by Heide Goody
Sam collected three high-stacked trays of hot meals and desserts, wedged them up against the tarp and whatever was under it at the back of the van, and left.
3
Meals on wheels was, Sam felt, a deceptive phrase.
Like the RNLI and the RSPCA, meals on wheels was such an established name that everyone sort of assumed it was an established and official body: some sort of government office existing to distribute food to the elderly and housebound. It was no such thing. Like the lifeboats and the animal inspectors, it had started out as an entirely charitable endeavour by well-meaning sorts, but unlike the RNLI and RSPCA, private sector forces had crept in and almost entirely taken over. Presumably there was little profit in sinking ships and abandoned kittens to draw capitalists in. Meals on wheels was a cash for nosh business, a Deliveroo for those who preferred their meals square and on proper plates.
The meals on wheels clients Sam catered for had signed up to a hot meal five times a week, with cheery banter and a friendly face as a very optional extra. Sam felt stopping and chatting with the elderly and isolated was a valuable part of the service, but her schedule, as administered through her DefCon4 app, had less sociable ideas.
The phone app beeped as she drove: her first visit of the day was Wendy Skipworth. She lived in a solitary cottage, up a small side road off a small side road, in Welton le Marsh: a village seven miles outside Skegness on the edge of the Wolds, at the point where the unremittingly flat and dull landscape began to show some promise of turning interesting. Like a Victorian lady lifting her skirts to show a bit of ankle. Mrs Skipworth’s cottage had actual honeysuckle growing around the front door, as though she didn’t realise it was a cliché.
Sam drew up on the gravel front yard and went to knock the door. The older woman waved at her from the bay window.
“Morning, Wendy,” said Sam, brushing her feet on the mat as she entered. “Meals on wheels. Your menu choices today are salmon salad, bacon hotpot, lasagne, or cottage pie.”
“I didn’t like what you brought me yesterday,” said Mrs Skipworth. “It gave me wind it did.”
“Sorry to hear that,” said Sam. “What did you have?”
“It was the special. What was it?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Sam. “I only do every third Thursday. It’s Karen who does the other days.”
Mrs Skipworth raised her bowed head to look at Sam properly. She wore the doddery old dear act well, but Sam could see a sharp intelligence in her eyes. A Daily Telegraph, folded to the crossword page, sat on one arm of her chair. A spiral bound notepad sat on the other, covered with squares and writing.
“You’re not Karen,” she said with a ponderous certainty.
“I am not. I’m Sam.”
“What happened to Karen?”
“Nothing,” said Sam. “Karen has to take a break every few weeks.”
“Why’s that?”
Sam could tell her, but it was a long and stupid explanation. It involved timesheets and an anti-monopoly clause in the meals on wheels tendering contracts, meaning various costly things for the contractors if they provided a continuous service for more than twenty-one days, dodged by a legally suspect loophole involving the whole thing being subcontracted to DefCon4 one day every three weeks.
Sam simply said, “She deserves a break every now and then, don’t you think?”
“Chow mein,” said Mrs Skipworth.
“Did it have noodles?”
Mrs Skipworth nodded.
Sam knew some of the staff would push the easiest option as a ‘special’. Glorified pot noodles seemed to turn up a lot, because all they needed was a little bit of hot water. They could make the client a cup of tea and prepare their meal in one easy hit. ‘Broth’ was another popular special. As far as Sam could tell it was a stock cube.
“There’ll be none of that today,” said Sam. “So, what do you fancy?”
“Bacon hotpot sounds all right,” said Mrs Skipworth.
“Do I need to check your notes to see if you’re on a low sodium diet?” asked Sam, her eyebrow raised. “You might be better with the salmon salad if you need to look after your salt.”
Mrs Skipworth wrinkled her nose. “Cottage pie then.”
It was a better choice. The bacon hotpot was a gloopy potato-based mess similar to the stuff campers might squeeze out of a packet into a billy can. There was no way it was more nutritious than chips. At least the cottage pie was chilled, which presumably meant it had been made locally. There were even some actual vegetables in it. She went out to the van and lifted the top lid to take out a cottage pie container. There was a strong fishy smell which competed with the fusty smell from earlier and was not at all pleasant. Sam wondered if the salmon salad was less than fresh.
She went back inside to put it into Mrs Skipworth’s oven to warm it up. “Cup of tea?”
“Only if you’re having one,” said Mrs Skipworth, which Sam took as code for, “Yes, sorry to be a bother.” There was a sudden rush of noise as Mrs Skipworth turned the television on.
The kitchen had a shelf on which stood six mugs decorated with stern-looking cats. Sam made cups of tea in two of them. She peered at the spiral notepad on the chair arm as she put the cup of tea down. Boxes with names in them – Edith Vamplew, Benjamin Greening, Thomas Osmond – arranged in rows and squares.
“Birthday party seating plan?” said Sam.
Mrs Skipworth laughed coldly. “It’s my eightieth next year. Can’t imagine any of these attending.”
“You never know.”
Mrs Skipworth leaned round her to watch the quiz show on the TV. “That Bradley Walsh has been getting right on my nerves with his laughing. He was better when he used to ride bikes if you ask me. Always playing the giddy goat now.”
