Rage hit her knees so hard and so unexpectedly it was as if she’d been crash-tackled. She put Enigma back into her pram and then she turned to the messy bench-top and she didn’t even look at what she was picking up with both hands until after she’d swung it against the back of his head. It made a loud ‘thwack’ and he tipped forward face-first into his porridge and then there was silence, except for the sharp high hum of a blowfly.
‘She’s a beautiful baby,’ said Rose, to the back of his head. She’d put the bread board back down and pushed the pram out onto the street and caught the train back into the city and met Jimmy and Connie after their movie, and said she and the baby had had a lovely time walking around the city, and in all the years to come whenever people talked about the Bread Board Murder Mystery, all Rose could hear was the hum of that fly.
She very carefully paints a fractured egg dripping blood. It takes up one whole tile.
Finally, she puts down her paintbrush and gets to her feet and stands with her hands on her hips looking at her life and her family spread across the kitchen floor, before she finds the mop and washes it all away, while she steadily eats her way through an entire packet of chocolate biscuits.
The next day, when Sophie comes to visit with an invitation to her fortieth birthday party, there is a sweet smell in the air that Rose explains must be the nutmeg in her sponge cake. The floor is white and pure, and Rose looks just like a dear little old lady whose only secrets are recipes.