Bette arrived with a plate of pie-shaped cookies and poured steaming coffee into a delicate blue-ware coffee cup. She handed this to Hessel along with a small plate with a single, still-warm cookie on it.

The smell coming off the coffee was doing strange things to my gag reflex, but it seemed tea would not be an option at this event.

‘And I rode it into Amsterdam in the early morning, to this wonderful little cafe there, and they knew me and would be waiting, and they had the most glorious little gevulde koeken – like this,’ he said, waving his cookie, ‘but not like this, better than this. Elizabeth does her best, but an Amsterdam cafe . . . well. So they would wait for me to get there and to have the first one before they would give it to any other customers. They wanted my seal of approval, you see?’ His eyes twinkled at the memory.

Bette slipped another gevulde koek onto my plate as soon as I finished the first one, barely hearing what Hessel was saying, transported as I was by the glorious almond paste inside the crumbly shell. Nassim has to try this, I caught myself thinking, and then suffered a little wave of pain at the thought of him.

‘. . . and all the artists and thinkers would come to the cafe,’ Hessel was saying. ‘European thinkers, with such things to say, nothing like you find here. And the art there . . . and then the art here . . . Ah well. Here we have the open space all around, I suppose. Room to breathe, huh? Something to compensate.’

Bette took off her apron and sat down in a third chair, brought in from the kitchen. She took a small, careful bite of cookie and she and I shared a look of cookie-bliss. ‘These are amazing, Grandma. Truly beautiful,’ I said.

Bette smiled and a piece of koek dropped from her mouth and tumbled down her dress onto the floor. Hessel scoffed while I giggled and picked it up for her, putting it on the table in front of us.

‘Yes, this is quite a good batch,’ said Hessel, leaning forward and holding out his cup for Bette to refill. ‘Still. My old Amsterdam cafe cannot be beaten. The taste of them is something I will never forget. So I would taste their koeken for them, and then I would climb back on my bike and just take off, just ride all around.’

‘You’re not drinking, Anna,’ said Bette. While I hastily picked up my cup and tried not to inhale while I sipped, Hessel leaned in towards me, mock-conspiratorially, and whispered loud enough for Bette to hear. ‘I had girlfriends all around, you see. A girl in every town.’

Bette rolled her eyes and smirked, but a bit of cookie caught in my throat and I coughed.

‘I brought them all they knew, the latest thinking, the best music papers, and all the delicious specialties from Amsterdam. It was so exciting for them when I rode in on my motorcycle –’