Part One – The Flat Above Park Place Bakery

My journey to work many, many years ago used to take about 15 minutes. On that journey I would drive up a long street of houses, shops, markets, flats…lots of traffic lights and pedestrian crossings…and quite often get stuck there during busier times of the day. I would look out of the window of my little Ford KA and wonder about the very many people who lived and worked there – who they were, what they were doing, what their lives were like…

This is what fascinates me – ordinary people and their lives which may not actually always be that ordinary. And even if their lives were ordinary, what might they be like?

And I have always been like this – I remember visiting my grandparents in Leek when we lived in Cambridgeshire and there was this one part of the journey that was through fields and hills and there would be small houses dotted about, sometimes far flung with just the low glimmer of distant lights as we drove home at night. I would wonder then as I did in the city – who lives there? What is that like?

So, I suppose much of my writing is preoccupied with that. What is life like? The ups, the downs, the treasure, the trash…and that’s what I enjoy writing the most. People you might know, who I might know and what connects us all in this great tapestry of life!

So, over the next few weeks I will be sharing with you my short stories – loosely based on and inspired by that journey to work I took through the city. Each day there will be a new part, linking to the last but they also stand alone in introducing you to an ensemble of characters that, you never know, might be just like you!

The Flat Above Park Place Bakery

Alan’s lottery win in August 1998 was a much publicised affair that, quite dreadfully, seemed to drag on in an endless quagmire of parties and lunatic behaviour until the police were called out in the early hours of a Friday morning. It appeared that Alan’s neighbour, a frail elderly woman who wouldn’t see eighty again, had objected to the fact that Alan himself was tied to a lamp post in little else other than a bed sheet, drunkenly singing Huey Lewis songs at the top of his alcohol soaked lungs. The police arrived, carted the aforementioned drunk off for a night in the cells and apologised to Mrs Hubbert from number 92.

Shortly after, Alan – who had insisted his big lottery win would not cause him to move from number 94 Elksdown Terrace or give up his day job as a mail sorter in the post office – did, in fact, hand his notice in. He bought a £2 million home in the country. He did not sell number 94 Elksdown Terrace but, in rather poor taste, invited the mayor and several other prominent local officials to a media frenzy whereby he handed over the keys and deeds to a stunned and bemused Mrs Hubbert. The front page of the Evening Gazette was plastered with pictures of Alan Limpton’s generous gift to – quote “the old and needy” unquote – with a rather strangled looking Mrs Hubbert blinking into the cameras.

When asked by the Gazette’s reporter what words she could find to thank Mr Limpton for his generosity, Mrs Hubbert barked the reply “Gift? Why would someone want 2 houses next door to each other?”

Her response was not included in the final version of the article and she was merely said to be extremely grateful, words she insisted to anyone who would listen that she had categorically not said. And from then on Alan Limpton, who had previously enjoyed some mini-celebrity status on Stookey Hill due to his win, became the local sweetheart…the charitable and altruistic Mr Limpton. This made his decision to buy the bakery on the corner of Stookey Hill and Park Place a “philanthropic gesture to a neglected neighbourhood”. That is, according to the Gazette. While the article did much to enhance Alan’s fast growing profile as the benevolent benefactor from a working class background, it also did much to affront the local residents who were getting rather tired of their locality being portrayed as some kind of post-communist ghetto.

However, Alan Limpton persevered as the lottery fairy godmother, granting as many wishes as he could to local businesses. While Alan’s Dresses (which in all seriousness was destined to fail with a shop name like that) closed down within two months of changing from Zara’s Dress Mart, the Park Place Bakery became a local legend.

I remember the day it all changed all too well. Clive was home, as is usually the case these days, shouting at the ‘imbeciles’ on some inane daytime talk show. Addicted to such television viewing ever since his accident, Clive had little patience for those he called ‘maladroit and inept’ – words he learned from a three and a half year subscription to a crossword puzzle magazine. Clive himself was less than competent but, as he pointed out frequently, would not subject himself to a DNA test no matter how unfaithful his girlfriend was. Clive and I are married and he doesn’t have a girlfriend. I had given up pointing this out. He would throw the remote at me and tell me, not awfully quietly either, that I am missing the point.

Clive could be heard from the shop when he was in full flow and three times a week, there and thereabout, the manager – Primmie – would come and knock and ask if there was any progress yet on either soundproofing or (even better) just getting Clive to shut up. I would smile at her thinly and tell her no on both counts. The bakery clientele could hear him, so it seemed, as he ranted and shouted at the television. Sometimes it was colourful or, more often than not, it wasn’t.

“I just can’t believe it,” he would say, “how people can be so stupid!”

His general dim view of the vast majority of the population was not just from his daytime television viewing. He liked a magazine here and there, which he would send me to fetch twice a week. Mainly gossipy ones with You’ll Never Believe It! headlines and horror stories about botched Botox. I’d like to say I didn’t read them, but I would look at them occasionally, flicking through the thin pages – thin in actuality and thin in quality journalism. And he liked true crime ones too. He made notes from those he wouldn’t let me read, which I tried not to be suspicious about.

