The loaf that she’d baked bloomed blue in the bread bin – the stainless-steel bread bin that she’d used as a stockpot one Christmas – until the whole kitchen smelled of a brewery.
The pears had taken on the shape of the fruit bowl and collapsed into its corners. When she picked one up, by the stem, the top tore right off. The limp skin was filled with pearly maggots, feasting on liquid fruit.
The mouse in the larder had been dead for weeks; it had been reduced to a tufted skeleton. Its naked ribs shattered under the weight of her boot.