The Housewife's Guide To Homicide

By Penny Young

Take one depressed housewife, season with matrimonial contempt, stuff with insecurity and marinade in dreariness for twenty years.
This was life for Alice Fields, until she discovered one important statistic.

100% of all domestic murders happen in the home.

Admittedly, not many middle-aged women decide to write an erotic novel as a means of escaping their downtrodden, suburban existence in a loveless marriage, but then not many women find themselves with a corpse in their hallway after a disastrous attempt at adultery.

And not many women prove to be as resourceful as Alice Fields.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penny Young
• Release date: Sep 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301543274

Penny Young

Penny Young was born in Luton (or Kuton, as her driving licence once misspelled it) in October 1959, just two months short of 1960. This irritating circumstance meant that she had to put up with being a Fifties baby rather than a cool and hip Sixties baby. Despite this major setback, she went on to gain her cycling proficiency test, her 10 metres underwater certificate and her Brownies cookery badge in the space of just three years. She is a former journalist, who now writes regular columns in The Sofa Diaries, at www.sofadiaries.wordpress.com, about her life as a middle-aged, menopausal, middle-class housewife and mother of three adorable former rapscallions who are now grown-up and doing extremely well in life, thank you very much. Her first novel, The Housewife's Guide to Homicide, is a piece of work she is confident that her former English teacher would be pleasantly surprised by (especially after her disappointing C grade in English Literature 'O' level). The majority of apostrophes are in the right place, and it has a beginning, a middle and an end. She has not yet won the Pulitzer Prize or the Booker Prize, but there is still time.

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THE HOUSEWIFE’S GUIDE

TO HOMICIDE

By

Penny Young

Copyright 2012 Penny Young

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Please visit Penny Young’s Web page to read her hilarious column The Sofa Diaries

http://sofadiaries.wordpress.com/

Chapter One

Breasts...?

Alice was talking to herself in Sainsbury’s again.

She was just six days away from burying her first body.

What about breasts, then? she wondered aloud. Would that work?

Absent-mindedly, she squeezed a large pineapple. Too firm. Not yet ripe. She stared unseeingly into a box of kiwi fruit, considering the options.

Yes, she said slowly. "Breasts is a good word, I suppose. Although…perhaps I should go for bosoms?"

Bosoms didn’t sound very erotic, though. In any case, surely it was bosom? Just bosom? She moved further down the aisle and paused in front of a box of globe artichokes.

"Because bosom is already a plural, she told them. Like sheep. The word is sheep, not sheeps."

She tried the word again. "Bosom. My bosom."  Then grimaced. It sounded wrong. Too capable. Too matronly. What she was searching for was a word that suggested buxom, bountiful flesh, a plump abundance of creamy flesh spilling over the top of lacy corsets and making gentlemen’s moustaches quiver with anticipation.

No, she said decisively, I don’t care if it’s plural or singular. It just won’t do.

So what would do instead? She studied a heap of unruly cabbages.

"Back to breasts then. Although, how about, maybe…tits? Oh, God, no!" She shook her head in horror. "What am I thinking? I couldn’t possibly go for tits. Much too coarse. God, no!"

A toddler in the child’s seat of a nearby trolley was staring at her in fascination. One of his shoes was missing and he’d been trying to kick off the other one until he’d noticed the plump woman arguing loudly with a crate of cabbages. This was far more interesting. He waited to see if she’d start gesticulating again.

Alice didn’t see him. She was still concentrating. "Maybe chest, then. Chest? No. Not chest..." She pursed her lips. Chest was another singular noun, so no good - there had to be two of them. There would be more momentum, more bounce with two of them.

And surely a prerequisite of any saucy literature was that it contained plenty of bouncing. Certainly not the stolid united front of a plain old chest. Or bosom, come to that.

In any case, she remembered her mother saying Well, Alice, you’re getting quite a chest! - almost accusingly - just before she’d marched her off to the underwear section of a gloomy department store to buy her first Teenform bra from a saleswoman with unevenly drawn-on eyebrows and a large whiskery mole on her lip. 

The thought of that mole now was very unpleasant. She shook herself thoroughly to rid herself of the memory.

Having been pushed further down the aisle, the toddler was craning his head round its mother in order to watch the strange lady who was now shuddering and pulling faces. He tried to attract his mother’s attention by pulling at her sleeve, but she flapped him away absently.  Alice saw none of this.

