Read Online Breaking and Entering by Wendy Perriam - Free Book Online

talents might she have, he wondered, and would they ever reach fruition? It was like his Africans again: potential going to waste. ‘You ought to get someone to teach her, Penny. She’d pick it up in no time.’
    â€˜Someone is teaching her,’ Penny retorted with a grin. ‘And perhaps you could teach me, while you’re about it. It’s so frustrating being in France and not understanding a word.’
    â€˜Right. Jump in at the deep end and have a go at ordering the drinks – un Pepsi, un pastis, et un Pineau de Charentes, s’il vous plaît .’
    â€˜Hold it! You’re going far too fast! I’ll never remember that lot.’
    â€˜ I want to do it,’ Pippa shouted. ‘Let me, let me!’
    â€˜Okay.’ He slowed his voice. ‘ Un P – P – Pepsi, s’il vous plaît .’
    Pippa’s brow was creased in concentration, the pepper-pot forgotten, her whole attention focused on his lips. ‘ Un P – P – Pepsi, s’ il vous plaît .’
    â€˜Perfect. Now all we have to do is find a waiter.’ He waved his arm, annoyed when no one noticed. He preferred the sort of place where his drink arrived without him even asking.
    â€˜ I’ll wave!’ Pippa clambered up on her seat and started semaphoring wildly with both arms. She seemed to have lost her initial shyness, though she subsided pretty quickly when a swarthy man strode up to her and bowed in mock-servility.
    â€˜ Qui, mademoiselle ?’ he drawled.
    â€˜ P – p – poisson ,’ struggled Pippa.
    Daniel and Penny laughed. ‘No, that’s fish,’ said Daniel. He noticed how the child’s face was as expressive as her mother’s. She looked totally deflated, her triumph turned to shame. ‘Don’t worry,’ he assured her. ‘You were very clever to remember the word at all. Now start again, okay? Un P – P – Pepsi, s’il vous plaît. ’
    â€˜ Un P – P – Pepsi, s’il vous plaît .’
    Penny sat fidgeting with her bracelets, cheap plastic bangles in shades of pink and mauve. ‘They’ll go mad at her nursery school if she keeps repeating all her Ps like that. They’ll think she’s started to stutter.’
    Daniel didn’t answer. He had stuttered himself as a child, though not until the age of seven, when he’d been sent away to boarding-school. He banished the dark memory, ordered his and Penny’s drinks, then began rehearsing conversations in his head. He ought to be making an effort to entertain this girl, but was unsure where to start. It wasn’t easy to embark on idle chit-chat, with the shadow of her husband’s desertion looming over them both. And anyway he’d never had the gift of the gab, nor André’s knack for polished opening gambits. He could ask about her life, perhaps, but questions might sound nosy – a form of inquisition – and they’d probably all lead back to Phil, and cause her more distress. He often felt uptight himself when people started closing in with their ‘Where do you live’s?’ and ‘What do you do’s?’; usually felt his answers were inadequate. But why should he assume that Penny was like him, when she was patently a different type entirely: much more free and forthright, more inclined to open up. She might jump at the chance to talk about herself, especially now, when she had no other adult company.
    â€˜Er … do you work at all?’ he enquired. Jobs were fairly safe, and she’d just mentioned Pippa’s nursery school, so she might well work, with her daughter off her hands.
    â€˜Actually, that’s rather a sore point. You see I’ve been doing really dreary things like dishing out the pizzas in a takeaway, and cleaning my sister’s house for her, then feeling sort of restive and frustrated. I’m not qualified for anything much, so I suppose I