I’m no good with names, I tell the nice cleaner
especially at weddings when everyone looks different. I mean, how was I to know that was my daughter in the big hat?
The cleaner, she’s just a young thing, sits down next to me and asks did I enjoy it, the wedding. I can’t really remember, so I tell her the bride and groom looked lovely and she laughs as if I’ve said something funny.
Do I want to try a game, she asks. Well, I do, so she tells me about this palace. It’s a palace, not a castle, and it’s all mine. First I have to give her a shopping list. I don’t need any shopping, I say, but she says no matter and takes out a notepad. Wedding thank yous, it says at the top of the page. I’ll write the list, she says. What would you buy? If you could buy anything?
I have a think. Stockings, definitely, American tan, large. Butter, though I shouldn’t, and sugar. Go on, she says, anything you like, and I say, Anything? Well then, corned beef and marzipan. And truffles because I’ve never had them.
Well, that girl, she knows how to tell a story! What a palace! Its walls are dripping with butter, its stairs are layers of corned beef. The turrets are madeleines and the pinnacles are truffles. American GIs lean out the battlements, dangling stockings full of sugar, and each has a strawberry for his nose.
Did I get it all, this girl asks, and I say apart from the marzipan, and she says that’s the walls, Nan, like in Hansel and Gretel, the walls are made of marzipan. I’ll write down some names and bring in some photos and we can have another go next time.
Nan, she calls me. I don’t know her name.
Sarah Masters lives in York and teaches English for Speakers of Other Languages. Her tiny stories have appeared in a few places including Funny Pearls, Full House Literary, Roi Fainéant, The Hooghly Review, CafeLit, Flashflood, and Shooter Flash.
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