‘Your relatives abroad are taking a keen interest in your welfare,’ Kerensky said to him on one of his visits. ‘The English Queen especially asks that your wife is aware that all her thoughts are with her.’

The knowledge that May was thinking of her, and doing her best to make some kind of contact, was balm to Alicky’s increasingly troubled soul.

But the weeks turned into months, and still they weren’t told to prepare to leave for England. Her general health deteriorated, her sciatica becoming so acute that she could no longer walk more than a few steps unaided and had to use a wheelchair, when accompanying Nicky and the girls and Alexei as they took their outside exercise.

It was summer when Kerensky, now head of the Provisional Government, had a long, difficult conversation with Nicky.

‘England is no longer possible,’ he said, constantly amazed at Nicky’s ability to take appalling news unflinchingly. ‘The fear of a left-wing revolution in Britain is such that the British Prime Minister has withdrawn his offer of sanctuary. It is his government’s belief that if sanctuary were to be given to a family who have ruled so autocratically and despotically, the very large number of British people in sympathy with revolutionary Russia would rise in protest and topple the monarchy, just as has happened here.’

Nicky, who had never understood how limited George’s powers as a constitutional king and an emperor were, gaped at him.

‘But if not England, where?’ he asked, struggling to get his thoughts in order. ‘We can’t be kept under house arrest forever! My wife and daughters have no privacy. The soldiers wander in and out of our rooms as they like. Perhaps Denmark? The King is my cousin.’

Kerensky didn’t have the heart to tell him that the Danish government had been approached and that their reaction had been identical to the British one.

‘I thought the Crimea,’ Kerensky said, ‘but wherever your destination, you will be leaving Tsarskoe Selo within days, for I can’t guarantee your safety here any longer. The Bolsheviks are now headed by a returned exile, Lenin, and there are rumours that he is plotting to overthrow the Provisional Government. If he does, it will be the end of me, as well as the end of you and your family. Begin packing, Nicholas. You will soon be leaving.’

‘The Crimea!’ It was the place they had always been happiest in, and Alicky could hardly believe that such good news was true. ‘And from there, when the war is over, we can quite easily be taken by boat to England.’

He didn’t tell her that England no longer wanted them. He merely said, ‘You and the girls must begin packing – and not only clothes. If something has great sentimental value to you, then see that it goes into one of the chests or boxes.’