The rat-tat at the door was firm and I sighed. It was Primmie. Although it was two o’clock and she hadn’t been up already, so that was at least something. I also wasn’t aware of Clive shouting, but then I sometimes thought I was so used to it I could tune it out.

“Primrose!” I said, brightly, opening the door. She already had that look on her face. A bit like she was gurning, but really it was just her angry face. Her bottom lip curled up over her top one, though, as though it was working on swallowing her nose whole. Her eyes were big and round, ready to pop clean out of the sockets if one more thing annoyed her. I suspected in calling her Primrose, that might be it.

“Ellen,” she said, her bottom lip sort of exiting from the top one, making her face still seem intent on eating itself.

“How can I help you?” this was always the patter. She came up and knocked, I said hello (sometimes using her whole name to irritate her), she said my name, I asked her what I could do for her and then came what Clive and I had affectionately started to call: The Diatribe.

Although, on that day The Diatribe never came. Instead, she burst into tears, which I did not see coming. I thought Primmie was fairly emotionless in that she possessed just the one, which was angered.

“What has happened?” I was alarmed and thrown entirely and wondered whether or not I should invite her in. Clive wouldn’t be happy, but then was he ever? I could sit her in the kitchen and give her some kitchen towel to stem the flow of mucous which was making a steady trail down her face. Gross.

She said nothing, instead the slow whine of her tears got louder and louder. So, invite her in it was.

Clive glowered at me, momentarily flicking his eyes from the television as we walked past him to the kitchen. Thankfully, despite the impossibly small flat we were in, there was a door to the kitchen. I had to move one of the chairs and shove the table against the wall to shut it, but shut it I could. So I did.

Primmie sat, her sobs petering out to a sniffle as she pulled what felt like yards of kitchen roll from the holder I placed in front of her. I strategically placed the bin by her side so she could toss the used ones in there, but she didn’t take that hint and so, instead, she made something of a sodden tissue mountain laced with gunk on my kitchen table.

Eventually, her sobs settled to an even in-out, in-out and I asked her again, what was wrong.

“I think I’m going to get fired!” her voice suddenly became low and conspiratorial. As though she had segued neatly from scorned woman to secret agent.

“Fired?” I said, for lack of anything better. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised. She was late most mornings and Mrs Armitage from No.48 was not above shouting at the top of her lungs that she needed her cream-filled doughnuts or else. Then there was the whole ‘money’ debacle. She had (allegedly) paid an (alleged) financial advisor to (allegedly) move some money to an (alleged) offshore account while (allegedly) claiming benefits. The newspaper sure did its best to avoid litigation with that report. But it was so convoluted I didn’t think anyone took it seriously. Except her boyfriend Phil who promptly dumped her the morning the paper came out.

“Yes,” she sniffed. Another transition, this time to somewhat haughty.

“But why?” that was a mistake of a question. Why did I want to know why? Actually, I didn’t want to know anything and wondered why Clive hadn’t deteriorated into a bit of hearty television-cursing so that I could make my excuses and get her to leave.

“It’s all because of Jim,” more sniffing, but a few more tears which meant a new shred of toilet roll from the dispenser.

“Jim?” can you kick yourself? Is that physically possible? I made a mental note to practice later so that I could prepare myself for any future moments such as this.

“Jim,” she said, with a deep sigh as though – despite the evident cadence in my voice that made my previous response a question – it was obvious. It was not. I hazarded a few guesses.

“Jim Carter?”

“No.”

“Jim Angleberry?”

“No.”

“Jim Thompson?” I was surprised I even knew this many Jims. That, it seemed, was the extent of it, though, because I had no more Jims left to suggest.

“No!” she sounded frustrated, but still offered no solution to which Jim we were supposed to loathe for getting Primmie fired.

“I don’t know anymore Jims!” I conceded, a bit sadly. A ball of kitchen roll made a move, tipping three out a bit further on to the table, a little trail of slime following behind it. It made me feel a little green.

“Jim from down the way!” she said, exasperation growing.

“The barber?”

“Yes!”

“I didn’t know he went by Jim!”

She smiled at me, knowingly and demurely.

“He does to his friends!” she said, winking at me. More knowing but less demure.

There was a silence as I tried to process the possible subtexts of what she was trying to communicate through her tear-stained face and winks, of which she gave me three, each becoming more and more a caricature of the previous one.

“I still don’t think I understand what you are saying!” I decided. I knew of James Hindbright the barber, who was indeed from down the way – six doors to be precise. He was, apparently a nice chap. Early sixties. Had owned the barbers since it had opened thirty years ago. I, of course, never went. And neither did Clive since he bought himself some clippers from Amazon and insisted I do it. Which I hated. The first three times I had kept closing my eyes. This is not advisable. I cut his ear twice, nicked the back of his neck and narrowly missed an eyebrow. Now I kept my eyes open, but barely.

I waited with expectation that Primmie might disclose what had led to Jim the barber, with whom she was well-acquainted, seeing her out of her managerial post at Park Place Bakery.

The tale, however, was far more intriguing than I would ever have imagined. And in it began the saga of Stookey Hill.