One of Moira’s giggling chambermaids filled me a steel beaker of wine, no doubt from a local vineyard, one of the few benefits of global warming. Moira clapped her hands and the chambermaids left. Moira smiled again.
‘We’re on our own now. It’s time for us to enjoy ourselves, Zack.’
The way she said those words suggested she might be talking about more than our banquet. I reserved judgement on that issue and gave her a reply that could be similarly open to interpretation.
‘That’s fine by me.’
A pitcher of water was next to my plate. The plates of fish and chicken and beef and crayfish in the middle of the table were pulling me towards them with an irresistible magnetism. I gave myself up for a time to the simple pleasures of appetite. There was, after all, nothing else I could do. Moir
