SUNNY FROM MINSTER LOVELL

Baker was lost. All these shopping malls look the same, he thought, noticing a blonde, bronzed young woman by the entrance to Hugo Boss. He swung his mobility scooter towards her.

‘Excuse me,’ said Baker, ‘I’m looking for –’

The blonde smiled and twinkled, then shimmied her large bronzed breasts towards him. They almost touched Baker’s face. His hands stiffened on the controls.

‘Hi,’ she said, ‘I’m Sunny from Minster Lovell. It’s so easy to get lost in these places, isn’t it? Like I bet you think this mall looks just the same as the last one? I do. I find it really confusing. I thought I was like lost myself there for a minute, but when you came towards me right away I remembered what I was after. Like I guess part of me unconsciously didn’t want to go there? But I dunno...’

‘I’m impotent,’ said Baker, stopping her in her tracks, ‘and no woman from Minster Lovell has ever managed to cure me of it.’

Sunny was aghast.

‘I know you,’ she said. ‘You used to be vicar there, and you stole my dad from my mum!’

Suddenly, a dark, woollen glove dropped from the walkway above them, bouncing off the mobility scooter and resting near Sunny’s shiny stiletto heel. She and Baker heard giggles on the walkway but couldn’t see anyone. Was it a game played by a child, they both wondered, or had a gauntlet been thrown down?

*****