Hi, lovelies! Now, this is my first real fanfiction, so please let me know what you think .... oh yeah and I do not own Sweeney Todd or Mrs Lovett

Hope you like!.....Sheesh! I'm really nervous now... *bites nails*

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She sighed. Yet another day…yet another day filled with meaningless work. Making dough, filling pies, baking pies; what was the point? It had been like this for as long as she could remember…ever since Albert died… She saw no customers; no one came in for a pie or a glass of ale. Not that she could blame them, she'd tasted her pies. Horrible things they were. Besides, hardly any meat in them.

She was suddenly snapped out of her thoughts as the small bell over her door sounded. God, she had missed the sound of that bell. Her eyes settled on the dark figure stood in the doorway of her pie shop. A customer!?

"Wait, what's your rush? Where ya goin'?" she asked as he turned to leave. The man said nothing, but he stopped. She rushed over to him, pulling him down into one of the booths. "God, ya gave me quite a fright there. Haven't seen a customer for God knows 'ow long. Ya come in for a pie, sir?"

He watched with interest as this strange lady chatted away to him, making her way to behind her counter and producing a pie from the oven. What interested him most about this lady….was the fact that she seemed to be completely content on holding a one-sided conversation. It's not that he wasn't trying to talk, but his focus on this unusual woman rendered him speechless. There was something strangely….familiar about her. Something about the way she chatted incessantly and flitted about the room that made him think that he had met this lady before. Somewhere…

Walking over to the booth the man was sat it, the woman placed a somewhat dusty pie in front of him. "Oh, I must say, I do miss the customers I used to 'ave 'ere. You'd think I 'ad the bloody plague the way people avoid me store."

She had been looking around the shop, as if searching for some reason people don't come in, but, on finishing her sentence, she looked back down at the dark man in front of her. Her brow furrowed. Had she met this man before? He did seem familiar, but she couldn't place him. But then, she thought, I 'aven't seen a customer in howlong? I coulda simply forgotten 'im.

After seeing the man looking at her quite strangely, she shook her head dragging herself out of her thoughts and back to reality. "There y'are now," she said, pushing the pie towards him. "Can I get ya somethin' else? Glass o' ale, perhaps?" He nodded.

Walking back over to the shop counter, the lady hurriedly wiped her hands on her skirts, reaching for a glass. "Mind you, I can 'ardly blame 'em," she remarked, gesturing out of the windows towards the people walking past. "These things are bloody 'orrible, they are. Ugh," As the woman looked down, a rather large cockroach scuttled past. "Times is so 'ard, I can't afford much meat anymore."

Rearranging the rather dishevelled curls on top of her head, she looked up to see her customer gagging on the horrible taste of the pie he had just sampled. Refraining herself from giggling at the look on his face, the lady walked over and placed the glass of ale in front of the dark man, watching as he tentatively sipped at the liquid that had just been given to him.

"You'll need somethin' stronger than that, I'm sure. Come back here with me and we'll get ya a nice tumbler o' gin, eh?"

The man stood, following the owner of the store into what he assumed was her living room. Then he saw it. The staircase. Their staircase. He wondered if this lady had known her. Well, there was only one way to find out –

"You have a room over the shop, don't you? If times are so hard, why don't you rent it out?" Immediately her head snapped around and realisation hit her as hard as a ton of bricks. It was him. How had she not realised sooner?

"What, up there?" she asked slowly, gesturing upstairs. "Nah, no one'd go up there. People think it's haunted." He looked over at her, her face a beautiful glow in the light of the fire blazing behind her. And then he realised. It was her. Oh, God help him, he did know this woman. This woman, who had been his landlord for years.

As he was coming to terms with this and about to ask the woman…Mrs Lovett…where his wife was…she told him something that brought him crashing back down to earth. His heart dropped.

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Phew...there's the first chapter done... Hope you enjoy!