Ruby waved a hand. ‘Never mind,’ she said, with impressive nonchalance. ‘I suppose it was rather a last-minute decision, wasn’t it, Vincent?’ she added, as a tall, lean man in his early fifties, with a greying buzz-cut and small round glasses, entered the office. A black messenger bag was slung across his body and he was toting a white cardboard box containing, I assumed, the aforementioned pastries.

‘Vincent, this is Luke, Edith and Cameron,’ Ruby said, nodding at each of us in turn and smiling lingeringly at Cameron. ‘And Roger, you know,’ she said as an apparent afterthought, gesturing towards him.

‘I do indeed,’ said Vincent, smiling at us all and walking towards Roger, his hand outstretched. ‘Good to see you again, Roger.’

‘Aye,’ said Roger, shaking his hand. ‘How are you? And how are Harriet and the children? There are three of them now, aren’t there?’

‘All well,’ said Vincent. ‘Although the youngest is quite a handful.’

Ruby placed a hand on his arm. ‘Oh come on, he’s gorgeous. They all are. Harriet was telling me such funny stories about them when we went for drinks last week. She’s such a wonderful mother.’

Vincent looked at Ruby with an undisguised admiration which, I suspected, might not have been entirely professional. I sent up a silent prayer for Harriet.

‘I tell you what, Roger,’ said Vincent, apparently unable to tear his gaze from Ruby, ‘I hope Alison has no hard feelings about me snatching this talent from you.’

She lowered her head, tilting it to one side and smiling coyly up at him. I looked past her to Luke, who appeared transfixed, watching the scene with an expression of horrified delight. All he needed was some popcorn.

‘No hard feelings at all, I’m sure,’ said Roger, ‘from any of us. Not a bit of it.’

‘Careful,’ laughed Vincent. ‘Don’t be too understanding, or I’ll be after Edith as well. Ruby is forever telling me how brilliant she is.’

‘Well, she is,’ said Ruby.

Struck dumb by the impossibility of making any sort of sense of Ruby Blair, I simply stared at her.

‘So, can we go straight in?’ asked Vincent, turning to Luke.

Luke stood up, hurrying from behind his desk. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘Oh, Vincent,’ said Ruby, her hand still on his arm, ‘would you be very cross if I took just another few minutes or so to catch up with everyone? I know you wanted to talk to Alison about…’ She hesitated and widened her eyes significantly. ‘About the thing. So how about you discuss that first and then I’ll join you. What do you think?’

‘I think you’re incorrigible, that’s what I think,’ he said, causing Luke to put a hand to his mouth and me to shudder involuntarily. ‘But that’s fine. Join us in a minute.’ He turned to Luke. ‘Shall we?’