Heavens to Betsy!

Betsy's cakes are the best in town. Everyone says so, and she has multiple awards to prove it. Her cakes are a feature at every school fete, bake sale, birthday party, and wedding. There is something about Betsy's cakes that leaves you hungry for more. Every single mouthful is oozing with richness and utter deliciousness! The euphoria from eating Betsy's cakes is like a drug - and everyone in town has an insatiable hunger for more.

Betsy has been perfecting her recipe for years. Her husband, Bill, was her harshest critic. Every Sunday, she would make him a cake and hope that it would please him. But, every week, Bill would not finish his cake and would say, “Betsy, this is terrible! There is nothing special about your cakes. You are a terrible cook!"

As Betsy held Bill's opinion in the highest regard, his criticism left her feeling hurt and incompetent. But every time, she would thank him for his opinion and then make her way back to the kitchen to look for ways to improve her recipe.

***

Betsy didn't know anyone when she first moved here 47 years ago after marrying Bill. She and Bill were conservative, god-fearing folk who kept to themselves and rarely ventured out from their small orchard. The only time Betsy travelled into town was to do the grocery shopping and go to church. But those visits were kept to a minimum as there was always so much to do at home.

Betsy longed to start a family. Every night she prayed that she and Bill would be blessed with children, but it was never to be. So, she focused her attention on perfecting her baking.

Eventually, Betsy made some friends at church. Her new friends encouraged her to enter the upcoming bake-off competition. Betsy was hesitant at first - Bill had always been so critical of her cakes. But she was curious enough to get the opinions of others and thought it wouldn't hurt to enter. When she told Bill about it he was over the moon. He shouted, "That's a brilliant idea, Betsy - I'm sick of tasting your terrible cakes". Betsy hardly heard the end of Bill's retort. She was so excited that he thought it was a good idea that she immediately started planning her best cake recipe. The bake-off was in two days, so she needed to get to work!

Betsy spent all of the next day planning how she would decorate and present her cake. It was essential that everybody loved it, she couldn't bear to embarrass herself with a failure of a cake. The cakes for the competition had to be at the church by noon, ready for judging.

The morning preparations went exactly to plan on the day of the bake-off, and Betsy arrived at the church right on time to set up before judging. She wanted everything to be utterly perfect. She was so nervous. What if Bill was right? What if her cakes are awful? She was just about to change her mind and take her cake back home again when a bell rang, declaring that judging was about to begin. "Too late to back out now!" she thought.

Betsy and the other competitors left the church hall while the judges tasted all of the entries. Judging would take an hour, with results expected at 2 pm.

Betsy and her friends went to Margaret's house for a light lunch while they waited, then they all headed back to the church to see the results. Betsy felt sick on the walk back, she was so convinced that her cake would be an embarrassing failure. "What was I thinking?" she thought. "These ladies have been entering these competitions for years, and I, on the other hand, have been disappointing Bill with my cakes for years!"

Everyone gathered around for the announcement of the placings. To Betsy's surprise, she placed 3rd overall. "What a relief!" she thought. Betsy's friends rushed over to congratulate her, but all she wanted to do was go home and tell Bill the good news. She thanked her friends for their support, encouraged them all to finish off her cake, and rushed home with a piece of her award-winning chocolate cake for Bill to try.

Bill was not excited to see Betsy come toward him with a piece of chocolate cake. He thought that entering the bake-off meant that he didn't need to taste these cakes anymore! Betsy explained that she had won 3rd place and that he would be surprised with how good this cake was. Bill sat down to taste it, and yet again, he didn't finish it. "I don't know what all the fuss is about Betsy. The other cakes must have been awful too because this cake is still terrible!" Betsy left the kitchen deflated. She thought for sure that this was the winning recipe to make Bill happy. Once again, she thanked Bill for his feedback, and she headed back to the kitchen to work on her recipe.

The next day, Margaret from church dropped by the orchard to return Betsy's cake stand and decorations. They were left behind when she rushed home to Bill after the bake-off. "Betsy," Margaret swooned, "Your chocolate cake was divine! All of the ladies at church were raving about it. We all think that the only reason that you didn't come 1st is that the Pastor's wife and daughter also enter the bake-off, and every year, the judges feel that they have to award them 1st and 2nd place."

Bill let out a roaring laugh from the kitchen. "You don't know what you're talking about, Margaret! Don't go putting ideas in Betsy's head that she's a good cook - her cakes are terrible! You've all lost your minds! Now get out of here before you put other crazy ideas in her head!". Margaret quickly hurried away in tears. Betsy, quite shaken and upset, excused herself and took a walk outside through the orchard.

