She tried in vain to think of some way of comforting or distracting Alicky, but couldn’t. May rarely felt out of her depth, but grief combined with guilt – no matter how irrational that guilt – was something totally outside her experience. To her great surprise, it was Willy – generally accepted as being the oddest of the many oddballs in the vast tribe of their family – who came to the rescue by bringing Alicky’s attention to the deformity that he usually went to huge lengths to hide.

‘Everyone has something terrible happen to them, Alicky.’ He indicated his foreshortened and withered left arm, with its abnormally small hand. ‘Look at this. This is because, when I was born, I came out all wrong.’

Alicky hiccupped again and stopped sobbing, her attention caught now. She didn’t quite know what he meant by ‘having come out all wrong’, because storks brought babies and she thought they would be careful about doing so. Like May, she had never previously known Willy to voluntarily remove his hand from one of his specially tailored jacket pockets and, as he did so now, she was riveted.

So was May.

Willy’s deformity would have been dreadful for anyone. For someone who was already a prince, and who would one day be Crown Prince and eventually Emperor, it was dreadful on a scale that was truly calamitous. Kings and emperors were not supposed to be disabled. They were supposed to be fine figures of men who rode on magnificent white horses at the head of glorious ceremonial parades, and Willy had horrendous difficulties with anything that needed balance and physical coordination.

Just as the rest of the male members of the family were in formal dress at an informal party, so was Willy, although in his case, because he was a lieutenant in the 1st Foot Guards, he was wearing military uniform. As Alicky seemed about to begin crying again, he quickly removed the glove on his left hand. His little paw was as white and flaccid as a small, beached sea creature.

Alicky wiped her tears away. ‘Is it always like that? Does it ever move?’

‘Only if I move it with my good hand.’ To prove his point, he lifted it with his right hand and then let it fall, so that it once again lay inert on his thigh, the fingers clawed.

A seagull was circling around them, hopeful of food. May shooed it away. Alicky said with a perplexed frown, ‘Were you born like that, Cousin Willy? Or did it just happen to you, like catching diphtheria happened to me and Mama?’