When my mother died she left the farm to Cassis, the wine cellar to Reine-Claude, and to me she left her recipe album and a truffle. As Cassis always said, I was the favourite. I am now widowed with two daughters, Noisette and Pistache, whom I barely see, while fat Cassis has a son, Yannick, who married Laure Dessanges, the food writer, and they own a restaurant in Angers.
My name is Framboise Dartigen, although no one knows my real name now I have returned to Les Laveuses on the banks of the Loire, where the story began. Here I am Francoise Simon. Get on with it, I hear you say, but bear with me as the style of the telling is as important as the story itself.
I was nine years old in 1942. Father had died in the war and Maman was unpredictable. "I can smell oranges," she would say and rage furiously as she disappeared to her room with a migraine. Cassis, Reine and I would then go to Angers, where we exchanged information with the Germans for sweets.
My creperie was a huge success. Yannick and Laure begged me for Maman's recipes. I refused, naturellement. Then a mobile burger bar opened opposite and my customers stopped coming.
I loved Tomas Leibniz. He never used the information we gave him and we all just had a lot of fun. One night he told us to meet him outside La Mauvaise Reputation, but things went wrong. Reine-Claude was raped and old Gustave was killed. We saw less of Tomas after that.
Old Paul found out that the burger man, Laure's brother, was seeing the gendarme's 15-year-old daughter. The burger bar soon rolled. "I'll go public unless you cooperate," shouted Laure, encore une fois. "You will be ruined."
Now we near the end. I was fishing for pike when Tomas pulled up. "Help me," I cried. He jumped in and drowned. Cassis pulled him out. "What shall we do?" he whimpered pathetically. "Shoot him with his pistol to make it look like the Resistance was involved."
His body was soon found, and 20 villagers were shot. Signs went up accusing us of collaborating, and our house was surrounded. "Oui, I was his whore," screamed Maman. "I needed pills for my headaches. I shot him."
There, the story is out. I am now a celebrity, and Noisette and Pistache are talking to me again.
And if you really are pressed: The digested read, digested After Chocolat, a pick'n'mix of characters collaborate on a slightly darker small-town French confection
