Rosie was sitting on a plastic chair in the now abandoned world record attempt preparation area. She was all alone, apart from baby Teddy sitting on her knee, and there were tears streaming down her face.
Tears
Unable to ignore her, Albert rushed to her side. ‘Whatever is the matter, Rosie? Are you hurt, did something terrible happen?’
Rosie glanced up at him, a sad, apologetic smile on her face, then looked back down again, focussing on Teddy gurgling happily on her lap. ‘It’s nothing really, Albert. I’m just feeling sorry for myself.’
Albert looked around until he spotted a chair, fetched it, and set it down next to her. He pulled a face at the baby. It was supposed to be a funny face that would make Teddy smile or maybe giggle, but he burst into tears to match his mother, a long wail accompanying his change in state. Albert wrote off any further thoughts about amusing the baby to focus on Rosie.
‘It’s clearly something,’ he insisted. ‘Perhaps it’s something I can help with?’ He did something his grandfather had taught him to do when faced with a tearful woman and produced a clean handkerchief from his pocket. Attitudes had changed a lot in the last couple of decades; women were strong and should be viewed as such. He wasn’t going to argue, but a crying woman was still a crying woman in his book.
Rosie took the offered tissue, using it to dab at her eyes with one hand while shushing Teddy gently with the other. ‘It really is nothing,’ she claimed for a second time. ‘I’m just being ridiculous.’ Seeing she needed to say a little more, she explained, ‘I need a job. Something steady, and I thought maybe this would turn out to be a lead into something I could do full time, or maybe even part time. It’s the curse of being a single mum: I need to have Teddy so I can’t work full time hours unless the job comes with a creche and few do. I pick up work here and there, like this thing with the world record attempt. The organisers were taking anyone with any kind of baking experience. It’s done now though, so tomorrow, I have to go and try to find work again.’
‘But surely the government provide you with benefits to support yourself and Teddy.’ Albert thought about all the tax he’d paid over the years and the arguments he heard about people claiming they were better off on benefits because the government paid them so much.
Trying to calm her tears, Rosie let out a shuddering breath and allowed her shoulders to sag. ‘They do. Of course they do. It just enough for me to feed and clothe the pair of us, but I live in a terrible area in a terrible flat with terrible neighbours and Teddy will have to grow up in that environment unless I can find a way to escape it. I need a decent job that I can build on. Truthfully, I took this job because I wanted to enter the competition.’
‘Why didn’t you?’ Albert asked her.
She sniffed and dabbed her eyes again. ‘I couldn’t afford the entry fee,’ she admitted sadly. ‘My granny’s Yorkshire pudding recipe would have knocked their socks off.’
Albert wanted to look for Gary and catch up on how they were getting on locating Alan Crystal. There were a dozen or more other things he could be doing that would be more productive than comforting Rosie, but her need at this very moment was greater than anything else. She looked miserable and lost, and had done since he met her yesterday, bowled over and injured during the aborted mugging.
However, her boast gave him an idea. ‘You know, Rosie, I only came to York to learn how to make a decent Yorkshire pudding. Is your granny’s recipe a secret? Or will you show me how to make it?’
Rosie, whose eyes had been focussed solely on the child in her lap, swung up to meet Albert’s. ‘You really want to see it?’
Albert nodded, getting back to his feet, and holding his arms out so she could pass him Teddy. ‘I really do. It would be a terrible shame if I were to leave here without the ability to make a Yorkshire pudding for myself.’
‘Well then,’ said Rosie, forcing herself to brighten. ‘I think I had better look for some ingredients.’
Revolting Smell
With the scent in his nose, Rex set off, his paws moving at a fast lope. Unencumbered by a human to hold him back, he found a way into the marquee but there his nose became assailed by myriad other conflicting smells.
He could hear the firefighters calling his name. They were chasing him but would want to clip him back to his lead and take him outside. He wasn’t going to allow that. To his right was the competition, the bakers there feverishly whipping up the next batch of Yorkshire puddings as they entered each of the different competition options. The smells coming from it were mouth watering and very distracting. Worse yet were the stalls selling hot food, of which there were plenty. The smell of bacon and sausages had always been hard to resist, so Rex promised himself he would investigate the area around the stalls for dropped treats the moment he found the thing he was trying to track.
He moved deeper inside the marquee and out of sight of the firefighters who would burst through the door behind him at any moment. Once he deemed himself to be far enough away, he closed his eyes to focus only on his nose and drew in a large sample of air. Now he had to sift and discard all the scents he could easily identify as he looked for the one he needed to
