All stories

The curtains twitched as they pulled up to the house.

'how long do you think she's been stood at the window' sneered Alexa.

James sighed, ‘please try to be nice’.

Before Alexa could respond James’ mother threw open the door and rushed towards the car.

'Hello hello my boy' she bellowed, 'welcome home, come in come in!' His mother took his bag off of him and ushered him towards the front door. He glanced back over his shoulder at Alexa unloading the boot and shaking her head.

'You'll have a leg won't you, of course you will' said James' mother, putting the biggest turkey leg on James' plate. She piled his plate high with roast potatoes, 'triple cooked, just how you like them,' she sang. Alexa raised an eyebrow at him over her 'ladies' portion.

'Alexa and I are on a bit of a health kick' said James, 'so this is a welcome break.'

'Oh you don't want to be bothering with all that nonsense now do you' said his mother, waving her hand dismissively.

'Not if you like your arteries clogged’ said Alexa under her breath.

‘Pardon what was that?’ asked James’ mother.

‘I said yes we’re writing a blog’ said Alexa.

His mother frowned, ‘oh yes dear how is life as a travelling cook?’ She asked.

‘Alexa is an executive chef Mother, she’s requested to cook all over the world, she’s in great demand,’ said James, squeezing Alexa’s hand proudly.

‘So that’s why I never see you’ harrumphed his mother.

‘Oh mother’, tsked James with an indulgent smile.

Alexa breathed in, nostrils flaring.

‘I’ll go and find a nice bottle of red’, James jumped in, getting up from the table. As he left the room a stony silence settled. Alexa chopped her potatoes into smaller pieces.

James’ mother straightened the napkin next to her plate.

‘So have you and my son decided when you’re moving back? asked James’ mother.

Alexa closed her eyes. ‘You should probably ask him about that’ she replied.

‘Oh I see’, said James’ mother.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ said Alexa putting her knife down.

‘Well we all know who’s really in the driving seat,’ his mother smiled, then added quietly ‘And I’ve never liked women drivers.’

Alexa snapped ‘WHY ARE YOU SUCH A SOUR OLD BAG’.

Just as the words flew from her mouth James re-entered the room.

‘Alexa’ he shouted, his voice like a whip. He marched across the room, ‘don’t talk to mother like that!’ James had never admonished Alexa about anything. She felt a moment of remorse as James’ mother’s bottom lip began to tremble, but as James leant over to comfort his mother she shot Alexa a victorious smile over his shoulder. The feeling quickly disappeared.

His regret wasn’t because she was wonderful at her job.

Far from it. With customer service skills that may have been honed by the Stasi, she didn’t give off the image Travelchef wanted in the buffet carriage of their brave post-privatisation world. She left snotty tissues on the work counter and reeked of Fisherman’s Friends which she used to overpower the permanent odour of pasty emanating from her polyester uniform.

One day, whilst secretly standing behind the curtain that led into the Servery’s inner sanctum Phil had heard her deal with a customer query as to why a twin pack of pork pies he had purchased were two months over their Best Before date.

“It was sold as seen and you should have checked at the time, I can’t go giving refunds to every Tom, Dick and Harry” she declared defiantly before turning to busy herself with the till roll.

Phil stayed hidden rather than be forced to deliberate between her and the customer about whether she really was a “hatchet-faced old bag”, but later, after quickly downing three Johnny Walker miniatures for Dutch courage, he issued her with a stern telling-off from which their working relationship had never recovered.

“Your attitude stinks and so do you! Sort it out!!” he’d shouted.

Her subsequent sulk and refusal to attend several food hygiene courses had meant that it was only a matter of time. Cost-cutting recommendations went forward and she was forcibly retired though savings were negligible.

Soon after though he began to feel lonely and guilty for how he had acted. Especially as he now felt a bit of relic himself.

For twenty years, she’d held the fort if he snuck down the guard’s van for a fag and she would always support him in any altercations with customers. They had always understood together that, on some level, that they had a reassuring permanence for travellers, like the graffiti on the black-bricked wall they passed before the tunnel. In some subtle way it mattered to regular customers that these guardians of the curly-ended sandwich were familiar.

