They then moved on to the quotidian tasks of the royal household that they would have talked about had they been at home: preparations for the Budget Day Speech in a couple of weeks, various upcoming appearances, and the never-ending flow of royal correspondence. So familiar were these tasks that it almost became possible to forget that they were not in the queen’s office at Noordeinde Palace in The Hague. But then a pause in the conversation brought them back to the here and now, and they sat there quietly for a few moments hearing the cacophony of the bugs and the frogs, the soft liquid sound of the running river.