Picnic
Episode 8 of the June Murders
Dawn poked its way through the curtains far too soon, and Sally couldn’t get back to sleep. She washed, dressed and put June’s discarded clothes in a laundry bag. How does one prepare for a police search? she wondered.
She went through the clutter on her desk. They would probably want June’s appointment diary and address book. Suddenly, she thought: Oh no, they’ll want her computer, and we’ve been sharing this Chromebook! She spent the next hour uploading correspondence and documents to the cloud so she could access them from her tablet. By then, she was hungry.
June had been a great believer in eating an ample breakfast. She always began with fruit, followed by wholegrain cereal. She would drink endless cups of tea and then have coffee while eating slices of fruit bread. She would do this even on days when she had to be at the studio by 5 a.m. When breakfast was later, Sally would sit across the table and they would chat; like an old married couple, she thought, although it had only been two years.
“To stay slim,” June liked to say, “you have to invert the pyramid. Big breakfast, decent lunch, light dinner.” And the regime had worked, thought Sally, looking at June’s picture. She heard the buzzer, and groaned: they are way too early. She went to check who was coming up the stairs.
