Part Three – Mrs Dorado at No. 42

Here’s part three of my series – Stookey Hill.

Today we meet Mrs Dorado who lives next door to the Bakery!

Part Three – Mrs Dorado at No.42

There were distinct advantages in living next door to the bakery. For a start: the smell. It was, as Mrs Dorado often exclaimed, “divine”. The soft warmth of freshly made bread near enough seemed to seep through the very walls from the bakery right into Mrs Dorado’s front room.

“It’ll be okay if I ever need to sell this place,” she would say, “because of the bread smell. They say bread and coffee sell a house!” although she had an aversion to coffee so had reconciled that she was fully relying on next door’s bread to sell No. 42 in the unlikely event that she wanted it sold.

“You’ll never sell it!” said Mark, her son. He said it with a chuckle, but that was a ruse. He didn’t think it was funny at all. He fully intended to make sure he inherited the place. Mainly because of what was underneath it. But no one else knew about that. Except maybe that young girl in planning who had found him some archived paperwork. He had tried to distract her with some flirtatious conversation to make sure she didn’t look at what he was looking at. So there was her. Possibly. But other than that, just him.

“I might one day!” Mrs Dorado would waggle her finger teasingly. But she knew she wouldn’t. She had every intention of dying in there. Hopefully in the lounger with the electric footrest, and hopefully while she had her feet up and was dozing to one of her favourite soap operas.

But, there were also disadvantages in living next to the bakery. The walls were paper thin. Mrs Dorado had enquired a few times as to whether or not the walls were sufficient.

“I’d best not go up in flames in a grill fire!” she joked. That made Mark a bit nervous. He also hoped she did not go up in a grill fire, although for altogether different reasons.

One morning, however, she was sure she could hear some kind of wailing. She got a small, decorative Ikea glass and pressed it against the wall, her ear against the cool underside of the glass. It didn’t seem to be coming from the bakery. Maybe it was that Clive again. She wasn’t fussed on him. Difficult man with a very patient, if somewhat dopey-looking, wife.

Although it didn’t sound like Clive.

Mrs Dorado wondered whether or not a bigger glass might help. She shuffled around in the kitchen, but they were all the same small tumblers that Mark had got her for Christmas. They were 50p each. He’d left the stickers on the bottom. He had also bought her twelve, which was ridiculous for a woman living alone, but useful since she had dropped seven of them when trying to listen in to the bakery to her right or the Skiptons at No. 44 to her left.

Eventually, she dumped what were actually quite stale looking carnations out of the vase in the kitchen window, gave it a rinse and then went to listen again. She sighed as she realised she hadn’t dried it thoroughly, making her face damp on one side. Also, the opening of the vase was far too big and it did absolutely nothing to aid her in hearing what the hullaballoo next door was actually about.

The front door opened. It was Mark. He looked at his mother and raised his eyebrows. He said nothing, however. This wasn’t strange behaviour in of itself. Not for her anyway. Although he did think the trail of slightly green water down the wall was a bit off-putting.

“Don’t you want to know what I’m doing?” Mrs Dorado shouted after him as he went to the kitchen.

“Okay,” he said, somewhat reluctantly. He was rummaging around and took his chance while she was distracted by opening the drawer next to the microwave where she kept her spare change and a roll of ten pound notes wrapped in an elastic band. He took two notes and three pounds in change. She wouldn’t miss that.

“I’m listening to what is happening next door, Mark, come and listen!” she shouted, even though she could hear nothing but faint muffles and a bang here and there.

Mark reappeared, his hands in his pockets with the money he had so shamelessly stolen from his own mother. The thought of it made him go a little red but then he dismissed it quickly. He’d been doing it for years. No point developing a conscience now.

The two of them stood, Mrs Dorado still with drops of water leaking from the mouth of the vase on to her blue floral dress and Mark standing as still as possible, hands still stuffed into his pockets as if burying his treasure.

The sounds were vague and difficult to interpret. Multiple voices, for sure.

“It sounds like Primrose…” Mark said, trying to decide by cocking his head to one side.

“She’s upset!” said Mrs Dorado, her eyes glinting as they relished the thought (or hope) of something scandalous unfolding.

“It’s probably just that lazy boy,” Mark shrugged and was about to leave when there was a crash which caused Mrs Dorado to drop the vase. It smashed to the floor in a hundred pieces and she sighed. There were still some bits down there from the last glass she broke, she was sure of it.

Mark stepped to the side and over a few stray shards that had made their way to the middle of the room before saying his goodbyes and leaving her to it. He was fed up of hoovering broken glass off that carpet.

Mrs Dorado sighed again and shook her head. You’re the lazy boy, she thought to herself as she went to fetch the dustpan ad brush.

Whatever was unfolding next door, however, came to a halt. Just as well, since Mrs Dorado had run out of ear-wigging options.

Once the glass was cleaned up – well, -ish – Mrs Dorado wondered about what she might do first that day. As much as she loved the smell of the bakery, she couldn’t afford fresh bread, or pies or cakes. She usually went to the little shop across the way. Harry’s Shoppe. She didn’t understand the spelling mistake and had long since given up trying to get Harry to explain it. Anyway, Harry sold loaves of bread for under a pound and kept out-of-date Eccles cakes for her. He gave her a 10% discount but also made her promise not to sue him if she ever got food poisoning. She thought it was a bit much that he had made her sign a disclaimer, but she didn’t think salmonella was a high risk outcome from a small cake that had more preservatives in it anyway than other ingredients.

As she thought about it, she decided it might be as well to get on with her day and get some food in. Mark would be back for his lunch soon enough and she always made him his favourite: ham sandwich with butter and cheese and onion crisps, right there in between the slices of bread and ham. He liked the crunch, he said.

Putting on her shoes, Mrs Dorado looked about for her coat. It was October already and the nip in the air was now apparent. To her dismay, she realised there was no change left in her pockets so she went to her stash in the kitchen – the drawer next to the microwave.

“Hmmm,” she said out loud, puzzled. There were some coins missing. She wouldn’t ordinarily notice, but little Tommy Skipton had asked her the day before if she happened to have a five pound note he could swap her for all his pound coins. She did, so they had made the exchange over the back fence. At least, the hole in the back fence that Skipton’s swing set had caused in that awful gale last winter.

She poked around a bit, but no. There were definitely coins missing.

“I bet it’s that man who came to read the meter!” she exclaimed to herself, horrified at the sudden thought of him rifling through her belongings. She’d report him to Ofgen later. She had their number from when she had reported that other boy who came and took two packets of ham from the fridge! Who’d have thought it! Such shameless theft. Although, she mused to herself, that was how crime was the most successful. Hidden in plain sight. She thought the electricity board needed a more stringent screening process.

Pulling a ten pound note from her elasticated wad, Mrs Dorado went to get her shopping. She pulled her coat about her as the breeze made her shudder. And had she locked her front door a fraction later, she might not have missed her own son look furtively up and down the street before darting into the side entrance of The Frog and Cricket.