He took hold of my wrist — friendly, the way he does, the way that makes it impossible to object to afterwards — and said, with about twenty people in earshot:
"What did you do, pay him?"
PART 4
For about two seconds every single thing that man has ever said to me came back at the same time.
The kitchen. The waist. The four days of packing. A hundred people in a room and my ten-year-old somewhere behind me in a green dress.
I wanted to be anywhere else on earth.
But Abel did not look uncomfortable.
He did not argue. He did not make a speech and he did not put an arm round me, which about four people have since told me they were expecting.
He just smiled at him. The particular way you smile at somebody who has got a fact slightly wrong and is about to find out.
