Kalinda Brown

Copyright 2016 Siramarti Publishing St George Pty Ltd

It is Friday afternoon. The door of the terrace apartment is painted freshly in navy with a biscuit trim that glows gold in the lowering light. Two large urns flank it, filled with pencil conifers standing like bellboys to attention. A stained glass fanlight glitters and the brass plate announcing the owner’s address is polished so brightly it reflects the shrubbery in the tiny courtyard beyond the veranda.

“Christ,” Jason thinks, “Mr L must be dreaming. This is way beyond me.” For Jason, whose life is circumscribed by hand-to-mouth paydays, the smell of money seems to waft from beneath the closed door and down the short flight of steps.

 But, despite his anxiety and his awe, Jason puffs himself with the confidence his new employer has recently instilled in him. This appointment is a definite step up from his previous job selling house-cleaning products door-to-door, and Lehmann has as good as promised him a job with better pay if he does well. Jason has bought a new suit to ease his entry into the upper echelons of society. Clutching his briefcase, also new, he mounts the bluestone steps to press the bell.

 At his knock the door opens instantly to frame a handsome, middle aged, and very tall woman. Jason guesses that she has been waiting there, but she gives him the small, automatically deprecating smile reserved for salesmen. She has long hair curling too girlishly over her shoulders, and is dressed in designer jeans and a white top that shows off plump breasts lifted by a Wonder bra.

Despite her modern dress, her face reminds Jason of a goddess in a temple frieze that he had seen in one of those glossy art books. There is mysterious austerity in her features. He decides she has more than money: she has class.

They look at each other appreciatively for a long moment. The woman’s automatic smile dissolves and is replaced by an incongruously coquettish tilt of the head as she assesses the open face and fine head of thick, fair hair in front of her.

Jason feels the flicker of sex between them. He is embarrassed. Jeez! She is old enough to be his mother.

"Mrs Rubinski?' he enquires politely. "My name is Jason Hicks. I understand from Mr Robert Lehmann that you are interested in installing a LifePowers home gymnasium?"

“You can call me Hetty,” she says in an offhand voice, not bothering to answer his question. “Come in.”

The sweet mustiness of a house that might have belonged in old Europe envelops him. He pads obediently after her down a hallway lined with sepia portraits and into the drawing room, its heavy velvet curtains closed to the day, but dimly lit with wall lamps. It is obvious she has prepared for his visit because there are two porcelain cups and a plate of almond fingers set out on a mahogany coffee table that smells of lavender and wax.

She drops on to a narrow plush sofa, which looks oddly disproportionate for her height. She does not offer Jason a seat, and for a moment he stands awkwardly waiting. She stares up at him without comment until, not knowing what else to do, he perches opposite her on a leather-buttoned ottoman. He is aware of his knees sticking out awkwardly. As he leans forward to push a folder filled with sales brochures across the table towards her, the sleeves of his new suit slide up his arms revealing delicate wrists that detract from his consciously assumed Brad Pitt persona.

The woman remains forbiddingly silent. Jason coughs, hoping to start a reassuringly casual conversation that could segue into his sales pitch, but he is at a loss to know where to begin. He looks furtively around the opulent room, searching for a compliment he can make about the chandeliers or the oppressively pink wallpaper.

Hetty seems to know what he is thinking for she answers his unspoken judgments. “My husband built this house for his first wife.” The tone in which she utters this brief sentence conjures up an entire history.

“Er, yes,” Jason stammers. “Great. Really great.”

Hetty gives a short, bitter laugh. “It’s a museum piece. If I had my way I would sell the damn thing and get a penthouse overlooking the bay. But Joseph will not hear of it. Not Joseph.”

There is a silence that he has no idea how to fill. She repeats herself.

“Not Joseph. Joseph is a man of … fixed opinions.”

Suddenly, although her eyes have not moved, Jason is aware that her attention has moved from his face to his crotch. She leans back slightly so the light of a lamp falls becomingly on her hair and the swell of her breasts. Jason’s animal brain registers that the movement is not unintentional.

A trickle of sweat runs down one armpit. It is not that he is immune to her invitation, but he does not want to blow his career chances with Mr Lehmann. He thinks bleakly that, if challenged, he would have a snowball’s chance of convincing anyone that he had not forced himself upon her.

On the other hand, he guesses that the sale probably depends upon his sexual favours. He drops his eyes from her ripe breasts, and in a flash of gallows humour reflects that he is between a rock and a soft place.