"No, definitely not chest," she said, shunting her trolley back and forwards in front of the carrots.

Burgundy, the wanton heroine of Alice’s fledgling novel, would never have worn a Teenform bra. In Alice’s imagination, Burgundy had just sprung fully formed and firmly well-endowed into life; no childhood, no awkward teenage years being interrogated by hirsute shop assistants. Just pow! straight into black silk lingerie and Laboutins.

So chest was out too.

"That would not be sexy. In any case, men have chests as well. So it’s ambiguous. No, hang on, I mean asexual. Or do I? Isn’t it amoebas that are asexual? Or should that be amoebae?" She tried to remember the Latin declensions from her ‘O’ level days, but could only get as far as agricola, agricolae.

"I suppose boobs could be an option," she said thoughtfully, pulling out a handful of plastic bags from the dispenser.  But boobs didn’t sound sexy either. It was just matter-of-fact jargon.

"So...boobs is a definite no-no, then. Not at all erotic. Oh dear."

She looked again at the boxes of vegetables, seeking some kind of inspiration. Writing this wretched novel was not proving to be as easy as she’d imagined when she’d come up with the idea. The plot was flagging already, and she’d only written three chapters.

It had quickly become clear, on re-reading her work, that her choice of anatomical terms was unimaginative. They were accurate enough - her readers couldn’t possibly confuse one body part for another, or head north when they should have been going south - but it all sounded far too formal.

In fact, she had a horrible feeling that instead of an eye-wateringly erotic story, her first chapters bore an uncanny resemblance to the pamphlet handed out in their sex education class at school.

Obviously, she wasn’t practised at this sort of writing, but Ronaldo inserted his member didn’t make it sound as if he was pantingly aroused.

It could possibly even be an instruction from some Rotary Club initiation, she thought gloomily. 

Reflectively, she stroked the smooth flank of an aubergine with a forefinger. She stopped as she reached its pert rump. Perhaps a variation on mamm-…

"Excuse me!" A hand snaked beneath her forearm and snatched up a couple of courgettes from the lower shelf.

Startled, Alice spun round. Oh, I’m so sorry! she said. The courgettes were now cradled protectively against the chest/bosom/breasts of a pinched-face woman in a tracksuit who was glaring at Alice.

Sorry! Alice said again, unnerved by this inexplicable animosity. But there was no response from her adversary, who silently placed her basket deliberately on the floor, still staring at Alice.

They held each other’s gaze for a few more seconds then, just as Alice was forced into blinking, the woman pulled a plastic bag from a nearby roll with practised ease, opened it and dropped the courgettes inside. She tied the handles and placed the bag into her basket then slowly arched an over-plucked eyebrow in Alice’s direction.

Alice did not recognise this for what it was; namely, the careful action of someone approaching either a wild animal or a potentially dangerous middle-aged psychopath.

Instead, she felt that it was now up to her to now make a move.

Panicking, she grabbed the aubergine and threw it into her trolley, remembering too late that not only had she failed to put it in a plastic bag, but that she didn’t much like aubergines anyway. (She was never entirely sure what to do with them, apart from making moussaka, which Richard wasn’t keen on. Too greasy, he said. He’d never been a great fan of continental food.)

But it was too late to put it back now. The other woman was still hovering, presumably keen to show off more of her skillful plastic bag maneuvers, Alice imagined. Or maybe she was just keeping an eye on the remaining courgettes. Her purposeful stare was giving nothing away.

Eccentric people were everywhere these days. Even in Sainsbury’s.

Flustered, she set off briskly in search of onions, hoping that she had given the impression of being a woman who bought aubergines regularly; a woman who could put together an exotic aubergine-based dish faster than you could say ratatouille.

She pushed her trolley towards a small crowd of people in front of the organic mushrooms, all waiting for a bored teenager to fill the shelves with a pile of glossy wrapped packets.

The boy finished and the crowd parted reluctantly to let him escape. Then they closed in and emptied the box in a matter of seconds.  Delia or Gordon or Jamie must have been making some sort of fungi-based risotto the night before, she decided. There was always a rush for something at supermarkets these days. Juniper berries, pork belly, crabmeat. Cranberries and tinned chestnuts in December.

Ideally, she would have liked to have smiled to herself in a superior sort of way, but of course she was just as gullible as the rest of them; she still had three bottles left of the pomegranate gin she’d made for her friends the previous Christmas.

