One Way or Another: An absolutely hilarious laugh-out-loud romantic comedy Read online

  One Way or Another

  An absolutely hilarious laugh-out-loud romantic comedy

  Colleen Coleman

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  35. One Year Later

  Don’t Stop Me Now

  Colleen’s Email Sign Up

  Also by Colleen Coleman

  A Letter From Colleen

  I’m Still Standing

  To Julian

  You are the love of my life and my best friend. You asked me to surprise you, hope I have. Thank you for making my life all that it is, Cx

  Chapter One

  ‘So there you are, Katie Kelly! Up to your bloody cheffy shenanigans again.’ My boss, Bernie, slams down her clipboard on the stainless-steel countertop and points at the door. ‘Into my office, NOW.’

  I go to open my mouth. A reasonable ‘What have I done?’ stuck in my throat, hovering over my tongue. But Mel and Zoe furrow their eyebrows at me, simultaneously, raising blue, plastic-gloved fingers to their lips. It’s our code for keep your mouth shut and keep your job. This one little gesture of solidarity means we know batshit Bernie is no mere catering supervisor: no, she’s a complete despotic maniac. So best just agree with whatever she says and remember, it’s only a job, it’s not worth losing my cool. Or my weekly salary. Or my self- respect just because the boss hates my guts.

  I get it.

  They’re right.

  I shut my mouth and loop my hairnet over both ears. Like it’s a hard hat with the power to protect me from the verbal ambush that no doubt awaits me on the other side of Bernie’s office door.

  Mel starts to hum a tune. Cheery and upbeat and completely escapist, an effort to boost me up mentally, help me to remember the bigger picture.

  The small picture being that I’m a hen-pecked catering assistant pulping beige mush in a retirement home eight hours a day.

  I hum too, summoning perspective, trying to zoom out of this career-low scene, which is way too close-up for my liking

  Zoe must be able to read my thoughts because she calls out after me,

  ‘Be the bigger person, Katie. Remember what we talked about… rise above it.

  I turn back to give her a weak smile and nod. This job is low but it’s not rock bottom. Since my restaurant folded, it is pretty much the only thing between me and rock bottom. And like my friends keep telling me, it’s just for a little while. It’s just until I get back on my feet, just until something else comes along. I’ll suck it up because there isn’t any other option out there for me right now. I had my chance at being my own boss and I ballsed it up.

  So here I am. Here I am at Parklands Senior Residence. Chief potato peeler. Executive pot wash. Master blender of incongruous gloop into less lumpy incongruous gloop. But the silver lining is that it’s full-time, five days a week, it pays okay, it’s walking distance from the flat and it’s what I’m qualified to do.

  Overqualified to do… but hey, beggars can’t be choosers. Like Bernie told me in my interview, a cook is a cook is a cook. Throw the food in the pot, serve it out on time and under budget, end of story.

  So I take a deep breath and follow Bernie from the kitchen prep area to her office, biting the inside of my mouth with every step. Once I’m in, she slams the door behind me.

  ‘Are you actually trying to kill our residents?’ she screams at me.

  I have absolutely no idea what she is talking about.

  Bernie takes an oversized ziplock plastic bag out of her pocket and throws it on the table between us.

  ‘Contraband substances is what I’m talking about!’ She points to the small pouches of dried herbs. ‘Parsley, eh? Oregano? Rosemary. Thyme. Nothing gets past me, let me tell you. I found these stashed behind the cans of soup. I’ve had my suspicions about you right from the get-go, Katie, and looks like I’ve been right all along.’ She folds her arms and curls her whiskery top lip at me. ‘So come on, let’s hear it, Katie. I can hardly wait to see you try and worm your way out of this one.’ She leans back on her table, smiling smugly.

  ‘Fine. They’re mine. I brought them in and put in a sprinkle to flavour the soup, so it would have, you know… some flavour.’

  Bernie pushes her tongue hard into her cheek and snatches back the ziplock bag, unsealing it and sniffing the leaf like a customs officer. ‘How many times, Katie? That’s not how we do things around here. Herbs and spices and other fancy-pants stuff are not included on the recipe cards. And your job is to follow the recipe cards TO THE LETTER. Which you are clearly still not doing. And you’re spending far too long on service chatting to the residents. Your role is to cook and serve the food the way we like it – that’s it – not involve yourself in rambling conversations about the minutiae of their days. Which brings me to my second point, what about Mrs Rosenblatt’s pudding?’

  ‘I can explain that.’

  Bernie pushes away from her desk and claps her hands together. ‘I knew it! I knew it would be down to you, Katie, you and your so-called haute cuisine! Do you know what you did to her? She was on the toilet for three hours this morning. Three hours! The nurse thought she might have a gastric bug and wanted her hospitalised. But the old girl refused, said it was your pudding that caused it.’

  ‘Excellent!’ A smile breaks my lips. ‘Mrs Rosenblatt told me she was constipated, she asked for my help. I knew a little prune and spiced pear crumble would get things going.’

  Bernie makes a tight fist. ‘You can’t keep doing this. Breaking the rules, switching up the menus, creating your own meals for residents… it is not the way we do things around here.’

