He didn’t envy Georgie his life at sea, but he did envy Eddy the glamour of his Hussars uniform and what he suspected was now, unknown to his parents and his grandmother, the raciness of his private life. His own future was also to be the Army, and Frank couldn’t wait until the day he began officer training at Sandhurst and, as he was sure Eddy was doing, started a secret life of gambling and womanizing.

‘Do get a move on, Frank.’ Maudie was striding out as much as her narrow ankle-length day-gown allowed her to. ‘It’s beginning to rain.’

Frank hurried unenthusiastically to catch up. Now the weather had changed, there would be no alternative but to join May, Looloo and Toria in one of the drawing rooms, and that would mean passing the time playing cards – although not for money and so, to Frank, pointless – or in a game of Halma, or helping with a jigsaw.

He cheered himself up by thinking of how, when Maudie joined in with one of her family’s boring pastimes, he could beat the boredom by mentally summoning up the image of her standing before him in the summerhouse, her gown unbuttoned to the waist, her underclothes in disarray and her wonderful tip-tilted, creamy-white breasts fully exposed to his appreciative gaze.

‘Where on earth have you two been?’ Toria asked as they walked into the drawing room. ‘We wanted to play Halma, but as there were only three of us, we couldn’t.’

‘Two of you could have.’ Frank did his best to sound reasonable and not exasperated, ‘and as there are now five of us, if you do have a game, one of us will have to sit it out. And before you start puzzling who that should be, Toria, I’ll be the one to volunteer.’

Toria, who would have preferred it to be Maudie who volunteered, began setting the board with more force than was necessary.

‘Did you play much Halma to while away the tedium when you lived in Florence, May?’ Looloo asked, her curiosity sincere.

‘No, I don’t believe we did.’ May seated herself at the table, ready to play. ‘I don’t remember there being any tedium when we were in Florence.’

‘But what did you do? I thought there was nothing to do in Florence but visit boring galleries and museums?’