The interchangeable agency staff that followed were easier to manage, but each spotty face reminded Phil of the clock counting down on the institutionalised working world he knew. Soon words like Ciabatta, Rocket and Artisan started to creep onto the Menu and the prices began rocketing.

Within three years Phil himself cashed in a redundancy payment and bought a burger van which he ran from a layby near Cirencester until his retirement last week.

---

One of his first jobs as a man of leisure was to clear a few boxes from the loft.

He soon found a small box off stuff she’d left in the cutlery draw which he’d kept forgetting to send on, her old name-badge, a photograph of them at the British Rail catering awards 1989 and a half-eaten packet of Fisherman’s Friends. It was hard to disagree with its verdict that things had been “Best before Jan 2000.”

I pulled back the curtains and peered into the bright festival sunshine. A cloud of teenagers drifted past, pointing at our sandwich board and double dog daring each other to come inside: Madam Magnifica - spirit medium. Fortunes told, palms read.

“So who’ve you got for me? Chop chop.”

Madam’s lacquered nails tap-tapped. The silence grew until its pressure filled the caravan and forced the answer out of me.

“Bloke called Jack. About 50. We got chatting in the ice-cream queue and his wife just died. Told him I’d just had a message from my dead grandad off you and he lit up like a Christmas tree.”

I didn’t say how sad his eyes looked amid the colourful gaiety of the festival - that would only spur her on; she’d milk him for every last penny if she thought she could. I could spare him that.

Madam gobbled up the details - his hair, eyes, clothes; everything committed to memory.

It was our fifth festival this summer and I was heartily sick of it all; the mud, the posturing, the interminable thud of the neverending drum soundcheck.

And the gullibility of people desperate to believe our cheap tricks and despicable lies. They came like moths to our gaudy little van looking for a spark of hope and we rinsed them for the little they had left. I was heartily sick of myself too. I pressed my miserable cheek to the glass.

“Shit, he’s coming.”

Madam arranged herself artistically as I slipped out back. I heard the sad-eyed man enter, pay, sit. Then silence.

I lit a fag and leaned against the caravan. This would be the last dishonest summer, the last time I’d drag myself through shit and mud and beer to manipulate the grieving out of a few quid. Next year I’d do something good with my life, something honest.

The falafel chef next door came outside wiping the sweat from his forehead. He’d been next to us at Burning Flamingo too. I’d noticed. He’s the kind of man you noticed.

Wordlessly I offered him a cigarette, which he took and lit from mine.

“You again” he said, inhaling. “What are you guys? Mentalists or whatever?”

“Madam’s a medium. I’m just her assistant. I don’t have The Gift.”

He made a derisive noise, looked at the ground.

“You don’t believe me?”

“wouldn’t waste my money.”

My heart raced as his eyes challenged mine.

“Tell you what, I’ll trade you a free consultation for a falafel wrap. See if you don’t change your mind.”

Reckless. I held out a ticket. Without taking his eyes from mine he plucked it from my fingers and walked back to his van. Behind me I heard our caravan door slam as the mark left. I stubbed out my cigarette and went in.

Madam was counting out pound coins on the table. I stared into her mirror.

“The falafel guy is looking for love, even if he doesn’t know it. When he comes, tell him a pale girl with blue eyes is going to change his life, or at least his night...”

I grinned at my pale, blue-eyed reflection. Something honest could wait for another day.

Richie had set his phone up to wolf whistle every time a woman liked him back in whatever app of desperation he was signed up to that week. Six times it went off in that hour, and each time Richie smirked at the group and took himself out of lad’s banter to deal with what he termed “wench admin”.

Eventually Duncan cracked and asked what he put in his messages.

‘Honeyed words, my boy,’ Richie said. ‘I am the silver fingered typist. You want some lessons?’

Billy rolled his eyes. ‘He sends them a dick pic, it’s all he ever does.’

Richie said, ‘It’s not a dick pic. It’s called being upfront. It’s a shagging app, so why all this bullshit about holding hands and favourite films?’

Johnny butted in. He said, ‘This reminds me of Old Shocky. I was working in a pub kitchen. Old Shocky was a freelance dude, came in from time to time if the proper chef was off sick. We didn't call him Shocky because of his mad scientist hair.’

