‘It is for all these reasons, Georgie,’ his grandmother continued, ‘that it is imperative you marry soon and have a family, and I can think of no one who would make a more imperious and dutiful future Queen of England and Empress of India than dear May. I would like you to go home now and give very serious thought to all I have said to you.’

With the words lodged in his throat, he told his grandmother he would do as she asked. Then, suffering from palpitations, he returned speedily to Marlborough House, locked himself in his room and opened a large bottle of brandy.

At the end of November, the Teck family were invited to Sandringham to celebrate the Princess of Wales’s birthday with her. It was the last thing in the world May wanted to do, for their visit would run into the beginning of December and the anniversary of her engagement to Eddy.

‘The memories will be hard to bear, sweetheart,’ her mother said sympathetically, ‘but they are something you will have to endure.’

May had enough self-knowledge to know not only that she was good at enduring, but that she was good at keeping her feelings to herself while doing so. It was something she had learned the hard way as a child when being constantly reminded that, as a Serene Highness, she was not truly royal and so not really part of the family. It was an ability she had relied on at the time of her parents’ bankruptcy when, with a broken heart, she had watched the contents of her family home being sold at public auction and she and her family had so humiliatingly been sent into exile. Her agony at the shame of it all had been intense, but she had not allowed it to show, for she believed deeply that intense emotion was cheapened by public display.

Her week at Sandringham was just as difficult as she had anticipated. Her Uncle Bertie’s and Aunt Alex’s kindness to her was as unstinting as it had been in the days immediately after Eddy’s death, but she’d had to suffer being taken by Aunt Alix into the room in which Eddy had died and which, now filled with flowers, was kept as if his death had never taken place. A fire burned in the grate of the little fireplace that Eddy had once said he could touch, even from his bed – a bed now covered with a large Union Jack. There was soap in the soap dish, and his hairbrush and comb were laid out as if, at any moment, he would be picking them up to use them. Also in the room was the hard chair she had sat on for so many long, heart-breaking hours, and once again she could see Eddy’s head turning on the pillow towards her and hear him saying huskily, ‘There you are, May. Sweet May. Lovely May.’