(Having brewed a batch with festive enthusiasm, she’d realised that none of her friends or family were pomegranate-gin sort of people. She couldn’t even think of any vague acquaintances at all, in fact, who might receive pomegranate gin with anything but downright trepidation. 

She’d felt quite resentful towards them all when January had arrived and she’d been forced to hide the luridly pink bottles - all bearing her hopeful little labels with hand-drawn holly leaves - at the back of her kitchen cupboard.)

Now, finally arriving at Onions and Leeks, she looked at the boxes arranged in front of her and wondered if she even needed onions. 

And if she did, which sort was she supposed to buy? Why did there have to be so many different varieties to choose from? There was too much choice of everything these days. 

She plucked a large bag of the most oniony-looking onions from one of the lower boxes and moved purposefully on towards Meat and Poultry, hoping that the momentum might remind her of whatever else it was that she had scribbled down on her notepad that morning. The list had definitely been on the kitchen table when she’d left to do the shopping after lunch, but when she’d reached the supermarket, she couldn’t find it in her handbag, or in the car, or in any of her pockets.

Over at Meat and Poultry, she paused, but the muse (if indeed there was a muse for shopping lists) didn’t come to her rescue.

Oh, dear, she said to a shelf of Lincolnshire sausages. I really must try to be more organised about these things.

Look at that, she thought, studying the glossy packets in front of her. A whole shelf of nothing but sausages from Lincolnshire. There was an entire row above of Cumberland sausages. Who would have thought they’d be so territorial? She imagined an army of indignant chipolatas all lined up along their county borders, fiercely brandishing pitchforks.

(The toddler from the Fruit and Vegetable section - whose mother was now choosing streaky bacon - shouted and pointed all over again at the strange lady laughing at the sausages, but no one noticed.)

It was onions all over again, she reflected; sausages didn’t seem to be just sausages any more. They were either classified by geography, their length or girth, or had even been upgraded by the addition of pointless and  random ingredients.

Pork with stilton and apricots, herb sausages with garlic, beef sausages with rosemary and mozzarella. Poor old sausages, she thought. They couldn’t just be themselves any more. If they wanted to be popular, they had to tart themselves up with extra flavourings or herbs, or a foreign cheese with a five-syllable name. Apparently, no one wanted an ordinary sausage any more.

No one wanted anything to be ordinary these days.

She shook her head sadly. She was just one more ordinary, unwanted thing amongst all the other rejected, ordinary things.

I am just the human equivalent of an economy sausage, she said sadly.

(An elderly man nearby, whose hand was hovering over the chipolatas, glanced at her and adjusted his hearing aid.)

Then something occurred to her.

Hang on a minute! What am I even doing here? she said to an indifferent pack of turkey rashers. 

It wasn’t a philosophical question.

Why am I looking at sausages?

The elderly man anxiously wondered if he was supposed to respond.

"I don’t even want sausages," Alice told the turkey rashers. Nervously, the elderly man backed away and disappeared round the corner, back to the safety of Breakfast Cereals.

Or do I? Had I planned to cook sausages this week?

Things were getting out of hand. She was starting to feel very annoyed with herself. Not only had she forgotten her list, she couldn’t even remember anything that she’d written down.

All she’d been able to think about on this shopping trip had been anatomical terms. 

Just lately, she seemed to have been behaving even more distractedly than usual. Where was this famous multi-tasking that was supposed to come so easily to women? Alice felt quite cheated. She’d be more than happy if she could just manage a bit of simple mono-tasking.

It was a good thing that she had an appointment to see her GP the next morning for a general check-up; this was just one more thing that she needed to ask him about. Was it normal for her to forget so much and to be so absent-minded?

Obviously, as a middle-aged woman, she should expect a few things to go wrong with her mind and body. But she seemed to be suffering from more than her fair share.

At least she’d been pro-active enough to make a list of everything. All she’d have to do the following morning was remember where she’d put the list.

That’s going to be a challenge, she said gloomily. It was probably hiding under that morning’s shopping list. Wherever that was.

Already on the list were the hot flushes and the tenderness of her breasts.

Aha! Breasts! she thought with relief. Of course it’s got to be breasts. It’s obvious. Her heroine would have breasts. Two of them. Bouncy and perky and bountiful. Why on earth had she let herself be sidetracked by boobs and tits when breasts had been there all the time? Classic and sophisticated, and yet down to earth. (Which, by sad coincidence, was the direction in which her own were heading. No point in mentioning that to her doctor. That was just a gravity issue.)