Betsy decided there and then that she would keep entering bake-off competitions and keep perfecting her recipe. But, this time, with the hope of pleasing her friends and the townsfolk, rather than Bill. Bill was never again asked to taste one of Betsy's cakes.

***

Six years later, during one of the hottest summers on record, Bill disappeared. Betsy was distraught and rushed into town to report him missing. After a lengthy search by the police and the local community, Bill was never found.

After Bill's disappearance, Betsy was quite lonely on the orchard, and she couldn't manage it alone. It was clear that Bill wasn't coming back, so there was no use in trying to hold on to the property. So, Betsy decided to sell the orchard and move into town.

Betsy moved into a small cottage, just a couple of houses down the street from Margaret. It was perfect for her with a lovely big kitchen to cook all of her much-loved cakes.

***

Over the last 25 years since Bill disappeared, Betsy has sharpened her cake recipe even further. She now receives regular 1st place awards at every competition she enters. She credits her success to her secret ingredient. She receives regular orders from townsfolk to cater for all events that called for cakes. She is in her element, and she is one of the most loved people in town.

Betsy's secret ingredient lives in a ceramic jar on her kitchen bench. It is a white powder added to the cake mix. Everyone is curious about what it is, and she is asked about it regularly, but Betsy is always tight-lipped.

***

Betsy headed into the kitchen to start on a new cake order. It was a beautiful Spring day - the birds were chirping, the sun was shining, and there was the smell of blossoms in the air. While preparing all of her ingredients for the cake, Betsy grabbed for her secret recipe jar, and as she did, she knocked it off of the bench, shattering it all over the ground. Betsy was devastated! What was she going to do now? This cake order was due today! She pulled herself together and baked the cake anyway and hoped that nobody would notice. But people noticed. For the first time since Bill disappeared, Betsy received a complaint about her chocolate cake.

Betsy knew what she had to do - she had to replenish her secret ingredient. She couldn't have people complaining about her cakes. Betsy thrived on being adored by everyone. She devised a plan to gather the ingredient that she needed.

***

When Betsy lived on the orchard she had a neighbour, Murray. A grumpy older man who rarely spoke to anyone, other than to yell at them. He still lived next to the orchard, and Betsy went to visit him. Murray was suspicious and annoyed to see Betsy at his door. They were never friends, and they hadn't spoken at all since she sold the orchard 25 years ago. Betsy offered him some chocolate cake, and he obligingly let her inside.

***

Lawrence, a friend, and neighbour of Murray's had seen Betsy enter Murray's home and thought that something was off. When Betsy hadn't emerged from Murray's house after half an hour, Lawrence went over to knock on Murray's door. He could hear a scuffle taking place with lots of shouting, so he ran back to his house and called the police. He then ran back to Murray's house to see if there was anything he could do to help, assuming that Betsy was in trouble. He moved around to the kitchen window, and to his astonishment, he saw Betsy trying to overwhelm Murray with a cloth of some description held to his mouth! He yelled out to Betsy, shocking her, and she dropped her grip on Murray. She was about to try to run but the Police had arrived and they stopped her in her tracks.

Betsy was arrested and taken back to the police station. During questioning, she broke down and admitted to everything. She explained that she was trying to replace her secret ingredient, and she needed Murray's bones to do that.

You see, the secret ingredient was Bill's bones, crushed up into a powder. After learning that people liked her cakes and that Bill had been so nasty without reason for so long, Betsy decided to poison him. She added arsenic to his food each night, and after a few weeks, he was dead. She put his body out in the orchard, out of sight from the neighbours but in full sun, where his body quickly decomposed, leaving only his skeleton. She then collected his bones and meticulously crushed them up, one bone at a time using her mortar and pestle, and kept the dust in her ceramic jar. This went on for a few months until all of his bones were crushed. That's when she called the police to report him missing.

Putting this secret ingredient into her cake mix happened accidentally initially. The ceramic jar of bone dust looked similar to the baking powder jar. When she thought she was adding baking powder, she had instead added some of Bill's bone dust. She received some of the best feedback of her life from that cake with the accidental secret ingredient! The next time she went to make a cake she realised what she had done. At first, she was horrified! But then, considering how good the feedback was from that cake, she decided to do it again as a test. The feedback was just as good the second time. Nobody could get enough of these cakes! So, Betsy decided to keep using her secret ingredient. It wasn't really hurting anyone if they didn't know, right?

Betsy had planned to kill Murray and crush up his bones to replenish her secret ingredient. But instead, Betsy found herself spending the rest of her life cooking cakes for prisoners in prison.