Sweet Karma

Clive was in over his head. In over his head in standard-sized marshmallows.

This one really took the biscuit. Edith had filled the bathtub with marshmallows, made him get in and submerge himself in the gooey mess. There were marshmallows everywhere - in his hair, in his armpits, between his toes - he was sure there was even one between his bottom cheeks. Icing sugar got up his nose, making him want to sneeze.

He'd had just about enough of this. He began to fight his way to the surface of the pink and white fluffy mass.

"Don't you dare move yet," Edith demanded. "I haven't finished counting. Four thousand, four hundred and thirty-two, four thousand, four hundred and thirty-three..."

"But Edith, I can't breathe!"

"Don't be silly. Of course you can breathe, you're talking! Now... rats. I've lost count. One, two..."

"You got to four thousand, four hundred and thirty-three," Clive said.

"Oh, yes. Four thousand, four hundred and thirty-four, Four thousand, four hundred and thirty-five..."

Clive could hold it no longer - he sneezed.

"For heaven's sake, Clive, keep still! Seriously. If you move, you'll dislodge more of them and skew the answer. You must wait until I finish counting. Four thousand, four hundred and thirty-six..."

Clive knew from bitter experience that if he dislodged more marshmallows, she'd go bat guano crazy and they'd have to do it over again. His only option, if he wanted a quiet life and to do the sudoku puzzle in the paper with a nice cup of tea, was to remain perfectly still until she said he could move. She was still counting. "Four thousand, four hundred and fifty-eight, Four thousand, four hundred and fifty-nine..."

Clive ate a marshmallow. Better not eat any more or he might get a sugar rush and mess up her calculations.

What would the lads at work think if they could see him now? They'd wet themselves laughing, that's what. They already thought he was hen-pecked. "Four thousand, four hundred and sixty..."

Clive tried to quell the tide of his rising anger by imagining himself on that world cruise he'd been saving up for forever, but never seemed to get any closer to affording. He imagined himself sunning himself on a deckchair by the pool, reading about the exotic destinations they were sailing towards. "Four thousand, four hundred and seventy-five, Four thousand, four hundred and seventy-six..."

Even dreaming of the world cruise couldn't stop his ire building up. The things that woman made him put up with!

Why, he was still finding Lego bricks in his car from the time she'd needed to know how many of them would fill a Ford Fiesta. Most of the bricks had gone to the charity shop afterwards, but enough had escaped to lurk in the hallway for him to tread on when he crept downstairs for a midnight snack in his bare feet.

Then there was the time she'd forced him to use up all his annual leave allowance and spend it roller skating from John O'Groats to Land's End in order to find out how long it would take.

Only last month he'd gone to the doctor, concerned about his skin turning yellow, fearing jaundice and liver disease, only to be humiliated when the doctor had told him it was down to eating Fritz's carrot stew for twenty consecutive days in a row. Well, they'd been close to their use by date, and he didn't like to waste food. Starving kids in Africa, and all that.

"Five thousand, one hundred and fifteen!" Edith announced, triumphantly. "That's it! That's how many marshmallows it would take to make a life-sized model of Clint Hudson!"

Clive sat up, noticing that Edith had been right; still more marshmallows spilled onto the bathroom floor when he moved. He stood up and brushed several marshmallows from his bare skin. He was sticky all over and covered in icing sugar. He could do with a bath. Oh. The bathroom was full of marshmallows. No bath until this mess was cleared up, and that would take ages. Even with Edith helping, but she'd already gone downstairs to fill in the final number on the entry form. As soon as she'd done that, she'd be off to the post box to make sure she caught the last post.

"Why the rush?" Clive had asked on previous occasions.

"It closes tomorrow," Edith would say.

"Why must you always leave these things to the last minute?" Clive would ask, exasperated.

"Because as soon as I send it, I'll get a better idea for a tie-breaker slogan."

"So enter again."

"I can't. It's one entry per household."

Mrs. Barker next door hadn't spoken to Edith since she'd entered a one-entry-per-household competition in her name and the prize, a year's supply of best quality horse manure, had been dumped in her driveway. Mrs. Barker would give Clive sympathetic looks now, whenever Edith dragged him out on some ridiculous competition-related mission.

And the shopping! The lads at work would boast of how they'd get around the supermarket in ten minutes flat because they'd worked out an optimum route for picking up their regular purchases. With Edith, the weekly shop could take all weekend. She'd have to check there were no competitions on alternative brands. They'd have to buy milk in Morrisons, soap in Sainsbury's, butter in Budgen's and coffee at the Co-op because they had competitions on them, and on bad weeks, they'd have to go to the supermarkets in the next town as well, because one had sold out of the qualifying packets, or the new Lidl was running one as part of its opening offers.

Clive pulled a marshmallow out of his hair. He was going to bloody well make her help him clear up so he could have a bath. He stomped out onto the landing, feeling sticky marshmallows under his feet, and yelped in pain as his foot found yet another stray Lego brick.

"Edith!" he yelled, but the only answer was the slam of the front door as she left the house. He could see her through the landing window, walking briskly up the path, a wad of envelopes and postcards in her hand.

Oh, well. He could still have a cup of tea and do the sudoku. It was surprising how much that always calmed him down.

He opened the kitchen cupboard. A mountain of teabags fell out of it onto his head. Damn it. He'd forgotten she'd sent all the boxes off as a qualifier for some competition or other. He stuffed one teabag into a cup. 

Once he'd made his tea, he went over to the kitchen table. You couldn't see the tablecloth. Every inch of the table groaned under piles of entry forms, stamps, postcards, pens, and scraps of paper, on which Edith had been trying to distil into twelve words or less why she loved Tesco toilet roll in that spidery scrawl of hers.

Demanding she put it all away had little effect. Even if she did, it would be as messy again within a couple of days.

Thank goodness today's paper was on the top of the pile. He put his mug down, his temper too frayed to care if he left a tea stain on a precious entry form.

He picked up the paper and turned to the sudoku page, only to find half the puzzle was missing because Edith had clipped out an entry form from the next page.

Clive roared with rage and threw his tea across the room.

"I'm home!" Edith called. "I just caught the postman. He was emptying the box as I got there. Now, let's go clean up all those marshmallows."

Clive stomped up to the bathroom behind his wife. She began stuffing marshmallows into a bin liner.

Something deep inside Clive snapped. He grabbed his wife in one hand and a handful of marshmallows in the other. He stuffed marshmallows into her mouth and up her nose. She struggled, but he didn't stop until her face had turned blue and she went limp in his arms.

When the police came to take him away in handcuffs, all the neighbours came out to gawp. Only Mrs. Barker patted him on the back. Only she knew what Edith had put him through. "I'll come visit you in prison," she said.

Mrs. Barker was as good as her word. On the third day of Clive's life sentence, she came to see him. While she was there, she handed in some of his clothes for him, along with a letter in a long white envelope she'd picked up from the mat on her way out. It was addressed to Mr. Clive Winner. He hadn't been expecting any mail, so he opened it, intrigued.

"Dear Mr. Winner," it read. "We at Sweetdew Marshmallows Ltd are delighted to inform you that you have won first prize in our recent "How many marshmallows does it take to make a life sized model of Clint Hudson" Competition. The prize is a world cruise..."


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