Georgia jumps, quite violently, at a commotion from the fireplace and has to take a moment to breathe and find her heartbeat again before turning around to greet her visitor. There’s a particularly potent kind of stress that comes with hostessing one’s mother for an afternoon, and another for introducing her to one’s lover, and Georgia has no idea what she was thinking when she decided to impose them both on herself at once.
”Mum! Hi! Okay, er… we’ve got tea in the pot, should be brewed by now, and a shi—I-I mean, a ton of cake. Fred’s down in the shop but she said she’d drop in when she gets a moment, and I think Vati’s just… powdering her nose.” In fact, Parvati’s getting changed, as they both have several times that day in spontaneous panics that their skirts are too short or heels too high or necklines too low. “Come in, sit down, make yourself at home, okay?”