Free The Traveling Tea Shop by Belinda Jones

diabolical?”
    “Let’s just say I’ve yet to find my Georgie.” No need to gloom them with my romantic history. I turn to Pamela. “But you’ve done well too—how long is it with Brian, twenty years?”
    “Mmm.” Pamela turns to look out through the window.
    Okay. We’ll leave that there.
    “What about you, Ravenna? How long have you been with . . .”
    “Kevin.” Gracie helps me out with her boyfriend’s name.
    Ravenna’s eyes narrow. “It’s Eon now, as well you know.”
    “Eon?” I raise a brow.
    She juts her chin. “We’ve been together two years.”
    “God help us.”
    “What did you say?” Ravenna snaps at her grandmother.
    “Are those giant headphones affecting your hearing? I said, ‘God help us!’”
    “How can you be so rude?” Ravenna gapes.
    “Oh, when he speaks so fondly of us?”
    “He’d never say any of that stuff to your face.”
    “How very discreet!”
    “Um,” I scoot forward in my seat, eager to change the subject. “We’re just approaching New Haven if you would like to take a little break? It’s not part of our official itinerary, but it is home to Yale University, and Louis’ Lunch—the birthplace of the American hamburger—if anyone’s peckish?”
    “I’m happy to keep going,” says Gracie, adjusting her grip on the steering wheel.
    Ravenna gives a “don’t care either way” shrug and Pamela doesn’t even reply, she’s so deep in her own thoughts.
    “Okay, well we’ll just keep on trucking.” I slide back into my seat.
    Gracie catches my eye in the rearview mirror. “You look disappointed?”
    “Oh no, it’s fine! I’ve just got a bit of a thing for university towns.” I pull my cardigan around me. “Even though we’re just getting into summer, they still make me think of argyle socks and scrunchy leaves and armfuls of books.” I don’t really mean to keep talking, but I do. “It seems so romantic to me—the idea of sitting at some creaky desk listening to a whiskery intellectual spouting mind-expanding wisdom—”
    “I take it you’ve never actually been to university?”
    “Ravenna!” Gracie scolds.
    “It’s okay,” I respond. “I haven’t. I got offered a travel rep job as soon as I left school and, at that point, the idea of getting paid to spend a year in Greece was rather more appealing than student loans and more exams. Not that I’m saying that was the smarter decision,” I quickly add, conscious that Ravenna is still in uni mode.
    Mercifully Gracie suggests some music: “My friend’s grandson put together a CD for me . . .”
    Ravenna rolls her eyes and lodges her headphones in place before she’s even heard a note—Gracie could have opened with “Highway to Hell” for all she knows.
    In actual fact it’s the most laid-back, borderline melancholic selection from the 1940s—“One for My Baby (And One More for the Road),” “Sentimental Journey” and a rather ironic “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” . . .
    •   •   •
    By the time we get to our official first stop, both Pamela and Ravenna have nodded off.
    “Now this is more like it,” I whisper to Gracie, acknowledging the hand-carved, welcome-to-our-town sign (settled 1654), picture-perfect, pointy-spired white church and ye olde seaport with Captain Pugwash-style sailing vessels.
    “Delightful,” she agrees.
    “Are we here?” Pamela croaks as we pull into a parking spot beside the wooden boardwalk.
    “We are.”
    She reaches to jiggle Ravenna’s shoulder.
    “Don’t wake her!” Gracie hisses.
    “What do you mean? We can’t leave her in the car!”
    “It’s fine—we’ll crack the window.”
    “Oh Mum!” she tuts and gently touches her daughter’s hair—guaranteed to render her wide-awake and riled.
    “Where are we?” Ravenna asks—a simple enough question, though it sounds more like an accusation with her tone.
    “Mystic,” I announce.
    She snorts. “What, as in
Mystic Pizza
?”
    “Yes. Exactly.”
    She