The World's Best Caramel Sauce

"It will be the perfect coffee cake." said Joyce, sweeping her still-long, grey hair into a ponytail high on her head, "It will be just like your mother's."

Pauly grinned lazily. He reached out and swept his cigarettes, phone and keys across the table towards him. He stood up.

"I'll believe it when I taste it."

He left.

Joyce breathed out when the door clicked closed. Her baking was usually chaotic; today it would not be. She would not grab ingredients as she needed them, leaving the cupboards open and running the risk of forgetting the vanilla essence. Today, it would be perfect. She laid all the ingredients out methodically, like a TV chef, resisting the urge to start creaming the butter and sugar before everything was weighed out. It dirtied all her bowls this way, but it would help her make the perfect coffee cake.

She chose real butter, not margarine, as Pauly's mother had reputedly always done. There was no point in mentioning the times that Joyce herself had witnessed her sainted mother-in-law melt margarine into things; she was wrong. Pauly preferred real things; real butter, real homemade bread, real designer label clothes. Apparently this obsession did not extend to breasts: if it had, he wouldn't have fucked that "actress" with the double-F cups perched on her visible ribcage. Strange that.

She whizzed the real butter into the sugar until it was smooth and perfect. The sieved flour fell softly on top of it. Joyce folded it in.

She contemplated the spatula: to lick or not to lick? Licking spatulas was one of the sloppy habits Pauly hated. It made her look cheap and common, apparently. Other times she was wasteful for not using all the food she bought. Go figure. She smiled and licked it clean, before stirring in the slithering egg. The coffee formed a dirty river through the cake mixture before it too was briskly combined.

The tiny bottles on the counter called her attention next, A drop of vanilla; she had already decided that the other essence was going in a caramel sauce. She wanted to eat this cake.

There was something meditative about this languorous style of baking; by the time the cake was in the oven, Joyce felt more relaxed than she had in a long time. She wondered if this was how her mother-in-law had felt when she was finished her famous cake. Probably today was the closest she would ever come to understanding that woman. Perhaps, after today, they would be friends. Perhaps not. Anyway, they would be a little more alike.

As the cake cooled on the rack, she found a recipe for the World's Best Caramel Sauce. Yes, she thought, it would be. Viola had served her oh-so-perfect coffee cake with several different sauces and icings over the years, so Pauly would have no protest about the accompaniment.

He took a long time to come home; she no longer felt much curiosity about what he was up to or who he was with. He wasn't with his mother, anyway; that was certain these days. The important thing was that the cake would be waiting when he got home.

For the first time in many years, she smiled to hear the door open.

"How's that cake coming along?" Pauly sniggered, by way of a hello.

"Brilliant. It's definitely just like your mother's. Would you like some now?"

He grunted, sitting on the chair by the door and yanking off his shoes. She had wrongfooted him by being so obviously in a good mood. She had better tone it down.

"Alright then." he said. She dished it up, covering it generously in the World's Best Caramel Sauce. It did look like good sauce; she would make it another time.

She did not lift her fork until he did; she was more interested in his reaction to the cake than her own. His face was impassive, which was a sure sign that the cake was fantastic. If he had been able to find something wrong with it he would have told her immediately.

He said nothing, just kept eating. Joyce smiled. It was a good cake; it was probably the best cake she had ever made. She should have taken a leaf out of his mother's book a lot earlier. It would have saved a lot of trouble.

Pauly thumped his plate down on the table.

"I told you you should learn from my mother. With that recipe, even you can make a decent cake."

Joyce just smiled. "Thank you. That's very kind of you to say. It really means a lot to get a compliment from you today."

Pauly narrowed his eyes suspiciously, stood up and keeled over.

Joyce finished her cake.

It was fair enough, as far as she could see. The cake was just like his mother's. Just like the one she'd used to poison her husband in '98.

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