All stories

Our mums said we weren’t to go in Mrs Lovett’s chocolate shop. Even from the street it had this weird, musty aroma and she had those long rubber strips festooned over the door, so it was really hard to see inside.

She sold all kinds of other things, beside chocolate, that seem strange when you’re seven; reels of string, bottles of ‘medicine’, jars labelled only ‘potted meat’ and tubs with ‘Toxic!’ written on in red. And that’s just what you could see peering in from the doorway.

“She’s got naughty magazines behind the till,” David told us smugly, scratching Misty behind the ears. We were in my garden, and Alys threw one of the windfall apples at him.

“It’s true!” he said, rubbing his arm. “I was going past once, and Mr Lewis was coming out, and he was hiding one under his coat.”

Me and Alys drowned him in a chorus of ‘ewww’’, but our curiosity was raised to boiling point.

That afternoon we told mum we were off to the park, but we found ourselves outside Mrs Lovett’s shop.

Between us we had 73p. Alys thought chocolate was maybe 60p so we could get inside, buy something and have a good look around.

After a brief squabble about who would go first, we clustered together and edged under the rubber strips.

It was dark inside, and hot. It took a moment for our eyes to adjust but the potted meat was there, neat rows of hand-labelled jars. Ancient bars of chocolate, bottles of cough syrup and booze, and, as David had promised, naughty magazines towering high above the little old woman at the till, cigarette smoke wreathing her lank grey hair.

We gaped. She eyed us beadily.

David opened his mouth but suddenly there was mum, bustling and flustered and furious.

“What have I told you? You are not to come in here. It’s not a fit place for children – or for anyone for that matter.”

Mrs Lovett stared, a wicked gleam in her wizened eye, taking in every word mum said. Storing it up.

Mum had the grace to flush, but she didn’t stop; she hurried us back out into the daylight, vowing she’d tell David and Alys’ parents, deaf to our pleas.

I was kept inside for a week. It wasn’t so bad because David and Alys were stuck in too. What made it hard was that Misty had wandered off that evening, which wasn’t like her.

The week dragged by lonely and interminable.

Misty still hadn’t come back by the time my punishment had ended. Mum made me go round the streets with her, putting up posters on lampposts. I was worried - she’d never stayed away this long before.

At home, we ran into Mr Baker from next door, who was just getting home himself.

“Oh, hello love,” he warbled. “Still no sign of Misty then? That’s a shame.”

Then he leaned conspiratorially over the fence. “I tell you what, Barbara Lovett’s got a delicious new potted meat in. Made it herself, she did. She said she got her hands on an unexpected special ingredient last week and there’s not much, but she said she'd saved you one jar, special. There's a treat!"

1976.ITV. Mike the Mountie rides his horse across the Canadian prairies. “When me and Shadow are oot on the range looking oot for trouble we always take a Mountie bar along. Hang on partner is that Yukon Jake I see? Just about to rob the confectionary shop! Stop you thief! the kids need their Mountie bars! ……” he says.

Mike lasso’s the felon, who is wearing a stripy jumper and mask, then leads him away towards the jailhouse behind his trusty steed.

“Here you are sheriff, nothing can stop the kids getting all that yummy goodness now. With Hazelnets, Marshmallow and real Canadian maple syrup!”

“You see with a Mountie bar, we always get our man. New Nestle’s Mountie Bar, 5p from all good confectioners!”

Colin was pretending to be ill so he didn’t have to go to school. He hadn’t tasted a Mountie bar yet but was intrigued by the exciting looking new confectionary. If he looked ill enough Mum would probably get him one.

Instead she told him he’d have square eyes if he watched any more television and that too much chocolate would make him fat.

1990.ITV

Gavin Percival, a handsome man in a blouson leather jacket is knocking on a flat door. He is carrying a bunch of flowers and a box of Marquess Du Bruges, “Midnight collection” from Rowntree. “A whole brazil nut, enrobed in a caramel heart, festooned with rich, intense dark Belgian chocolate with an aroma of finest Brazilian coffee.” Intones a suave voiceover.

The door opens and Rachel, a thin blonde of about thirty opens the door.

“Hello” she says looking at Gavin flirtatiously, “You cant seem to keep away.”

“I think you’ve forgotten these.” Says Gavin handing her the box of chocolates. The nation had been following their romance and sales had quadrupled.

Colin who was known to all his work colleagues as “Fat Colin with the square eyes” reached for the box and took out his 12th Marquess.

Then he had a wank over the advert’s star and trudged the full six yards to bed. He knew that Gavin was out of his league.

An hour ago. ITV

Colin bounds onto the set of Maya and Ryan’s Coffee Morning. His 60 yr old body in surprisingly good shape. Known for the series “From Chunk to Hunk” he is probably Britain’s most famous reformed-chocoholic-come-healthy-eating-guru. Out and proud, miserable years confined to his flat behind him and, astonishingly, living with the man of his dreams. He’s here to promote his best-selling book, “Boiling Point” billed as “a damning expose on the advertising industry”.

For balance they have an American marketeer who is also promoting “Reese’s all American salted caramel petals”. Colin finishes haranguing her with a monologue to camera. “What sort of world do we live in when young people are tricked into a life of obesity because you want to sell sugar?!” He roars to rapturous applause.

Now.

Colin is still in his dressing room, slumped on a sofa. He rereads the cruel text on his phone. Any hope that Gavin has not left him for a younger man has finally disappeared. His hand sadly reaches into the pile of salted caramel petals left on the table as samples.

