This Body of Death Read Online Free PDF Page B

fashion out of flour, eggs, and all the rest. So why try? It wasn’t a contest, after all. It was a friendship in need of rescue.
    Gran and granddaughter were off on their adventure with the otters and Granddad had taken himself to work when Meredith finally had the cake completed. She’d chosen chocolate with chocolate frosting, and if it was just a tiny bit lopsided and a tinier bit sunken in the middle …well, that was what frosting was for, wasn’t it? Copiously used and with plenty of flourish, it covered a host of errors.
    The heat of the oven had raised the temperature in the kitchen, so Meredith found she had to shower another time before she could set off for Ringwood. Then, as was her habit, she covered herself shoulders to toes in a caftan to disguise the beanpole nature of her body, and she carried the chocolate cake to her car. She placed it carefully on the passenger seat.
    God, it was hot, she thought. It was absolutely boiling and it wasn’t even ten A.M. She’d thought the day’s heat had been all about having the oven blasting away in the kitchen, but that was clearly not the case. She lowered the windows in the car, eased herself onto the sizzling seat, and set out on her journey. She’d have to get the cake out of the car as soon as possible or she’d have nothing but a pool of chocolate left.
    The trip to Ringwood wasn’t overly long, just a dash down the A31 with the wind blowing in through the windows and her affirmation tape playing at high volume. A voice was intoning, “I am and I can, I am and I can,” and Meredith concentrated on this mantra. She didn’t actually believe this sort of thing really worked, but she was determined to leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of her career.
    A tailback at the Ringwood exit reminded her it was market day. The town centre was going to be jammed, with shoppers surging towards the market square where once each week stalls spread out colourfully beneath the neo-Norman tower of St. Peter and Paul parish church. In addition to the shoppers there would be the tourists, for at this time of year the New Forest was teeming with them like crows on roadkill, campers, walkers, cyclists, amateur photographers, and all other forms of outdoor enthusiasts.
    Meredith gave a glance at her chocolate cake. It had been a mistake to place it on the seat and not on the floor. The sun was blasting fully upon it, and the chocolate frosting wasn’t benefiting from the experience.
    Meredith had to admit that her mother had been right: What on earth was she thinking, bringing Jemima a cake? Well, it was too late now to change her plans. Perhaps they could laugh about it together when she finally managed to get herself and her cake to Jemima’s shop. This was the Cupcake Queen, located in Hightown Road, and Meredith herself had been instrumental in Jemima’s finding the vacant space.
    Hightown Road was a bit of a mixed bag, which made it perfect for the Cupcake Queen. On one side of the street, redbrick residences took the form of terraces and semis that curved along in a pleasant bow of arched porches, bay windows, and dormer windows with white gingerbread woodwork forming their lacy peaks. An old inn called the Railway Hotel stood farther along this side of the street, with plants tumbling from wrought-iron containers that hung above its windows, spilling colour towards the pavement below. On the other side, things automotive offered services from car repair to four-by-four sales. A hair salon occupied space next to a launderette, and when Meredith had first seen, adjacent to this, an empty establishment with a dusty T O L ET sign in the window, she’d thought at once of Jemima’s cupcake business, which had been going great guns from her cottage near Sway but was in need of expansion. She’d said to her, “Jem, it’ll be grand. I can walk over in my lunch hour and we can have a sandwich or something.” Besides, it was time, she’d told her friend. Did she want