Comrade Charlie

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Charlie Muffin was surprised to feel as uncomfortable as he did. The need for self-preservation normally overcame all scruples and Charlie was convinced he needed all the self-protection he could get, or manipulate from wherever he could get it. Since when had he been bothered by scruples anyway? He reckoned he’d lost them around the same time as he’d lost his tonsils, when he was about eleven. Too late to back off now: he was committed. Necessarily committed.

‘Lovely place,’ said Laura.

‘Got a great write-up in one of the Sunday food sections,’ smiled Charlie. How much had the proprietor slipped the lying bugger to write that this was the most exciting eatery in London? On the standard so far he’d probably had to throw his virgin sister in, to swing it. It was a place of pinewood, checked table-cloths and waiters who wore earrings, jammed with yelling, table-swopping people all of whom seemed to know each other but be unable to speak at any sound level less than a hundred decibels. And the food was crap: Charlie was currently undecided whether his salmon had died from decaying old age or from botulism with a distinctive mercury flavour. The botulism was favourite.

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