Recently, they’d felt very tender, and even vaguely lumpy, and she’d already resigned herself to the thought that she would have to have an examination. The mortifying investigation of her torso (although, to be accurate, most of the prodding would have to take place in her armpits as she’d be lying down – again, a gravity issue) while she stared up at the ceiling and babbled about summer holidays and the problems of parking in the town centre.

To make matters worse, Dr Priestly, her usual GP, was on holiday and she would be seen by the young and handsome Dr Habib. And because he was so young and handsome, she knew she’d find it difficult to tell him exactly which parts of her body needed investigation.

(She’d always had a problem with talking to men about intimate parts of her body - probably why it was proving so difficult now for her to write erotic literature. Richard had once suggested that she ‘talk dirty’ during the early days of their marriage - when they’d been slightly more adventurous - but she’d been literally stiff with embarrassment and the whole experiment had ended disastrously when she’d finally managed to whisper ‘vagina’,  which Richard had misheard as ‘angina’ and had scrambled off and away from her with a horrified look on his face. That had put an end to that little sexual experiment.)

With a jolt, she realised that she was still standing in front of the sausages and that the only things in her trolley were an aubergine and a small bag of misshapen onions.

Get a grip, Alice! she told herself firmly. For goodness sake, woman!

There was only one thing for it.

She backed the trolley away from the meat aisle, did a three point turn by some Buy-One-Get-One-Free! jumbo prawns and went back down through the vegetable section towards the entrance.

It’s all right, I’m not shoplifting! I’ve just forgotten what I came for! she said gaily to the security man by the door as she did a U-turn in front of him. Having one of those senior moments! I’m going to start at the beginning again - thought it might jog my memory!

What? he said, in alarm, unplugging an earpiece and looking down at her. She noticed a large bogey fluttering in and out of his left nostril and moved slightly out of range in case it came loose.

"I said, ‘It’s all right, I’m not shoplifting.’" She felt that as far as light-hearted comments went, this one hadn’t really been worth repeating.

No, love, I didn’t think you were, he said, looking around for support.

Good! said Alice with a carefree laugh, moving off smartly. She’d really wanted to inspect some reduced raspberries that she’d spotted, but she could see him talking urgently into his walkie-talkie and keeping a close eye on her, so she didn’t really want to stay in his line of vision.

Purposefully, Alice launched herself towards Meat and Poultry again and this time chose some chicken fillets without hesitation.

 If I look like a woman who knows what she wants and what she’s doing, then that is how I will appear, she told herself. Sod the list.

The list wasn’t that important. Actually, just as long she had everything she needed for the meal that night, that was the main thing. Everything else could be taken care of tomorrow.

"One step at a time, Alice," she told herself.

So she went through that evening’s menu: chicken in tarragon and orange sauce with sauté potatoes, carrots and peas. Most of the ingredients were already in her fridge, but she’d planned to do a raspberry pavlova as well. That was now out of the question. She couldn’t possibly go back to the Fruit and Vegetables for a third time. Even if the raspberries were half price.

Perhaps she could do a lemon tart? Apple crumble? But she wasn’t sure whether she had either lemons or cooking apples at home and it wasn’t worth taking the risk.

Ah! How about cheesecake, she thought. Of course! She remembered seeing some digestive biscuits behind the teabags in her kitchen cupboard that morning.

In the Dairy aisle, she grabbed some cream cheese and two tubs of double cream, and then had a brainwave. Never mind ordinary cheesecake - she do a chocolate cheesecake! She definitely had chocolate at home (when did she ever not have chocolate at home?), and it was one of Richard’s favourites. Especially if she put plenty of caraque on the top.

The meal was in the bag now.

Almost literally, Alice said with satisfaction.

Just some wine and...oh, what was it that Richard had especially asked her to get?

And don’t do your normal ditsy thing and forget them, Alice, she remembered him saying, with that stern raised-eyebrow look. A shred of tissue had been attached to his chin by a dot of dried blood.

He’d been very careless about shaving just lately; in fact, now that she came to think about it, his appearance generally hadn’t been as polished as it usually was. His tie had sometimes been casually knotted, even missing altogether on one occasion. And he hadn’t had his hair cut for some time. It really wasn’t like him at all. It was probably her fault. She must remember to take his suits and ties to the dry cleaners and remind him to get his hair cut.

