Bitter Flavours

Vanessa carefully placed her cookies inside the cellophane bag, then printed the ingredients clearly on the label. 

Chocolate and chili. Not a flavour she would choose for herself, but that was what her recipient in the Christmas cookie exchange, Tom, had requested. The strong taste would hopefully hide any deficiencies in her baking.

Vanessa wrote Tom’s name on the other side of the label, and threaded it onto a length of shiny red ribbon. She tied the ribbon around the neck of the bag, sealing it securely, and then placed it in the large basket on the kitchen island. The sole bag looked forlorn at the moment, but as the party guests arrived with their own cookie contributions, it should make an attractive display.

Vanessa heard the insistent trill of the doorbell. She stood up, smoothing the skirts of her gold sequinned dress, nerves suddenly prickling her stomach. She had been preparing this party for a long time, but it could still all go wrong. She paused for a moment by the mirror in the hallway, checking her hair was smooth and her makeup pristine, and opened the door.

She was unsurprised to find Wanda Sutton outside. Over her three months in Willowside, she had noticed that Wanda was always the first to arrive at any gathering. Wanda lived for gossip, and was afraid that she might miss some vital tidbit of information if she was late.

Wanda was slightly red in the face. She only lived a few doors down, but she was laden with a number of heavy looking bags.

“Can I help you with those?” Vanessa reached out swiftly to catch one of the bags as it slid off Wanda’s over-stretched arm.

Wanda gasped her thanks, and Vanessa managed to maneouvre her into the kitchen with all the bags intact. 

“What is all this?”

“A few bottles of wine. You can never have too many, the way the Everetts drink.” Wanda winked, with a sly smile. “My lemon tarts, of course, it wouldn’t be a Willowside party without them! And my cookies for the exchange. I put them in this lovely heart-shaped box.”

Vanessa duly admired the box, as she put the wine in the fridge to chill. “It’s beautiful, Wanda, but I’m afraid I have to ask you to put the cookies in one of these bags, instead.” “Why?” Wanda looked offended. 

“A few of the participants have food allergies, so I promised to keep all the cookies completely separate in sealed bags, and that all the ingredients would be written clearly on a label.”

Vanessa had specified all this in her email explaining the procedure for the cookie exchange, but she had suspected that most of the recipients would ignore it. 

“Food allergies.” Wanda reluctantly moved her cookies into the cellophane bag. “It seems to be the latest fad. We didn’t have food allergies in my day. We ate what we were given, and were grateful for it.”

And some of you probably died from it, thought Vanessa, rolling her eyes inwardly. 

“Some food allergies can be life threatening. Nut allergies, for instance. I feel I have to take precautions. I couldn’t forgive myself if anything happened because I’d been careless...”

“Of course not!” Wanda flushed, a little shame faced. “I’ll do whatever you ask, my dear. No trouble.”

She wrote down the ingredients in a looping hand. “Oats and honey?” Vanessa read over her shoulder, raising her eyebrows. “That seems very...healthy for a cookie.”

“I know.” Wanda sighed heavily, and their eyes met in shared disapproval. “I know it’s important to eat sensibly, but this is a Christmas cookie exchange...one can take healthy living too far.”

“Alison Harper?” said Vanessa, and Wanda nodded. It was an easy guess; Alison, Tom's wife, was a gym fanatic, and the kind of person who saw taking full-fat milk in her tea as an over-indulgence.

“At least I didn’t get Lisa Everett, and have to come up with a vegan cookie.” Wanda tucked her bag of cookies in the basket. “The exchange is a lovely idea, Vanessa. What made you think of it?”

“I read about it in a magazine. I wanted something different from the usual Secret Santa, otherwise everyone gets socks and bath salts.” 

Vanessa plated up Wanda’s baked offering, and squeezed it onto the buffet table. She suspected the plate would still be largely full at the end of the evening. Wanda’s lemon tarts were so sharp they could cut your tongue.

“I hope I haven’t over-catered,” she said, surveying the packed table with a frown. “I wasn’t sure how many people would come.”

“Everyone you invited will come,” said Wanda, with utter confidence.

“Are you sure? I’m still new here.”

“That doesn’t matter. They’ll come to see the house,” said Wanda, apparently oblivious to any possible lack of tact in her words. “Everyone’s been dying to see how Eva remodelled this place, but she never invites anyone to see it. I’m surprised she allowed you to have this party.”

