‘God only knows. Presumably the doctors thought doing so would energize my arm, but the only result was that I had nightmares about dead furry things for years.’ Willy shielded his eyes, looking out to sea, to where the Danish royal yacht lay at anchor. ‘After dead hares, I had electric-shock treatments, which were supposed to jolt my arm into life; and when they failed, I was strapped into an iron arm-stretching machine for an hour every day. The only outcome, for the years and years of medieval torture, was that it emphasized my difference from everybody else in the family. I’m so much of an outsider that sometimes I don’t feel part of the family at all.’

May drew in an unsteady breath. That anyone else in the family should feel as she did − even if for a very different reason – was such a revelation that it made her feel dizzy. Even though Willy was eight years her senior and an adult, she suddenly identified with him in a way she had never done with any of her other cousins.

Willy began one-handedly taking off his footwear. ‘I fancy a paddle to cool down. Are you coming, Alicky? May?’

Alicky looked doubtful, but May, who didn’t want the unity that had so unexpectedly been forged between the three of them to come to an end, said encouragingly, ‘Come on, Alicky. I’m going in. Do you know Granny Queen has a bathing machine so that she can go into the sea and sea-bathe?’

Alicky hadn’t known and, as May began undoing the buttons on her white boots, she said, ‘Is Granny Queen your granny as well, May?’

‘No.’ May took off her boots and began undoing Alicky’s. ‘The Queen is my mother’s first cousin, and though she isn’t my aunt, she allows me to address her as if she is, and it is how I always think of her.’

With their boots off, they peeled off their long white stockings and then, hand-in-hand, began running towards the sea.

‘I wish I’d brought my bathing costume,’ Willy shouted, his trouser legs rolled up to his knees.

May also wished she had her bathing costume with her. She could have changed into it in the privacy of the bathing machine. Scooping her skirt and petticoats as high and as far away from the water as she could, she splashed towards him, amazed at how much fun Cousin Willy – whom she had always regarded as being no fun at all – could be.

Suddenly he frowned. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he looked towards the far end of the beach where two figures could be seen. ‘Do you think that’s Ella?’ He was rigid with tension. ‘And is that Louis of Battenberg with her?’