florence. He was only a few years older than I was, and very attractive and talented. I always loved spending time with him, and for quite a while after my return to England I missed him enormously.’

Maudie’s jaw dropped. Nothing – absolutely nothing – could have amazed her more than that May, always so very correct and proper, had had a secret romance in Italy that no one knew anything about.