Chapter Twenty-Five #4
I thought back on it all over the years.
When they’d said, “Is that all?” and “Anything else?” I’d thought they’d been wanting me to spend more money—to give as much as I could.
That, or they wanted to make sure I didn’t have a reason to come back.
If they didn’t smile, I thought it was because they didn’t want to serve me.
Maybe, on reflection, they were merely the polite questions of shop assistants, and if they didn’t smile, it was because they were busy, or harassed, or bored.
I remembered people browsing my shelves when I worked in the SPAR, then walking away. Could it be they just hadn’t found what they wanted? I’d felt so guilty, I’d thought they were walking away from me. I never wanted to approach them because I was ashamed.
I went back through the piece. I wondered who had said what, but apart from the ones I thought I knew, I would only ever be able to guess.
I looked again at the comments from BigDreams: “She has a vengeful side,” and, “She’s coldhearted and ruthless.”
On the worktop to my left, the poisoned cake sat in all its useless glory, waiting to be thrown in the bin. I stood up and walked away.
***
A couple of hours later, I heard James’s dulcet tones shouting, “Who made this?”
I went to see what he was talking about and found him peering at the cake, the piece I had cut for Tarquin, assumed eaten from his point of view.
“Mrs. Billings,” I said.
“What for?”
“The Bone Bonanza, but it’s finished. It ended when the archaeologists left.” I walked away from the kitchen, pretending to be uninterested.
“Have you eaten some?” He managed to make that sound like a threat, but I defended myself:
“Just a small piece. Mrs. Billings ate most of what’s gone.” I had cut Tarquin a sizable slice.
“Why is it purple?”
“Parma Violets,” I said, hoping he’d not ask me how I got those crunchy little purple candies into a cake.
“Weird.”
I waited, slightly nervous, for him to cut himself a slice, but he left the room and went to get changed.
Disappointing. He came back a few minutes later but left again without even looking at it.
He sat down and started scrolling through his phone.
Then he turned on the TV and I heard the theme for the news.
“Why haven’t you started tea?” he shouted.
“I lost track of time. I’ll do it now.” I turned the grill on high and took a packet of Alphabites out of the freezer, potato pieces shaped into letters. I arranged them carefully on the tray: “I know you strangled Lennie Green,” and “I will beat you,” I wrote.
I thought about asking him if he’d like a snack while he was waiting, for example, a piece of cake, but I didn’t normally do that. I would have to be patient.
The Alphabites came askew as I was serving them out, crisp and brown and shimmering with menace; I hadn’t really meant to present them to him that way.
So James never saw the warning, he just shoveled them down his neck, along with fish fingers and mixed veg.
James was particularly fond of fish fingers and if this was to be his last meal, I wanted it to be a good one.
Afterward, he poured himself a glass of whiskey, which he didn’t normally do, and my hopes began to fade.
But the cake would still be edible the next day.
Then it happened! James finished his whiskey, stood with the glass in his hands, and made his way, not to the drinks cabinet, but to the kitchen. He returned with a slice of the cake.
He took a bite. He took another bite and looked thoughtfully at it. “It doesn’t taste like Parma Violets. Not bad, though.” He carried on eating and I watched him, hardly believing what I was seeing as he munched quietly until it was gone.
I sat, trying not to fidget, waiting to see what would happen.
After a couple of hours, he went to get a glass of water because his mouth was dry.
A little while after that, he went to get another, but he went all the way down to the old kitchen for it, which was a strange thing to do.
He had to call me to remind him of the way back to the lounge.
One of the symptoms of deadly nightshade poisoning is confusion, and it seemed to be hitting him hard.
“You seem a bit muddled,” I said, but he shook his head and said it had been a long day.
The waiting was harder than I’d have imagined. It was too early to go to bed, so I went for a bath to pass a bit of time and to save me from having to sit in the room with him, looking normal, when I was not feeling normal.
“What the hell are you wearing?” he asked when I came back, his voice slightly slurred.
I didn’t answer. He could see what I was wearing; it was a dressing gown I’d made from deceased soft toys, eyes, ears, and noses still attached. It was the last thing he said to me, and it was perfect for his final words.
A bit later, he seemed to be in some discomfort. His face was flushed and he kept putting his hand over his heart. He wriggled back in his chair and mumbled something nonsensical about an army of spiders. He looked quite upset.
“Why don’t you go to bed,” I said. “You don’t look ever so well. A good night’s sleep will probably sort it out.” And he must have been feeling rough because he took my advice. I followed him to make sure he went the right way.