This rang a bell. He’d asked her to get something to do with... with...

Bugger! she said, and smacked her forehead with the heel of her palm. She looked up and caught the eye of the woman from the vegetable section, who was standing a few feet away, giving her another hard stare. Wretched woman, Alice thought. Does she have nothing better to do?

She looked away and pretended to investigate some low-fat yogurts, reading the list of ingredients on the labels and nodding to herself as if to say, mmm, yes, just as I suspected, not quite enough Bifidobacterium Lactis for my liking. After thirty seconds of scrutinising the back of a pot that she’d taken off the shelf, she saw the other woman disappearing round the corner. With relief, Alice moved off slowly, still thinking hard.

Come on! Concentrate! What was it? It was...it was...it was...Yes! she recalled triumphantly. He’d cut himself shaving! Razor blades!

Ideally, she would have liked to high-five someone at that moment; remembering the razor blades was a small victory, admittedly, but nonetheless a victory. But she’d never high-fived anyone in her life; anyway, she realised she was still holding the tub of yoghurt. Guiltily she put it down next to some cream crackers and sped over to the far end of the store.

Arriving in Toiletries, rows and rows of assorted razor blades stretched ahead of her. Damn, she thought. It’s onions and sausages all over again.

All the familiar products were on display, but there were also variations on these that she’d never heard of; versions that vibrated or were newly improved with Plus or Mach or G. Whatever Mach and G were.

Which one did Richard use nowadays? G-Mach? Mach-3? Vibrating? Vibrating G-Mach Plus with Coriander and Sun-dried Tomatoes?

She closed her eyes and selected the first one that came to hand. Perhaps her luck would be in; it might just be the right one.

Even if it wasn’t, maybe Richard would just give a light laugh and tell her fondly she was a silly old thing and not to worry, he would nip out and buy his own.

Oh, things were so much more pleasant in that parallel universe, she thought. The one where her husband was easy-going and enjoyed her company.

She allowed herself to bask in this familiar fantasy for a few seconds before giving herself a brisk shake back into reality.

Was that everything?

She pictured the evening ahead, seeing herself frying the onions, cooking the chicken in stock, then adding the cream, orange zest and tarragon, peeling carrots, crumbling biscuits for the cheesecake, stirring in the butter, beating the cream and cheese together, laying the table for four, Richard coming home, looking into the pans critically, pouring himself a whisky and soda, Geoffrey and – and...- yes, Caroline arriving, Richard getting them a drink, Richard making the usual joke about Alice’s cooking, Richard offering them some...peanuts!

Of course! she said, setting off towards Crisps and Nuts. Richard would be furious if she forgot to get the peanuts again. (Although Richard was always furious these days. With or without peanuts.)

She collected a bag of dry roasted nuts, and defiantly added some pretzels for a bit of continental flair, then found an empty checkout.

It had all gone very well, she thought, packing her bags at the end of the conveyor belt.

At least she’d managed to choose the right word for her heroine’s best features.

And considering that she’d started out by forgetting the list, it could all so easily have all ended in disaster - no onions, no chicken, no cream, no cheesecake, no peanuts... and no razor blades.

She could just imagine how enraged he would have been if she’d forgotten both the razor blades and the peanuts.

Apoplectic! she said loudly and cheerfully to the security man on the door. He pretended to ignore her.

She noticed that the bogey had disappeared.

Chapter Two

Drink, Caroline? Geoffrey? How about a G and T? Yes? Excellent! I’ll make it a large one, then – I find from bitter experience that Alice’s cooking always improves when the tastebuds are slightly numbed! Richard’s voice could be heard clearly above the confusion of noise from the sitting room.

Alice, alone in the kitchen, narrowed her eyes and carried on pushing the knife across a slab of chilled chocolate. Small dark ringlets cascaded in the path of the metal blade as it moved forwards. There was something quite hypnotic about the steady motion of metal against the velvety darkness, the slowness of the movement as she held the knife with both hands and controlled it as it satisfyingly and oh, so slowly pushed deeper and deeper…

But it was warm in the kitchen, and the blade was beginning to slice too deeply into the melting chocolate. She scooped up the tiny dark scrolls and scattered them over the marbled surface of the cheesecake, then stood back and closed an eye while she inspected it, tilting her head to one side. God, I’m good!  she thought. This is going to be wasted on Richard. Probably on our guests, too.

