Die With Me by Elena Forbes

Author:Elena Forbes
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press
Published: 2011-04-29T22:00:00+00:00

19

Café Montmartre was new and gleaming with fresh paint, fixtures and fittings. An attempt had been made to recreate the feel of the genuine French article. But with its lilac walls, dinky gilt mirrors and brass lights, it was a cheap parody, totally lacking in any kind of atmosphere. They had got all sorts of other details wrong too, Tom thought, spreading a large dollop of marmalade on his croissant. For starters, the French didn’t eat marmalade, from what he could remember. Instead they made something unpleasantly sweet and gloopy out of oranges that had none of the tangy bitterness and bite of a decent English marmalade. At least this one came in its own small pot, safe from contamination by someone else’s buttery knife or, worse still, toast crumbs. Grudgingly, he was forced to admit that it didn’t taste too bad, although it couldn’t hold a candle to his grandmother’s. She cut her peel nice and thick and sometimes put brandy in it. Hers was the best he had ever tasted, made with Seville oranges when they came into season once a year just before Christmas. He remembered the pleasure of being allowed to lick the pan and spoon, if he had been good. Luckily, the old bat had made a new batch just before he’d throttled the life out of her and he had enough to last him a long while.

He took a bite of croissant. The butter was salted, of course, unlike real French butter, but although a bit chewy, the croissant was acceptable. Which was more than could be said for the coffee, which he’d had to send back twice. The waitress looked pretty pissed off, failing totally to understand what he was talking about and, when he’d insisted on hot milk, instead of cold, she seemed to think he was being difficult. From what he could tell, she was Russian or from some unsophisticated, Central European shit-hole. It wasn’t surprising she hadn’t a clue. But her attitude left a lot to be desired. She wouldn’t be getting a tip from him and if she had the gall to try and add service to his bill, he’d strike it off.

Something about her, smilingly oblivious each time she spoke to the way she murdered the English language, made him think of Yolanda. She was another of these stupid cunts who came over here and made no proper effort to get to grips with the native tongue. They were just there for a good time; slags, all of them. All thanks to the EU and the stupid British taxpayer. But in a way, that played nicely into his hands. The papers had tried to spoil things for him and the old routine wouldn’t work any longer. But it was time for a change anyway and it would be fun to try something new. There was little Yolanda, totally unaware of what was going on in the big world around her, just ripe for the picking. He was amazed that anybody had employed her to look after their kids.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.