Читать книгу One More Croissant for the Road онлайн

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Having apparently learnt all that there is to be learnt from the tight-lipped staff, and shortly before someone calls security, I make my way up to the slightly sepulchral dining room, where Matt is sitting reading The Times in the company of a pair of Korean girls charging their phones on the table, a family of voluble Italians and a grumpy British couple who look like they’d dearly like to ask him for the features section. Almost every inch of wall is covered with photographs of grandees who have been lucky enough to feast on the famous Poulard hospitality, ranging from Trotsky to Marilyn Monroe and Margaret Thatcher, who came as a guest of President Mitterand, apparently to ‘discuss the problems of the world over a good omelette’ – one hopes they weren’t served by the same rather pungent waiter that we’ve been assigned by the deliciously superior maître d’. ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ Matt says in a manner that suggests that even if he did he’d be too well mannered to say so, ‘but at this time of day surely it must be the beginning of his shift.’ I’m just glad he smells worse than us, I say.