“She understands I’m more sociable than she is,” said Vanessa. “She was fine with it.”

That was a total lie from start to finish. Their house sitting agreement had specifically forbidden parties, and Eva was constitutionally incapable of understanding that other people didn’t feel exactly the same way she did about everything, including her dislike of socialising. It was a curious blindspot in someone so accomplished and successful, but it had been useful to Vanessa. She had smiled and agreed with everything Eva said, and Eva had never thought to doubt her.

The doorbell rang again, and kept on ringing, and Vanessa was swept up in a whirlwind of names and faces. She had already met most of the women in Willowside, over three months of coffee mornings and book groups, but the men were largely unknown to her. It didn’t help that they all looked so interchangeable, in their neatly pressed shirts and silk ties, with their receding hairlines and encroaching bellies and expensive watches.

Then Vanessa opened the door to the Harpers, and finally a face stood out from the crowd.

She had not seen Tom Harper for fifteen years, but she would have recognised him anywhere. His hair was almost completely grey now, deep lines crossed his forehead, and he’d put on weight, but the broad smile with the edge of smugness was the same. The smooth, arrogant voice, so certain that whatever he said was worth listening to. 

“Tom, this is Vanessa White. She’s house sitting while Eva is in Australia,” said Alison Harper. Her gym-toned body was covered by a shimmering blue dress with a high neckline and long sleeves, and the sharp edges of her face were covered in a thick coat of makeup. Vanessa had never seen Alison without that layer of armour. The other women joked that she put it on even if she were merely opening the front door to collect the post.

“Good to meet you, Vanessa. How do you know Eva?” 

Tom extended his hand. Vanessa remembered that hand too. Strong and muscular, black hair crisply curling along the back, so large that it enveloped her own. She remembered seeing that raised hand, thick fingers curled into a fist, thumping like a mallet against her mother’s face. A surge of nausea choked her.

“I work at Eva’s company,” she said, struggling for calm. Her pause must have been obvious, because Tom was looking at her curiously. For the first time this evening, she was afraid. Afraid that he would recognise her.

She answered Tom’s following questions about her work at Eva’s company, scolding herself under the smooth practiced phrases. Why should he recognise her? Why would he look at the well-groomed professional woman in front of him and see a skinny ten year old girl with pigtails and braces? He had never paid much attention to her anyway; he was not a man who cared for children, and her mother had shooed her off to her bedroom when he was around.

I’m safe, she told herself. I’m safe. She bit down on the underside of her lip, and the salt taste of the blood grounded her, kept her smile intact and her voice steady through the rest of the conversation. She had worked and planned too hard for this moment to ruin it all now.

---

The party was a success, by the sedate standards of the residents of Willowdale. No-one got embarrassingly drunk, except the Everetts, and they got drunk so regularly it was no longer embarrassing. All the guests were able to make a thorough inspection of Eva’s new decor, and either note what they wanted to copy in their own houses, or discuss at length how they would have done everything better. 

It was not late when the party drew to a close. The demands of babysitters or age-induced sleepiness called most of the guests home before midnight. Vanessa bade them farewell at the door, handing each one their personal bag of cookies. If she was drawn taut as a bowstring when she handed Tom his chocolate and chilli cookies, she showed no outward sign.

Alone in the house once more, she looked around at the detritus of the party. Half-empty glasses, dirty plates, balled up paper napkins and dissected canapes were strewn like flotsam left on a beach after high tide. Most of the food had been eaten, apart from Wanda’s lemon cakes.

Vanessa could have gone to bed and left tidying up until the morning, but she was still wound taut and arrow ready, too restless to sleep. She walked around gathering rubbish into a binbag, stacked the dishwasher, and boxed up the leftovers for the fridge. From time to time she stopped to look out of the picture window in the living room, which gave an excellent view of the surrounding houses.

Nothing will happen yet, she told herself. It’s still a waiting game. I should go to bed.

She didn’t. The cleaning finished, she poured herself a glass of wine, turned off the lights and sat in front of the picture window. 

Waiting.

Some time later, the silence was shattered by the wail of sirens. The dark living room was suddenly bathed in an eerie blue light.

An ambulance. Outside the Harpers’ house.

