We all stood. After the business of bows and curtsies Tamasin smiled at us. ‘So this is how you fathom out the secrets of the law.’ Barak and I laughed, though Nicholas frowned a little at the latitude she allowed herself. But she and I were old friends, and Tamasin had never been a shrinking violet.

Barak said mock severely, ‘We allow ourselves a little relaxation at the end of a hard day; a fine thing when women squirrel their way in to chide us for it.’

‘Perhaps it is needed. Seriously, Jack, if you are finished I wondered if you would come with me to Eastcheap Market, to see if there are any apples in.’

‘’Tis late. And you know there are none ripe yet; only the dregs of last year’s poor harvest, expensive for all they are shrunk and wrinkled.’

‘I have such a craving for them.’ She gave Nicholas an embarrassed glance. ‘There may be some from France, now we are trading again.’

‘God help my purse,’ Barak said. But he put down his mug.

‘I should leave too,’ I said. ‘There are some papers in my office I should take home. Wait while I get them, then I can lock up.’

‘Thank you,’ Tamasin said. She turned to my pupil. ‘And how are you, Master Nicholas?’

‘Well enough, Mistress Barak.’

‘Jack tells me you do not lose papers and knock things over the way you used to,’ she said mischievously.

‘I never did,’ Nicholas answered a little stiffly. ‘Not much, at least.’

In the office I sorted out the papers I wanted. When I opened the door to the outer office again Nicholas had left, and Tamasin had seated herself on Barak’s desk. He was gently winding a strand of blonde hair that had escaped from the side of her coif round his finger, saying quietly, ‘We shall scour the market. But the craving will cease gnawing soon; it did last time.’

I coughed. We all went out. As I watched them set off into the late summer afternoon, bickering amiably as usual, that moment of intimacy between them, caught thus unexpectedly, clutched somehow at my heart. I felt sadly aware of the lack of anything like it in my own life. Except casting a fantasy at the Queen of England, like the most callow boy courtier at Whitehall.