At the funeral (which took place at Windsor), my father handed Uncle Bertie my bridal wreath of orange-blossom and Uncle Bertie laid it upon the coffin. How I lived through the service and the next few days and weeks, I do not know. To have been on the verge of having so much, and then to have lost not only Eddy, but everything that would have gone with marrying him – royal status, financial security for my family, the satisfying prospect of being a helpmate to Eddy – all to be snatched away and with nothing to replace it, has been an enormity too difficult to come to terms with. I have, however, slowly begun doing so.

Immediately after the funeral Uncle Bertie, Aunt Alix, Georgie and the girls stayed as guests of the Duke of Devonshire at Compton Place in Eastbourne, for none of them could face returning home without darling Eddy. From there they went to the South of France where, for several months, they stayed at Cap Martin.

Mama’s friend, Lady Wolverton, had leased a villa further along the Riviera at Cannes, and she kindly invited us to spend the spring and early summer with her. Although we were seventy miles or so distant from Cap Martin, Uncle Bertie and Georgie visited us on their yacht. I used to be very chary of Uncle Bertie, but I am so no longer, for despite his own terrible grief, he has been kindness itself to me and I now see him in a quite different light.

She paused and laid her pen down. Did she write and tell Alicky of how, at Cannes, a sense of embarrassing constraint had entered her relationship with Georgie – and the reason for it – or did she not? In the end she picked up her pen and wrote:

Ever since darling Eddy’s death, Georgie’s marriage has become a question of priority for Aunt Queen and, so the newspapers say, for the country as well. Do you remember the story behind Nicky’s parents’ marriage? How Aunt Minny had been engaged to Uncle Sasha’s brother, the Tsesarevich? And how, when his brother died, Uncle Sasha then became engaged to Aunt Minny and married her? Some people – my father, I’m sorry to say, being one of them – are saying that as I am in exactly the same position as Aunt Minny once was, it is a precedent that should be followed here, in England. As you can imagine, such a suggestion is desperately embarrassing for both me and Georgie. At Cannes we did our best to laugh it off, but weren’t very successful.

She paused once again, hot with remembered embarrassment, and then began a new paragraph: