Sofy said, ‘Nellie, I need your help. I want to rewrite my will.’

I said, ‘Tell me what you want and I’ll set it down, though I wonder you ask me. I thought Conroy was your man for such things.’

‘He is,’ she said, ‘but I don’t know when he’ll come back from the country and I’m liable to die at any time.’

Well, which of us is not?

Sofy lived in the dark but her mind was still sharp. She knew by heart all the small bequests she’d made and none of those were to be altered. There was nothing for Tommy, nothing for little Georgiana. She simply wished to stipulate that she should be buried at Kensal Green.

She said, ‘I was buried years enough at Windsor. You know, I always dreaded the idea of being taken back there, to be lowered into that charnel house, but until Gus died I didn’t realize I was allowed to choose a different resting place.’

That was Sofy. Sixty-six years old and in many ways still like a nervous child. Was this permitted, was that permitted? She’d seen so little of the world it seemed not to occur to her that she’d committed one very great transgression and no thunderbolt had struck her down. So why worry about receiving Gus Sussex’s natural daughter or ringing for tea a little earlier than usual?

There was no drawn out suffering for Sofy, I’m glad to say. She escaped the family curse of dropsy or Augusta’s costive agony and slowly faded away. Whenever Minny was in town she would take her for a ride in her carriage or bring one of the Queen’s little ones to sit on her knee. She longed to be useful, and for a while Cissie Inverness had her filling bags with lavender flowers but more lavender landed on the floor than in the sachets. It was not a great success. Ladies still came to read to her, though she had less and less staying power for a story and often fell asleep. Mainly she liked conversation, and sometimes we would make quite a coterie. Cissy Inverness, Minny Gloucester, Gussy Cambridge. Three duchesses and one humble companion. When we were so many Sofy said very little but she listened intently, leaning forward, not to miss anything.

When it was just we two she loved to talk, chiefly about men. Did I remember a page called Cake? Or a gardener called Blinkhorne? And what about Henry Halford? She asked me one day about Jack Buzzard. Had he been the love of my life?

I said, ‘I think you know he wasn’t. But he was a good steady husband. I’ve nothing to complain about.’

She said, ‘I believe I know who you’d have preferred.’ I said, ‘I doubt it.’

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I do. It was that stable hand from Piddletown. What was his name? Ezekiel? Ephraim? It was something very biblical.’

I said, ‘It was Enoch, and you couldn’t be more wrong.’

We agreed to toss a sixpence. If it fell to the head I must tell, if it fell to the reverse I could keep my secret.

‘I’m trusting you now, Nellie,’ she said. She had no choice. She was quite in the dark by then. But when old King George landed face down, I found I was disappointed. I wanted to tell her how I’d loved Old Garth.

She refused to believe it, of course.

‘No, no, no,’ she said. ‘Don’t tease me now. You promised to tell the truth.’

And even though I offered to swear it on the Testament I know she never took me seriously.

‘But he was old,’ she said. ‘And so ugly. I remember when you thought he had been my lover. I had bad dreams for weeks. No, you must come up with someone more plausible. He’d better stand six feet in his stockings and have a firm, manly chin.’

I had no intimation that the end was so near. She had become the kind of desiccated old lady that can last for ever, like a dried fig. On Thursday I sat with her for an hour but she was very tired.

She said, ‘I’m an old bore today, Nellie. Come on Monday. I promise to be livelier by then.’

We’d been bottling gooseberries, five pounds of red and ten of white. I don’t know why we do so many for there’s only me and Annie to eat them, but I still take a kind of comfort in a shelf of preserves. I was standing in the cool of the larder admiring the look of them when a messenger came to the street door. Sofy was dead.

Gussy Cambridge had been with her, and Mrs Corcoran, her dresser, and the chamber nurse. I went directly to Vicarage Place. Doctor Snow had been, confirmed the diagnosis and left. Minny Gloucester was there, and Dolly Cambridge, very teary and blowing his nose. Another sister gone.

Minny said, ‘I was with her this morning. It never crossed my mind.’

Gussy said, ‘But she vent vair easy, like she vass aslip.’