Nicky had reluctantly agreed to the reunion. She had hated the school. A selective grammar school in the home counties was just fine and dandy if you came from the right background and she most certainly didn’t. Some great teachers, of course, but the whole place reeked of petty snobbery. None of the nasty little life-long advantages of a public school, but it still came with the healthy doses of bullying and class prejudice.

But she was here. One of her friends has suggested using the day as an exercise in anthropology. A chance to study the class of ’86 and their journeys through a Britain eating its way through its own decline. Sounded like a fun day out so she signed up.

The day was boiling hot, yet another milestone in a succession of heatwaves, and even the bunting that festooned the pompous ‘Dame Edith Bracken Memorial Gates’ was beginning to wilt. It looked like such a desperate attempt to inject some fun into the occasion and Nicky’s heart sank even further.

Desperate to get out of the sun, she headed for the main hall whose oak panels were meant to suggest grandeur. Some one had put up boards with a bewildering collage of photos pinned to them at ‘jaunty’ angles. Nicky couldn’t help looking to see if she was in them. Luckily her studied attempts to stay insignificant had paid off and she was just going to move on when one collection of pictures caught her eye: production photographs from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1985). There she was, though heavily disguised, thank god, as an Oompa Loompa.

By heavily disguised, of course, what she meant was blacked up. All of them. Probably about ten all together. Except of course for Florence who was one of the tiny handful of girls in the school, indeed for miles around, that was actually black.

Nicky had of course remembered the show. But she hadn’t remembered the blacking-up. Probably blotted it out and for good reason. From anti-apartheid through to Black Lives Matter, Nicky had tried to be a good citizen. That just about summed up the place. Nicky considered running away when a voice stopped her.

‘Is that really you Nick?’

As she turned, she couldn’t help a small gasp of horror.

‘Florence?’

‘That’s me. Grey-haired and proud!’

They hadn’t been that close all those years ago, but the past hit them like a strong wave and they hugged so tightly that Nicky could hardly speak for a moment.

Then she saw Florence see the photograph. Jesus, what is she going to think, thought Nicky?

Then a strong memory of Florence’s brilliant, booming laugh came back to her, just at the same moment as the strong aroma of boiling chocolate invaded her nostrils. But the laugh wasn’t a memory – Florence was actually killing herself laughing at the picture. The smell was just a memory though. Some bright spark had the idea of filling the hall with it when the production was on.

‘Just about sums this place up doesn’t it?’ says Florence.

They looked at each other for moment and then cracked up again.

‘Shall we get out of here and have a pint somewhere?’

Nicky nodded and they practically ran for it.

Inspector Lewis closed his mouth, opened it, muttered "Fuck it" and turned back to the Trainee Pastry Chef, Jamal.

"Explain it again, this time with less stuttering, and more facts."

"I made a wedding cake."

"Per the instructions?"

"Yes, absolutely, no deviations, no improvisation." A brittle smile cracked his face, "I wouldn't know how."

"And this is from ChatGPT?"

Lewis expected Jamal's head to come clean off his shoulders with how hard he was nodding.

"Hard to believe, but okay, let's start there."

Lewis looked at the 'wedding cake'. First, even if the damned thing hadn't toppled it would never have made it outside through the gate. Maybe through the skylight, not that it mattered. Nobody would be eating this bloody wedding cake, the head chef lay crushed underneath it.

Jamal took out his phone and tapped an icon titled ChatGPT, "I simply opened the app, and asked for a wedding cake." The app displayed the recipe.

"How did you make it so," he paused, choosing the right word, "tall?!" The aroma of vanilla did not mix well with the stench of decomposition.

"Scaffolding." He pointed to a few metal implements in the corner, festooned with chocolate buttons. Lewis blinked, confused. Jamal continued, "The app told me to."

"It told you to decorate the scaffolding?"

"Yes, see?" The app had generated an image, based on wedding cakes, with buttons on the scaffolding as if it was a part of the cake.

Where had all the critical thinking gone?

Jamal swiped up to show a diagram of the inside. Two meter wide monstrosity he had constructed, complete with a reservoir of boiling caramel, more caramel than Lewis had seen in his lifetime.

Again, this was consistent with the CCTV footage of the head chef taking a knife to the cake's base and collapsing it on top of himself, all three stories of it.

"Can I see that?" asked Lewis, Jamal handed him the device. He tapped the three dots in the corner and looked for the app info. It hadn't looked right when Jamal opened it.

The logo, a cupcake had little 1s and 0s coming out the top, and the loading animation was of a pastry growing to monstrous proportions, which Lewis naturally concluded should not be part of ChatGPT.

App Name: ChatGPT - Chat with the Giant Pastry Team

App Description: Make your own giant pastries with our own specially trained AI.

The recipe generated started with requisitioning two metric tonnes of sugar and flour respectively, and Lewis felt a migraine take hold.

Time to follow procedure.

Lewis took out his MET issued device and opened Applaude, their internal judicial AI, and told it everything. Then he uploaded pictures of Jamal, the toppled cake, the body, plus their basic information and timeline, and asked, "Is he guilty?"

The app churned away, a dozen cores in a York data center crunched the data, while consuming the drinking water and electricity of a small household, before fourteen minutes later delivering its verdict.

Suspect: Guilty.

Sentence: Execution.

Tokens Used: 14327

Cost: 1406 GBP

Case Closed…