The news had come totally out of the blue. They had known, of course, that ever since Nicky’s abdication eighteen months earlier, he and Alicky and the children had been living under house arrest. They had received news via the British Ambassador in Petrograd when the family had been moved – for what had been described as their own safety – to Tobolsk, in Siberia. Later they had received the information that they had been moved again, this time to Ekaterinburg, a town three hundred miles to the west.

She and George had been at Windsor, enjoying a Sunday lunch with Marie-Louise and her parents, when George had been called away from the table to take an urgent telephone call.

When he re-entered the room, the man she had always known had vanished forever. In his place was a man suffering mental agony; a man who had aged two decades.

‘Nicky,’ he had said dazedly. ‘Those damned bloody Bolsheviks have murdered Nicky.’

There had been no news of Alicky and the children. Even after the atrocity of Nicky’s murder, it hadn’t occurred to anyone to wonder if they, too, had suffered a similar fate. That such a thing might have happened to them had been beyond imagination.

Twenty-four hours later they had been faced with the ultimate horror.

‘How,’ George had said to her, struggling for speech, ‘was I to know that because I had refused them asylum, they would be killed in such a ghastly manner? Who could possibly believe that such a thing could happen?’

Hunched and ashen in the seventh circle of hell, he had locked himself into his stamp room, tears streaming down his face.

May looked at the photograph now. Nicky had his arm around Alicky’s shoulders. Alicky was staring straight at the camera, not smiling, but then Alicky never smiled in photographs. Her eyes, though, were smiling. She had been happy that day; happy to be back in England where she had spent so much time as a young girl; happy with her family around her. Olga, Tatiana, Marie and Anastasia were all wearing straw boaters decorated with wild flowers. Alexei’s arms were around the neck of his little pet dog. How, when that photograph had been taken, could anyone possibly have imagined the horror lying in wait for them?

With an unsteady hand she poured herself a stiff brandy.

Details of what had happened had reached them a week later, when White Russian forces loyal to Nicky had taken Ekaterinburg and one of the executioners had been captured and interrogated. According to his statement, on the night of 16 July the family had been told that, as White Russian forces were advancing on Ekaterinburg, they were to be moved to yet another destination and were to go into one of the basement rooms to await the arrival of their transport.