Dolly said the Queen wished to be informed of the arrangements.

‘Windsor, of course,’ he said. ‘So the only question is when.’

I said, ‘No, not Windsor. If you find her will you’ll see she wanted to go to Kensal Green.’

They didn’t like it. Dolly shook his shiny dome of a head.

Kensal Green!

I said, ‘It’s not as though she’s the first.’

I helped Mrs Corcoran to wash her and put her in a cambric winding sheet and we sat with her through the night, with eau de cologne on our handkerchiefs and a fly tormenting us. At ten the next morning Minny returned with the Cambridges and the search was begun for Sofy’s will. Everything was gone through, though that didn’t amount to much: books she’d still liked to have read to her, a few pictures she’d kept though she couldn’t see well enough to make them out, and her old sewing table she hadn’t used in years. She’d perched in that house like a little bird that was too tired to flutter any further.

It was wrong of Dolly to shout at Mrs Corcoran. A lady’s dresser may know a great many things but she couldn’t be blamed for not knowing where the will was kept. John Conroy was the man they needed to ask about that, but the very mention of his name brought on one of Gussy’s nervous sinkings.

‘Oh Dolly,’ she whispered. ‘I beg you vill not send for him.

Zey say if you look in his eyes he kenn bevitch you.’ Minny said, ‘What nonsense. Have him come at once.’

I agreed with Minny. I’d looked John Conroy in the eye often enough and all I’d seen was the glitter of other people’s money. Some people said he was the Devil incarnate but in my opinion he was just a regular scoundrel. On the subject of Conroy Sofy and I never did agree. Personally I’d no more have trusted him than I would a rat in a coal hole but in all matters financial she deferred to him. He was sure to know where her will was lodged but he couldn’t be asked. He was out of town, visiting his estate in Montgomeryshire. Then Mr Drummond came from the bank with the vital document in his hand and the burying at least was settled.

Dolly Cambridge was Sofy’s executor, he and Minny her residual legatees.

He said, ‘Very simple, very straightforward. Just a few modest bequests.’

Drummond said, ‘Just as well, sir. Her Royal Highness spent rather freely these recent years. There’s very little left.’

Dolly said, ‘Spent on what? I never knew anyone live as modestly as Sofy. Has someone been fleecing the old girl?’

I said, ‘I can tell you Tommy Garth got nothing. Conroy and Taylor saw to that.’

Gussy Cambridge said, ‘Who iss Tommygart?’

Then a terrible hush descended. I’d said the unmentionable and drawn attention to my strange position. What was I? Not a servant, not family, not a suitably noble attendant. Mrs Corcoran would be dismissed, the doctor would be paid, but what was to be done with Nellie? There were no rules concerning a humble companion. I was something left behind by Sofy, like the felt slippers worn to the shape of her feet, and it was time for me to be disposed of. As I descended the stairs for the last time I heard Dolly say, ‘Less than two thousand pounds! Then where has it all gone? There should be three or four hundred thousand at least.’

I met Cissie Inverness at the front door. Another encumbrance for the Royalties but not one they can so easily dismiss. Gus Sussex had married her before God but he did it without the King’s permission and that made all the difference. Was she a duchess? Sussex certainly thought so. Could she be a royal duchess? Never in a month of Sundays.

‘Nellie,’ she said, ‘what a sad day. But I’m glad to hear she’ll be buried near my Gus. I shall go there too, of course, in time. We shall be neighbours again.’

So indeed Sofy was buried at Kensal Green. It’s a pretty place, with lawns and winding walks and birds singing. These new garden cemeteries are quite the fashion.

As we drove back along the Harrow Road Dr Snow returned to the subject of my connection with Sofy. He thought the idea of a humble companion for a princess was a singular theory.

‘King George,’ he said, ‘must have been more of a thinker than is generally allowed.’

I said, ‘Yes, I believe he was, when he had his health. The Queen was too tired to interest herself in how they were raised. Fifteen children, it’s no wonder. But the King was quite attentive to a great many things.’

Dr Snow said, ‘And did you ever see him?’