FLOSSIE MUCH sat in her parlour at a loss. All she could do was stare.
It was a big-eyed stare.
A picture of Reggie Much, the one which caught his favourite comb-over from the best angle, sat upon a designer mantelshelf that cut a false pilaster in half about two thirds up.
Bloody fractions, she thought. Could never get her head around them. When they told her of Reggie's demise they said he'd been cut into ribbons. What kind of fraction was that?
Her eyes welled with tears.
'Oh Reggie,' she said in throaty tones. 'Where did it all go wrong? We'd been so happy up until you fell in that fan weaving machine thingy. Trying a dare to make a new pattern. Always stretching things you was. Dear Reggie,' and she sobbed anew.
Something about this Summer Pause had been dreadful. Like a cloud hanging in the air, a cloud of doom. Bitter and twisted.
Flossie flicked a card across the table at the opposite empty seat. She was alone in her parlour these evenings. Even misery had decamped to pastures gloomier. She flicked another card and it danced on its edge briefly before falling value up. A ten of posies. Like a funeral display.
Yes, it was a dismal summer all round.
Gathering the cards, Flossie made to shift and relocate to the kitchen for some cold tea. She did not have heart enough to heat the water up. Besides her widow's pension would only stretch so far and the compensation outlay dwindled in spectacular fashion thanks to those amazing on-grid bargain sites so full of sparkly things.
Then she heard a noise and sat back down.
'You just stay there ma'am,' a voice called out in familiar, comfortable tones and in a daze the mistress of the house did just that. 'I'll get us some tea,' was the next instruction she heard.
'Yes,' Flossie muttered automatically, without thought. 'You just go ahead and do that.' Her voice was flat, devoid of inflection, of feeling. Then a shadow at the edge of her vision resolved itself into a familiar figure.
'Why, Soopsie,' she said, vocal cords tightening. 'Who let you in?'
'Shredder ma'am. Good memories, dogs, in their noses I mean,' and the errant maid stood there, still in her coat, the textured one bought at Shard and Razor for a year's wage in certain stations of life. Flossie sat there and stared back.
For a moment they both looked one at the other across the room, the low light accentuating their uncertain expressions as they explored each other's feelings from a careful distance.
'Tea sounds about right,' Flossie eventually said.
'Right indeed ma'am, and lemon biscuits,' and the spell was broken. Soopsie was all action, pausing only to pat the dog grinning knowingly at her in a corner as she bustled about a kitchen too long neglected or poorly maintained by daywork girls from some agency, most likely.
In a trice a sparkly tea pot appeared on a tray, cups, biscuits, milk jug and a shiny circular thing with emerald initials emblazoned upon its teeth-scratched iridescent surface.
'There you go ma'am, tuck in,' and the maid paused over the display as her erstwhile mistress examined the assorted things before her. She looked up and noted the coat had disappeared, its gaudy velvet red and black design hidden from sight. Soopsie wore a modest dark blue frock trimmed with regulation lace and garnished with a small but perfectly formed pink carnation near the left shoulder.
'Pity there isn't company. You've produced so much,' she said softly, looking down again.
'Much,' the maid said, fingers fidgeting a bit. 'Much and more.'