Bonus Scene

Ginger was lounging on her beautiful vintage armchair, with Nina undecidedly fidgety on her lap. She was feeling calm and serene, but questions ran amok in her head.

Will this be my new life?

Since moving back to Little Chiswick from London, she had brushed shoulders with two murderers and helped catch them. This was not how her new life was supposed to start.

She was running away from the things that hurt her and weighed her happiness down, not trying to come up with new demons to plague her life.

How had she gotten into all this mess, and even more pressingly, why did she like the way it made her feel?

Was it the sense of power? The surge of adrenaline? The fear? The thrill of it all? What did those things do for her?

She stroked Nina's back, who purred quietly and was dozing in and out of sleep.

What was it that attracted her to two bloody cases of murder so close to each other? Was she supposed to perish along with the victims? She always believed that people's fates were predetermined. That everything was already written, as it were. Did she somehow escape her own fate?

Heavy existential questions burdened her consciousness, yet she felt a sense of accomplishment, an uncanny hint of happiness after a very long time.

Her dreams of becoming a master baker were only in their baby steps, and she already had a celebrated position in the prestigious school. Things that would make most people content. Yet she couldn't shake the feeling that while on her journey of self-discovery, she stumbled upon a new hidden aspect of herself. That of a sleuth. And she was damn good at it.

She had the instinct, the drive, intelligence, and imagination to make it all work. Yet her inner puzzlement was only birthing more and more questions as she kept poking at that dark side of her brain.

What do we get out of a murder mystery, and what attracts us to its inner workings in the first place? Is a bad guy just the other side of the coin? Would she feel happy if there were no lives on the line?

Would you keep reading a murder mystery novel if no one died?

Ginger pondered these deep thoughts as Nina suddenly reared her head and meowed whilst yawning, making an unintentionally funny noise.

"Well, I guess we'll have to find out how all this plays out, my lovely Nina, now won't we? And I have a pretty good feeling this is going to turn out deliciously..."

A steady hand sealed the makeshift envelope. Certain, sworn, full of desire. In fleeting flashes of her imagination they were together, joined in the holy act of matrimony. An angel. Her angel. A grown man. Her husband.

Self-satisfied and proud of her assumed prerogative, she left her office and walked down the long corridor, tightly gripping the ashen paper of the unassuming envelope.

It was a few minutes after 5pm. All the students had long departed in the private buses or had been picked up by their families' chauffeurs. The school grounds were appropriately empty.

Maintaining her beliefs, she had to cultivate her understanding about the world and truly grasp the conception of love. Divine, natural, perverted, it fuelled her confident step down the school corridor.

As she approached his office door, her heart beat faster, her palms turned sweaty, and she feared she would wet the fancy paper she had so carefully chosen for the task.

Under her breath, an almost inaudible mantra was being repeated.

Everything that is done out of Love acquires greatness and beauty.

Everything that is done out of Love acquires greatness and beauty.

Everything that is done out of Love acquires greatness and beauty.

With the strength of St. Josemaria Escriva's words, she quickly slipped the envelope under the office door. Artless and silent, just like that, it had begun.