‘I can be available for a briefing meeting. But pastries and coffee? That’s blasphemy. Do I need to bring my own emergency supply of tea?’
‘Better than that. Following our meeting, I have set up appointments for you at three Beresford hotels this morning. And they all serve tea.’
Dee caught her breath in the back of her throat. Three hotels? Wow. But then her brain caught up with what he was saying. He had set up appointments for her. Not them.
Oh no. She was not going to let him get away with that trick.
‘Ah no, that won’t work. You see, I still don’t feel that the Beresford management team is fully committed to fixing the problem they have created. It would be so reassuring if one of the directors of the company would act as my personal guide to each of the three venues. In person. Don’t you agree, Sean? Now, where shall I meet you?’
Tea, glorious tea. A celebration of teas from around the world.
Do you add the milk to your tea? About two-thirds of tea drinkers add the milk to the cup before pouring in the hot tea. Apparently this is an old tradition from the early days of tea drinking, when fine porcelain was being imported from China and the ladies were terrified the hot tea would crack the very expensive fragile china.
From Flynn’s Phantasmagoria of Tea
Wednesday
Dee stepped down from the red London bus and darted under the narrow shelter of the nearest bus stop. The showers that had held off all morning had suddenly appeared to thwart her. Heavy February rain pounded onto the thin plastic shelter above her head in rapid fire and bounced off the pavement of the smart city street in the business area of London.
Typical! Just when she was determined to make a good impression on Sean Beresford and prove that she was totally in control and calling the shots.
She peered out between the pedestrians scurrying for cover until her gaze settled on a very swish glass-plate entrance of an impressive three-storey building directly across the road from her bus stop. The words Beresford Hotel were engraved on a marble portico in large letters.
Well, at least she had found the hotel where Sean had asked her to meet him. Now all she had to do was step inside those pristine glass doors and get past the snooty concierge. Today she was a special guest of the hotel management, so she might be permitted entry.
What nonsense.
She hated that sort of false pretension and snobbery. In India she had met with some of the richest men and women in the land whose ancestors had once ruled a continent. Most of the stunning palaces had been converted into hotels for tourists but they still had class. Real class.
She could handle a few London suits with delusions of grandeur.
Dee took another look and sighed out loud as the rain faded and she could see the exterior more clearly.
This was one part of town she didn’t know at all well. Lottie’s Cake Shop and Tea Rooms were in smart west London and she rarely went further east than the theatres around Soho and Covent Garden. The financial and banking part of the City of London past St Paul’s Cathedral was a mystery to her.
At first sight the outside of the hotel looked so industrial. Metal pipework ran up one side of the wall; the lift was made of glass and looked as though the architects had glued it to the outside of the stone block building.
There was nothing welcoming or friendly about the entrance at all.
Just the opposite, in fact. It was imposing. Cold. Austere. Slippery and grey in the icy rain.
Where was the connection to that warm and communal spirit that came with the ritual of making tea for people to enjoy?
It was precisely the kind of building she avoided whenever possible. In fact, it gave her the shivers. Or was that the water dripping down onto her jacket from the back of the bus shelter?
Dee closed her eyes and, ignoring the two other ladies waiting at the bus stop, exhaled slowly, bringing her hands down from her cheeks to her sides in one slow, calm, continuous motion.
If there was ever a time to be centred, this was it.
This had been her decision. She was the one who had volunteered to organize the London Festival of Tea. Nobody had forced her to take on all of the admin and co-ordination that came with pulling together dozens of exhibitors, tea growers and tea importers looking for any excuse to show and sell their goods.
But there was one thing that Dee knew for certain.
This was her big chance, and maybe even her only chance, to launch her own business importing tea in bulk from the wonderful tea estates that she knew and understood so well, and the passionate people who ran them.
This was her opportunity to show the small world of the tea trade that Dee Flynn was her father’s daughter and had learnt a thing or two after spending the first fifteen years of her life travelling the world from tea plantation to tea plantation. Peter Flynn might have retired from the world of tea importing, but his little girl was right up there, ready to take over and make a name for herself as an importer.
Just because her parents had found out the hard way that there was a big difference between importing tea other growers had produced and running your own tea plantation, it did not mean to say that she was incapable of running a business.
And she was determined to prove it.
Of course, that had been last summer while she’d been working for a big tea-packaging company. Before Lottie had asked her to help her run the tea rooms in her cake shop. Her life had certainly been a lot simpler then.
But she had done it. No backing out. No giving in. No staying put in a nice, safe job in the back room of the tea importers while her so-called boyfriend Josh took the credit for the work she had done.
Josh had been so kind and attentive that her good nature had stepped in the first time he had struggled over a technical report. He really did not have a clue about the tea and had really appreciated her help. For a few months Dee had actually believed that they could have a future together, and the sex had been amazing.
Pity that it had turned out that Josh was waiting for his real girlfriend to come back from her gap year travelling in nice four-star hotels. Walking in on the two of them in bed last August had not been her finest moment.
Past history. Done and dusted. No going back now. And good luck to them both. They were going to need it.
Dee blinked her eyes open and smiled across the street as the rain shower drifted away and she could see patches of blue in the sky above the hotel roof.
Idiot! She was overreacting.
As usual.
This was probably where Sean had his office. There was no way that he could offer her a conference room in a hotel this swanky. This was a five-star hotel for bankers and stockbrokers, not rough and ready tea growers and importers who were likely to drop wet tealeaves on the no-doubt pristine hand-woven carpet.
She was just been silly and she was exhausted from the worry.
Time to find out just what Sean had come up with.
With a quick laugh, Dee shook the rain from the sleeves of her jacket and dashed out onto the pavement in a lull in the traffic as the lights turned to red and the queue of people at the crossing ran across the busy road.
In an instant she was with them, her boots hitting the puddles and taking the splashes, but she made it.
Taking a breath, Dee lifted her chin, chest out, and rolled back her shoulders as she stepped up to the hotel entrance. For the next few hours she would be D S Flynn, tea importer, not Dee from the cake shop.
Stand back