Charlotte Street [antikvár]

Prologue The best stories are the ones that make you laugh and cry. Enrico told this story several times, and it generally made people laugh. It used to make him cry. Lucy would get him to repeat it while he sliced paper-thin rashers of pancetta, or scooped the glistening balls of creamy buffalo mozzarella, which always reminded her of putti s bottoms, from the vat behind the counter of the deli. It had started around half past eleven on a Tuesday morning in late spring. Charlotte Street is never quiet, but this incident occurred after the late breakfasters had departed, and before the lunchtime rush, so there can't have been too many people around. The sound of a door slamming alerted Enrico and the regulars sitting outside the café opposite to a commotion across the road. A young woman emerged from the Street door of number 53, cursed as she pulled the clamping authorization off the windscreen of a battered Nissan Micra and wrestled with the key in the car door. Thirty seconds later, the first-floor sash window was thrown up and a male head and shoulders emerged. 'You want to go, Izzy?' the man shouted. 'Fine, bloody well go.' The whole Street heard him, although the blonde woman did not acknowledge him in any way. He disappeared, and the six or seven spectators returned to