A Bollard

On the Monday morning, when I came into the kitchen, Antoine was already back from the greenhouse. He had made coffee in a stovetop pot on the wood range, and he was reading the farming paper as he drank it standing up, leaning against the sink, his boots still on and earth on the tiles.

“There's bread,” he said. “Butter. Strawberry jam, obviously.”

He half smiled. It was his first joke since I'd come home, and he looked as if he were apologising for it.

I poured myself a cup. I let my eyes go round the kitchen: the table, the worktop, the shelf above the range. There were jars of flour, rice, pasta, lined up and labelled by hand. There was a red tin tea caddy, dented, with half-worn-away drawings of Chinese pagodas.