“Also,” added Rhys, who was lounging across two chairs on the other side of the circle with his head in Ana with one n’s lap, “it’s only tea.”

Oliver gave him an I-wish-it-was-that-simple kind of look. “Sadly, the it’s-only-tea defence isn’t recognised in court. Our defence is specifically dishonesty.”

“Because,” I tried, “we thought we had the tea owner’s permission to drink the tea?”

Turning back to me—Oliver had been Wimbledoning between us—he gave a sort of half nod. “Interestingly, consent by itself wouldn’t be enough either.”

“What?” Ana with one n sat forward, displacing Rhys’s head. “I could get done for theft even if somebody has given me permission to take something?”

“If you came by that permission dishonestly.” Oliver had gone into a law rhapsody. I liked law-rhapsody Oliver even at two in the morning at a random police station on the Welsh borders. “The law specifically says ‘appropriates,’ not ‘misappropriates,’ and the precedent was set in 1971 when a taxi driver who took money from a tourist’s wallet was found guilty of theft because while the tourist had permitted them to take the money, the amount of money taken had been far in excess of any reasonable fare.”

Ana with one n’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you know so much about theft?”

Feeling a sudden swell of pride, I gave Oliver a possessive hug. “Because he’s a lawyer.”

“Barrister,” Oliver gently corrected me. I knew the difference, I just thought lawyer sounded cooler and less like he made flat whites for a living. “And more specifically I’m the very unsexy kind of criminal barrister who deals with exactly this kind of law. I’m afraid I spend a lot less of my time saying, ‘My client couldn’t possibly have been guilty of this murder because the pings from this cell-phone tower prove he was ten miles away’ and a lot more of it saying, ‘My client is not technically guilty of theft because although she did leave the restaurant without paying, she formed the intent to do so only after she had already eaten the meal, and therefore at the time the dishonest appropriation took place, the food in question was not in the restaurant’s possession.’”

She blinked. “Do you say that a lot?”

“Quite a lot, yes. As I say, I’m not the glamourous sort of barrister. Young people who have skipped out on a bill are quite a large part of my client base, and ‘it’s only stealing if you decided not to pay before you ate’ is a well-known technicality.”

Rhys gave the kind of broad grin that suggested he thought he’d had the most brilliant idea. It was a grin he got far more often than he should. “That’s not a technicality,” he said, “that’s a bloody life hack. We never have to pay to go to a restaurant again.”