“Oh, that’s great.” I try to match her light tone. “Charlie doesn’t mind my baking, but Hugh’s been missing his digestives.”

I don’t know why I said my baking. Sally does all our cooking. Maybe it just felt like something a mother would say. I catch myself sometimes, aiming for normal and missing the mark.

Jo pretends not to notice that too.

I take two more careful sips, and then: “What did you mean about flying in on the Day?”

“I don’t expect it’ll happen,” Jo says quickly as if to reassure me. “Everybody knows not to fly here this week, even when it’s not restricted airspace, as it were. But I’d hate for anybody unsuspecting to get wrapped up in all this. It’s why we shut the cottages down and the campsites, you know. T’wouldn’t be fair.”

“So you think it’s fair as it is?”

I smile so big I’m practically winking, broadcasting the fact that I haven’t been taken in. This conversation is for the fun of it. My stomach isn’t clenched, my foot not tapping peevishly under the tearoom table.

She considers the question thoughtfully. “It’s fair in its way. It’s a deal that was struck a long time ago, and we do see the benefit of it. Especially in times like these. I’ve never lived anywhere so peaceful, so safe. Can’t beat the views either.”

Mrs. Wickett murmurs something I can’t make out, and Jo laughs.

“Should we go sit with her?” I whisper.

Jo shakes her head, still smiling. “She likes to be alone, where she and Fred used to sit for tea. It’s her ritual.”

And this is mine. Escape while the kids are occupied, tea with a friend, and then something all my own.

Jo reads my mind, psychic or not, sliding a folded napkin over the table with a complicit glint in her eye, like we’re thirteen. She starts to whistle, overdoing the innocence, and I swat at her. As Mrs. Wickett looks away, staring at a porcelain plate hung on the wall, I pull my contraband out from under the napkin and stick it in my pocket.

One cigarette a day. It hardly counts as a vice, but Jo’s the only one who knows I do it. I could buy a pack and hide it, but that would feel more like an actual addiction, especially with the gory photos they cover the packaging with here: diseased toes, rotting gums. I hardly ever even finish smoking the things before stubbing them out and depositing them in the hollow of the tree trunk that serves as my hiding spot in the grove. It’s a nothing habit.