Recipes for Love and Murder

I made some coffee and went and sat on the stoep to watch the day arrive. It happens all of a sudden in the Karoo. One minute the light is soft and full of the night's shadows, and then the sun is blasting everything awake

I messed up," I said to the cake. "If he had a taste of you, he would have agreed to anything I asked." I licked a piece of rum-and-chocolate icing off my finger. "Anything".

If a man treats a woman so badly that she ends her own life, it’s like he has killed her twice: her heart and then her body.

cooking and eating are two of the best reasons to be alive.

My mother was Afrikaans and my father was English and the languages are mixed up inside me. I taste in Afrikaans and argue in English, but if I swear I go back to Afrikaans again.

Maybe he hadn't saved my heart, but he had saved my life. Surely that was worth something.

I would need flour for the chocolate cake, of course. But also ingredients for chicken soup; a person cannot live of chocolate cake alone.

I clutched my tin of buttermilk beskuit. I wanted to give him something to help with the shock. But he needed something else even more than these broken rusks. Something we all needed: hope. We had to have hope.

I was still awake after the crickets when to sleep. My thoughts went round and round like the moths at the light.

I wanted to shout, but instead I did the dishes. In a way that was more noisy than usual.

It made me feel peaceful, just being in the grocery store, looking at the piles of fresh fruit and vegetables. Bananas, apricots and melons. That sweet smell of ripe spanspek.

In the end what matters most is love and food. Without them you go hungry.

We sat together at my kitchen table, just the vetkoek and me, then just me.

I've never grown roses myself - they are too much work for something you can't eat.

Cooking vetkoek with curried mince is an art which South African tannies have spent generations getting just right. As I sat there enjoying the food, I was grateful to them all, especially my own mother who taught me me how to do it. There in my kitchen, eating that vetkoek and mince, I had that feeling I'd expect you would have when you go to a church you have faith in. I said I didn't believe in anything, that my faith went out the window, but maybe that wasn't true. I believe in vetkoek with curried mince, and all the tannies who made them. If the end of the world was coming, this was the meal I'd make.

We went to the back door and turned off our torches and watched the rain fall in the darkness. Cool, soft rain. Jessie and I grinned at each other. At last. The ground sighed with relief as it fell. I took in a deep breath. "Ooh, that smell," I said. The first rain on the warm dry earth. Nothing like it. Then after the smell of the earth came the smell of the plants. It was like each plant gave something of itself to say thank you for the rain. All the smell mixed together to make a delicious air soup for us to breathe in. "Let's have a sandwich to celebrate," I said.

I don't believe in sleeping in the day," I said to my tea. "It's confusing. When I wake up I don't know whether to have breakfast, lunch or supper." I dipped my muesli rusk into the tea. "I suppose I can just eat beskuit. Any time of the day.

Her voice was rough but it had some sweet flavour, like Christmas cake with stones in it.

I ate the soft warm bread with butter and apricot jam on one slice and cheese on the other. I am not sure how settled my mind was, but the food settled nicely in my belly.

I was leafing through a new batch of letters. The fan on the ceiling was going round and round. It was like an oven with a termafan. Jessie, Hattie and I were all being evenly baked as we sat at our desks.

If you are honest with yourself," I said to the potato salad, "is the feeling of love really any better than the satisfaction you get from a good meal?

It has been too long without rain. The Karoo sun tries to suck all the moisture out of the plants and the people. But we knyp it in, holding on.

But maybe life is like a river that can’t be stopped, always winding, towards or away from death and love. Back and forth. Still, even though life moves like that river, lots of people go their whole life without swimming. I thought I was one of those people.

You smell lovely," I told the appelkooskonfyt. When I call it apricot ‘jam’ it sounds like something in a tin from the Spar, but when it’s konfyt, you know it’s made in a kitchen.

Sometimes news travels faster than the things that are actually happening. I was once told of an old lady’s death before she died. But she did die, the next day, so she managed to catch up with the news.

RECIPE FOR MURDER 1 stocky man who abuses his wife 1 small tender wife 1 medium-sized tough woman in love with the wife 1 double-barrelled shotgun 1 small Karoo town marinated in secrets 3 bottles of Klipdrift brandy 3 little ducks 1 bottle of pomegranate juice 1 handful of chilli peppers 1 mild gardener 1 fire poker 1 red-hot New Yorker 7 Seventh-day Adventists (prepared for The End of the World) 1 hard-boiled investigative journalist 1 soft amateur detective 2 cool policemen 1 lamb 1 handful of red herrings and suspects mixed together Pinch of greed Throw all the ingredients into a big pot and simmer slowly, stirring with a wooden spoon for a few years. Add the ducks, chillies and brandy towards the end and turn up the heat.