She’d had a shock. Her default mechanism of making tea in a crisis had gone out of kilter and I sat watching my stepfather take on the job. “One lump or two?” he asked, his face like an ancient stone block, unreadable. But was that humour? They didn’t use lump sugar, only granulated. Anything else was frivolous. “I don’t take sugar.” He didn’t even know. “Well maybe you should. Bit of extra weight wouldn’t hurt.” I looked over at Alice, figured she got my ‘I told you so’ expression. But she remained annoyingly impassive. I guess she was tired. It had been a long journey and she and David had taken turns with the driving. I had been allowed to stretch out on the back seat and fallen asleep lulled by the warmth of the heater, the comforting hum of the engine. Although I was no oil painting (swollen nose, and interesting purple bruises blooming across one side of my face) I figured I looked at least as good as Alice.