Johnny sat up, then waited till everyone was paying attention.

‘I met Shocky after I missed the last bus; he let me crash on his sofa. So I wake up, he’s there in his boxers stood at the window. One second later, he whips them down, whips open the curtains, then starts doing some strange weird Yoga shit, starkers in the window.’

‘Turns to me then, he does – still starkers – tells me he’s trying to get the Bible bashers to stop calling.’

Johnny grinned Richie’s way. ‘The reason for my story though – he had the same idea as you. This was pre-Internet mind, so there’s Old Shocky, in the park, in his mac, in his motorbike helmet, on the lookout for a jogger or young lady on the way to work…’

Silence for a moment, then Billy said, ‘He was…a flasher?’

‘Bingo. But that’s not why we called him Shocky.’ He grinned again at Richie. ‘So it’s his last time out, and he meets this woman, young mother, with a double pushchair. I guess he figures what can she do, has to stick with the pushchair. Only she charges him, with the pushchair. Old Shocky, he has no time for nothing 'cept running, and there he is, old fella flapping, then boom! back of the ankles with the pushchair, down he goes.'

'Maybe he thought it finally paid off, he met someone as horny as him, that’s why she was stood over him naked on the ground.’

Johnny waited for the sniggering to stop. He shook his head.

He said, ‘Boom! Forty thousand volts through a place forty thousand volts shouldn't go.'

The circle of lads winced in unison and took part in a synchronised leg cross.

Johnny said, 'Once the feeling came back, he flips over, starts crawling, and then boom, forty thousand volts through a second place forty thousand volts should not go.'

At that moment, Richie’s phone wolf whistled again. Everyone stared at him.

‘Not going to get that?’ Billy said.

Richie didn’t seem to hear.

She lowered her eyes, avoiding any contact, placed the dish in front of him and backed away slowly. Her heart was as calm as her actions, slow, sure. She paused at the exit as expected. No further demands came, so she slipped though the fabric curtains into the hallway and headed back to the kitchen. Every place has its own eccentricities that only the rich can get away with; this one had no doors in his mansion. Quietly she packed her things. Carefully. There was no rush. Everything has to appear perfectly normal. Besides it would be weeks before there were any symptoms.

Tomorrow it was onto another city, another client. Of course only certain people could afford Manon Boucher. She wasn’t just the best, you simply must experience her, they said, it’s so much more than food. They had no idea.

She supposed she should feel bad. Some remorse, a hint perhaps of what some less informed would describe as guilt. But nothing. Not for this one. She remembered him from a restaurant she worked in on 34th. The Soup has been ‘too dry’. He’d demanded to speak to the chef and of course his outrage grew when he saw it was just a woman. “No wonder it’s so fucking awful”, he’d spat at her. In front of the staring restaurant. “I wouldn’t be seen dead eating your shitty food. Stick to waitressing and baking love and leave the cheffing to the men who know what they’re doing.”

Now of course he was paying $4000 a night for her shitty food. And he was right. He wouldn’t be seen dead eating her shitty food. But sure as shit he would be seen dead.

Normally it was so simple, most of them were either out of shape, or overindulged in a little something they shouldn’t. All it took was the right extra ingredients and sit back and wait. Heart failure, drug overdose, a sexual provocation gone wrong, there were so many ways to make it look accidental. She had to choose wisely. But sometimes, like this one, they chose for her.

She heard her name being called by the maid, almost nervously. “Ms Boucher, Mr Harper, wishes to see you”. Manon slipped one of her knifes into her apron pocket and sighed. Moments later the dining room curtain swished silently apart as she entered.

“Your food is meant to be extraordinary, an experience”, Mr Boucher said, as his eyes crawled over her body. “Well I rather like my experiences more hands on.” There were only four of them in the room. A private dinner, though she knew there would be girls waiting upstairs for them. That just left the maid, a shame she thought. She had been nice.

“Hand’s on?” She asked. “How funny.” Her eyes flashed wildly. The men laughed at each other, keen to get their money’s worth.

“Sometimes that’s exactly how I prefer it.” She purred, smiling happily to her-self.