“I’ll just have the elderflower,” Izzy said. “Not really feeling up to wine tonight.”
The group nodded sympathetically.
Stevie had recovered enough to figure out her drink. She would do what Izzy did—she would have whatever sparkling elderflower was. （It turned out to be sort of like Sprite. Fancy Sprite, for fancy people.） “This dairy-based, Seb?” Sooz asked as the soup was set in front of her.
“No, darling. It’s vegan. I checked.”
“I’m vegan,” Sooz explained to the newcomers, though that much could have been gathered from the previous exchange.
“You’ve been known to eat meat,” Sebastian said.
Sooz’s mouth twisted into a grin.
“Not for years,” she said. “No. I’m entirely plant-based now.”
Theo frowned at this and turned pointedly to Stevie and the others.
“Is your school food quite dismal?” she asked politely. “Or is it all right?”
“It’s a lot of syrup,” Stevie said.
“And moose,” David added. “Moose steak with syrup. Delicious.”
This remark was allowed to die a peaceful, polite death.
“Pete,” Sooz said, “Yash—what were you two talking about before?”
“Just a new show idea we’ve been bandying about,” Yash said. “Early doors.”
“Oh!” Sooz said. “What’s it about?”
“It needs work,” Peter replied.
“They’re always like this,” Theo said. “Always have been. Yash pitches the ideas. Peter shoots them down. Yash refines. Peter figures out the problems. And together they eventually come up with something brilliant.”
“I come up with ideas all the time,” Peter said. “Just because I’m not indiscriminate . . .”
“That’s what your mum told me last night,” Yash replied.
“You see what I’m working with?”
They continued like this, bantering without pause as the dark night settled down around them. Debbie brought out dishes of sausages and mashed potatoes and salad. （“The mash is plant-based, right, Seb? And which is the veggie sausage?”） The group spoke breathlessly, endlessly, grabbing the tails of each other’s sentences, understanding every nuance. What they were talking about, Stevie largely had no idea. This was the conversation of people who had known each other for a long time, who were so intimately aware of each other that they had their own language. They all seemed to have a deep, penetrating knowledge of everything going on in the world—politics, art, books, music. They all sounded so self-assured. That wasn’t surprising, considering that they were older and successful.
Izzy slid right into this conversation, speaking confidently on the subject of wind farms, some scandal in Parliament, and Bake-Off. Her royal-blue sweater, which, now that Stevie was looking more closely, was both small and large on her in precisely the right way. It was a shape and size of sweater that had evolved from all the lesser sweaters of the past, achieving this effortless final form. Had Stevie worn the sweater, it would have ended up wrong somehow. The neckline would suddenly be weird, and the shoulders would sag. She would disappoint the sweater. Stevie only truly understood hoodies, which felt very American and unsophisticated and maybe a little Unibombery. She pulled down on her sleeves to cover her hands, then realized what she was doing and pushed the sleeves partially up to her elbows. This too was wrong, so she let the sleeves fall back to her wrists.
That salad dressing from the plane was still visible on her hoodie.
Stevie wasn’t an unaware person. She read a lot. She knew the basics. But she found herself struck dumb, confused, and freaked out. Janelle could easily keep pace with almost everything being discussed, especially if it involved science or crafting. Vi was shockingly up to speed on UK politics, even more so than David, who was here studying international affairs. Only Nate and Stevie kept to themselves. Nate focused on the food, and Stevie watched the people. Everyone around this table was pointedly avoiding the reason they were all here. There was no mention of Angela. Everything was light, flowing, and desperately avoiding the terrible matter at hand. Stevie got the sense they were waiting for something—a boom to go with the tick tick of the clock.
As she ate her sausages, she looked at the intricate design of the walls. It took a few moments to work out that the pattern was not repeating. This wasn’t just some nice wallpaper that had been carefully lined up to make the pattern match—it was a continuous, varied piece of art, not repeated designs.
“It’s silk,” Sebastian said. “Hand painted.”
He had obviously seen her intently examining the walls.
“It’s one continuous picture. I think it was done sometime around 1920. It’s a little worn in places, but with the lights low you can’t tell. It’s quite a piece of work. I’m not sure you could get something like it now that could wrap the whole room in a big piece of art.”
One long, continuous picture. Not pieces. One picture.
“So,” Yash said as the plates were cleared and Debbie came in with sticky toffee puddings. “Tell us about detecting. You’ve solved two cases?”
Stevie wrung her hands in her lap.
“Well, four. Kind of. Or . . . it depends on how you count them.”
“How do you do it?” Sooz said, leaning over the table. “You don’t have a DNA lab in your room at school, I assume. How do you solve murders? What’s your process?”
“I . . . I just kind of . . . look at everything.”
“Old-school,” Peter said.
Perhaps realizing that discussing Stevie’s career might take the conversation down some dark paths, they moved on to Nate.
“You wrote a book?” Theo said. “The Moonbright Cycles?”
“I read that,” Peter said, perking up. “My daughter loved it, wanted me to read it. So I did.”
He did not, Stevie noticed, say he loved it. That didn’t mean he hadn’t liked it. But Stevie had spent enough time around Nate to know now that if someone read his book and didn’t specifically say they liked it, then he assumed they hated it. It would be worse if they said they liked it. If that had happened, Nate would have crawled into the fireplace and set himself on fire. Writers were weird. Talking to them was like talking to spiders—the mere breath of speech sent them running.
Nate began shoveling sticky toffee pudding into his mouth. They moved on to Janelle, discussing her engineering skills, the machines she made, her Rube Goldberg entries. Vi talked about becoming a translator.
“And what do you do, David?” Yash asked.
David nodded. “As little as possible,” he said, taking a sip of red wine. It was a glib reply, but everyone gave it a polite laugh and Sebastian toasted him with a glass of water. “I have learned a lot since I’ve been here, though. Like about the Salmon Act 1986. It’s illegal to handle salmon . . .”
“。 . . in a suspicious manner,” Yash and Peter said, almost in unison.
“We write jokes for a news show called Fish in a Barrel,” Peter explained. “It’s our job to know stupid laws about fish.”