The whole cottage shook with the force of the slammed door. Selma was far beyond livid, way past angry and miles in front of irate. All her plans and schemes had been reduced to ash, and not by just anyone, no, everything had been completely ruined by a horrid pack of children.
She stormed to her favourite chair and flopped down so hard that the chair gave an audible creak. She sat for five minutes, just seething away. If anger were steam, the room would have been a completely fogged-up sauna by now.
She knew exactly what she wanted: She didn't want yet another man, as this day had shown just how unreliable they all were. No, what she wanted was revenge, cold, hard revenge. Cedric Brown and his awful brood of little ratbags were going to pay and pay big. She had been completely humiliated by them and that couldn't, no, wouldn't be allowed to stand.
Visions of throwing his whole screaming herd of kiddies down a very deep well or maybe burying them in the depths of the wood floated across her mind. They were going to have to die and die painfully and slowly.
Then, when she was done, she would leave this squalid little place and move to a world of opportunity, a place where pretty and clever people such as Selma Imogen Thaddeus Quickly could succeed and make something big of themselves. She had read a lot of articles about people like her upping sticks and moving to the New World and making their fortune: in other words, America beckoned with a solid gold finger and she wasn't going to say no.
The first order of business though, kill the Browns. How though? She looked about the room for inspiration, hoping that an idea would leap out from behind a piece of silverware. When she turned to the window and gazed out at the garden, an idea jumped out from the flower bed: there, towering above the rest of the plants was a foxglove. She already knew they contained poison, a fact that her first husband had found out the hard way. One problem came to mind: being directly connected to several local poison murders maybe wouldn't be such a wise plan. The thought of being in prison, or more likely being hung really didn't appeal. What was needed was someone to do the work and thus take the fall should it all go wrong. One name sprang to mind immediately: Letitia, her companion of many was it! "Yesss. I can get Letitia to do the deed while I leg it." During her deepening thought, Selma had started talking to herself, "Do this right and I can be clean across the ocean before anyone works out whats happening. All I have to do is to convince her to sneak some...whatever it is in foxgloves into their food, while I get a boat from Southampton. Game on Selma girl, game on."
She suddenly realised that she wasn't fuming any more, but rather smiling and almost….happy. This idea of leaving this place and all its awful inhabitants behind, ditching Letitia and making it big in a bright, new country was an absolute winner in Selma's mind.
That was when she realised, revenge was utterly unimportant. What she really, really wanted was to just ditch this...life and just get away from Cedric Bloody Brown and his horde of horrible kiddies. So she did.
Within a week, she had sold 90% of what she owned, including the cottage and bought a one way ticket on a transatlantic ship. She left a letter for Letitia, thanking her for a lifetime of company and asking her to poison Cedric with 'that stuff in foxgloves' if she could somewhen.
It was time to head off to New York and to seek out new horizons. The journey was long and rather uneventful, and she was very glad to get to America. Selma stayed in New York for week, but decided it was far too busy for her taste, so acting on a rumour of gold galore on the west coast, she travelled to California and eventually settled in a small township near the edge of San Francisco. It was the following year in the local saloon that she was propositioned by a farm hand. When he said his name was Cedric Brown, she went absolutely beserk. Screaming wildly she ran amok. She threw a stool over the bar, punched a serving girl in the face, and with surprising speed, she grabbed a gun from the holster of a nearby cowboy and tried to shoot the now cowering would-be suitor, but having all the gun skills of a concussed turbot, she missed by a mile. The bar owner by now had recovered from the shock of a customer suddenly going totally nuts and had grabbed his rifle from beneath the counter. "Alright!" he yelled, "That is enough! Put the gun down and step away from it."
Still very high on adrenaline and incandescent fury, Selma spun to face him, "I will do no such thing! I leave England to get away from Cedric Brown and his horde of little terrors and who do I meet here? Another Cedric bloody Brown! I will not take this anymore, do you hear me? I will not take another minute of this!"
Without another thought, she raised the gun to shoot the barman, but he pulled the trigger first and hit Selma square in the chest. That was when the Sherriff, who was ouside talking to a blacksmith when he heard the commotion, barged in and upon rapidly taking stock of the chaotic situation, ran over to the fallen Ms Quickly.
As he cradled her, she quite calmly said "Oh, hello Arthur. I seem to have made a bit of a mess of things. Never mind, I'm sure it will all work out." before expiring.
"She came here for a new life, a new start." The Sherriff looked up at barman, who was trying to push the gawping crowd back, "Back up folks, give us some space. Someone go fetch the undertaker please?" Turning back to the lifeless lady, he quietly spoke, "Well, that didn't quite go to plan did it, Miss Q? You were supposed to meet the man of your dreams weren't you? You just forgot the bit where you didn't get killed in a bar fight." With that he carefully layed her down and stood up. He hated this part of his job.
Ms Selma Imogen Thaddeus Quickly was buried in the church cemetary the next morning with a small group of the locals that knew her gathered around, as well as a few newcomers, one of which was Nanny McPhee. She had come here to help Selma become a nicer person, but given the unexepected turn of events the previous day, had arrived too late.
Sometimes, its simply the case that there is nothing much you can do.