“I think you might mean Bradley Wiggins. He’s the one that rides the bikes.”
“Just testing,” said Mrs Skipworth.
“You want me to draw the curtain? The sun’s on the telly.”
“Leave it,” said Mrs Skipworth with the casual bluntness of the elderly.
“You sure?”
“I want to be able to see the ghosts in the churchyard.”
“Ghosts?” Sam looked out the bay window. The cottage’s slightly elevated position gave a good view across the road and a small village church.
“Now they’re playing silly buggers most nights.”
“Is that so?”
“Don’t you look at me in that tone of voice, miss,” said Mrs Skipworth. “I know what I see.”
“Of course.” Sam pulled out the menu card for the desserts and placed it next to the cup of tea in front of Mrs Skipworth. “Now, why don’t you choose something for after?”
Mrs Skipworth studied the card. “When it says ‘fruit-flavoured jelly pot’, what fruit is it?” she asked.
Sam had no answer to that. She was certain no actual fruit came anywhere near the stuff. “Not sure,” she said. “I heard that the carrot cake is good.”
Sam checked on the cottage pie and went out to the van to find some carrot cake. As she approached the door she heard a scraping sound from inside. That was strange. She opened the door a couple of inches and peered in.
“Blaaaark!”
She jumped back at the noise, which was accompanied by a large, whiskered face peering out the door. The noise was halfway between a donkey braying and a world-class belch. The face was flabby and mottled grey, with big drooping whiskers. A seal! It had to be one of the biggest and ugliest she had ever seen. If a seal was ever cast as Pablo Escobar, the Columbian drug lord, this one would be in with a good chance, with its humourless expression and dark moustache. She stepped forward to look properly, but it lunged towards the door, making that appalling noise again.
“Blaaaark!”
As it rolled its enormous body, it spilled crushed boxes and food trays out of the door. The food from inside them had gone, along with chunks of cardboard and plastic, large bite marks in evidence.
“Oh hell!” Sam opened the door a little wider and saw the carnage within the truck. The tarp at the back had been thrown aside, revealing the remains of a wooden transport crate. The seal had eaten its way through nearly everything on the meals on wheels trays. When it wasn’t attacking her, it seemed intent on cleaning up the rest.
She closed the door and stepped away. There were several problems here, but she needed to keep a clear head and not add to them by panicking.
She went back inside Mrs Skipworth’s house and took the cottage pie out of the oven.
There was a seal in her van.
Sam slid the dinner onto a clean plate.
There was a grey seal in her van.
She brought the dinner to Mrs Skipworth on a tray decorated with stern-looking cats, like the mugs. “Here you go.”
There was two metres and at least five hundred pounds of Atlantic grey seal in the back of her van.
“I like a bit of brown sauce with cottage pie,” said the old lady.
I’m sorry, Wendy, you’ll have to forgive me, but a large grey seal has somehow snuck into my van and I can’t reach the condiments sachets.
Instead of saying that she searched the kitchen cupboards and found a bottle which looked as though it dated from this century. “Right, you eat up and I’ll be back with your pudding in ... in a short while.”
Sam stepped outside. She had to re-open the van to double-check.
“Blaaaark!”
“Oh, yes, it’s still there.” She closed the door and paced for a good few seconds. “A seal in the van. A seal in the van.” She was sure that in several hours she would admire this as an excellent trick, worthy of Mr Marvellous himself, but right now—
Insanely, she was put in mind how, in high summer, ladybirds would appear in their thousands, everywhere; even where they could not conceivably be. “How did it even…? Through the air blowers?” Except it wasn’t a ladybird. It was a bloody seal.
She pulled out her phone to call for help, though from whom she had no idea, and saw that she had several missed calls from the van depot already. “Hi, it’s Sam from DefCon4. Listen, that van I—”
“You took the wrong one!” exclaimed the clerk loudly.
“Did I? I mean, yes. Obviously, I can see that now. Although I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit curious about how we came to have a massive angry seal in one of the vans.”
“Guy from Seal Land is going absolutely spare.”
“Does he want his seal back?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“I can drop him off.”
“They’ve been moaning like anything because of timings and the vet’s availability and yadda yadda. They want to re-schedule for the morning.”
“I’m not keeping a seal until tomorrow morning.”
“I told you to take the other vehicle.”
“You told me to take the ‘van’. You told me the van was out, but it was back, and you told me to take the van.”
“You didn’t even give me chance to do a pre-hire damage check.”
“Oh, there might be damage now,” she said.
“What have you done?”
“Did I mention the seal? It’s huge! It’s eaten all the meals. What am I going to do about them?”
“Hey, I do vehicles. Food is your department.”
Sam thought he sounded a bit too pleased with himself at dodging that bullet, for having pushed her in front of it. She sighed. “Please pass me the contact details for the Seal Land guy. Maybe I can arrange to drop the thing off sooner.”
“Larry,” said the clerk.
“And what’s Larry’s number?”
“Larry’s the seal.”
“Larry the seal?”
“Yes. I’ll get the guy’s number. And watch out. He can be vicious.”
