She was reviewing all this with Willem and other members of her staff when Lotte came down for breakfast. All the staff members broke off and quietly made themselves scarce as mother and daughter greeted each other with somewhat more than the usual amount of hugging and smooching. For the last couple of years, relations between queen and princess had been not exactly frosty, but distant and maybe even a little prickly in a way that was not really that unusual. Suddenly, somehow, the ice had been broken. Saskia knew why but none of the household staff did; they were content to slip out and finish their coffee in another room while mother and daughter caught up a little.