The electronic beep of the kettle coming to the boil coincided neatly with Lyra's arrival. At least, Will was reasonably certain it was Lyra, seeing as his only regular visitors were the other Merry Men, and he knew each of their knocks about as well as he knew their voices. And sure enough, the face that greeted him when he opened the door was fair and freckled and framed with red curls; Patrick's daughter without a doubt.
"Well, you must be Lyra. Come on in, it's cold as brass monkeys out there." Will moved back from the door to let her through. The workshop was a converted loading garage, one large room and a closet-like loo. It was full of drafts in the winter and it was liable to get real cramped when he had a big job on the go, but Will had made it his own and he was well comfortable with the set-up.
Hand tools hung in tidy rows along one wall above a couple of perpetually dusty work benches on which some larger pieces of equipment sat. Wood was stacked on a couple of metal shelving units, some pieces already cut to size. Several finished chairs hung from the ceiling – the only place they could practically fit, since Will needed all the floor space he could get. In the far corner, mostly shielded from sawdust by another shelving unit, was a tiny kitchenette: a sink and a bar fridge and the all-important kettle, with a table that doubled as a desk wedged in alongside.
"I'm Will," he said, offering Lyra a hand to shake once she was through the door. "I was just about to make a cuppa, you fancy a tea or coffee?"