‘I don’t know what I would have done without you,’ Georgie said to her on one of their walks. ‘Motherdear won’t believe Eddy is seriously ill. She sent a telegram to Granny Queen this morning that read: Thanks so much for best wishes. Poor Eddy has influenza. So tiresome. She simply won’t allow herself to believe in the pneumonia diagnosis. Toria is nearly as bad. Looloo is just the opposite. Every time I try and speak with her, she dissolves into floods of tears. Maudie isn’t so bad, but even she doesn’t have your inner strength, and I’m very grateful for that strength, May. Truly I am.’

Four days after first feeling unwell, Eddy’s temperature soared to one hundred and eight degrees, there was congestion in both lungs and he had developed a hacking cough.

What should have been a wonderfully happy and carefree week celebrating his birthday was fast turning into days of ever-increasing anxiety as, instead of ‘turning a corner’ as his father had put it, Eddy’s condition grew slowly worse. He began drifting in and out of consciousness, sometimes recognizing May and sometimes staring through her with glazed eyes, as if she was someone he didn’t know.

Princess Mary Adelaide was in a state of near-collapse. ‘I do hope the wedding day isn’t going to have to be postponed,’ she said time and again. ‘If it is, it will take us into Lent, and how can a wedding that will be the cause of national celebration take place during Lent? It can’t. It simply can’t. And so that means the wedding will be delayed until Easter!’

‘And if it is, it won’t be the end of the world, Mama.’ May didn’t care how far in the future a new wedding date might be, as long as Eddy recovered his health. As Dolly kept reminding her, he would recover, for he was young and strong, and pneumonia was fatal only in those who were old and fragile.

By dawn the next morning a second hard-backed chair had been squeezed into the room, so that the Princess of Wales could sit on one side of the bed, sponging Eddy’s brow, while the nurse who had been called in sat on the room’s original chair.

Whenever the nurse needed a break, May took over from her and, despite her inner distress and deep anxieties, did so in such a calm and competent way that all three doctors regarded her presence in the room an asset, not a hindrance.

The Prince of Wales came into the room for a few minutes every hour, on the hour, and May heard Laking say to him, ‘I think, sir, a public bulletin should be posted on the gates of Marlborough House.’

There was a taut silence and then Bertie said unsteadily, ‘And the wording?’