“Okay, you lot,” Owen said. “It’s after six. Or, as it’s also known, wine o’clock.”
Noah and Penny looked up from their notepads and books, and Max plopped the large legal tome he carried onto the desk with a thump. Owen stood at the door of the room which served as the firm’s library, his coat on. The two trainees had spent the afternoon researching some obscure points of law for a client, while Max did the fetching and carrying of law books, and much needed consciousness-sustaining coffee, between filing and general dogsbody work for Mrs Barstow. She’d gone at five. The senior partners had gone at three—being Friday, that was yet another tradition. Owen had been working in his office. Max had taken him coffee a couple of times and revelled in the smiles of thanks he’d got. But Owen had