It looked so delicious that she wanted to push her face into the whole thing. Death by cheesecake. That would be a good way to go. She stared down at her masterpiece and pretended that she was actually going to do this, lowering her face slowly towards the swirls of white and dark chocolate below.... 

The door banged open behind her, making her jump. Fortunately, she jumped backwards and up rather than forwards and down. The cheesecake remained intact.

For God’s sake! Richard strode purposefully into the kitchen. Peanuts! Where are the peanuts, Alice?

She turned and pointed.

There. On the table. In the white bowl. She wiped her hands down the front of her apron and wrapped the rest of the chocolate carefully in foil before putting it back in the fridge. Ideally, she’d have liked a little more caraque on top, but she’d be able to do more later if necessary, once the chocolate was cold enough. (Even if she didn’t, she wanted to be able to treat herself to the remaining bits of misshapen chocolate while she cleared up after Richard had gone to bed.)

Honestly! he said. He was still hovering over on the other side of the kitchen, watching her suspiciously. She had a feeling that he knew exactly what she’d been about to do when he’d burst into the room. But obviously, he couldn’t accuse her of that. A husband couldn’t say to his wife, Hold it right there....were you by any chance just about to push your face into that cheesecake? Not even Richard could do that. Although she knew he’d like to. Their relationship these days was almost a battle of wits, except - as he so often reminded her - she was half-witted.

 "I trust you’re going to make an appearance soon, he said. It really is beyond the pale, Alice. You’re supposed to be the hostess, and instead you’re just skulking about here in the kitchen."

Richard, that’s completely unfair, Alice said, closing the fridge door. "I’ve been busy preparing a three-course dinner all afternoon. Hardly skulking. And if you give me a chance and stop shouting about being beyond the pale - whatever that means -  I was just about to come through and join you so that I can be ‘the hostess’."

This retort was wasted on Richard, who was peering dubiously at the pretzels. He prodded them with a finger.

So you go on, she said reasonably. Take the nuts and pretzels through, and I’ll be there in a minute. I’m sure you’re quite capable of entertaining them on your own for another five minutes.

He grabbed the bowl of nuts from the table top. His hand hesitated over the pretzels, then he gave her a look and raised an eyebrow. That eyebrow said What on earth do you think you’re doing? Showing off with this foreign rubbish?

She sighed. She did feel a little bit sorry for him. He was so conservative. And he didn’t even enjoy entertaining very much. Richard wasn’t much of a People Person. So now wasn’t going to be the time to try and persuade him to be a little more experimental with salted snacks.

He gave her a final look and disappeared into the sitting room. She heard him mutter something that sounded like stupid woman and stopped feeling sorry for him. Instead, she made vigorous two-fingered salutes towards the kitchen doorway. He reappeared almost immediately.

What are you doing? he said, pushing past her and grabbing a bottle of tonic water from the fridge. Are you mad, woman?

I just...had some chocolate stuck between my fingers, Alice said lamely. But he disappeared again without waiting for her reply.

She washed her hands and then cleared the middle shelf of the fridge so that she could install the cheesecake. It sat there, on its special white platter, looking majestic. She blew it a kiss and whispered, later, my darling. Then she took her apron off and draped it over a kitchen chair. Finally, she smoothed back her hair, ran her tongue over her teeth to get rid of lipstick stains, and took a deep breath.

Caroline! Geoffrey! How lovely to see you both again! she said, entering the sitting room. She’d met them both before at one of the ubiquitous office parties that Richard always insisted on taking her to. Although exactly why he was so keen for her to go to these with him, she’d never understood.  As he never introduced her to anyone, ignored her as soon as they arrived and didn’t acknowledge her as his wife in any way, her role at these occasions seemed to be exclusively Bearer of the Car-Keys.

Caroline - stiff and slender with an equally stiff and slender smile - moved towards her for a mwah-mwah kiss, but pulled back slightly at the last moment, her perfectly plucked eyebrows bobbing up in alarm.

Oh! she said, scrutinising Alice’s face. "It’s chocolate! I thought it was…"

Alice, blushing, crossed the room to the mirror over the fireplace and rubbed furiously at her cheeks. She wondered what exactly it was that Caroline had thought it might have been smeared over her