There was never any need

There was never any need to see what she was doing. She could reach into the bag and touch the tiny mountainous dimples and spiky peak of the oranges, smell their sharp, wide tang melting in her nostrils like honey on a hotplate. Such was their power that the netted bag around the oranges allowing them to roll around her palms but not into the black abyss of the bag carved a nick in her thumbnail with one of its strong, fine threads. She could feel the imprinted lines on her fingertips riding over the waxed paper of the butter and under their pressure, the edges caved, eroded and slipped into a slope, down, down, into a cold face; the cold face of a jar and she travelled along its surface to an angular edge. Not a right angle, wider. Onto another side, the same again and it began to warm to her caressing. As she moved upwards, towards its neck, she paused at its moulded shoulders, possibly pears or fruit of some kind, leaves, a clue to the jar’s contents. Over the shoulders, the neck and a round lid ice-smooth and her index finger felt for the weakness in the middle. She pressed down, listened, felt; there was no click. It was still safely sealed, intact. Satisfied that the jar was upright and would come to no harm, she withdrew her arm slightly and her sleeves brushed against a noise. Two rough surfaces; a perforated, crinkly bag and the flakiness of a crusty loaf rattling roughly, rasping against one another. A squishy, nutty warmth wafted upwards and its dampness landed between her fingers. She couldn’t delay any longer. Eyes open, knife thrusting, yellow butter sliding generously, red jam oozing, brown wholemeal crumbs. The matter of a heavenly mixed marriage.