‘What?’ he asked, shrinking from their gaze. ‘Sasha, tell them to back off! Even if you’re mad at me because I didn’t tell you we were finished, this is outright intimidation.’ Jack took a step away, only to find himself backed against the butcher’s block.
‘Your comment just then,’ said Sasha quietly. ‘Are you suggesting I’m fat?’
‘I never said that!’ Jack looked around, but found no support from her family. He held out his hands. ‘You’re not fat, Sasha… not yet.’
‘Here we go again,’ said Ivan with a sigh. ‘Another attack on meat eaters.’
‘You’re all crazy,’ Jack spat back, frantic now, and glowered at Sasha once more. ‘I should’ve dumped you after our dinner date!’
To his surprise, Sasha smiled to herself and nodded.
‘You might have helped me see the light as a vegetarian,’ she said, sounding strikingly calm. ‘But right now what I need is comfort food.’
‘Look, just let me go and you can all get back to your supper.’
‘That won’t be possible,’ said Titus calmly, and nodded at Ivan. ‘If you leave now,’ he added, as the boy produced the knife once again, ‘we’ll have no main course.’
‘Jack has been trying to turn vegan,’ Ivan pointed out, like this might be a problem. ‘And there’s no time to properly prepare him.’
Titus didn’t once let his gaze slip. If anything, his eyes slowly narrowed. Such was the overwhelming menace in his glare that Jack just froze and whimpered.
‘Think of him as corn fed,’ he said, and stood aside for his son. ‘Corn fed and rustic.’
Amanda Dias heard the cry for help. She had been sitting on the park bench at the time. At first, she chose to ignore it. If Jack Greenway had attempted to carry out a killing, she wanted no part of it if something had gone wrong. Instead, she clasped her hands and focused on the ducks settling in the twilight.
There was something delicious about this moment, she thought to herself. That somebody would commit the ultimate crime for a cause she believed in passionately left her feeling so powerful. Amanda was beyond the law here. Untouchable. The cops would catch up with Jack, of course, and he could protest all he liked that she had set him up to force food ethics onto the agenda. It would never wash in court. There was no evidence beyond his word. Amanda had been sure to check it out, hypothetically, of course, which proved simple as Daddy was a barrister.
A moment later, Amanda heard the sound of tinkling glass. It came from the direction of the house. Her first thought was to walk away. The noise caused several dogs in the neighbourhood to kick off, but after a moment the hum of the city spread out below the park returned a sense of normality. She folded her coat against the evening chill, glanced at her watch and waited. From what Jack had told her of the Savage family, they didn’t care what meat went into their mouths. If he truly shared her belief that a slaying of this nature would ultimately force people to think about the food that they ate, then the head of the household was a legitimate target. Titus Savage wouldn’t be able to defend himself from such a surprise attack. Not like the hunters of old. Those who depended on flesh for their survival.
So, when Jack failed to emerge, her curiosity began to rise. In the back of her mind, Amanda wondered whether he had made up with his ex-girlfriend. He was certainly taking his time in leaving. Of course, she couldn’t care less about that, she told herself, though the thought that a boy would choose someone else over her finally prompted her to rise from the bench and find out for herself. She knew it would be safe to take a look. Jack certainly couldn’t have stuck a knife in the guy, as he’d promised he would. Had he done so, the alarm would’ve been raised and the place swarming with police. Whatever was going on in there he’d let her down badly, Amanda decided. She’d been wasting her time.
‘Once a vegetarian,’ she muttered bitterly, ‘always a vegetarian.’
Amanda walked past the house three times before she dared to venture onto the drive. The lights were on, and she could clearly hear activity inside. There was certainly some cooking going on because the hob extractor was blowing at full tilt. Immediately, she figured they had invited Jack for a bite to eat. Given how easily he had abandoned his pledge to kill a man, no doubt he had thrown away everything and was enjoying some beef, pork or chicken. Feeling let down, betrayed and angry, Amanda headed for the passage around the side of the house. All she wanted to do was peek inside. Just to confirm that she’d been dealing with a creep.
It was the sight of the flabby-looking man face down and bleeding on the patio that caused her to freeze. At first she thought he was drunk, judging by the way he was groaning, but the silver foil pants just foxed her. Was this some kind of stag night, she thought to herself, and then dared to peer around the corner of the house. She could hear a lot of noise from the kitchen, like dogs competing to wolf down the last few kibbles from a bowl. Crouching at the drainpipe, she saw the broken glass from the French windows. Then, very slowly, she turned to focus on the interior.
‘Oh… wow,’ she whispered to herself after a moment. Her eyes began to widen, her face illuminated from the kitchen as she emerged from her hiding place. Without a doubt, this was an atrocity she was witnessing, but in her mind it took things even further than she had ever imagined. In a stroke, she had stumbled on the only way to eat meat with a clear conscience. The realisation hit her so suddenly that it felt as if her life’s work had been leading to this moment. Amanda smiled, rising to her feet to face the diners inside. For she had arrived, as darkness closed in, to witness humans turn upon their own kind. A woman stood at the hob, flash frying thin steaks that had come straight from source thanks to the bald-headed figure carving expertly in the background. As for what was left of Jack, splayed out over the butcher’s block, he looked as if he might have died of fright. Still, no animals had suffered for their supper here. Not the innocent kind. The flesh on the plates was fair game. It was, she realised, on drawing ever closer to the broken window, the ultimate in ethical eating.
Just then, one of the family members picked up on her presence. It was the girl that had accompanied Jack to the talk. She seemed different in this light, thought Amanda, and not in a bad way. In fact, the whole family looked to be the sort of people she wanted to know better.
‘What is it like?’ she asked them.
Such was Amanda’s expression of wonder that nobody looked at all threatened by her presence. If anything, they looked transported to another dimension by the food they were eating here.
‘Bacon,’ said the girl between mouthfuls. ‘The best you ever tasted.’
‘May I join you?’ Amanda Dias waited for her response, entranced by what she had discovered, before carefully making her way across the glass shards that covered the threshold.
DIGESTIF
To the neighbours and nearby residents, it felt like an age before the media moved on. For weeks after Vernon English found the strength to stumble into the road to raise the alarm, the house was under siege from camera crews, journalists, photographers and the plain curious. The police cordon held them back while the house was practically pulled apart. When the investigation finally finished, building contractors moved in to board up the doors and windows. From that day on, the house set about a slow decay. Weeds sprung from every crack and crevice in the brickwork, while dead leaves gathered in the porch as if seeking shelter from the wind.