In Florence, life was far different. Some of their new friends were royal, but many others were not. What had been an eye-opener to her was how, in Florence, her parents happily socialized with fellow exiles who were not even aristocratic and possessed no other title than Mr, Mrs or Miss. Even more extraordinary was that they had been happy for May to make similar friendships, and at the art-history class that she attended at the Uffizi she had made friends with Rowena Daly, who was an American, and with Belinda Light, who was a niece of Miss Bianca Light who had loaned her parents I Cedri.

In England she would never have been allowed to make such friendships, and she most certainly wouldn’t have been allowed to saunter down Bond Street – or anywhere else – unaccompanied by anyone except a couple of girlfriends. Now, in Florence, her parents turned a blind eye when, after art class was over and in the company of Rowena and Belinda, she explored the little shops that lined the nearby Ponte Vecchio. Even better was when she strolled in the countryside around I Cedri, picking wild flowers to press, in the company of her mother, Miss Bianca Light and Mr Thaddy; and sometimes, even better, with Belinda, Belinda’s aunt and Mr Thaddy.

It was a taste of life that was unremarkable to her two friends, but which May had never experienced before, and the dizzying novelty was compensation aplenty for not attending Ella and Sergei’s wedding.

She picked up her pen again, wrote Never before have I been so happy, and came to a halt, overwhelmed by the realization of why she was so happy. Quite simply, it was because she no longer felt herself to be an outsider. Among her new-found friends, and in her new-found way of life, it didn’t matter that she was ebenbürtig. Ebenbürtig was an ugly word that her Florentine friends didn’t know and, if they had known, wouldn’t have cared about. The reserved, withdrawn young woman May had once been was – now that no such shield was needed as protection from hurtful remarks – no longer reserved and withdrawn. Instead she was outgoing, carefree and not only laughed easily and often, but did so out loud in a way that at Windsor, or at Marlborough House, would have been considered extremely vulgar. It was a transformation so wonderful that she never wanted it to end.

For the first time, it occurred to her that being born royal was to be born in a kind of prison. Rowena and Belinda could fall in love with whomsoever they pleased and marry whomsoever they pleased – an option that when her family’s exile finally came to an end, and she and her parents returned to England, would not be open to her.