“I’m pretty sure he has,” said Fee, then frowned. “Or was that Alaska?” she wondered.

“Oh … hi.” Tom was coming from the French windows that led to the sitting room, a book in his hand. When he saw the two women, he stopped. “I was going to read in the last of the sun here, but if you’re in the middle of something, I’ll go back indoors.”

Emma looked up at him, thoughtfully.

“You’re American, too, aren’t you?” she said.

“Last time I looked,” he said.

“Do you know anything about Closker College in North Dakota?” she asked.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” he said. “A friend of mine taught literature there for some years. It’s a good school. I even visited him there once—he asked me over to give a talk on Dr. Johnson.”

“What’s it like?” she said.

“It’s your classic American college town,” he said. “Quite an interesting place to visit, from a sociological point of view. There’s not too much going on in the town itself; it mostly caters to the farmers, who tend not to have too much in common with the college folk, so the college folk are kind of thrown back in on themselves. So you have a collection of highly educated academic types, all pretty much fishes out of water in a rural town, all rubbing shoulders with no one much but each other. I guess the best way to describe it would be like a kind of grown-up version of your old university campus.”

“Not my old university campus,” said Emma. “I went to London. King’s College. On the Strand.”

“Ah,” he said.

“But what’s the town like?” she said, after a moment. “Are there bookshops? Nice restaurants?”

“I don’t recall a bookstore,” he said. “As for restaurants, there’s probably a Chinese—there generally is. And I remember a diner that did a good coconut cream pie.”

Coconut cream pie, thought Emma sadly.

“Is there a theater?” she said.

“A small one,” he said. “But it’s pretty much for the local kids, so it mostly just shows the latest action movies. It’d be mostly about ordering DVDs from Netflix if you wanted something more interesting.”

“No,” she said. “Not a cinema theater. A theater theater. With real actors doing plays. On a stage.”

“Oh,” he said. He thought. “I’m pretty sure there’s one in Minneapolis,” he said then, helpfully. “That’s only three hours, if the traffic’s good.”

“But you can’t go to North Dakota,” said Sophie the next day over brunch. “How can Matthew fix my computer if he’s half the world away?”

“Thank you, Sophie,” said Emma. “I’d miss you, too.”

“Take her with you,” said Lulu. “She spilled a bag of sugar in the kitchen that hot day last week and then left for work. We’ve been wading through an inch of goo ever since.”

“I replaced the sugar,” said Sophie. “And at least I don’t bring in dog hairs and bits of twig every time I come home. It’s like living with the Hound of the Baskervilles.”