Death and Croissants

‘Eggs!’ Monsieur Meyer finally snapped. ‘We want our eggs.’

‘Look.’ Richard had now lost control and pointed towards the chicken coop. ‘Go and get them your bloody self!’

The Meyer family all looked at the chicken coop not far away in the corner of the garden, shaded under a lime tree. The two little girls both screamed, and turned their heads into their mother’s dress. The mother glowered at the father, the father looked stunned and Richard, Valérie and Madame Tablier all turned to look in the same direction.

There, hanging from the coop, a wire noose around her neck, her eyes white with death, was a hen.

‘The bastards,’ Richard said quietly. ‘They’ve killed Ava Gardner.’ [The main character, a fan of old films, has two other hens and she calls them Lana Turner and Joan Crawford!]

Richard began to wonder what parallel universe the woman operated in. How a woman of Valérie’s grace, poise and whateveryoucallit – he had the words, but wasn’t prepared to admit them to himself – would ever even come across a pale ale, was completely beyond him. It would be like watching Arthur Scargill order a pink gin.