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really happy there. Then it all went wrong. No petrol for cars. Trucks couldn’t deliver goods to the shops. People couldn’t buy food. The black market took over … and … and …”
KristalClear’s eyes are beginning to well up with tears. Not because of what happened to M. Troyes, but because of what happened to the family’s horses.
“Oh Maman! Tea! Lovely!”
Mme. Troyes had been rifling through the kitchen cupboards, “sorry about the noise my lovelies! I had to go to the back of the top shelf, to reach the nice tea cups.”
She sets a tray down on the coffee table. The teapot is a bulbous, old fashioned, white one, decorated with intricate swirls and patterns in Royal blue. It’s surrounded by four ornate tea cups with elaborate curved handles. The pattern on the cups matches the tea pot, and inside the rim the cups have a neoclassical meander.
If there was a broken cup or a broken saucer back in the kitchen, then it wasn’t one of these fancy ones!
“Milk and sugar?” asks Mme. Troyes, looking directly at NutJob.
“Ooh! Milk! We hardly ever have milk in our house!
“No, nor do we!” says Mme. Troyes, with a knowing smile. If the youngsters didn’t realise that this was an extra special occasion, they do now!
“Black please, no milk, no sugar.”
“This is a lovely Darjeeling from Mannin,” says Mme. Troyes. She places a pretty, delicate metal tea strainer on NutJob’s cup and begins to pour some tea from the pot, “they say that Manx tea is just as good, if not better than the tea that we used to get from India.”
M. Troyes can be heard coming down the stairs, light footed, but clearly audible. He enters the front room, now dressed in lightweight khaki chinos and a short sleeved, buttoned, white cotton shirt. He’s wearing nothing on his feet, and he cheerfully says, “how far did we get?”
With a light tremble in her voice KristalClear says, “horses, Paris.”
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