There is a question I was never asked at university and have been asked several thousand times since.
“Do you want a tea?”
It comes about ninety seconds into a visit, usually from somebody who did not want me there and has decided to be decent about it anyway. I used to say, “No, I’m fine, thank you,” because I had been told it was more professional, and because I had seen the kitchen.
I say yes now. It took me longer to learn than anything in the legislation.
What the offer is
It is not about tea.
Somebody whose home has been walked into by a stranger with a badge is doing the one thing left to them, which is to be the host. For as long as the kettle takes, it is their house again. They are choosing a mug. They are asking how I take it. I am a guest, and guests behave.
If I say no, I have turned that down. I have said that I am here to look and not to stay.
What I have been given
Tea so strong the spoon slowed down in it. Tea made with evaporated milk, which is better than it sounds. Tea in a cup and saucer that had plainly come out of a cabinet for the occasion, carried through very carefully, with both hands.
Squash, because there was no milk, offered with an apology that was not owed.
A glass of water that took a long time, because the glass was being washed first.
I drank all of it.
What happens while it brews
Everything useful.
People talk to a kettle in a way they do not talk to a social worker. They have their back to you and something to do with their hands. I have learned more about a family in the time it takes to find the teabags than in an hour of sitting opposite somebody with a form on my knee.
Children come into kitchens. They want to see who the visitor is, and they want a biscuit, and they will tell you what they had for tea last night without being asked.
When you cannot
There are houses where you should not, and you will know them, and no rule I write here is worth more than your own sense of whether you are safe.
There are visits that are too short, or too hard, for anybody to be putting the kettle on.
And sometimes there is nothing to offer, and the person knows it, and is ashamed. Then I say I have just had one. I had not. It is the only lie I tell at work and I do not lose sleep over it.
What I would say to somebody new
Say yes. Say thank you. Drink at least half.
Do not look into the mug before you drink. Do not wipe the rim. If you would not do it at your auntie’s, do not do it here.
And notice who makes it. If it is always the ten-year-old, that is worth knowing. I would put it in the notes, carefully, as what I saw and not what I think it means.
The best ones
I am not going to tell you about a real one. They belong to the people who made them.
But the best ones all go the same way. Halfway down the cup, the person who made it looks at you and says something like, “You look like you’ve not stopped.” You came to assess them. They have taken one look and assessed you, and they are right, and they have put two sugars in without asking.
Maisie x
Next in the notebook: Supervision: a user’s guide