Chez Vegas Tales
Chez Vegas is what locals call Chesterfield. It’s not affectionate, exactly. It’s just accurate.
These are linked stories set in the town — a charity shop on Chatsworth Road, a mechanic’s workshop, a hospital A&E, a council office, a staffroom. The characters move through each other’s margins. No one knows they’re in someone else’s story. Each piece stands alone. Together they map a town.
A boy in a borrowed car on Chatsworth Road. Both windows up. The police scanner on. He knows the voices by frequency, by the flat tone of routine. Today the call is about him.
The police came and went. Jan stood at the counter with both palms flat on the surface. Procedure finished. What didn’t finish was the girl’s face when she came back.
That evening, Keith told Sue what he’d seen through the roller door — the car, the girl, the volunteer at the counter. He described it the way he’d describe a fault. Sue asked the question he hadn’t asked himself.
A&E on a Thursday night. A nurse with a clipboard and questions designed to be answered yes or no. The form gets what the form needs.
A council admin worker processes safeguarding referrals. Forty-three seconds each. She keeps her own tally. At lunch, a man on the bench by the Crooked Spire says something she mishears.
Three days clearing her mother’s house. Every room done except the sewing room — the one that had always been closed. In the third drawer, a photograph of a man she doesn’t recognise. Her mother’s handwriting on the back.
The charity shop volunteer opens a donated bag of sewing things. At the bottom, wrapped in lining cloth, a photograph: a man on Chatsworth Road, 1987, a name on the back. The oval frame had been waiting behind the counter for two weeks.
An estate agent in his good suit, briefcase rather than the folder. A routine handover: clean title, vacant possession, keys on the table. The buyer picks up the Yale and says she thinks she might already have one. Same colour fob as her mother’s. Easy mistake. Bryan is already smiling when he says it.
A secondary school form tutor has been noticing one of her Year Ten students since October. Quieter than last year. Still attending, work still good, nothing the referral guidance has a category for. She stays late. Near the end of Megan’s essay, a sentence she wouldn’t have expected: What is left unsaid is also a form of speech.