Free Femmes Fatal by Dorothy Cannell Page A

home.” Fantasy always found me marinating in a bubble bath, one tempting knee rising from the foam, my Grecian curls spilling from a satin ribbon. Hubby would stride into the bathroom, lay a bottle of champagne in the heart-shaped basin and stand transfixed. “My God, woman, you’re lovely! Don’t move an eyelash, my sweet. Let me imprint this vision upon my soul for all eternity.”
    Ben, entering by the back door, found me in the kitchen, up to my elbows in nappy suds.
    “Don’t tell me you’re home!” Accusing eyes on the clock. “You just left.” All four walls got splattered as I wrung my hands.
    “Glad I took the evening off.” Eyes darkening, he looked for a vacant space to toss his coat, but the tablewas cluttered with remnants of the babies’ five o’clock feed and every chair was up to its kobs with folded clothes or bags of groceries. Tossing the coat over his shoulder, he stood, hands on his hips, looking the place up and down. Nelson on his column surveying the pigeon poop in Trafalgar Square. The man had me with my back to the sink.
    Swatting soap suds off my forehead, I said, “So, it’s a jungle in here.”
    “Babies cranky?”
    Only a coward hides behind her children. “Good as gold and already in bed.”
    “Didn’t Mrs. Malloy show?”
    “Yes, but she was feeling poorly … and had to leave early.” I was bracing myself to tell him that I had gone with her to Fully Female when he began loading the dishwasher. I knew how he hated having his concentration broken during said procedure. Heaven forbid that a cereal bowl might end up in the wrong slot.
    “Ellie, don’t think I’m criticizing—”
    “Perish the thought!”
    “—But you might try making lists.”
    I continued wringing nappies as if they were chicken necks. “I suppose your mother …”
    “Well, you know Mum—a perfectionist.”
    “To the death!”
    Yanking the plug out of the sink, I listened to the gurglings—so reminiscent of a person, preferably male, being choked to death. And to think I had been ready to rebuild myself from the ground up in the interests of making this marriage work. Well, no dice. Mrs. Malloy would have to be a big girl and go to her first Fully Female meeting alone. Tomorrow morning I would telephone Bunty and …
    My thoughts came to a screeching halt. I’d gone to wipe my hands on my apron and found I wasn’t wearingone. It was back at Bunty’s house, wadded up in the clay urn by the waterfall—with Mrs. Malloy’s gun in the pocket.
    “What’s up, Ellie?”
    “Nothing.”
    Dumping the nappies in the wash basket, I looked around the kitchen. What a transformation! In five minutes flat, Ben had rendered order from chaos. Every surface was wiped clean. Foodstuffs were returned to the pantry and the ironing board banished to its cupboard. Not by a grease spot on a shirt cuff did the man betray that he was reduced to being a skivvy in his own home; in his elegant grasp the broom might have been a silver-topped cane.
    The smile Ben bestowed upon me would have once turned my heart to pâté. “Why don’t I pour us both a glass of white wine before dinner?” His eyes strayed to the cooker, standing wantonly idle.
    “Frozen dinners all right?” Crossing to the freezer, I removed a tinfoil package. “How do you like your meat thawed, dear?”
    It was a moment of such exquisite fragility that it took only a whimper filtering through the intercom from one of the babies to shatter the mood.
    “I’ll go up to them,” he said.
    “The steak tartare will be ready when you are.” My smile stuck to my face the way the frozen package stuck to my palms.
    “Forget it. We’ll pig out on cheese and crackers at the Hearthside Guild.”
    Blast! Ben was out the door before I could explain that the stupid meeting had completely slipped my mind. Surely he could understand there was no way on God’s green earth that I could be at the vicarage by seven. Even if Freddy could be cajoled into