After the pause has gone on too long, he says heartily, “Well, at any rate we can liven things up with a LifePowers home gym. Where do you plan to have it installed?”

The ploy doesn’t work entirely. She shifts irritably. “I haven’t decided if I want it yet.”

But then she adds, suddenly leaning forward over the table to look at him intensely, “I like value for money.” He can feel her warm breath, fragrant with sex, touching his throat.

“Of course,’ Jason answers as easily as he can, taking fictitious control. “I can see you are that sort of person. But if you are considering LifePowers equipment it would help me to know your plans for it.”

“I don’t have any plans,” she says sharply. “It’s Joseph’s idea. He is a friend of Robert Lehmann. It’s their idea of getting me out of myself. They feel I need … an interest.” She pauses, watching him. He is wholly at a loss as he tries to fathom the import of this remark.

 She notices his discomfiture, and her eyes soften. “Really, I probably have enough stuff already. Maybe a personal trainer would be better. Or a dog.” It is a suggestion she makes without innuendo.

Jason laughs with relief. “Maybe,” he concurs. “Sometimes all the equipment in the world is not enough. I have a dog myself. He’s a mutt my dad picked up from the RSPCA. He runs with me each morning and he never lets me off the hook. My aerobic fitness is all that matters to him, so he says.”

He laughs again, this time at the little fantasy he has created for her, knowing pretence on their parts is over and he can speak about his dog with truth.

 “Then you are surely blessed,” Hetty remarks, in a turn of phrase that makes him aware that she must have been born to a foreign tongue. He has no ear for accents but again a glossy art picture floats in front of his eyes; this time it is of a medieval town worn by centuries of suffering brooding beside a slate grey river.

She says, her dark eyes looking beyond him. “I used to have a dog when I was a child. I had forgotten how dogs can speak. My Poppy could be so comforting, and so sure of her opinions too. We used to talk for hours.”

Suddenly she smiles so brilliantly that Jason feels as if the room has dissolved around him and they are suddenly together on a picnic rug in a sunlit garden with dogs. It is such an unexpected vision that he blushes.

Hetty stands up abruptly. “I haven’t offered you coffee. Would you like some?”

Jason hesitates. He would like to stay a little longer for he has fallen prey to her smile, and the adventure of their meeting. But the more cautious part knows the danger her misery holds for him.  She waits patiently, not pressing her advantage.

“That would be fantastic,” he finds himself saying. The words have slipped out, and he immediately regrets them. She has managed to take the upper hand because he mentioned his darned dog.

She nods and leaves him to gaze at crowd of silver-framed photographs on the mantelpiece. There are images of Hetty, younger, beautiful and haughty as a catwalk model.

In other portraits, a solid man, with perfectly coiffured grey hair and an unvaryingly cold stare, drapes his arm possessively around a different woman, short and dark, a motherly friendliness about her. Jason realises this must be the first wife. He feels her kindness instantly as if a flood of it had leaked from the frame: and he wonders what became of her.

A voice behind him makes him start. “That’s Emily. She killed herself. I cannot imagine what Joseph saw in her. So dumpy, don’t you think?” Hetty says this in a matter-of-fact tone, but there is a brittle anxiety that belies her words.

Jason says the only thing he can. “Thank you for the coffee.” He takes the tiny cup half filled with foam from her.

She places long fingers with polished nails on his lapel and presses him lightly to sit upon the sofa. He notices a bluish bruise the size of a thumbprint at her wrist.

Now she stands looking down on him with that odd, coquettish tilt of the head with which she had first greeted him. But, her earlier warmth has disappeared. He has the mad impression that he is a small bird watched by a creature with talons.

She says gently enough, but insistently, “You are a careful boy. I am sure you would not treat a woman as Joseph does. I am sure you would let a woman know she was … sufficient.”

She fingers the bruise at her wrist absently, and says, “Raw cruelty never hurts the heart so much as the absence of any feeling whatsoever.”

This time there is no mistaking her bitterness. Jason’s body shivers, but his mind goes blank.

“But what would you know of that? You are very young. Very.” She changes the subject abruptly. “Would you like to take lunch with me?” 

Jason is confused. He thinks she has used the word fake instead of take. He begins to wonder if she is a little crazy.

“Thank you, but no, I have another appointment,” he lies.

She makes a small moue of disappointment. Suddenly she falls upon the sofa beside him like a discarded Barbie doll, and begins to weep quietly.

Jason finds a crumpled tissue in his pocket that is clean enough and hands it to her. He pats her shoulder ineffectually, wanting to take her in his arms but fearing that she or he will mistake the comfort he intends to offer her.

