She's done research, scoured past newspapers in the library endlessly until her eyes failed to focus and the words failed to sink in. She knows that a theoretical knowledge will not necessarily totally prepare her for whatever might happen here- and she feels that something is going to happen here, that and now you live here is an anticlimax, that she's here for a reason- but the acquisition of facts makes her feel powerful.

She hisses in her breath through her teeth, mock coy- "Oh, do you think so?" she says, like he's suggested they're long overdue for a patch of sun. "Then I look forward to being broken in immensely."

--watch it, Alice, he's taken, but she's not really angling for that; she ticks all the boxes of flirtation without ever really trying to make it anything more than a box-ticking exercise. She could be more convincing, but sees no need. "What was it like? I've read accounts. Newspapers. All very detached, very...third-person."