It was, however, better than the alternative view, for if she sat facing in the opposite direction she would be looking towards the house. York Cottage – her home. Even after four years she wasn’t able to look at it without a flinch of distaste, for the name ‘York Cottage’ was a complete misnomer. When Dolly had first seen it, he’d given her a fit of the giggles by saying it reminded him of three Merrie England pubs joined together. It had originally been built as overflow accommodation for Sandringham’s male shooting-party guests, and although screened from the Big House by huge swathes of rhododendron, it was only a hundred yards’ walk away from it. Without asking her opinion, and blind to York Cottage’s architectural hideousness, George had asked his father if they could make it their marital home.

His reason for doing so had been that his mother now spent nearly all her time at Sandringham, her deafness so total that Marlborough House and London society had lost all charm for her. It meant that George could pop into Sandringham House and see her whenever he wanted, and that his mother could pop into York Cottage whenever the fancy took her. And it took her often.

May regarded such intrusions as both rude and insensitive. George was always simply overjoyed to see her.

If she had been given free rein in the decoration and furnishing of York Cottage – or even if she and George had been able to come to an agreement on how it should be decorated and furnished – she might well have begun to feel differently about it, but she had had no say in the matter.

Before their marriage, and without telling her, George had supervised a decoration scheme of various shades of brown and tan, relieved only by the decor of his study, where the walls were covered in hideous dark-red cloth. Ignoring all the beautiful furniture he could have cherry-picked from royal store-rooms, he had ordered factory-built furniture from the Maples department store in Oxford Street. The real travesty, though, was that not one piece of the artwork he had chosen for York Cottage was original. In a family that owned as many original paintings as May’s favourite galleries, George had opted for reproductions. Nothing else could have shown more clearly the difference in their tastes and interests. Hers were all cultural: art, music and books. His were shooting – it was another of the reasons he so liked living on the Sandringham Estate – and stamp-collecting.

‘Cooee, May!’

At Ducky’s familiar voice, May slid her half-finished letter into her writing case and sprang to her feet, happy to have an end to her depressing train of thought.

‘I didn’t know you were in England,’ she said, turning to greet Ducky as, despite the narrowness of her ankle-length skirt, Ducky walked across the grass at remarkable speed.