“Can I find you something to drink?” he asks instead.

She shakes her head and raises her gaze to his. Now her eyes are dry, and there is urgency in them. “I know you would not treat a woman as Joseph does. A man who loves a dog could never treat any mortal thing as he does. Remember that when take your pretty body out among the girls.” Her voice has grown shrill.

Now he is sure that she is unbalanced. But her vulnerability and her smile have made him love her a little, and he searches for a way to negotiate the sorrow that hangs so palpably in the room.

Before he has time to speak, another mood overtakes her. She says quickly, “It is time for you to leave. You must leave now. It is good to have talked to you. It has been a ray of light in here.” She waves her arm vaguely to encompass the photographs and the burden of the room’s furnishings.

Jason is prompted to make a banal remark such as you are welcome. But he desists, nods instead, and is rewarded once again with the amazing beauty of her smile.

Hetty partially opens the door and Jason squeezes through by necessity. It makes him feel uncomfortable, as if it had been a clandestine arrangement.

He hastens down the road towards his car, past an old woman in black who is watering her garden. She stares suspiciously when Hetty, who has come to stand on her veranda, calls to him. “Come back next week. I need to think about it more. For it is true what Robert Lehmann says of you: you are indeed a beautiful boy.”

She laughs harshly and adds, "But perhaps not sufficiently experienced a salesman as yet?”

Jason nods at the woman in black, trying to maintain his dignity. When he reaches his car he sits for several moments in its overheated stuffiness, shivering.

On Monday morning Jason arrives at work, wearing his new suit still, but feeling bone-weary and gritty. He has had sleepless nights. remembering Hetty and her craziness.

He is angry with her too, and indignant for her. The hard stare of the husband in the photographs reverberates uncomfortably in his memory. He has decided to resign his job and register his protest at being sent to Hetty’s house as party to her husband’s cruel schemes. He has made a choice that he will not treat any person as Rubinksi does.

But when he reaches Robert Lehmann’s office there is a policeman there with a notebook and a sombre face.

Lehmann beckons Jason through the glass partition.

“Mrs Rubinski,” Lehmann says, glaring at him. “She is missing. She left home Friday night, leaving a note.”

Dread wells up in Jason like a rush of black water. The image of the first wife’s eyes, kind and as he now knows, desperate, jumps horridly to mind.

The constable, seeing his consternation, intervenes. “There is nothing to be concerned about, Mr Hicks. But her husband is naturally worried because she has not contacted him. We wonder, since you were possibly the last to see her, what she might have meant when she writes...” he fumbles with his notes … ‘I have gone to find a dog’?”

Jason recalls again the sunlit garden of her smile, and shakes his head.

When Mother died I inherited her secret recipes box. As children, my sister Belinda and I yearned to peek into the locked box where Mother kept a journal of household hints, simply because of that word secret.  But Mother kept the key on a chain around her neck and so our curiosity was never satisfied. Mother was the kind of woman who kept her thoughts and feelings to herself. The secret box was in keeping with her character.

Mother collected tips on gardening, long forgotten folk remedies, tricks that turned an everyday recipes into something special, such as using lemonade to make scones instead of milk. But, as I discovered when I finally read her journal, it was little known hints on gardening she most valued.  Mother was a devoted gardener, especially when it came to growing strawberries.

Hers were real strawberries. Not the bullet-hard, chemical drenched, tasteless excuses for strawberries you get nowadays. Mother’s strawberries were straight from the hand of the Earth Goddess. They were big, glossy fruit and they came to the table in capacious, brown bowls with their green elf caps still attached. We children scooped them greedily onto our plates and argued about how much icing sugar we needed. On summer weekends our parents might linger a whole afternoon, sitting under the vine draped porch, sipping pale wine and consuming those strawberries. I used to feel the love Mother had for Dad and her home and garden flowing from her on those days. My mother said her garden made her think she was living in Italy.

In reality, however, we lived on a large allotment that had been carved from a farm when residential development made it uneconomical for its owner to keep his land. It was a featureless plot, apart from a few fruit trees and the vegetable garden. Definitely not like Italy, but my parents preferred it to the claustrophobic closeness of more settled suburbs.

It was Dad who had started the strawberry patch. He used the planks from an old fence to make a raised bed, and set about filling it with compost and manure. We five kids were sent in search of autumn leaves. We hauled them home in hessian sacks and watched as he forked them, red, gold and brown, into the moist soil.

