The Mystery at the Second-Hand Shop

Ever since Anne-Maj went on early retirement six months ago, she has been working as a volunteer at the Second-Hand Shop situated in an abandoned supermarket behind the new Irma supermarket. Just once a week, from ten o’clock in the morning to six o’clock in the evening. She has always had a great interest in books. She loves reading them, smelling the pages, feeling them in her hands, and she has always had a sharp eye for beautiful front covers and the fine details of book bindings. So, being in charge of the book section has greatly interested her for quite a while; however, old Helmer thought he owned the section right up to the end and prevented anyone from sharing the job with him. If she could take over that job now …

No, she thinks, washing the juices from the meat off her hands, grown-ups who refuse to cook their own food shouldn’t be allowed to call themselves grown-ups. Or at least shouldn’t be allowed to have children. If you aren’t able to provide your family with nutritious, tasty meals three times a day, then you’re simply … she is trying to find the right word as she dries her hands on a clean dish towel …Well, then you’re simply immature. She nods to herself, satisfied with her own conclusion. The thought doesn’t occur to her that her own daughter, who is notoriously clumsy in the kitchen, belongs to that very category of people.

Every meal begins with a person cooking. Actually no, that isn’t really true. It begins with a person buying the necessary ingredients, preparing them and cooking them and then serving the finished dish. But it is a process that fewer and fewer people subscribe to. In fact, more and more people choose to buy their meals ready made, already prepared to be thrown into the microwave and later consumed practically straight from the packet. It is a depressing tendency, thinks Anne-Maj, who derives just as much satisfaction from preparing the meal as she does from eating it, and that is no exaggeration; her passionate love of good food is reflected in her ample figure.

When Anna-Maj moves around the kitchen, it’s like watching someone perform a carefully choreographed tribal dance in which every movement serves a specific purpose: from when she cuts up the red pepper, onions and celery in perfect square-shapes to when she, in deep concentration, folds the stiffly beaten egg whites into the slightly cooled-off roux for an egg gratin, or when she, with a practically lovestruck look on her face, pours dripping over a saddle of venison simmering in the oven.