Free Grace's Table by Sally Piper

she’d seen at Luna Park. She’d always considered that mouth to be a macabre welcome to a place of fun, like being swallowed by a greedy giant. This rib cage had a similar effect.
    Des held a large cleaver in his right hand. He raised it above his head and brought it down hard on the ragged and bloodied neck end. The action was done with such authority and strength that she imagined if the animal’s head had been still attached then he could just as easily have hacked it off in one blow as well. A quick and efficient beheading. For a moment she faltered in her cause, even considered turning around and leaving the shop before he noticed her there. This wasn’t a place for the unsure, not when things were being done around her with such certainty. But it was too late for that.
    â€˜What can I get for you, love?’
    Grace’s gaze was taken away from Des’s back and she looked into the playful eyes of one of the other butchers.
    â€˜I’d like a pound of thinly sliced veal, please.’
    â€˜Grace, what are you doin’ here?’
    Grace tried to appear brave. She looked around her as if Des might have lost his senses. ‘Buying meat,’ she said.
    â€˜We can’t have run out at home.’
    â€˜No, we haven’t,’ she said, ‘but I wanted something other than what was at home.’
    Des looked at her incredulously, like she might be the one who’d lost her mind. ‘How could you want somethin’ other than what’s at home? There’s a pile of meat in the freezer.’
    â€˜I want veal,’ she said. ‘There’s no veal in the freezer.’
    Des looked flummoxed. ‘Veal?’
    â€˜Yes, veal.’
    â€˜I don’t like veal. It’s got no flavour.’ Des embedded the cleaver into the timber block then picked up the severed neck end and flung it into a bucket on the floor.
    Grace shrugged. She noticed the man who was serving her had paused, knife edge resting on the pink slab in front of him, torn between slicing it thinly and putting it back in the refrigerated cabinet.
    â€˜A pound, please,’ she said.
    â€˜So what’re ya gonna do with it?’ Des sounded sulky, like Peter when he’d been told off.
    Grace wouldn’t be put off, she decided. She smiled sweetly at the man as he carved off the slices.
    â€˜Make veal parmigiana,’ she said, ‘with garlic bread, I think, and a nice green salad.’
    â€˜Bloody wog food.’
    The butcher serving Grace secured her paper-wrapped package with twine, looped the long end of it round his index finger then snapped it free from the roll with a jerk of his hand. He placed the parcel on the counter in front of her, held his hand on it as though she might consider returning it. She didn’t wait to see if Des would offer to put the cost of the meat on his tab. She opened her purse and handed the man a note.
    Thanking him, she left the shop with her neatly wrapped package, but not without hearing, ‘You’ve got yourself a feisty one there, Des.’
    The cleaver came down hard again as the shop’s door closed behind her. She imagined the animal’s spine severed in two.
    For a while after that Grace had made her own weekly meat list. She’d stand and wait her turn like all the other women, flirt even with some of the butchers on occasions, and order her meat for osso buco and stroganoff and moussaka. Her inventiveness proved short-lived though, because before long she went back to giving Des exactly what he liked.
    â€˜There were plenty of times your father thought he’d been starved.’ Grace took another pea from the diminishing pile.
    Susan snorted. ‘Not the way I saw it. You always gave him a mountain of food – much more than he needed.’
    â€˜That’s because he’d complain if he saw too much of his plate at the start of a meal.’
    â€˜Do you think those comments about being expected to