What You Don't Tell Samir

Samir arrives on Saturday at eleven with a sports bag, two baguettes, a Herve cheese that stinks out the car and a bunch of tulips he bought at a petrol station in Charleroi and is embarrassed about.

“They're orange,” he says, handing them to me. “It was that or chrysanthemums. I thought chrysanthemums, with your grandmother, might be a bit…”

“A bit.”

“Exactly.”