Recipes for Love and Murder Read Free Page B

that I mind chatting. It’s just that those sweet cool dishes were calling to me quite loudly, so I couldn’t listen properly.
    I could smell the ripe mangoes as I drove past the farmlands, through the open veld and between the low brown hills. I turned into the dirt road that goes towards my house, drove past the eucalyptus trees and parked in my driveway, next to the lavender. Two brown chickens were lying in the shade of the geranium bush; they didn’t get up to say hello.
    I went into the kitchen and plonked my grocery bag on the big wooden table, then straightaway peeled six bananas and put them in a Tupperware in the freezer. Then I chopped four mangoes and put them in the freezer too. I stood over the sink to eat the flesh off the mango skins and suck their sticky pips clean. It was a messy business.
    Then I crushed the hazelnuts with my wooden pestle and mortar and lightly toasted them in a pan. I tasted them while they were warm. I broke the chocolate up and put it in a double boiler. I would do the melting when the bananas were frozen. I tasted the dark chocolate. I ate some together with the nuts just to check the combination. Then I prepared some more nuts and chocolate to make up for all the testing. It would take a couple of hours for the bananas and mangoes to freeze. How was I going to wait that long? My letters. I had brought back my two letters from work.
    I decided to take them outside so I could focus without distractions. I sat on the shady stoep and opened one. It was from a little girl who liked a boy and didn’t know how to make friends with him. I gave her a nice easy fridge fudge recipe. Little boys never say no to fudge.
    The next letter I opened said: Oh hell, I’m such a total idiot. Please tear up that last letter. If my husband ever sees or hears about it . . . I’m a fool. Please don’t publish it. Destroy it. I beg you.
    What last letter? What was she afraid of? I looked at the postmark on the envelope. Ladismith. The date was two days ago. I phoned the Gazette , and got Jessie.
    ‘Hey, Tannie M,’ she said.
    ‘Did I leave a letter on my desk?’ I asked.
    ‘Hang on, I’ll check.’
    I looked at the kitchen clock while Jessie was gone. Not even an hour had passed since I’d put the bananas in the freezer.
    ‘No, nothing. But mail did arrive after you left. And there’s a letter for you.’
    ‘White envelope,’ I said. ‘Postmark Ladismith, sent two or three days ago?’
    ‘Mmm . . . ’ she said. ‘Yup.’
    ‘I’m making some choc-nut frozen bananas,’ I said. ‘If you want to pop over sometime . . . ’
    ‘Why don’t I shoot across in my lunch break? I’ll bring your letter.’
    ‘Just right,’ I said.
    I didn’t have a good feeling about the husband in the woman’s letter. It gave me an uncomfortable worry in my belly. I decided to put something sweet in my stomach instead. The banana wasn’t frozen yet, but it tasted good with the nuts and chocolate. I needed to test the recipe properly – with frozen banana and melted chocolate – so I stopped at just one banana.
    To get myself out of the kitchen I put on my veldskoene, old clothes and straw hat and went into the vegetable garden. I had two pairs of veldskoene: one light khaki, which was smarter, and the other dark brown, which was better for gardening. It was like a roasting oven outside but there was a part of the garden that was in the shade of the lemon tree, and I kneeled down there and started pulling out weeds.
    There were some snails on my lettuce and I chucked them onto the compost heap where the chickens would find them.
    I was lucky I had good borehole water. It had been too long without rain. The Karoo sun tries to suck all the moisture out of the plants and people. But we knyp it in, holding on. The little vygies and other succulents do the best job of holding onto it. I put olive oil on my skin at night so I don’t turn into dried biltong. But I don’t use it when I go outside or else the