The Mystery Lunch

Owen worked in a small office on the third floor, and he was always so busy that he never had a proper lunch. At one o’clock every day he ate a dry biscuit at his desk, his eyes fixed on the screen, and told himself that this counted as a break.

On Monday a green box appeared on his desk. A note beside it read, “Please eat this at one o’clock.” Inside he found warm soup and a thick slice of bread. Owen glanced round the office, but nobody seemed to be paying him the slightest attention, which only made the whole thing stranger. He checked the box for a name, but there was none. Someone must have left it on the wrong desk, he assumed, until he read the note again.

He was hungry, so he ate the soup, and it was far better than anything he had eaten at that desk. On Tuesday another box arrived, this time with rice and chicken, and the note said, “Sit down. Do not work.” For once he obeyed, and it struck him that he had not sat still over a meal for months. By Tuesday he caught himself glancing at the clock at five to one.

By Wednesday Owen was determined to find the cook. He questioned his boss, and he questioned Dana at reception. “No idea,” they both replied. Yet Dana smiled faintly as she said it, and she looked down at her keyboard a fraction too quickly. Owen noticed, but he decided not to push her. Dana must have known something, he reasoned. It couldn’t have been his boss, who barely knew where the kitchen was, and a stranger couldn’t have known which desk was his; someone in the building must have been watching him eat biscuits for months.

On Thursday he walked into the kitchen at noon. Mrs Ray, the cleaner, was standing there with a green box in her hands. “You never eat,” she said. “Now you can say thank you.” Owen burst out laughing. The kitchen smelled of onions and fresh bread. “Thank you!” he said, and on Friday a new note was waiting on his desk: “Today, we eat together.”