It was easy sitting there with Bill, though I knew I should probably feel uncomfortable. He lacked the formality that I was used to in the men who came and went from the Scriptorium. He was more town than gown, of course, but there was something else about him I couldn’t articulate. Bill was younger than Tilda by ten years, he said, which made him twenty-two. Just two years younger than me. He was tall enough to look me in the eye, and had Tilda’s fine nose and full lips, but they were hidden among a riot of freckles. He shared his sister’s green eyes, but not her honeyed hair: Bill’s was darker, like treacle.

I listened to him talk while we waited for the play to start. He talked mostly about Tilda. She’d cared for him when no one else would, he told me. Did they have no parents? I asked.

“No. Not dead, though,” Bill said. “Just absent. So I follow her wherever the theatre calls her.” Then the lights went down and the curtain went up.

Tilda was mesmerising, but the rest of the performers were not.

“I’m not sure tea will be sufficient this afternoon,” said Tilda when we finally left the theatre. “Do you know where we can get a drink, Esme? Somewhere the rest of the cast won’t go.”

I had only ever been to pubs with Da for Sunday lunch—never just for a drink. We mostly stayed in Jericho, but we’d once gone to a tiny pub near Christ Church. I led the way to St. Aldate’s.

“Is Old Tom the owner?” asked Bill when we were standing outside the pub.

“It’s named for Great Tom, the bell in Tom Tower.” I pointed to the belltower down St. Aldate’s Road. I was ready to tell them more, but Tilda turned and walked inside.

It was five o’clock and Old Tom was beginning to fill, but Bill and Tilda were a striking pair. They cut through the crowd like a warm knife through butter. I followed, slightly bent, my eyes down. It was the wrong time of day for a meal, and I could count the women present on one hand. I imagined Lizzie grabbing her crucifix when I told her how I’d spent my afternoon.

“How kind,” I heard Tilda say as three men got up from their table and offered it to her.

Bill held her chair as she sat, then did the same for me. “What would you like?” he asked.

I really wasn’t sure. “Lemonade,” I said, in a way that begged approval.

The bar was only a few feet away, and Bill shouted his order above the heads of the other men. At first there were grumbles, but when Bill pointed to where we sat, suddenly our refreshment became everyone’s priority.

Tilda drained her whiskey. “Did you enjoy the play, Esme?”