Edie and the Flits in Paris by Kate Wilkinson

Author:Kate Wilkinson [Wilkinson, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Piccadilly Press

Passage de Curiosité

T

he back door to the shop looked shabby and unused, and autumn leaves were piled up against it. Edie rattled the handle, knowing that it would be locked. Fabien looked up at the spindly branches of the tree with its skinny, slippery trunk and the distance between the closed window and where they were standing.

‘Are you thinking that we should climb it?’

Edie didn’t reply. She was busy looking along the line of the roof.

‘C’est dangereux,’ he said. ‘We might fall, and the window is locked from the inside. Edie, is this really a good idea? What if we get caught?’

‘Oh, we’re not going to climb it ourselves!’ said Edie. ‘I’ve got another plan.’

She pulled a packet of sunflower seeds out of her coat pocket, which she’d bought for a couple of euros in the flower market on her way back to the hotel, and shook it hard so that the seeds rattled inside. For a few minutes nothing happened. Traffic hummed in the background and someone kicked some rubbish in a neighbouring alleyway and a can skittered along the cobbles.

‘What are we waiting for?’ said Fabien.

Edie shook the packet again and held a finger up to her lips. They stood in silence until a movement from the roofline above made Fabien jump. There was a flapping sound as if someone was shaking a square of thick fabric and a large bird landed at their feet.

Kraaa!

It was Pigalle. Edie bent down and held out her hand. The crow pecked at it greedily. Sunflower seeds were clearly a favourite.

Like Victor had done earlier, she stretched out her finger to rub the feathers on Pigalle’s head. He backed away, looking at her suspiciously, but she smiled and spoke gently until he hopped forward, twisting his head under her finger for more caresses and eyeing the packet again. She noticed that one of his claws was slightly crooked as if he’d been in a fight or had caught it in a trap.

Edie closed the packet of seeds with a theatrical gesture and stood up.

Pigalle hopped about and pecked at her shoe, hoping for more. Kraaa!

She pointed up at a tiny square roof light set in among the tiles. She had noticed the dim shaft of light falling on Victor’s desk earlier that day and looked upwards to see that the roof light was wedged open.

‘You can have more if you fetch the spare keys that are hanging on the hook by Victor’s desk.’ She mimed shaking a ring of keys and turning one of them in a lock. Pigalle fluffed out his feathers and turned his back on them.

‘Does he understand you?’ said Fabien. ‘And even if he does, why doesn’t he speak French?’

‘He understands enough,’ said Edie, laughing. She also knew that whether he was in fact a Parisian bird or a Londoner, Pigalle (or Shadwell) was not a loyal bird. He just went where he saw the opportunities. She had seen that when he had abandoned Vera Creech at Wilde Street on the London Underground and flown off into the tunnel.

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.