He acknowledged May’s presence with an inclination of his head and a brief ‘Cousin May’, and then did a double-take. The Cousin May he remembered had been nothing spectacular to look at – and she still wasn’t, in comparison with a lot of the young women he spent time with – but she had certainly blossomed. Tall and slender and with china-blue eyes, she had a poise about her that none of his sisters, all of whom were around her age, possessed.

Seating himself in a companion armchair to Frank’s, Eddy said chummily, ‘I take it you backed Miss Jummy and came out of things handsomely, Frank?’ He took a cigarette case from his inner jacket pocket, proffering one to Frank, before lighting up himself.

Frank had been smoking since he was twelve, and the surge of pleasure he felt wasn’t because Eddy thought him old enough to smoke, but because he and Eddy were having a one-to-one chat without the interfering presence of anyone else. The girls didn’t count, even though, with the exception of May, they were all clustering around the armchairs. Maudie perched on the arm of Eddy’s chair, while Toria and Looloo drew up fat leather pouffes so that they could sit at the foot of it.

‘I did rather,’ he replied. He shot May a quick glance, but as she was toying with the Halma-board chequers and seemed lost in thought, he risked saying, ‘And I scooped the jackpot at Epsom Downs with Firefly at sixty-six to one.’

He kept his voice low, for his growing passion for gambling was not something he wanted either May or his parents to become aware of.

Eddy was impressed, as Frank had hoped he would be. ‘You’re obviously a lucky cub when it comes to the turf.’ He shot Frank his slow, sweet smile. ‘Perhaps you can give me some tips.’

Frank was more than willing, and was also more than a little relieved when May rose from the games table and walked to the bank of long windows at the far end of the drawing room.

She did so looking perfectly composed, but that was only thanks to steely self-discipline. Eddy’s sudden arrival had filled her first with elation, then with crippling shyness and lastly, after his brief acknowledgement of her, with bleak acceptance that she was not of the slightest interest to him. Making matters worse had been Toria, Looloo and Maudie leaving her marooned on her own, for there was no way she could have joined them in drawing up a pouffe to Eddy’s armchair or perched on a chair arm. It was all right for his sisters to behave in such a way, but for her to have done so would have looked very odd indeed.