‘It is to be the twenty-seventh of February and is to take place in St Paul’s Cathedral,’ her mother announced, giddy with excitement. ‘Goodness, but what a lot of arranging is going to have to take place in such a short space of time! A wedding gown to be made. A trousseau to be created. Flowers to be decided upon. All the furnishings and decor of your married home to be agreed upon. And on top of all that, there is Christmas.’

For the next few weeks May’s feet scarcely touched the ground. When not being fitted for her wedding gown and trousseau, plus an entire new wardrobe appropriate for her new role in life, she was out and about in London with Eddy. They went to the theatre several times, always to see a musical production and, because they had enjoyed it so much, going back a second time to hear Cavalleria Rusticana. They visited the ‘Venice in London’ exhibition at Olympia, where they floated around a replica of the Grand Canal in a gondola; and they chose wallpapers for the spacious apartment they were so soon to be moving into at St James’s Palace.

On the day they received the news that Hélène’s parents had taken her abroad so that she wouldn’t have to endure being in the country when it was their wedding day and that, as a family, they would be making Spain their home for the foreseeable future, Eddy’s voice had been unsteady.

‘It’s so hard to have loved someone so much, and to have lost them,’ he’d said with deep feeling, ‘but you have been a godsend to me, May. I wouldn’t be coping if it wasn’t for you.’

A week before Christmas, when they were playing a game of bezique in front of a roaring log fire at Sheen Lodge, while Looloo and Fife were out walking their dogs, Eddy laid down his cards and said, with surprise in his voice, ‘I’ve been able to talk to you about so much I’ve never been able to talk to anyone else about. How I hated being at sea all those years. How, although there are some aspects of the Army that I like – the camaraderie, for instance – I find other parts of it, the endless drill and the jogging round and round the riding school day after day, pointless and tedious beyond belief. I haven’t even admitted to Georgie how unenthusiastic I am about the Army.’ He stood up, drawing May to her feet and into his arms. ‘Please believe me when I say I’m happier than I ever thought I could be, and that it is all thanks to you, darling May.’