Neville stood outside the door and listened. Inside, he could hear Canker banging pots and clinking his ladle. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. At least he’d get to eat something, working in the kitchen. He opened the door slowly.
‘Hello,’ Neville said. ‘Canker?’
‘Well, if it ain’t my overling assistant!’ Canker shouted, his head half buried in a barrel of rotten fruit and vegetables. ‘You took your time, littl’un.’ He emerged holding a mangled orange peel in his ladle hand. ‘Mmmmm, exotic.’
‘Erm … I … uh … I’m supposed to help you with the cooking,’ Neville said.
‘Indeed you are, my trainee truccaneer, indeed you are.’
Neville stood in the doorway and stared. He wasn’t sure what to do next.
‘Well, come on then,’ Canker said with a cheeky smile. ‘Lots of ’ungry mouths to feed.’
‘Aye-aye, sir,’ Neville replied and darted into the kitchen. Canker chuckled to himself.
‘Sir?’ he said in his raspy voice. ‘You don’t have to call me sir! Just good ole Canker will do. Now then … up you get.’
Neville clambered on to an upturned crate and looked out over the room. He’d never seen such a disgusting kitchen before. Back at home, Marjorie had a fit every time someone left a spoon on the worktop. Here, Neville couldn’t even see the worktop. Every bit of space was covered in splatters of old food and drips of dried cooking grease. There were jars and buckets everywhere filled with the most horrendous-looking ingredients and the smell was unbearable.
At the far end of the worktop, nearest to Neville, was an open cookery book. It was like one of the books his mum kept on a shelf at home, only this one was covered in stains and wrinkly from getting wet too many times. Neville looked at the page and read aloud.
‘Sounds lummy, eh?’ said Canker. He put his frying-pan hand over the stove and turned on the flame. ‘Right then, what’s first?’
Neville gulped and tried not to look too disgusted. He’d make sure he sneaked something a little less revolting when Canker wasn’t looking.
‘Erm …’ said Neville, glancing through the recipe, ‘it says fry the barnacles in a pan of sizzling hair-grease.’
‘Ha ha, I love cookin’ barnacles,’ Canker laughed. He threw a ladleful of the little creatures into his frying-pan hand and they hissed and spat angrily. ‘Makes Old Barnacle squirm, it does.’
Neville smiled a nervous smile. ‘Then it says to drizzle the puréed fish heads from a great height.’
‘From a great height? Um …’ Canker thought for a moment, then, before Neville could stop him, he squirted a great arc of fish-head purée into the air.
‘I don’t think that’s what the recipe meant,’ Neville said as Canker ran round the kitchen catching globs of the stuff as it dripped off the ceiling.
‘Course it did!’ Canker smiled. ‘So, little Blood-gulping Brisket, do you want to skin the rats or shall I?’
‘You can,’ Neville whimpered. He watched in horror as Canker pulled the ladle hand off with his teeth and replaced it with a blunt, rusted potato peeler.
‘There,’ said Canker with a grin. ‘That should do the trick. Now … where did I put those rats?’