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“Peter,” his mother interjects. “She’s coming. Wait patiently.”

Mrs. Beurton turns back to me. “One minute and they’ll be off to the bus for school.”

Nina rushes back into the room with a bag slung over her shoulder, and the two hurtle out the front door without further words, just incoherent exclamations before the door slams behind them.

Mrs. Beurton notices she’s still holding my coat, which she tosses over the back of the sofa, and leads me to the kitchen. “Finally. Quiet.”

She pulls out one of the four chairs tucked tight beneath the small round table in her kitchen’s corner and invites me to sit. I obey and watch as she bustles around with quick efficiency pulling our tea together. She sets the kettle on the hob with one hand, almost simultaneously sliding scones off a baking sheet and onto a platter with the other. Deft flicks of her wrist and a spoon fill small dishes with Devonshire cream and jam, which she sets before me. Then she returns to fill the teapot with the now-boiling water.

I take in the space as she moves around it. Her kitchen countertops are wood, just as ours were in our East London flat when I was young. But these are smooth and well cared for. And the cupboards, though painted in that ubiquitous greyish dove-blue color that’s been so easy to come by since the war, as so much of it was made during those years, looks like it was specially chosen rather than the only color available. It sets off the blue-black of the stone floor and the deep-toned wood counters perfectly.

But all this fades as I find the room’s focal point: a cream-colored AGA that fills almost one entire wall. It has two ovens, six burners, and a full scuttle of coal beside it to keep it burning. My eyes widen in envy, despite the fact I wouldn’t know what to do with half those burners or either of the two ovens if I owned them. Yet it feels like I’ve found the power source to the sense of family, warmth, and belonging here. I find myself trying to sink deeper into the straight-backed wood chair almost as if by not moving I can absorb and carry home a bit of its magic. My gaze sweeps back to Mrs. Beurton, and I find her staring at me.

“I love this kitchen too.” She steps towards me and sets both the teapot and the scones on the table. “I’ve moved many times in my life, lived in many houses, but once I saw this kitchen, I wanted nothing more than to live here. I honestly consider this my first real home. First for my children too.”

I guess Mrs. Beurton’s age to be close to my mother’s, if she were still living. Possibly in her early to mid-forties. But she doesn’t feel that old. Her ever-ready smile, dancing eyes, and nimble movements, and also her blouse’s bright-patterned Liberty fabric and the red scarf holding back her mass of hair, make her look much younger.

As she pulls the last details together—plates, cutlery, and the like—I pepper her with questions about her children and how she came to live in our tiny village. Really I’m nervous, and when nervous, I prattle on. In the end she answers few of them, and I end up sharing more than she does. More than I expect to say, too, but I find her such a good listener it’s almost as if I can’t help myself.

“It wasn’t that I was unhappy in London. Other than my years in Yorkshire, it’s all I’ve known. I just wasn’t happy either. Something was missing. Then I saw the advert for the job here and simply had to try for it. I got this sense it was right without knowing anything real about it or about Great Rollright at all.”

She smiles at me, as if I’ve shared something far deeper. “I’ve dared many things on conviction alone, that irrepressible and undeniable feeling inside, and most have turned out rather well.”

A breathy snort escapes. “That’s far too grand for what I felt. I’m not sure I know what ‘conviction’ feels like. Mine was survival, perhaps? The idea of my own space, a situation I could control, somewhere I could slow down and think.”

She keeps eye contact as she places the tea trappings on a tray, and I blither on. “It was a small feeling—like in a small village, I might feel safe.”

“You call ‘safe’ a small word? It’s as grand a conviction, a necessity, as anything in life. If we didn’t want safety, didn’t believe it was vital for survival, I doubt so many would have had the conviction to die during the war.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“Yes, but it’s fleeting, too, isn’t it? This thing we crave so much.” She props herself against the counter. “The war is over. Peace was to come. We were told we were safe. But are we? When one side is more powerful than another, there will always be struggle and strife.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.” The conversation seems to have gone long past my desire for a single room.

“Safety. Peace. It comes when there is parity between nations. This thing you want, what we all want, isn’t possible right now.” She rolls her eyes and laughs, soft and light. “There I go again. The kids tire of my philosophical lectures, so here I foist them upon you. But I’ve moved around a bit and I’ve seen a lot. It leads to endless byways in my brain.”

Of course, I have to ask about that and learn about the cold, damp day she and her children arrived in Liverpool in February 1941.

“It was so miserable, worse than anything I could’ve imagined, and a damp unlike anything I’d ever experienced. Not more humid than southern China, mind you, but so cold it bit into my bones and wouldn’t let go.” She scrunches her nose in disdain. “I didn’t like it at all and wondered what I’d gotten us into. I almost ran away again.”

“What made you move so often?”

She regards me, almost as if making a decision. “My husband’s work. I was married before Mr. Beurton, and my first husband, Rudi, was an architect in Shanghai. There were many moves and a lot of life lived before I met Mr. Beurton, but after we did marry and Europe felt like it was burning to the ground, we came home, to his home.”

“I’m sorry you had to leave Germany at all.”

“I’m glad we had a place to come to. And my new homeland defeated the monster. Rather, you should say, ‘You’re welcome.’”

She offers a cheeky smirk, but a thread of sincere conviction infuses her words. She tilts her head towards the door into the parlor. “Please go make yourself comfortable while I finish sorting our tea.”

I return to the larger sitting room and pick the least rumpled chair in which to sit. To me it means it’s probably not her favorite. I sit, cross my ankles, shift my skirt, and pull myself upright. And the second she enters the room with a bounce in her step, the plate of scones in one hand and two cups and saucers balanced in the other, I realize how silly and stiff I must appear.

Her gaze drops to my ankles. I uncross them. She steps around me and places everything onto the table and returns seconds later with the tray filled with the bowls of cream and jam and the teapot.

As she pours, my eyes drift out the back windows into the garden. She has both a flower garden as well as several raised beds, which I assume will grow vegetables come spring. The stone wall dividing her garden from her next-door neighbor’s is lined with brown stumps.

“You have roses.”