I glance down and find she is watching me, so I giggle and she smiles.

‘You are a pretty girl, Katherine Howard,’ she says.

I flutter my eyelashes at our reflected images. ‘Thank you.’

‘I am not,’ she says.

One of the awkward things about her not knowing how to speak properly is that she says these dreadfully flat statements and you can’t quite tell how you should reply. Of course she is not as pretty as me, but on the other hand she has lovely hair, thick and shiny, and she has a pleasant face and good, clear skin and really quite beautiful eyes. And she should remember that almost no-one at court is as pretty as me, so she need not reproach herself for that.

She has no charm at all but that is partly because she is so stiff. She can’t dance, she can’t sing, she can’t chatter. We are teaching her to play cards and everything else, like dancing and music and singing, of which she has absolutely not a clue; but in the meantime she is fearfully dull. And this is not a court where dull goodness counts for much. Not at all, really.

‘Nice hair,’ I say helpfully.

She points to her hood on the table before her, that is so very large and heavy. ‘Not good,’ she says.

‘No,’ I agree with her. ‘Very bad. You like try mine?’ One of the really funny things about trying to talk to her is that you start speaking like she does. I do it for the maids when we are supposed to be sleeping at night. ‘You sleep now,’ I say into the darkness and we all scream with laughter.

She is pleased at this offer. ‘Your hood? Yes.’

I take the pins out and I lift it off my head. I take a little glance at myself in the mirror as my hood comes off and my hair tumbles down. It reminds me of dear Francis Dereham, who used to love to take off my hood and rub his face in my loose hair. Seeing myself do this in a good mirror with a true likeness for the first time in my life I understand how desirable I was to him. Really, I can’t blame the king for looking at me as he does, I can’t blame John Beresby or the new page who is with Lord Seymour. Thomas Culpepper could not take his eyes off me at dinner last night. Truly, I am in extraordinarily good looks since I have come to court, and every day I seem to be prettier.

Gently I hold out the hood for her and when she takes it I stand behind her to gather back her hair as she sets the hood on her head.

It makes a tremendous improvement; even she can see it. Without the heavy square frame of her German hood sitting like a roof slap on her forehead, her face becomes at once rounder and prettier.