“Okay, she says, the secret, Come I’ll tell you, she says, playing for time, the secret to good skin and hair is – and here she pauses – is plain cold water. Listen, once you get that water in the kettle and you heat it up, then all the goodness flies out.” (Wicomb, 24)

Though this part wasn’t significant or special, I really liked reading this line. From what I was getting in the beginning was that Grace was getting a little annoyed as Fiona would persistently ask “what her secret was”. She wanted to know Grace’s secret to looking so young at her age of 74. After a few times of Fiona asking and Grace repeatedly saying she has no secret, she decided to switch up her response. Grace seems to “cave in” (in reality she isn’t) and says the secret is “plain cold water”. I enjoyed this line because I felt this is exactly what I would do in the same situation. However, after reading a bit more we see it is actually the truth. Grace’s choice (really the authors choice) to respond the way she did and then say “all the goodness flies out” once the water is hot is definitely something I would do to be sarcastic if someone is constantly annoying me about something I genuinely have no answer to or something I just don’t care to think about . Using dialogue like this in the text is what interests me the most when reading but relating to characters and making them seem realistic is what attaches me to a reading. It is also fun how I jumped into conclusions when in reality the author even states she was being truthful.