Esteemed Malevolence

II: Toast

Believe it or not, the baker had actually managed to last a week without bothering her beloved brooding barber. 

She'd taken extra care each day to make sure she arrived with his breakfast, lunch and dinner on time - on the dot, to be more precise. Not that he'd be remotely aware of the time when he was in a world of his own, usually staring ahead with his dark barren eyes, or pacing about his blood-stained floorboards with restlessness.

Surprisingly, the barber had also managed to last the week, however, he hadn't really done anything forward (like their small kiss) since the day their truce was formed. Or really even said, or done anything different at all. In fact, Mr Todd 'treating Mrs Lovett right' seemed to have morphed into him ignoring her. He barely noticed her now. He hadn't given any attention whatsoever to the woman before their agreement, but now he was worse than ever. 

It seemed he'd used the truce to silence her, much to his manipulative delight.

Instead, Mrs Lovett had been loyally honouring their agreement every time she clambered those frightful stairs of his, not even earning the slightest twitch of movement from him when she crept in through his door, alerting the shop's tingling bell. She didn't even let out the faintest peep as she'd set his tray down silently, a brief scuffle of her boots would be the only sound in his demented workplace. Her eyes were always full of desperation as she'd steal a glance at him, yearning for him to look back at her, just as he had done that day he'd been mesmerised by her anger.

 Even if the infernal man had thought it meaningless, or was just messing with her, Eleanor Lovett now knew that such an action as Mr Todd listening to her, kissing her... was actually possible. So therefore, in her eyes, there was an enormous chance that such a happening could repeat again. 

She'd look so expectantly, with beads of patience in her glossy brown eyes just before she'd turn around on her heels, to quietly leave him to his grief. He wouldn't even know she'd been there. 

But whenever she would come up to retrieve the tray she'd left, the tea in the cup (or shot of gin if it happened to be later on in the day) and food on the plate would have gone. Did he think that food just appeared out of thin air? Clearly he did because he would never thank her, or utter a word when she'd take it all the way out of his shop and back down the stairs.

It was clear, that the barber was certainly not keeping his end of the bargain.

It was the early hours of a Thursday morning when Mrs Lovett's bad luck seemed to return - something that had laid dormant ever since the barber's advance. 

Her usual routine was to wake up at a respectable time in order to prepare fresh pastry for the day ahead, she always needed a lot of it due to the greedy demand for her fine pies... If only the public knew that they were gorging themselves on their fellow man, maybe then they wouldn't be so quick to scoff the pastries down with such desperation...

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Mrs Lovett had overslept on this bitter, frosty Thursday morning. As soon as she lazily stretched her bare arms up, chestnut hair like tangled twigs in a bird's nest, she gasped at the light poking through the gap in her bedroom curtains. Usually in the early hours of a November morning it would be pitch black outside, she didn't even need a clock to tell her that she was late.

"Silly nit!" she whispered to herself firmly as she flung the greying bed sheets off her, scrambling to her feet. "S-So bleedin' c-cold!" 

Her arms hugged around her for warmth as she rushed around her room in an attempt to make herself presentable in the fastest time she could. She forcefully jerked open her ancient wardrobe, picking out any old dress that happened to be hung up in front of her at the time.