‘I do hope you’re exaggerating.’

‘I really don’t believe I am. He’s a fanatic’

‘You know him very well, don’t you?’

‘Quite well. I help in their shop sometimes. They are experts, aren’t they, on old costume? Of course, Jeremy has to leave most of it to his partner because of work in the theatre but in between engagements he does quite a lot. I’m learning how to do all kinds of jobs from him like putting old tinsel on pictures and repairing bindings. He’s got some wonderful prints and books.’

‘I know,’ Peregrine said rather shortly. ‘I’ve been there.’

She turned her head and looked thoughtfully at him. ‘He’s madly excited about making the gloves for the show. He was saying just now he’s got a pair of Jacobean gloves, quite small, and he thinks they might be suitable if he took the existing beadwork off and copied the embroidery off Hamnet’s glove on to them.’

‘I know, he told me.’

‘He’s letting me help with that, too.’

‘Fun for you.’

‘Yes. I like him very much. I do hope if he’s madly in love with Destiny that it works out but I’m afraid I rather doubt it.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s a darling but he hasn’t got anything like enough of what it takes. Well, I wouldn’t have thought so.’

‘Really?’ Peregrine quite shouted in an excess of relief. He began to talk very fast about the glove and the play and what they should have for dinner. He had been wildly extravagant and had bought all the things he himself liked best: smoked salmon with caviare folded inside, cold partridge and the ingredients for two kinds of salad. It was lucky that his choice seemed to coincide with Emily’s. They had Bernkastler Docktor with the smoked salmon and it was so good they went on drinking it with the partridge. Because of Jeremy’s defection there was rather a lot of everything and they ate and drank it all up.

When they had cleared away they returned to the window-seat and watched the Thames darken and the lights come up on Bankside. Peregrine began to think how much he wanted to make love to Emily. He watched her and talked less and less. Presently he closed his hand over hers. Emily turned her hand, gave his fingers a brief matter-of-fact squeeze and then withdrew.

‘I’m having a lovely time,’ she said, ‘but I’m not going to stay very late. It takes ages to get back to Hampstead.’

‘But I’ll drive you. Jeremy hasn’t taken the car. It lives in a little yard round the corner.’

‘Well, that’ll be grand. But I still won’t stay very late.’

‘I’d like you to stay for ever and a day.’

‘That sounds like a theme song from a rather twee musical.’

‘Emily: have you got a young man?’

‘No.’

‘Do you have a waiting list, at all?’

‘No, Peregrine.’

‘No preferential booking?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Are you ever so non-wanton?’

‘Ever so.’