The strain of the war showed in May’s face. It was very seldom now that any of her natural merriment showed in her eyes. At fifty-one her distinctive hairstyle was still the same as it had always been, although her dark-gold hair was now flecked with white and, because George disliked change of any kind, her way of dressing had barely changed over the years. She still wore off-the-face toques that didn’t interfere with her poodle fringe, and she still favoured several-stranded chokers of pearls and, at the same time, invariably wore long, waist-length ropes of pearls. Her still-slender figure was always stiffly corseted and she had lost none of her ability to move gracefully.

The Prime Minister, David Lloyd George – no lover of royalty – had been heard to say admiringly that never had any queen been as effortlessly stately as May Teck.

The memory of the horrors she had seen on the Western Front were not ones that she wanted at the forefront of her mind when trying to bring a little cheer to badly injured men and she blocked it from her. She must think of the day ahead. A day when Marie-Louise would be acting as her lady-in-waiting.

Since her divorce from Aribert, Marie-Louise had never remarried, but had always kept herself busy. At one time she had been the owner of a smart little hat shop in Knightsbridge, something that shocked the majority of her family just as deeply as her divorce had done.

May hadn’t been shocked. She had thought it very enterprising.

‘There was a time, before my engagement to dear Eddy, when I thought of doing something similar,’ she had said, ‘although not in London, but in Florence.’

On the outbreak of war, Marie-Louise had turned a Girls’ Club that she had established and run in Bermondsey into a hospital of one hundred beds and, under the direction of the government, she was its hands-on administrator.

As they sat together in the back of the royal Daimler, Marie-Louise said, ‘When my father died a few months ago, Willy sent me a very kind letter of condolence via Daisy. Not a word about the war, of course; just family matters. Adalbert and his wife have had another daughter. Is Adalbert Willy’s second son?’

‘Third.’ May was never at a loss when it came to fathoming family relationships.

‘And Sissy and Ernst have had a daughter, Frederica.’

May felt a pain in the region of her heart. Was it only five years ago that they had been at Sissy’s and Ernst’s wedding in Potsdam? All the royal houses of Britain, Germany, Austria and Russia, united in celebrating a happy family event? How could the unspeakable monstrosity of what had happened since then have occurred?