The smell of bacon cooking wakes me. I roll out of bed and wrap myself in my robe, then go downstairs to the kitchen to see what magic is being worked. “Good morning,” Nikola says as I walk in. He is standing over the stove, bacon in a pan, eggs already on plates on the […]

The old man raised his empty glass in the direction of the barman, and in a few moments, the waitress had brought him another beer. “Put it on me tab, love,” he said, his Scouse accent standing out like a naked man in the Sistine Chapel, Iowa being as far from Merseyside as to be […]