“Sure. I wouldda said, ‘Hey, please explain me the difference between China tea and Indian tea, ’cause I don’t know.’ By the way, what is the difference between China tea and Indian tea?”
I laughed. “Good question. It’s the taste, I suppose. I’m wondering which you would all prefer. I happen to like Lapsang Souchong. It has a sort of smoky flavor. As you can tell by the name, it’s Chinese. Or there’s Earl Grey, a favorite of mine that’s blended with bergamot oil. That’s from India. Actually, you know what? Maybe it isn’t from India at all. Silly that I don’t even know.”
“Google it,” Jennifer suggested.
Kate looked down at her phone. “No reception. Cell phone reception sucks up here, remember?” Kate looked at me. “What’s the Wi-Fi and password?”
I told them and warned, “But the reception for the Internet’s also sketchy, it comes and goes.”
“I’m not getting a connection either,” Dan said. “Man, the Internet’s so fucked up in this house. The downside of living on top of a cliff.”
“Very funny. Don’t mind my brother and his lame jokes,” Kate groaned. “I’m not getting a connection, either. Jen?”
Jennifer swept her hand through her mane of honey hair. “I left my phone at home on purpose. I have a life, you guys, without a phone. Jeez, I wish we’d been born in the 70s, you know, when people actually communicated without technology.”
I smiled. “I know how you feel, Jennifer.”
“Call me Jen. Hey, why don’t we look it up the old-fashioned way? You got a dictionary?” She had already got up and rushed off to the other end of the room, to my bookshelves, her long dress billowing behind her. I scrambled after her, almost tripping over myself. There was a certain “book” I did absolutely not want her to get her hands on.
“Manners, Jen,” Kate called over. “I swear to God my sister’s the rudest person in the universe.”
“I am so not!” Jen fired back.
Kate’s words hung in the air. It was true—not just Jen, but all of them behaved as if they’d known me forever, with their easy familiarity. How strange this must feel for them, I thought, to be visitors. I grabbed the dictionary from the bookshelf and handed it to Jen.
I observed her pretty face and the sweep of blond hair the wind had mussed up outside earlier as she browsed through the onion-thin pages. Then she looked up at me and grinned. Her eyes looked so trusting, the pupils large and deep. I had a knack for divining people’s natures by their eyes. Was it Shakespeare who said that eyes were “windows to the soul”?
“And?” I said. “What does it say?”
Kate shook her head in disapproval. “Jen! You’re so nosey.”
“Kick us out if we’re bugging you,” Dan said.
For a second I wondered if these three had found the hidden key in the tree stump, opened the front door and then put it back again, but then I dismissed the idea. None of them carried that same jasmine scent, and they were too messy and clumsy, by the way they dumped their jackets around and traipsed clods of mud and dead leaves into the house. I would’ve seen breadcrumbs of their presence if they were the culprits. Besides, they had the confidence to simply knock at the door, barge their way in, as they had pretty much done now. But I wasn’t complaining. No, I liked their lively company, despite their cockiness. My house had never felt so homey. So bustling and active.
“‘Lapsang,’” Jen read out, “‘is a specific Chinese tea grown on Wuyi Mountain, dried and processed near a pine fire that gives it its distinctly smoky flavor.’ Hmm, think I’ll pass. Tea tasting of smoke sounds gross.”
“Read out what it says about Earl Grey,” Dan said, but Jen had already snapped the book shut and was more interested in the whistling kettle on the stove.
I ambled over to the kitchen and took a large white teapot from the counter. I didn’t have an electrical kettle for two reasons. Firstly, the stove was such a masterpiece of engineering I needed an excuse to use it daily. And secondly, with the occasional power cuts up here, the last thing I needed—or wanted—was to be stranded in the dark without at least a cup of tea. The teapot lived here on the counter permanently, never put away. You can take the girl out of England but you can’t take England out of the girl. I