There was a photograph of Dolly on his wedding to Margaret Grosvenor, and another of Alicky, Nicky and baby Olga that had been taken on their most recent visit to Balmoral. There was a photograph of her mother and, looking at it, May felt a flare of anxiety, for her mother had not been well of late. And there was a photograph of Granny Queen. On May’s marriage to George, when the Queen had told her that she was no longer to refer to her as ‘Aunt Queen’ but as ‘Granny Queen’, that – of all the many privileges that had come with her marriage to George – was the one that had given her the most satisfaction.

Last, but by no means least, there was a photograph of Eddy. Not their engagement photograph; that lay in a box of memorabilia that no one but herself had access to. It was a photograph that had been taken of him in 1891, not long after he had been created Duke of Clarence and Avondale, and in which he was wearing his ceremonial gold-braided and bemedalled Hussar uniform. Dashingly moustachioed, and with one hand lightly clasping the hilt of his sword, he looked splendid, but then – in May’s eyes – he always had.

Her conversation with Ducky, and the memory of her conversation with Maudie, had put her in an odd, reflective frame of mind where her own marriage was concerned. Without a doubt, she knew there were aspects of married life that she would have found happier if Eddy, and not George, had been her husband. Intimacy with Eddy had been natural and easy, and although he had died without their having become lovers in the married sense of the word, she knew there would have been no embarrassed awkwardness between them, once their bedroom door had closed – as there had been, and often still was, between her and George. And Eddy would never have been so insensitive as to have not discussed with her how their home should be decorated and furnished. There would also have been much more companionship between them, for although Eddy had been as poorly educated as George, somehow they had always found things to chat and laugh about.

But would that happy state of affairs have continued?

In the years since Eddy’s death, she had come to know a lot more about him than she had during the few short weeks of their engagement. She now knew that even when he had been so eager to marry Hélène, he had been writing love letters to Lady Sybil St Clair-Erskine, the nineteen-year-old daughter of the Earl of Rosslyn – and she knew that his having done so wasn’t merely salacious rumour, for Sybil had shown the letters to many people, one of them being Dolly.