Mimi's Ghost Read Online Free

recognised (in money terms if nothing else) was a definite step up.
    Shrewd herself, Paola had quickly developed a fatal attraction for Morris’s own particular brand of shrewdness, his curiously polite stiffness and reservation, which she found a ‘terrific turn-on’ (and imagined was exquisitely English and fashionable, not realising, as Morris himself was all too painfully aware, that on the whole Anglo-Saxons were an uncouth and violent lot). For three, four, five months they had thus lodged together, enjoying a sex life as ambitious as it was exquisitely free from sentimental complications. Paola had learned not a word of English and spent a great deal of money. Unlike dear Mimi, it turned out that she shared, more than shared, Morris’s interest in expensive food and drink, with the result that Morris had made the mistake, for the first and hopefully the last time in his life, of succumbing to an almost constant state of inebriation, something that had doubtless blurred his awareness of other, less attractive sides to her personality.
    Returning to Italy together in the spring of the following year, it had been to find that as a result of an unplanned pregnancy elder sister Antonella was being hurried into marrying the ugly heir to a battery chicken empire, Bobo Posenato, or Polio (chicken) Bobo, as Paola disparagingly called him (one of the few things Morris genuinely liked about Paola was her ability to be wittily disparaging). All kinds of extravagant arrangements were under way. Mamma Trevisan was over the moon with the expediency of this marriage, which obviously far outweighed the tawdry circumstances that had precipitated it. Very large sums of money were being spent. A beautiful apartment had been bought, designer wedding clothes were even now being made. The Due Torri, Verona’s most expensive hotel, had been booked for the reception.
    With all this extravagance and festivity, sharp Paola had not unnaturally felt herself being upstaged by her blander, rather goosy elder sister. For his part, Morris, having vaguely wondered in London if he mightn’t set himself up as the man of the family, had felt his previous antagonism for Bobo reinforced if not doubled or trebled. Hadn’t this arrogant boy with his nosiness and enquiries been responsible after all for the rejection of Morris’s initial attempt to court Massimina in a traditional fashion, and thus, in the long run, for forcing Morris to become a criminal? And surely it wasn’t right that a taciturn, acned young man with no imagination and less manners should be so extraordinarily well set up in terms of wealth and power? It was the kind of naked injustice that fed Morris’s insatiable appetite for resentment. Of course, he did have some wealth himself now, enough to buy - what? - two or even three apartments perhaps (why hadn’t he asked for more when he’d had the knife by the handle?), but absolutely nothing like the miliardi available to Polio Bobo and his ilk; and to make matters worse, Morris, at that time, still had to be painstakingly careful that nobody noticed him spending this money, whose existence he would never be able to explain. Like a fool, he must continue to play the pauper, the poor mouse of the family, even when he wasn’t. It was infuriating. Because you weren’t rich until you had your hands on the means of producing wealth - Marx had been right about that. With just a few hundred million (lire!) in Eurobonds you were barely hedging against inflation. So that when one evening Paola had very coolly remarked how upset the others would be if she and Morris got in on the act by making it a double marriage, he had immediately said yes, wouldn’t they? Plus, if they didn’t watch out, Paola had further observed, there was every danger that Polio Bobo, still kept out of his own family business by Father and elder brother, would worm his way into Trevisan Wines and even further into