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‘The Mary Magdalene treatment.’

Sophie nodded. ‘The Mary Magdalene treatment.’

I stared into my drink, unsure of what else to say. A Paul Auster line floated into my mind – a word becomes another word, a thing becomes another thing – but I didn’t speak. The second hand ticked around the large clock over the bar, the Thames rolled on, and the entropy of the universe steadily increased.

‘Why do you have notes on Beowulf? Is there going to be a book?’

I didn’t say ‘is one of your clients writing about Beowulf?’ but it amounted to nothing more than a slightly obscured version of the same question, and when I heard the words coming out of my mouth, I knew Sophie wouldn’t answer.

‘Someone has to keep track of these things.’ She shrugged. ‘Frederick J. Klaeber wasn’t really Frederick either, he was a Friedrich.’

‘In 1922? Well, we can’t blame him for that.’

‘No, we can’t.’ Sophie fixed me with her steady blue eyes. ‘But we can observe that he was a man who was fully prepared to rewrite the narrative, when he deemed it necessary.’