Accompanied by Margaret, Dolly’s wife, May was strolling down the avenue des Champs-Élysées on her way to the art exhibition that was the purpose of her visit. At forty-two, she still had a neat figure and, beneath her pleated silk hat, her hair, although no longer possessing a coppery glint, was still wheat-gold and she wore it the way she had always worn it – high and tight at the sides and with a distinctive poodle fringe.

‘And was the artist whose works we are going to see a very great friend of yours when you were a girl and your mama and papa lived in Florence?’ Margaret asked as they turned out of the Champs-Élysées and into the narrow but elegant rue Saint-Honoré, where the gallery was situated.

‘Yes.’ And then, mindful of the crush she had had on Thaddeus when she was seventeen, and not wanting her sister-in-law to guess at it, she added, ‘A very great family friend. When we knew him, he went by his birth name of Henry Thaddeus Jones, but he later changed it to Henry Jones Thaddeus – the surname Thaddeus being much more memorable for an artist, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, much!’ May was so knowledgeable about things artistic, Margaret wouldn’t have dreamed of disagreeing with her.

As they approached the gallery May was pleased to see that the exhibition was being very well attended. The gallery hadn’t been advised of her visit beforehand – something that was her habit when visiting small galleries, otherwise she would have to suffer the annoyance of being formally met and escorted from picture to picture, instead of being able to wander at will and browse undisturbed.

The pictures were of a variety of subject matter. There were pastoral scenes and European landscapes – May recognized Lake Trasimeno in Italy and Lake Garda in Switzerland. There were Orientalist paintings: one of a gateway in Samarkand, another of a street market in Cairo. There was a historical painting of a Scottish family being evicted at the time of the Clearances, and then last, but by no means least, there were the portraits.

As they moved out of one of the gallery’s small rooms and into another room, May was just telling Margaret how, many years ago, Thaddeus had painted portraits of her parents, and of how the portraits had been exhibited at the Royal Academy, when they walked straight into Ducky, arm-in-arm with an exceedingly tall and good-looking gentleman whom May knew could only be Kyril Vladimirovich.

May gasped in surprised delight. Ducky gave a squeal of joy. Kyril looked bemused, and Margaret, who had never previously met either Ducky or Kyril, was very quickly introduced.