Generally, Dad wasn’t the kind of man to let kids share in his activities. He liked to do things strictly according to plan. He found children exhausting in their demands, as indeed he found any long-term commitment. My father had the wandering temperament of an adventurer who was always moving on. It was because she loved him so much that Mother accepted that he was not the kind of man to cling too tightly to, and she forgave him his deficiencies as a parent and man about the house.

It wasn’t many months before he abandoned his strawberry bed for more novel projects, and Mother took it over. That was the nature of their relationship. He was the one with the ideas, and she was the one who maintained those projects he began and she decided she wanted. Our home gradually became a reflection of my mother’s personality. Dad felt left out; he spent a lot of his time talking to neighbours instead of trying to be a family man. I could sense that this hurt my mother but she could not see that she had partly been responsible, and of course she did not speak about it openly.

Mother let us children tend the strawberry patch. We were allowed to bed down the shoots from runners in any way we liked. She didn’t ask us to set them out in neat rows like my father would have done. We helped her pack straw around their new leaves, and set flour traps for snails. You filled a short pipe with flour – snails will eat flour - and the snails were supposed to think that they were both safe and well fed there. Once the pipe held some snails, we tipped them out and stood on them, making a satisfying scrunching sound. But many snails weren’t so naïve as to be seduced by the traps and eventually my elder brother, Rodney, came up with the more effective method of keeping a blue tongue lizard amongst the strawberries.

Rodney is the inventor in our family, and he not only solved the snail problem, but he also built a handsome little stone house for the lizard at the end of the bed. We covered the house and whole bed with netting and our lizard was quite happy to live there until one mating season it tore a hole in the net and lit off into the wilderness in search of sex. Once the lizard had absconded, we had to find other ways of protecting our strawberries. But by then, mother had to become an expert on different ways to kill off all manner of predators.

In this way, strawberries and all matters relating to them became part of the family legend. Mother became a dab hand at strawberry recipes too. She baked strawberry cakes, made mousses, ice cream, coulis and even sweets from the dried fruit.  Most times these were a great success and people would ask her how it came about that she was such a genius with strawberries. Mother would just laugh and say it was due to a secret recipe.

One of the less pleasing consequences of having the strawberry patch was that it attracted people like Mrs Sheila Bagley. Mrs Bagley lived in a bungalow on the other side of a looping wire fence that separated our berry patch from her garden.

You would think with a name like Bagley that Mrs B would be plump, maybe shapelessly dumpy.  Far from it.  Mrs Bagley was shaped like Marilyn Monroe. She had bleached blonde, twig-like hair that stuck out all over her head and never seemed to know brush or comb. She decked herself out in flashy costume jewellery, and she took pains to wear different clothing every day. She seemed old to Belinda and me because her skin was wrinkled, and her lipstick tended to run into the fine lines around her mouth. But now that I think back, I believe the wrinkles were more due to excessive hours of sun-baking and smoking than the passage of time. She was probably in her early forties.

Mrs Bagley was an avid spectator at all strawberry rituals. She stood by the fence, watching us digging out old plants, cutting new ones from runners, and watering in fertiliser. She always had a critical comment to make. Maybe I had stood on a new plant by mistake or a drift of blood and bone had crossed her olfactory path.  She would shriek in protest or offer an irritating suggestion on how things might be done better. Belinda flatly refused to work the strawberry patch whenever Mrs Bagley appeared.

My parents had an ambiguous relationship with Mrs B. My mother was never one to reject a person in need. She judged our neighbour to be a lonely woman who was in need of companionship and kindness despite the fact she always appeared dressed as if ready to depart for a lively social engagement.

Therefore, in the early days, whenever Mrs Bagley arrived at our door – which was several times a week – my mother would say brightly. ‘Oh, come in, Sheila, I was just thinking of making a cup of tea.’ 

Mrs Bagley would then stay for hours giving Mother many repeat versions of her sorrowful life. These mainly revolved around how many men had let her down. Her husband had left her for no reason at all. A boyfriend had scammed her out of her divorce settlement, her brother was drunkard, and so on and on it went. Her complaints would always end with a remark about how lucky Mother was to have a good man like my father to depend upon. She would look at Dad as she made these remarks and he, though pleased and flattered, would say something self-deprecating. I could tell that Mother grew fed up with these conversations by the way her mouth began to tighten ever so slightly.

