A Fridge Full of Bacon

I gazed at the fridge in disbelief. A week ago, I had emptied the kitchen of food before my husband and I went on vacation, but the fridge was definitely not empty now. Upon the previously bare shelves sat a packet of butter (we only ever buy sunflower spread), a block of lard (ditto, olive oil) and what looked like enough bacon to set up a truck stop.

           “Did you buy any soya milk?” My husband joined me at the open fridge door and peered inside. “What the hell is that?” he asked, pointing to the mound of dead pig. (I should point out at this stage that we are both staunch vegans.)

           Someone,” I said, “has broken into the house while we were away and filled our fridge with animal products.”

           Matt looked at me sharply. “You’re joking, right?”

           “I’m afraid not,” I said, waving my hand at the damning evidence and wondering whether, in the short time we’d been away, someone had founded a Meat Liberation Front and was trying to make us all compulsory carnivores. Perhaps I should get Matt to google local bacon terrorist activities?

But my husband was shaking his head and frowning. “She wouldn’t...” I heard him mutter. “Not after I told her...

“You know something about this!” I said in surprise.

He looked sheepish. “Well, not exactly... But I’ve got a pretty strong suspicion.” He refused to say any more for the time being, leaving me lying awake for hours that night wondering how my vegan husband had become embroiled in a bacon conspiracy.

*

The next day, when Matt was at work, I spent hours combing the internet for anything that might shed light on the matter. He’d said she, so there was obviously a woman involved – but who was she? Had Matt been visiting some bizarre kind of carnivore-cabaret that offered not the ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ but the ‘Dance of the Seven Rashers’? Was there only so long a man could go without steak before he started to develop an unhealthy obsession with it and commenced a full-blown meat fetish? Perhaps it was time I replaced one of his veggie burgers with the real deal to see if it eased whatever unnatural cravings he’d recently acquired.

*

By the time Matt arrived home that evening, my mind was working overtime and imagining the worst. I couldn’t bear the thought of some floozy tempting my man away from me with pot roasts and chicken wings. Veganism had been my idea – after all, isn’t it a way to save the planet? – and my meat-loving husband had just gone along with it to support me. If only I’d known that lentils and tofu would be responsible for destroying my marriage!

Matt looked at my tear stained face as I hysterically started gabbling my apologies, promising never to make him eat a falafel again. “There’s something I ought to tell you,” he said awkwardly. “I think I might know where that bacon came from.”

And so the story came out of how his mother had rung him the week before we went away and asked if she could housesit for us while we were gone.

“Why didn’t you say yes?” I asked, thinking that at least the old lady would have been some sort of deterrent against burglars. (My mother-in-law’s a formidable woman and has been known to wrestle a Hell’s Angel to the ground when she thought he was after her handbag.)

He looked awkward. “Well,” he said slowly, “I told her no because I had a feeling she wanted to use our house as a love nest.”

I gaped at the idea of his parents getting down and dirty in our hot tub while we were away. “But I thought your dad’s just had a hip replacement!” I argued.

Matt looked even more embarrassed at this. “I don’t think she was intending it to be for her and my father,” he whispered. “I think she’s got a bit on the side!”

Now, I don’t know about you, but the idea of a woman in her sixties writhing around in extra-marital passion is not an image I want in my mind. Even now, it still makes me feel queasy if I think about it. What was even worse was that I knew Matt was just as perturbed as I was. “Do you think...” – he could hardly get the words out, poor love – “do you think the bacon and butter were part of some bizarre sex game?” (I vowed there and then that we would never watch ‘Last Tango in Paris’ or ‘9 ½ Weeks’ ever again.)

For the rest of the evening, we were too traumatised to speak any more.

*

It was a day or two later when a kindly neighbour provided another piece of the jigsaw puzzle. I was carrying out the garbage when Robin, the English guy who lived next door, called out, “We gave your mum the key.”

“Pardon?” I felt confused.

“Your mum – when she was here last week. She said you’d promised to leave a key out for her, but she couldn’t find it – so we gave her your spare.”

“She’s Matt’s mom, not mine,” I replied automatically. Then curiosity got the better of me and I asked, “Did she have anyone else with her?”

“Oh, you mean your father-in-law?” Robin didn’t seem to realise the enormity of this conversation. “Nice chap – we had a good chat about bikes. Said he’s got a Harley at home.”

“He wasn’t on crutches, then?”

I was hoping Robin would contradict me, but instead he laughed. “He’s the fittest bloke for his age I’ve ever seen – and he couldn’t keep his hands off your mother-in-law!”

So Matt had been right: his mum was messing around with another man – and she’d chosen our house for her not-so-secret assignation! Full of righteous indignation, I marched back inside. Who knew what they’d been up to in our home? I was going to have to strip all the beds and bleach every available surface!

*

By the time Matt came home from work, I’d calmed down enough to think things through. I was still mad at Mrs McKenzie for using our house without permission; but a part of me almost admired her for having such energy at the age of sixty-five. After all, I reasoned, it wasn’t as if her husband was the innocent party in all this – Matt had told me on several occasions what a philanderer his dad had been when they were growing up, so perhaps it was time his wife got her own back. “Sauce for the goose,” I muttered to myself.

Something told me Matt wouldn’t be too happy if I confirmed his suspicions, though, so I did what any loving wife would do and lied.

“By the way,” I announced casually, “I’ve solved the mystery of the bacon.”

I waited for his response.

“Did you ring my mom?” he wanted to know.

I shook my head. “I didn’t need to. Robin next door said he and Katy had a power cut while we were away. He popped round to see if our appliances were still working – you know they had our spare key – and put some food in our fridge to keep it fresh. He’d forgotten all about it until I told him we were going crazy trying to work out where that bacon had come from.”

Matt’s face flooded with relief. “Thank goodness I didn’t ring my mother,” he said fervently.

I knew then that we would never speak of the incident again.

“Oh, and one more thing...” I wasn’t sure how he’d react to this one, “I thought I might cook that bacon for supper tonight.”

After all, it’s hard to keep on being a vegan when a packet of bacon is calling to you from the fridge.