‘With or without?’ she asked, as the piping hot liquid poured from the urn. Charlotte was halfway through the details of a man called Lech Rostok from Danzig when something about the two men fighting suddenly hit her. She sat bolt upright. The papers she’d been reading fell from her hand. ‘Polish! They were speaking in Polish!’ Eyes that had been lowered over files in the office she shared with six others turned in her direction. ‘Just thinking aloud,’ she explained with a casual smile and a shake of her head. ‘I do that,’ said the tea lady, her hair a busy frizz around her dumpling face. ‘Now is that with or without sugar?’ she asked again. Charlotte declined. ‘I knew a Pole during the war,’ said the tea lady, a far away look in her eyes as she hugged her oversized teapot close to her chest. ‘Drunken swine!’ ‘Oh dear!’ The tea lady moved on and Charlotte’s thoughts went back to the building site, the two men fighting, two others brutalizing them, and the other man wearing a double-breasted suit.