Unfortunately, Mother was not comfortable when it came to having to confront people. She found it hard to be direct. These days the psychologists would say she had a problem with setting boundaries. As the months went by, her initial welcome grew into silent resignation. Mrs B would come in to make cups of tea for both my mother and herself without asking. Mother often pleaded urgent tasks to do just after she had swallowed the last sip. But she never spoke up. If anyone asked her what she thought of her neighbour, she would say abruptly, ‘She has her difficulties in life.’ Her tone did not encourage further comment.

But Mother remained kind about Mrs Bagley’s health problems – another topic without end - that ranged from chronic insomnia to skin rashes in spring. She said Mrs Bagley was an encyclopaedia of minor ailments. She would open up her secret journal to find a solution for each problem, which seemed to work well because Mrs B would sing her praises and say that she ought to have become a doctor. 

Dad, on the other hand, was unswervingly admiring of our neighbour. He would say things like, ‘Sheila is a real battler’ and ‘Sheila is quite sensitive when you get to know her.’ He spent a lot of time at her house, fixing gutters and showing her the latest edition of National Geographic. They seemed to have a lot of laughs together. Mother said it was due to the fact he told Mrs Bagley jokes she didn’t find funny. Her tinkly laughter and his guffaws wafted through her windows into our garden.

We children, however, developed an unequivocal dislike of her because of how she insinuated herself into our lives. Peter, who is the youngest in our family, echoed all our thoughts when he said, ‘You know, one day I would like a tiger to get into our garden and eat Mrs Bagley.’ 

We began to make up stories creating a sordid past for her, and a painful future. It became a competition to spy on her for gossipy details that we could use to add truth to our fiction. We discovered that she wore no brassieres and that sometimes her endless cigarettes smelled strangely and nauseatingly sweet. Belinda discovered that she only bathed once a week, but used a lot of deodorant and perfume instead. And my oldest brother Thomas suspected she had a boyfriend because spent a lot of time on the phone giggling in that way that some women do when they talk to attractive men.

Later, this espionage became somewhat embarrassing to us. My siblings never refer to those stories we made up, and none of them would like to know that I am writing about them now. Nevertheless, it was our clandestine surveillance that led to the shocking discovery that Sheila Bagley was regularly stealing Mother’s strawberries. Not just once, but several times. 

After much discussion, mainly centring on how to avoid revealing our snooping, we decided we had to to tell our parents. The details of how we had come about this discovery we would leave credible, but necessarily fictitious. I was the one deputed to reveal our discoveries.

Next evening, I summoned up my responsible child expression and said to my parents over the tea table, ‘Thomas was going for a pee last night and he looked out the back verandah and saw Mrs Bagley stealing our strawberries. She got a whole pot full.’

My parents stopped eating and stared at me. ‘Don’t tell silly lies, Edwina,’ said Dad instantly.

Mother looked more thoughtful. ‘Wait a minute, Harold. The children have no reason to make this up. But why would she do that? I have told her she can take home as many as she likes. Thomas must be mistaken.’

“No, he’s not,” we all chorused. That’s when we had to admit that we had seen these thefts more than once.

I said piously, ‘Well, Mother, we couldn’t believe it at first. That’s why we got Thomas to watch last night. We didn’t want to accuse her unjustly.’ I pulled my lips into a prim expression of self-righteousness. ‘But it explains why the crop isn’t so good this year. They aren’t just being eaten by snails now the lizard has run away.’

The rest of my siblings nodded gravely.

‘What shall we do?’ asked Belinda breathlessly. ‘Shall we call the police?’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ interrupted Dad heavily. ‘I will speak to her myself. It is just a small matter between neighbours.’

“It’s not a small matter, Harold,” said my mother angrily. “If you can’t trust a neighbour who regularly visits your house and accepts your hospitality, never doing anything in return, I might add, who can you trust?”

Dad went red in the face, and put on his stubborn bull expression.  “Don’t be so paranoid, woman. Sheila is a decent person and I am sure there is a perfectly reasonable explanation.”

Mother wanted to go on arguing, but I could see that now she was not so much angry as she was hurt that my father was supporting Mrs Bagley, defending her behaviour before his wife's feelings. I could tears glinting in the corner of her eyes, and that was something I had only seen when Granny died.

At last Dad gave way a little, and said if it were true, which he was sure it was not, then it was indeed unacceptable behaviour.  He would tell her that if she did it again, she would not be welcome in our house. My mother looked a little calmer, but I caught Rodney’s eye; he looked as sceptical as I felt. Neither of us believed that Mrs Bagley would take much notice of Dad, at least not for long. And we did not think that Dad would really ban Mrs Bagley from our home. We were on Mother’s side.