“The guy?”
“The seal. The reason he’s back here is because he got kicked out of some sanctuary in Cornwall for bad behaviour.”
The was a thump and a creak and an unpleasant noise from inside the van.
“Did he eat all their food? Raid the cafeteria? Carry out carjacking’s in the car park?”
“If there’s any damage to that van…”
“It’s all pre-existing stuff on the damage waiver,” said Sam and killed the call.
She rang the kitchens at the caravan park. The phone rang and rang. She sighed, because she knew there was only one person there who was assigned to admin, and if they weren’t there the others simply wouldn’t answer the phone.
Sam inhaled deeply and prepared to open the door of the Transit again. She needed to see if there was anything she could salvage from the food that she’d brought.
“Blaaaark!”
If anything, the volume of Larry’s cries had increased. He definitely had cake crumbs around his stinky fishy mouth. Could seals get a sugar rush? Sam immediately worried she had poisoned a wild animal by allowing it access to unhealthy food, then checked herself. This food was deemed ideal for the senior citizens of the area, so surely someone had decided it was all right? She edged towards one of the boxes which looked more intact, but Larry saw her intent and slammed his big blubbery body down in an angry protest at her invasion of his snacking space. The impact burst open another box, and Larry immediately started to consume the cold hotpot now dripping off every surface.
Sam sighed heavily and closed the door on Larry’s decadent dining style. One thing was certain: no food was going to make it out through those doors unless it was inside Larry’s belly.
She climbed into the cab. She could still use the vehicle with Larry in the back, and she needed to get some meals for her clients, including Mrs Skipworth – who probably thought she was washing up at the moment. She turned the van around and headed back up the lane. As she reached the top she had a thought and pulled over by the churchyard.
Options. She could give up and go home. There would be several hungry and potentially worried old people if she did. She could phone DefCon4’s main office for guidance, but experience told her that would result in up to an hour battling the automated phone system before finally speaking to someone who would be unable or unwilling to help her. Since starting with Defcon4, every attempt to navigate their internal systems had met with failure, mainly because she was the only person in the area, and all too often the systems relied upon a chain of command which simply didn’t exist in this rural outpost. She could go out and buy more dinners, yes. Which she would unsuccessfully try to claim back as an office expense and end up taking as a hit on her own personal finances.
How much money did she have? She looked in her purse. Eighteen pounds seventy five. She needed to find a way to replace the missing food for somewhere between zero and eighteen pounds. She gazed at the church, the drooping trees and the sunlit grass of the churchyard. To be a ghost in a churchyard like that… Yeah, sometimes Sam could envy the dead.
“Blaaaark!”
“Okay, Larry,” she said. “Let’s do this.”
4
Sam went home.
“Dad!” she called as she headed to the kitchen. “It’s only me, I’m not stopping, I just need to get something
He stood by the counter, reading the post. It was mostly junk and flyers, but he was reading it anyway.
“Back for lunch?” he said.
“Sort of. Dad, if you had to feed eleven people for less than twenty pounds, what would you do?” Sam fished three plums, a brown banana and a sad looking tangerine out of the fruit bowl. Then she noticed Consuela, the bearded mannequin. She was wearing a gold sequinned leotard. “She wasn’t wearing clothes before.”
“I put one of Linda’s old leotards on her.”
“What?”
Marvin Applewhite smiled sheepishly. “You’re going to think me daft, but I thought she looked cold.”
“Mad, not daft.”
“It was going threadbare anyway and I don’t think Linda plans to wear it again.”
Linda, Mr Marvel
lous’ stage assistant, was now a sixty-something retiree somewhere on the Florida coast, and who – after a career of wearing glamorous outfits and squeezing herself into magician’s cabinets – had merrily decided to let herself go a bit.
“Oh, I can show you now,” said Marvin.
“Show me what?”
He slid three white yoghurt pots he’d fished out of the plastic recycling across the counter and put one over the tangerine and the two others over plums.
“I need those,” said Sam.
Marvin revealed each fruit again momentarily. “One, two, three. Consuela, Linda and my special guest star tonight, Miss Cilla Black!”
“I do not have time for this.”
“Keep your eye on the tangerine – that’s Consuela. Round and round they go…”
“I am in a hurry, dad!”
“A great food tip for you,” he said.
“Really?”
Marvin slowly moved the pots around. Sam knew the slowness was a deception. He still had magician’s hands. “Back in my youth, I liked to think I was part of the scene, one of the cool kids, but I rarely had the money everyone else did.”
Sam hoped he wasn’t going to launch into a lengthy bout of his habitual showbiz reminiscing, as she just didn’t have the time. She still had an eye on the tangerine though.
“I hosted a party,” he continued, “booze was never a problem as people often brought their own, and a neighbour used to brew wine from things like dandelions and hedge clippings. But I couldn’t afford to feed everyone, so do you know what I did?”
“What did you do?” she said
“I lowered the lights and smeared some week-old pate around a few bowls. I scattered them around the place and everyone assumed they’d simply missed the food while they were dancing or something.” He tapped the side of his nose. “I even overheard Anita Harris telling everyone how delicious it had been.”