Vanessa felt frozen. Unable to move or to speak, to do anything but watch. At the same time she felt more alert than she ever had before, her mind racing, every nerve in her body thrumming with excitement.

She watched the paramedics in their bulky uniforms enter the Harpers’ house, and remembered another night disrupted by sirens and blue lights. Remembered another paramedic, a woman with greying hair, bending over her mother, sprawled at the bottom of the stairs like a bird flown into a glass door. Straightening up to look at Vanessa with eyes both kind and unsparing.

“I’m sorry, love. She’s gone.”

So few words, to change her life so irrevocably.

The paramedics were inside the Harpers’ house for a long time. No rushing out with a patient on a stretcher, no desperate dash to hospital. That could be bad news, or it could be good.

When they finally brought out the stretcher with a body in a bag, a body so long and bulky that it could belong to only one member of that household, she knew it was good.

Vanessa had imagined this moment so many times over the years. She had always expected to feel jubilant, to feel like screaming with joy or punching the air.

It wasn’t like that. There was a feeling of bitter satisfaction, but mostly she felt numb. In her head she kept hearing her mother’s cries, Tom's angry shouts, the sickening noise of that endless fall. 

---

Wanda called the next day. “Did you see the ambulance? Last night? The Harpers?”

“I thought I heard a siren. Are they all right?”

“Tom Harper’s dead.” There was a ghoulish satisfaction in Wanda’s voice at being the first to break the news.

“What happened?” Vanessa worried that her voice sounded too blank, too unfeeling. Still, people reacted to shock in different ways, and Wanda was probably too caught up in her drama to notice.

“He had an allergic reaction. Ate some nuts and couldn’t breathe. Guess you were right about some allergies being serious.”

“Alison told me about his allergy.” It had sparked an idea, led her to propose the cookie exchange. When Tom had asked for chili and chocolate, two strong flavours to hide any trace of ground nuts, it had become even easier. Such a simple thing to do, and who was to know it hadn’t been an accident? 

She allowed her voice to tremble. “Oh God...Wanda, you don’t think...was it my food? I did my best to keep everything labelled and separate…”

“Oh my dear, I know you did. Don’t blame yourself. You did everything you could, but some people are simply careless.” Vanessa let Wanda bumble through her soothing routine, making a choked noise at intervals. Wanda segued into how terrible it all was, and how one never knew, and even went so far as to say ‘in the midst of life we are in death’…

Thank fuck I’ll never have to endure her conversation again, thought Vanessa, as she ended the call. 

She got out of her car and locked it. Crossed the station car park, tossing the phone and keys down a drain on the way. Bought a ticket to London on the first available train.

As it pulled away from Willowside, she locked herself in the toilet and changed her clothes. Shed Vanessa White’s smart trouser suit for jeans, a loose pullover and a knitted beret. She looked in the smeared mirror, and thought she would be glad to lose Vanessa’s blonde hair as well. She could go back to her natural dark hair, or maybe try something new. Red, perhaps. 

She would need a new name as well. She decided to take time in choosing it. It would be a permanent name, now the task she had set herself so long ago was accomplished.

The authorities had decided that her mother’s death was an accident. Ignored her testimony - a distressed, overly-dramatic child - in favour of Tom’s, the respectable grown man with money and influence. He’d even had the gall to come to her mother’s funeral, and shed crocodile tears. She had watched him with burning eyes across the chapel, and vowed that she would punish him for what he had done, if no-one else would.

She got off the train at the first stop, and caught another going back north. She stared out of the window, smiling as the familiar landmarks appeared, standing up to move to the door before the electronic voice announced the station.

She bought flowers before going to the taxi rank. Red flowers. Flowers of passion, of remembrance. They stood out vividly against the muddy brown grass of the cemetery, as she placed them under the brass plaque.

“It’s done, Ma,” she said. She felt suddenly absurd, like a little girl offering a clumsy crayon drawing. See what I did for you, Ma!

What else could she have done? She’d had to do it. For years it had been the only thought in her mind, the north star that drew her through the long grey days.

“It’s finally done.”

She had never thought about what would come after. What she would do when that purpose was gone.

She had plenty of time to decide. For now, she knelt in the grass, heedless of the damp seeping into her jeans, and reached out to trace the name on the plaque.

For now, she let herself rest.