It was that we decided that we would wait for Dad to confront Mrs Bagley and then put her under 24-hour surveillance to see she kept her word. We even made up a roster with shifts all through the night. As it turned out, our Neighbourhood Watch scheme proved unnecessary.

It took Dad some time to visit Mrs Bagley. At least three days. I suppose he was trying to summon up courage because we all knew that Mrs B would not take such a challenge lying down. She would make a huge self-pitying fuss.

In the meantime Mother became strained. The incident had upset her more than she admitted. She went about her chores and she didn’t say a word about Dad’s procrastination. But I noticed that from time to time she looked at him oddly, and he would fail to meet her eyes. We were aware that something adult and mysterious was going on between them.

We were all happy to see him finally set off to Mrs Bagley’s house with a tense expression on his face. He was away briefly and returned with a smile on his face. Everything had been sorted out. Yes, Sheila had taken the strawberries but only because she felt embarrassed to ask for more after Mother had been so generous already. She didn’t want to impose upon her.

‘There you are,’ said Dad. ‘I told you that Sheila was a sensitive woman.’

My mother’s face closed in again at these words. She did not trust his account. I agreed because Dad could not see the wood for the trees as far as Mrs B was concerned. He really thought she was a decent woman and he did not seem to notice that when she talked with him she giggled and wiggled a lot.

I suppose it was only to be expected, but after Dad spoke to Mrs Bagley we did not seem to enjoy those strawberries so much. They didn’t seem so delicious any more. But apart from this, we began to forget the drama of the strawberry theft. Time passed and we stopped gossiping about Mrs Bagley. Although the matter had been smoothed over, she did not talk Mother so much and she did not tell us what to do when we were gardening.

Dad still kept up his friendship with her because, as he said to Mother, he had a perfect right to be friends with whosoever he chose. He would stand at the fence and offer her zucchini whenever one got too large. She always accepted them with her irritating giggle and a lowered comment that made him laugh.

One day Dad gave Mrs Bagley a birthday card with gold hearts and the words, To A Very Special Woman, on the front. Dad showed the card to Mother for her approval, and she had said, ‘I am sure she will be very pleased to know how much you appreciate her,’ in an tense voice. Mother was, I thought, a very patient person, putting up with this. Rodney, however, did not agree with me. He said that Mother was still mad at Dad and that she was coming to the end of her tether.

Not long after the birthday card incident a terrible thing happened. It was early in summer. Dad presented Mrs B with a bowl of surplus strawberries. It was Mother’s idea to let her have them. She picked out some of the biggest and most beautiful ones, saying it was a late birthday present. You could tell Dad was happy because he thought that this showed Mother had forgiven him for being soft on Mrs Bagley at the time of the thefts, and that she had finally accepted her again.

Mrs Bagley was delighted too, and asked yet again what the secret of her success with strawberries was. This time Mother said the secret recipe it was really just dried blood and bone harvested from the local abattoir.

She added with an odd laugh,  ‘Some creatures,’ she said, “are more useful when they are dead than when they are alive.’ Mrs B took a step back at this remark. It was not like Mother to say such brutal things. Mrs Bagley quickly said goodbye and took the bowl of strawberries home.

Dad remonstrated with Mother. ‘You gave Sheila a bit of a shock when you said that. You need to think before you speak.’

Belinda and I rolled our eyes behind his back. If there was one person in the house who didn’t need that suggestion it was our ever-patient mother.

Mother never had to heed our father’s advice to watch her words. The next day Dad and Rodney went round to Mrs Bagley’s place. They found her dead in her kitchen. My brother, who was ghoulishly precise about the gruesome details, said that they found her, face down in the overturned bowl of strawberries. Fruit, cream and sugar had stuck to her blonde hair, which was crawling with ants.

Everyone was very shaken. We children were upset because, although we never liked Mrs Bagely, we felt guilty that we had so often wished her an unhappy ending.

At the inquest the coroner found that Sheila Bagley had died of anaphylactic shock.  His verdict was that she had accidentally eaten the strawberries with honey, which she had been extremely allergic to it. The medical examiner had declared that even the slight amount of honey found on some remaining strawberries would have been sufficient to cause her throat to swell so much she could no longer breathe. I am sure it would have been a frightening but sudden death. 

So this brings me to the problem I have now that Mother has bequeathed me her secret recipes box. You can imagine how difficult it has been for me since I opened her journal and found an entry for December 10th 1965. It says: Recipe for ridding oneself of husband thieves: Impeccable kindness and courtesy spread over home grown strawberries with a smidgen of honey, and plenty of cream.