‘Monte Carlo?’ Maudie managed a wry smile. ‘I’m glad he’s somewhere it’s easy to imagine him being. Frank and Switzerland were never an obvious match.’ Adjusting her ankle-length skirt, she curled her legs beneath her. ‘I know you think my continually talking about Frank, and asking where he is, is no help to my getting over him, and so I promise I’m going to stop asking you about him. I’d like to tell you some good news now, but all I have is bad news.’

She gave May a few seconds to steel herself for what she was about to tell her and then said, ‘Irène and Heinrich’s little boy, Waldemar, has inherited the family bleeding disease. They were both so certain that he hadn’t, for there had been no long period of bleeding from his navel after birth, as happened with Irène’s brother, Frittie, who bled to death when he was three. After first having believed that Waldemar was free of the family curse, Irène and Heinrich are devastated.’

May’s heart went out to both of them, but especially to Irène, who would see herself as responsible for having transmitted the disease to Waldemar. The Queen had been the first person in the family to be a known carrier, and although the disease bypassed three of her four sons, her youngest son, Leopold, had inherited the disease and had died of it. That only females were carriers of it, and that only males ever suffered from it, was the most sinister aspect of haemophilia and caused a great deal of anxiety among the women in the family, fearing they might pass it on to any children they had. It was a fear that only May – a second cousin to the Queen, and not a direct descendant – was mercifully free of.

‘And if that news isn’t bad enough,’ Maudie continued, ‘Granny Queen has said that because of Hélène’s Roman Catholicism, under no circumstances can Eddy marry Hélène, which really doesn’t seem fair, when both Papa and Motherdear are so happy at the thought of having Hélène as a daughter-in-law, and when Hélène’s parents are equally happy at the thought of having Eddy as a son-in-law.’

May’s instant reaction was to be appalled at how crushed and shattered Eddy must now be feeling. Her second reaction was total mystification that such a reaction from the Queen hadn’t been anticipated by Eddy’s father. She could only assume that, like Eddy, the Prince of Wales had been under the impression that Hélène’s royal status meant the religious barrier was one that could be overcome.