Behind them, Julian was pacing the cavernous hall again, still talking about an upcoming vote.
“Oh, not Julian,” Yash said, sensing the direction Stevie was looking. “Not this time. But we’ve written jokes about Julian for the show too.”
“We had years of material stored up for that,” Peter added. He shut his laptop with finality. “Bugger if I know what to write right now. Let’s continue after breakfast.”
There was a general movement toward the kitchen, where Sebastian, Theo, and Sooz were all engaged in different activities. Theo was on the phone, talking doctor talk about a patient.
“。 . . well, I did send a message to neurology, but no one got back to me. Has the bloodwork come back yet?”
Sooz sipped a coffee and paged through the glossy color supplement from the newspaper on the table. Sebastian, meanwhile, ran from stove, to fridge, to sink, to counter, managing all the pans and trays he had going. The air was thick with good smells—frying bacon and sausages, some savory scents that she could not place.
“Have you had a full English?” Sebastian asked cheerfully. “It’s a cultural icon. Eggs, bacon, sausage, beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, and the most important . . .”
He held up something that appeared to be dark salami.
“Black pudding,” he said.
“Pudding?” Nate asked.
“It’s not pudding,” Sooz said, wrinkling her nose. “It’s made of blood. There are veggie sausages as well, for those of us who don’t want to eat congealed pig’s blood.”
“Pig’s blood and spices. It’s delicious.”
“Yum,” Nate said grimly. Sooz nodded agreement.
“Don’t be put off,” Sebastian said. “It’s a national classic.”
“Yash, grab the bacon from under the broiler, would you? Peter, the mushrooms and tomatoes are in the slow oven down there. Nate, Stevie, would you mind taking those teacups and plates through to the dining room?”
Stevie and Nate each grabbed a stack of crockery and brought it through. As they dropped them off, Stevie picked up an empty wine bottle that was still on the table from the night before. She considered it for a moment.
“It’s a bottle,” Nate said. “Hold it up to your ear and you can hear the vineyard.”
Stevie kept looking at the bottle for a long moment, setting it down when the parade of breakfast foods came through the door. Yash wrangled a platter of still-spitting sausages and bacon. Peter carried the tomatoes and beans and mushrooms. Sooz kept the plant-based food away from the black pudding and animal grease that was going everywhere. Sebastian brought up the rear with platters of eggs and racks of toast.
“Get Theo and Julian, won’t you?” he asked Sooz.
Sooz went off, and a moment later her trained voice rang through the entirety of Merryweather, curling through the hall and slipping under doors.
“Would you like to learn something about country house etiquette?” Sebastian asked them. “Meals were always served at table by servants—except for breakfast. One always serves oneself at breakfast from the sideboard. I’m doing it that way because I am lazy and cannot be buggered to serve these layabouts. And everyone likes a buffet.”
Theo reappeared, looking harried.
“They’re having a nightmare of a morning at A and E,” she said. “I had to explain I was out of town. I’m starving.”
Janelle and Vi appeared, summoned by a text from Nate. David took a moment longer, and Izzy was last. This was curious, but Stevie shook it off.
Julian still had not appeared.
“Always the last one,” Sebastian said.
“Must be off saving the country,” Peter said.
“I’ll text him,” Theo said.
“Anyway! Let’s start.”
Everyone filled up their plates and took a seat.
“What are your plans?” Sooz asked them.
“We have to go back to London today,” Janelle said, with a subtle side-eye at Stevie. “It’s our last day in England. We fly home tomorrow.”
“Do you have something enjoyable planned for the last night?” Sebastian said.
“Tea,” Vi replied. “At a hotel in Soho. And then we’re going to see Richard III at the Barbican.”
“Oh,” Sooz said. “I’ve got three friends in that production. I could text them and let them know you’re coming. They could show you around backstage, if you’d like?”
“What about you, Izzy?” Sebastian said gently. “You’re welcome to stay here with us, or if you want to go back with your friends . . .”
“I think I’ll go back,” she said. “I have lecture notes to go over and a project to work on. And I’ll go over and clean Angela’s flat and feed Doorknob. She left it a mess. I might stay there until she gets back.”
“Good idea,” Sebastian said.
“I have a stupid question,” Stevie said. “I wanted to get something for my dad. He loves whisky, and I can buy it here legally . . .”
This immediately caught the attention of all her friends, who knew that there was basically no way in hell Stevie was bringing her parents home a bottle of whisky. A magnet, maybe.
“And . . . this is weird, but . . . in the statements, I was reading about this amazing bottle of whisky? You drank something, you know . . . and I know you know whisky . . .”
“Oh, that whisky,” Sebastian said, nodding. “I don’t think you’re going to find that one at duty-free, and if you did, you wouldn’t buy it.”
“Why?”
“Because it cost ten thousand pounds,” Sebastian said, slicing himself a large chunk of sausage. “In the nineties. It would probably be about forty thousand pounds today.”
“You drank a ten-thousand-pound bottle of whisky?” Stevie said.
“Oh yes. Every drop.”
“You were obsessed about that whisky,” Peter said.
“I wasn’t obsessed with it. My father was. He sought rare bottles, and that one was the rarest of the lot. He seemed to value that bottle of whisky more than me. I was determined that we should drink it as a symbolic gesture.”
“Except you almost knocked the house over getting it out of the cabinet,” Yash said.
“I remember approaching the cabinet elegantly.”
“You crawled,” Theo said.
“With a candle in your hand,” Yash added. “Which I took. Then you banged and scratched that cabinet door until Peter got on his hands and knees and helped you open it.”
“I was testing the soundness of the wood.”
“It’s still got the scratches,” Yash said. “I looked. Someone’s tried to cover them, but I saw them.”
“Must have been the cat.”
“You don’t have a cat,” Sooz said.
“I have you,” Sebastian replied. “That’s close enough.”
Julian appeared in the dining room doorway, making an entrance as usual.
“The eggs are cold, darling,” Sebastian said. “I hope your constituents know the pains you go to on their behalf.”
Julian did not respond. He looked out over the table at his friends and the strangers he had just met. His shy, come-hither glance was more deliberate. He couldn’t quite look up. The table came to nervous attention. Stevie stiffened and put down her fork.