Eccles Cakes - contains a little swearing

“Oh, just fucking fuck off.” Said Mary throwing the book of pastry recipes across the room.

“Look all I wanted was an Eccles cake recipe. There’s no need to get violent.” Said Martin, the book had narrowly missed him. He tried to regain some sort of dignity but Mary wasn’t going to allow this. She ran the length of the room picking the book in one motion. Mary aggressively thumbed through the pages before tearing a page out and setting light to it. The flames licked at Her fingers before dropping the remnants to the kitchen floor and treading it into the lino. 

“What did you do that for?” Martin was starting to wonder about Mary’s sanity. This wasn’t the first time this week that she had flown off the handle. Martin had never been this terrified, he slowly backed away towards the door he was starting to think he had misread Mary and the situation.

The Mary he had first encountered was friendly, warm, smart and most of all beautiful. This was the woman he had wanted to spend the rest of his life with and it had been a real pleasure to be engaged to her, the last few weeks however his assessment of the woman he loved more than anyone changed. There was only one person he had loved more and that was that Blue Peter presenter of his childhood, he’d never met her but he did send a letter in and he got a badge in return. A ll he was getting in return for loving Mary was a torrent of abuse The closer the wedding got Mary’s temper was getting out of control now could explain it. He thought it was probably the final details of the wedding that was getting her down and he certainly hadn’t done his best to help.

“Mary we are here to help.” Piped up Keith. Everyone had forgotten that he was here but he had known Mary longer than anyone else he had been friends with her long before he was with Martin. He thought he could reason with her but it seemed increasingly difficult. He thought Martin could have been more supportive. He knew however how busy He was at the office and decided to see what he could do to help out his department.

“I thought you would have known better than anybody Keith,” Mary said. She was on the point of breaking down completely.

“I’m sorry I don’t know what you mean.” Keith saw that he was in front of the knife block. He shuffled over so it wasn’t in view of either of the happy couple. “Come on Mary, we can’t help you if we don’t know what’s wrong.” Keith waited for Mary to answer.

“Come on Mary. If you can’t talk to me I’ll pop out and let you talk with Keith.” Mary seemed to be relenting a little and it was soon decided that Martin would leave and the two friends could talk about these recent out bursts. Martin didn’t know where to go, he grabbed his jacket and left the house.

“Thank fuck he is gone.” Mary smiled. “He has been getting under my feet these last couple of weeks.”

“But you usually love that about him. He loves you and likes trying to make you happy.”  Mary has no argument with this. It was Martin’s puppy dog enthusiasm for everything that had first attracted her to him in the first place.

“You remember Harry? All them years ago?” Keith remembered instantly they had all been good friends before a car in the middle of town hit him. “Well the week before I had an abortion. It was his.”

Keith knew they were sleeping together everyone did. But this was news to him. “If you knew what was going to happen to him would it have made any difference?” he asked trying not to appear to overcome by the whole thing.

“I don’t think I would you know. It would have been nice to have something to remind me of him. But I wouldn’t have coped with a kid on my own.”

Keith took hold of her hand. “So what’s all this with you and Martin?” Keith looked Mary in the eye and for the first time this week she seemed so vulnerable.

“It’s the Eccles Cakes.” She thought she was sounding stupid. All this fuss over a little cake that wasn’t really that nice. “I thought it would take my mind off Harry. It is ten years since he passed on and I needed some sort of excuse to take my anger out of, you know I don’t even like Eccles cakes but her Martin is trying to make them some sort of them for the wedding.”

“I’m back” Shouted Martin from the hall. “I’ve brought some Eccles cakes from the bakers.” Mary and Keith looked at each other before laughing and in unison they shouted back.

“Oh just, fucking fuck off!”