TEA SET

From Park Row we squeezed through a gap between the double doors of a shop front into a room on the floor of which were scattered small pieces of furniture. The two of us walked round each piece to the room at the back where we sat down at a table set for tea.
I asked the old woman I recognised as having a girlfriend in the flats, ‘can we have a drink?’
‘Yes,’ she said, went put the kettle on and brought an orange juice in a glass with ice and a slice of lemon for my daughter.
‘I love the view,’ she said when I asked her why she lived here.
She pointed out three hills in the distance naming each in turn using words I'd not heard before and cannot recall. To the right as we looked I could see a block of flats painted baby pink and faded lilac like the icing on a birthday cake and thought, ‘that’s not where I live.’