Geoffrey One May Morning 2022.

an ex-MI5 spy enjoys retirement

It was a warm day, and he was glad for a chance to sit outside the cafe in the morning sunshine. The barista said she’d bring his coffee and scone outside for him. He put his walker to one side out of the way of others. He could watch the passing people from his seat and enjoy the sunshine at the same time. Here he could also smoke, which he did while waiting. Some mornings when he awoke he had remembered his wife’s death the year before and that she'd not be in the kitchen preparing his breakfast. He missed her company, but not her constant chatter or gossip.  The barista bright out his latte and scone and leaving her smile returned inside. He no longer had to construct a bed of lies about his past.; no one cared anymore nor asked what he did. The world has changed so much since the end of the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union made his work less intense as a spy. Now he guessed it was on a different level and the enemy different too. When he was recruited into the Secret Service in 1958 from Cambridge University, the world was in a dark and dangerous place. It still was, but he guessed from an enemy who didn’t care about dying for their cause. He was glad he was out of it. He sat and sipped the latte and ate the scone, a cigarette burnt out in the glass ashtray. What he did, even now, he couldn’t say.