Chapter Two
Two
“You’re making me nervous.”
This was at a time when the simple act of making Viennese whirls could still put a resident on edge. Before the murders.
“Does it say that the tablespoon should be heaped? Because you’ve just put a heaped tablespoon in the bowl, and a heaped tablespoon is not a tablespoon. It’s effectively a tablespoon and a half.”
“Does it really matter, Geoffrey?” said Margaret.
“I’m just saying…”
Here we go, thought Carol.
Geoffrey leaned forward to emphasize the brilliance of his statement. “I’m just saying baking is a science, not an art form.”
Geoffrey had said this many, many times before.
“I could strangle him, I really could,” Carol muttered to Margaret, under her breath. Margaret let out a quick little yelp of laughter, oblivious to the truth of Carol’s statement.
“You’re doing super, girls,” said Desmond, from his chair. “Ignore Geoff. He’s an arsehole.” Desmond’s blue eyes twinkled with mischief.
“All I’m saying is that…”
“We all know what you’re saying, Geoffrey,” said Margaret. “Really, we do. Thank you.”
The group had been spending Tuesday mornings in the communal kitchen for six weeks or so.
Elisa, the concierge, the lady who ran the day-to-day business of Sheldon Oaks, had put up a poster for “Bake Off Tuesdays,” and a few of the more active residents had signed up.
There were a lot more activities on offer since Elisa had started working there, people said. She had an energy about her.
At first, they’d all mucked in together in the kitchen, but you could quickly see that that wasn’t going to work.
Too many cooks and all that. Carol and Margaret had ended up doing most of the baking.
Sometimes Desmond would get a burst of enthusiasm, start mixing something, realize he was more of a hindrance than a help, and return to his chair.
Carol suspected that Catherine, who was currently reading on the sofa, had retreated from the actual baking because she didn’t want to embarrass the others.
In the first week, she’d effortlessly put together the most magnificent custard slices.
Flaky—light, really—just to die for. Since then she’d stepped back.
Perhaps she’d looked at the disasters the others were plating up and felt like an adult joining in an under-tens football match.
So Carol and Margaret were the only remaining actual bakers, but the group was the group and here they gathered every Tuesday at 10:30 a.m.
Light, dappled by the summer leaves, shone in from a courtyard and onto the marble countertops.
At the edge, away from the kitchen island, there were a sofa and a couple of sleek armchairs.
Kitchens, for Carol, had been functional rooms, where work got done.
This was foreign to her: a kitchen built purely for leisure. She liked it.
Elisa popped her head in. “Everything okay, ladies?” She nodded at the men. “Gentlemen.”
Carol still couldn’t place Elisa’s accent (possibly Spanish?) and had not yet asked her where she came from for fear of offending her.
She’d heard something on the radio about how asking people where they came from was apparently a no-no now.
She wasn’t sure why. Some friendly curiosity was a good thing, wasn’t it?
Wasn’t that how you got to know people? Surely if you meant well that was all that mattered.
It wasn’t like Carol was going to say, “Where are you from?” and then Elisa would say, “Madrid,” and then Carol would punch her in the face, spit on her, kick her to the ground.
Carol would just say, “Oh, you must miss the weather,” and then that would be a nice icebreaker to get the conversation rolling.
Better not risk it, though. Carol wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings.
She’d always found navigating social niceties tricky.
Perhaps that’s what had led her in the direction of recreational murder.
“All good, thank you, Elisa,” said Carol.
“Lovely. Whatever you’re making, save some for me.”
“I really wouldn’t get your hopes up,” said Margaret. “I’m not sure we’ve produced anything edible for weeks.”
“You ladies make me laugh,” said Elisa as she left.
Carol had surprised herself with how quickly she’d slotted into Sheldon Oaks life.
She supposed that, for all its comforts, all she’d really done was swap one institution for another.
Yes, there was freedom here, yes, she was no longer surrounded by criminals, but there were plenty of similarities.
This was a place that ran on routine. You saw the same faces every day.
Most people ate the same food, had the same conversations.
And then there were the differences. Carol looked around her, as she often did now, and thought about all the killing implements that were suddenly available to her.
Decades of not being trusted with metal cutlery, and now, right in front of her, there was a knife rack.
She could slice the arteries of everyone in this room in a minute.
On the counter was a blender she could shove Margaret’s hand into and turn the color of a chunky tomato soup.
A mortar and pestle. Which was the mortar and which was the pestle?
She wasn’t sure, but she did know that either, with a force she was still capable of, could cave in a skull.
There was a sad irony to it. She’d given up killing for good, and here she was, living in a murderer’s paradise.
Like a recovering alcoholic getting a job at a liquor store.
She trusted herself not to relapse. These people were her friends, and that impulse had left her.
It belonged to the last century—but, oh, what a younger Carol Quinn could have done in this playground.
