The Food of Love
Someone or something was watching over him, the day he fled Paris.
As he pounded the grimy streets, his case swung, bruising him no matter how he carried it. Sweating, sore and dishevelled, he fell into the train with seconds to spare, sending silent thanks upwards for his narrow escape.
“Luc!” She appeared on the platform. She’d found him?
There was no time. A cloud of steam; the guard’s shout.
“For you.” She forced a package through the tiny window. The battered parcel fell into his hands.
A grind of metal; the lazy huff as the train lurched into life. She shouted over the noise.
“Whatever happens, Luc… I will always remember the violets.”
He subsided into the dusty third class carriage. The parcel’s rough newspaper wrapping revealed three delicate cup cakes, each topped with a crystalline violet. Beautiful, like the flowers. Like her.
Someone or something was watching over him for sure. Hunger and homesickness led him to tear into the cakes, tempting him to indulge greedily in their soft sweetness. But he noticed inside the first one several fragments of metal, a surprise ingredient he soon confirmed as present in the others.
Whatever happens, Luc… Her husband had hounded him from the city in fear of his life. Now he was presumed dead even as he left. And after everything – the tears, the declarations – the fickle bitch had been complicit.
The train panted away from Paris.
He had given her violets; she had given him razor blades. Each was to contribute to his undoing. Luc pitched the mixture of crumbs and metal through the tiny window to the dirty suburbs of Paris. The three sugar violets he folded tenderly inside his handkerchief.
Unfolding it some hours later, he finally understood how easily something delicate and beautiful can end up a broken, sticky mess, regardless of the amount of care afforded. Consigning the sugary rag to a nearby bin, he began walking slowly towards his new pension. This time, the suitcase didn’t bruise.
Winn Smith lives in London and works in telecommunications by day. She finds the escapism of writing fiction a pleasant counterbalance to the structured certainties of her profession. Her main inspiration comes from history, nature, music and fairy tales, which appear in the majority of her work. Having been commended in several competitions, she knows she’s heading in the right direction, and values her frustratingly rare opportunities to write. Her proudest moment yet is an art/writing collaboration with a local artist; seeing their work exhibited was a real thrill, and she looks forward to further collaborative projects in the future. For more visit: winnsmith.co.uk.
