Clean
Esme was determined to create a "normal" atmosphere in the Cullen household, ready for Bella Swan to be welcomed into the family. She swooped around the kitchen, ferociously cleaning each surface, even the interiors of each empty cupboard, with something that smelled like putrid lemons mixed with sulphuric acid. Esme didn't mind though, she enjoyed the few minutes it took her (she purposefully went slowly) to clean the room, as it allowed her to fell more human, more like a real mother.
Esme was just polishing the ceramic hob – carefully this time as on a previous occasion she had been so desperate for sparkle that she had cracked it, leaving fragments of the hob embedded in various areas of the kitchen – when Emmett charged through the back door, almost knocking it off its hinges. He perched himself on one of the stools next to the breakfast bar and harrumphed as he slammed his head into his hands. A fraction of a second later Rosalie stormed through the door, her blonde locks trailing behind her wildly. She was holding up a limp-looking shoe; the delicate heel had been snapped and the sole of the shoe was caked in mud, as was most of Rosalie's face. She glowered at Emmett and poked him in the back with a well manicured talon,
"Look what you did!" Rosalie prodded Emmett in the back again and Emmett spun around on his stool. As he did so his huge arm knocked over the bottle of putrid-smelling kitchen cleaner; its contents slid slowly out of the top like a large, pale yellow slug and it began to drip lazily off the end of the breakfast bar, creating a small puddle on the just polished floor.
"Emmett! Watch what you're doing!" Esme was already rubbing at the spreading puddle on the floor and, as she spoke, Emmett raised his hands in surrender to the increasingly dangerous-looking dishcloth that Esme held in her hands.
Esme spoke again in her motherly way, this time to Rosalie, "Rose, could you please take that filthy thing outside"
Rosalie smirked and looked at Emmett with distasteful eyes, "I don't think I can lift him"
Rosalie could almost hear the gears churning in Emmett's head as he contemplated what she had just said and then he stood up quickly, "Hey! She didn't mean me!"
Rosalie grinned and Esme pointed towards the door with her dishcloth weapon, "Now please Rose"
Emmet smiled and mouthed the word "unlucky" at Rosalie. She stopped mid-stride and launched the mud-soaked shoe at Emmett's head. The shoe hurtled through the air towards Emmett and he dived dramatically out of the way, allowing the filthy object to continue its inevitable journey towards the cupboard above the sink. The shoe reached its destination and there it lodged itself, heel first, into the spotless beech wood of the cupboard door. Rose's eyes widened and Emmett gasped. Esme simply stood, staring. Suddenly the shoe slumped and plopped into the steel sink; it left a small hole, surrounded by mud, in the cupboard door which Esme immediately believed she could cover up. Then, with an audible crack and groan, the entire cupboard fell off the wall and into the sink, knocking the tap clean off and creating a small fountain at the base of it.
Esme remained perfectly statuesque and Rosalie began to back out of the door, "Oops", she said.
Emmett darted out of the kitchen and began pursuing Rosalie shouting, "That could have been my head!"
Esme continued to stand, staring at the gaping hole of plaster and wood, at the fountain and ever-growing stream wriggling through her kitchen. At the wrecked, splintered cupboard lying sideways in the sink and at the one spot of dirt that she'd missed on the ceramic hob.
She started with the hob.