Necessary Disappointments

A Maggie B. Casefile

It began, unexpectedly, with jelly babies.

Maggie had only popped into Wilkinsons for string and indigestion tablets. But she paused when Audrey Crenshaw—WI Chairwoman, bylaw enforcer, veteran of six scone-related disputes—emerged from the sweets aisle with a bag clutched lightly in one gloved hand.

Not even the posh kind. Standard red bag, slightly crinkled. A civilian choice.

Audrey didn’t see her. Just hummed, quietly, to herself. And then—just before stepping off the kerb to cross—she smiled.

Not her usual smile. Not the tight-lipped, photo-op smile she deployed when someone said quiche instead of tart and she needed to reassert moral order.

No. This was different. Soft. Uncalculated. Unwitnessed—except by the one who notices things.

She blinked once. Then, without quite meaning to, followed.

Audrey walked the long way round. Past the bakery. Down the side lane behind the vicarage. Her pace was unhurried, her coat unbuttoned. The jelly babies disappeared into her pocket.

She paused beneath the old sycamore at the edge of the park—the one no one sat under since the council forgot to prune it and it began dropping limbs like bad memories. Maggie stayed back, settling onto the far bench. Still. Quiet. Just enough to disappear.

Audrey sat. She unwrapped a small packet of biscuits—plain digestives, not even the chocolate ones—and crumbled one onto the grass. Birds gathered. Not pigeons. Wrens.

She held out one palm. Waited.

One hopped closer. Then another.

The wind shifted, catching the hem of her coat. Still she didn’t move. Just fed the birds. Hummed something barely melodic. Reached into her pocket. A jelly baby. Yellow. She bit the head off first.

Audrey always ate the yellows first. She once called them “necessary disappointments.”

Back at the parish hall, Netta Flinn had been whispering about Audrey’s “change in energy.” Agnes speculated about medication. Reginald, polishing a brass tap with unsettling focus, had simply muttered, “She’s up to something.”
Maggie said nothing. But she was watching.

At the next WI meeting, Audrey didn’t correct anyone’s grammar. She didn’t complain about the lukewarm tea. When offered a fig bar, she reached—paused just a moment longer than habit allowed—then took it, folding the napkin with unusual care.

Someone dropped a saucer. No one noticed.
Maggie did.

She thought, briefly, of that smile. Of the birds. Of the yellow jelly baby, sacrificed without ceremony. She thought, too, of a funeral long ago. Audrey had worn gloves then—summer gloves. Too tight. Too formal. The kind women wore when they feared their grief might slip out. Maggie remembered her alone in the second row, straight-backed, unmoved. Contained. The niece had died overseas. No one had known quite what to say.

Maggie hadn’t asked. She let it lie. She’d let too much lie.

After the meeting, she lingered. Picked two packets of jelly babies from the tuck box and walked them over to Audrey, who was sorting papers with the quiet precision of someone who needed order more than rest.

“Red ones are best,” Maggie said, sliding the sweets across.

Audrey didn’t answer right away. She looked at the packets, then at Maggie. Her fingers brushed the edge of one bag.

Then, with the faintest curve at the corner of her mouth, she nodded.

It wasn’t a thank you. Not really.

But it was something.

Later, at home, Maggie opened her grey notebook. She flipped past biscuit diplomacy, gnome skirmishes, and one unresolved scone stalemate, and began a new page.

Case #19: Necessary Disappointments
Observation: Even cornerstones crack, when no one’s looking.
Outcome: Undocumented. Deliberately.
Additional note: Kindness doesn’t always knock. Sometimes it slips a jelly baby in your pocket and walks on.

She tapped the page once, then closed the book.

Outside, a leaf drifted loose from the sycamore.
It turned twice in the wind before disappearing.

Hard to say what carried it.