Season to Taste by Natalie Young

could burn the bedding and the actual
     bed. She could chop it up with the axe and use it for firewood. She could burn the trainers, burn the clothes and towels,
     and go to Scotland in her Wellington boots. That was it. She looked at her watch. Things were clear.
    She used an oven glove and the tongs from the kitchen to lift a piece of thigh. She would need better gloves and proper tongs
     and she added these to her mental list while placing the slice down on a plate to cool. She glanced at her watch. Then she
     wrapped the slice in kitchen roll.
    After the first bite, it was absolutely delicious. Like a hot piece of really flavorsome chicken, slightly char-coaled on
     the outside. She went into the kitchen for the ketchup and another bit of kitchen roll—he’d not been a good husband—and then
     she stepped back out to the garden. She would eat all the way through like this, she thought: all the pieces, wandering, moonlit
     and a little drunk, around the garden.

Tom
    Lizzie agreed to give me a lift home. I realized as we got there that I didn’t have my key. I knew that my grandfather would
     be at the farmhouse, but I didn’t want to be there. I was happy talking to Lizzie on the way home in the car. I just wanted
     to stay like that. The heaviness had gone. In her car, she was more herself, and it felt like she was in control. I had no
     plans. But I didn’t want to go to the farm. I pleaded with her. She was adamant that I couldn’t come in. She said she was
     busy, that I couldn’t even sit in the garden.
    Then I told her what my grandfather had said about her husband disappearing, and her face began to change. Something passed
     across her brow and she became quite brisk and efficient. She said that I could come in. She said she was busy in the kitchen
     but that I could come in and see for myself that her husband had left her and that she was in the process of clearing out
     the house.
    The house was really, weirdly empty. Much more than I thought it would have been. Even if the guy had done a runner I wouldn’t
     have expected someone married for thirty years to clear their stuff out quite so fast. There was a patch of ash on the lawn
     out the back and I thought she’d probably been burning his things.
    I thought she was brave. She showed me this receipt from an escort place in Guildford. She urged me to keep it, to show it
     to my grandfather so that he might stop his crazy imaginings. I told her that I wasn’t going to take it and that she shouldn’t
     feel she had anything to prove. “He’s a mad old man,” I told her. And she seemed happier after that.
    I had a rest at her place and she went to make a cake. When I woke up she asked me if I would consider looking after the dog
     while she went to Scotland. She was glad that I’d come in after all because it had given her the idea. When it was done, she
     said, when it was fully cleaned up, I could stay there, and I could use the place as my own for a while. She said to bring
     my own bedding and towels. As we talked, she made these deliberate shrugging movements, as if it was all quite a casual arrangement,
     and I felt like she was someone who wasn’t used to living like that at all, that by nature she was a much more cautious person
     who’d decided, since her husband had gone, to throw it all in the air and see what came back.

5

    63.  Don’t start making comparisons with madwomen in history. You are not one of them.
    64.  Letting the brain get hold of a thought and run with it so that you are left sweating, panting, and groping for any available
     conclusion about the sort of a nutter you are is not going to be helpful.
    65.  Don’t think, why did I do it? Think, what am I going to do about it now?
    66.  Pack an overnight bag. Put inside it: five pairs of pants, one for every day of the week. Two bras. A T-shirt. A long-sleeved
     thermal vest. Jumper. Jeans. Face