‘Your Hungarian grandmother was granted the title “Countess of Hohenstein” on her marriage, and that is the name we shall all be travelling under.’

‘So I shall be travelling – and living in Italy − as May Hohenstein?’

‘Not quite, Pussy-cat. When we travel, you won’t be doing so under your family pet name, but under your baptismal name.’

‘And so I will answer to Victoria Mary Hohenstein?’

‘Yes.’ With his eyes not meeting hers, he turned away from her; May knew why. Her dear papa was just as mortified at the subterfuge they would be living under as she was.

It was impossible to keep the news of their enforced exile from the inmates of Marlborough House, and May had to suffer Toria distancing herself from her as if she had a catchable disease, Looloo’s horrified disbelief and Maudie’s tender sympathy. For once, she was grateful that Eddy was still at Sandringham and, for several days, she wondered if she dared to write to him. Not a long letter of course, just a line to say that for the foreseeable future she and her family would be living in Florence.

The fear that if she did write to him, Eddy wouldn’t trouble himself to respond – or that if he did, it wouldn’t be in the manner she was hoping for, but would be in a way that would entirely crush her – ensured that she never got further than writing Dear Cousin Eddy several times, before screwing the sheets of notepaper into a tight ball and, sick at heart, throwing them into a waste-paper basket.

By the time the morning of their departure arrived, May had already said goodbye to their spacious apartment at Kensington Palace. She had done so knowing there was very little likelihood she would ever live in it again. As she had closed the door of the bedroom she had been born in – a bedroom that had once, before she had ascended the throne, been her Aunt Queen’s bedroom − she had known that she was not only closing a door on a host of happy memories, but on a part of her life that was irrevocably over; and that she had no real idea of what was to come next. Saying goodbye to White Lodge was not quite as traumatic, for it had been decided that her mother was to retain the Lodge in the hope that sometime in the future they would be able to live in it again.

The plan was for them to cross on the night-boat from Dover to Calais, from where they would not travel directly to Florence, but to Rorschach on Lake Constance for a stay with their Württemberg relations.