They drank in silence for a moment. This was the tradition Zoey had adopted and perfected: the comfortable silence. Americans often felt the need to fill the air with noise, fearing that silence meant disinterest or awkwardness. But the English, Zoey had learned, treated silence like a well-tended garden. It was a place to be inhabited.

Perhaps the most iconic of all English traditions is Afternoon Tea, popularized by Anna Russell, the Duchess of Bedford, in the 1840s. Zoey Grey elevates this practice from a mere snack to a daily act of mindfulness.