Desmond made a noise, using his stick to propel his sturdy frame into a standing position. “I keep nodding off,” he said. “Think I’ll go for a lie-down. Got a busy afternoon planned.”
“Oh, yes?” said Margaret.
Desmond tapped his nose playfully. He liked to give the impression that he had a lot going on, but Carol sensed that he didn’t. A “busy afternoon” probably meant the cricket was on TV.
“All right, Desmond,” said Margaret. “We’ll bring you a couple of biscuits if there are any.”
“I have faith in you all. Can I lick the bowl?”
Carol handed him a spoon, smiling.
“Delicious,” he said. “Absolutely delicious.”
Once the whirls were in the oven, Margaret took Desmond’s vacated seat, and Carol hovered anxiously by the oven, checking the time twice a minute.
Geoffrey tried to strike up a conversation about something in the news that day but nobody bit.
They’d all learned a while ago that he was just looking for an opportunity to show off.
Geoffrey was the sort of man who started a lot of sentences with “See, what you have to understand is…” There was no subject he was not prepared to monologue on for the benefit of the group.
Arable farming, EU fishing quotas, a healthy diet, drill music, the Geneva convention, vacuum cleaner technology, the novels of Jilly Cooper (although he admitted to never having read one), stand-up comedy, the future of AI (which he insisted he understood but didn’t have time to explain), climate change, the Japanese economy, the correct road to take to get to absolutely anywhere.
Geoffrey was an expert on them all. A nice enough man, thought Carol, but not the sort of person you’d want to be stuck in a cell with.
Unlikely anyway, seeing as he’d proudly announced within thirty seconds of meeting her that he was an ex-policeman.
Not that that, in and of itself, bothered her particularly.
Her gripe had never been with the police: It had been with her victims, the ones who had to die.
But this was pleasant. These were smart people, nice people.
These were the sort of people Carol was happy to spend the rest of her days with.
They didn’t need to know about her past. What good would that do?
Yes, Carol had been a killer, but why should that define her?
Some people were so obsessed with identity these days.
Carol would see it on social media profiles, people reducing themselves to three or four labels: “vegan, dentist, keen cyclist”; “Welsh, socialist, Manchester United.”
The trouble was, as soon as you told someone you were once a serial killer, it was all they could think about.
It was crazy! They could never seem to get past it.
Carol would be standing there talking about how she used to like pork but now she found it too fatty or how there never seemed to be anything on the TV anymore or how she’d heard that Americans don’t call Lego “Lego” but “Legos,” and she could tell that whomever she was speaking with was just thinking about her murders.
So if no one else mentioned it, then neither would she. She’d told people in the home that she’d been a secretary and never married. Both were true. No one asked many further questions, and Carol was happy that way.
“Carol, why don’t you sit down?” said Catherine. “All that fretting isn’t going to help. They’ll either bake properly or they won’t. Geoffrey, be a gentleman and budge up for Carol.”
“Really, I’m fine,” said Carol.
“Oh, sorry, Carol. My head’s in this bloody newspaper reading about this bloody government. Did you know—”
“Yes, I’m sure we all know, Geoffrey,” said Margaret. “Now budge up for the lady.”
“Sorry. Sorry.” Geoffrey moved along the small two-seater sofa.
Well, Carol had to sit down now, seeing as such a palaver had been made of the whole thing. She took her place beside Geoffrey, with him, in that way that certain men do, spreading his legs wide, oblivious to the fact that this meant Carol had to make herself as small as she could.
“Sorry, Carol,” said Geoffrey. “Take a load off.”
Carol and Geoffrey hadn’t spoken much one-to-one.
Had Carol—now she had really to think here—had Carol sat this close to a man in thirty-five years?
How absurd. Oh, yes, that god-awful moment when her mother died and the prison vicar had sat beside her on her bed and tried to comfort her when all she could think about was his coffee breath and how, in her younger days, that would have been enough for her to put him on her kill list.
Carol and Geoffrey caught each other’s eye for a brief moment, each assessing the other.
Oh God, he wasn’t one of those residents looking for romance, was he?
Carol would see them sometimes, pairing off in the bar, slyly heading up to each other’s apartments.
Just hideous, the thought of it. Sex was, as far as Carol was concerned, like skateboarding—meant for younger bodies.
Geoffrey took off his reading glasses and looked at her.
“Carol, what’s your surname?”
Was this his attempt at a chat-up line? Showing an interest in something other than his own vast intellect? “Quinn.”
“Quinn?”
“That’s my name.”
Geoffrey put his glasses back on and looked down at his newspaper, frowning, not reading. Carol realized that her time as just another resident was coming to an end.
“Huh. Quinn,” Geoffrey mumbled to himself.
Just then, Margaret jumped up, as much as it was possible for a woman in her late seventies to jump up. “The whirls!”
“Oh fuck!” said Carol, smelling the burning and noting to herself that that was probably the first time she’d used the f-word in this company. Oh well. Keeping up appearances could only last so long.