  ‘So you just want me to clock in, throw the food in the pot and leave my brain and my heart at home.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Sorry, Bernie, not going to happen.’

  She is kind of quaking right now. And growling. And turning a funny colour. I’d call it mottled meatball.

  She leans towards me, jabbing her finger into the air in front of my face. ‘I am so sick of you. I’ve told the Catering Manager straight that I’m not happy with you on my team. I told him everything – the constant changes you make, the way you don’t listen to me, the way you backchat, the time you waste jabbering on to the residents during service. He agreed that as soon as anyone even half-qualified walks through those doors, you are gone from here. You don’t fit in, you won’t fit in, and I, for one, can never see a day that you will fit in. The only reason you are still tolerated around here is because we’re so stuck.’ Bernie clenches her jaw and narrows her angry eyes to slits.

  I know she’s saying this to try and hurt me, or frighten me, or bully me into doing things her way. But, actually, I echo everythin
g she’s said. I don’t ever want to fit in here. And the only reason I’m here is because I’m stuck too.

  I close my eyes and I think of my mother. I picture her in a supermarket car park years ago. Some crazed driver approached her and started yelling. The whole time she just smiled. When it all blew over, I asked her why she did that. Shouldn’t she have yelled back? Shouldn’t she have stood up for herself, scared him off? She said no. Sometimes it’s best to smile at those who want to overpower you. It confuses the hell out of them.

  So I open my eyes and give Bernie the biggest, brightest smile I can muster.

  And I feel like my mum would be proud of me. And for that I smile even more.

  Bernie shakes her head and sucks her teeth at me. ‘Get out and take that great big stupid grin of yours with you.’

  She throws open the door and I am free to leave.

  ‘Bring Mrs Rosenblatt a soft cheese sandwich up to her room – a plain soft cheese sandwich – would you? It’s the least you can do after all the upset you caused her.’

  I give Bernie a thumbs up as I walk out her office door.

  But there’s no way I’m bringing Mrs Rosenblatt a plain soft cheese sandwich.

  Because I like her way too much for that.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Hey Mrs Rosenblatt! Heard the prune pud caused a bit of a stir – in more ways than one!’

  Mrs Rosenblatt peers over her broadsheet paper at me, a giggle in her eyes. ‘I feel a million dollars thanks to you.’

  She is immaculately dressed, hair coiffed in her signature Elizabeth Taylor curls, her blue-kohled eyes smiling at me. Her room in the home is quite unlike any other; I imagine it’s what a magpie’s nest is like. Full of jewelled sparkliness in an array of shapes and colours, everything reflecting the light and catching your eye. Although Mrs Rosenblatt never leaves here, she still makes up her face each day with rouge and lipstick as if she’s just about to go for pre-theatre drinks.

  She shuffles up in her bed, the neckline of her dusky pink nightdress beautifully embroidered with sequined peacocks. I love coming in here to see her. Every time I walk into her room, there’s something that reminds me of walking into Santa’s grotto, like there’s still kindness and magic and possibility in the world and all I’ve got to do is be good and try my best and all will work out just fine. I’ve noticed that just being here makes my heart stop beating a thousand anxious raps a second. The moment I step in and smell the mingling scents of floral perfume and talc, it soothes me. It makes me feel like time has stopped and there’s nothing to worry about, that everything will be all right if she tells me so in her ever-reassuring, dulcet voice.

  I place the poached eggs and smoked salmon on a tray table by her bed.

  ‘Lots of omega-3 in that,’ I tell her. ‘Good for brains, hearts and immune systems. So eat it all up.’

  Mrs Rosenblatt holds out her hand. ‘Come over here and give me a cuddle. You’ve made an old lady very happy indeed. It is small acts of kindness that make all the difference in a place like this. So enough of this Mrs Rosenblatt business. Martha. Call me Martha. Friends ought to refer to each other by their first names.’

  I do as Martha asks and let her envelope me in a warm soft embrace. There is no comfort like it in the world. She smells like fresh linen and strawberry jam all at once.

  Just before she tucks in to her breakfast, I open her window and tear off a little peppermint from the small herb garden she has growing in her window box.

  ‘Good for digestion, a little in hot water with a slice of lemon,’ I explain.

  Martha takes it from me and inhales the fresh, sweet smell. ‘Oh that’s joyous. Reminds me of Morocco. Oskar and I loved to roam the souks and feast on all their spicy wonders. Heaven. Yes, peppermint tea, that would be a real treat. Thank you, Katie, you do spoil me.’ She points over to a heavy bound photo album which has morphed into more of a scrapbook, with invitations, concert tickets, postcards and personal letters stuffed between the pages. ‘Pass that over if you would so I can show you something.’

  I fetch it from the small bookshelf by her wardrobe and hand it over to her.

  My shift is finished now so I take a seat and she chats through her memories with me. All of her photographs are carefully glued to the thick card pages, each of them dated with captions in her elegant cursive handwriting. Such a life Martha had!

  She flicks through to the middle and strokes her hand over a very small photo with a frilled border, its colours muted with age. It shows a much younger Martha, her hair pressed in perfect waves, and a man with a Poirot moustache grinning broadly into the camera whilst leading a camel in the desert.

  ‘Cairo, that was our honeymoon. Oskar said that we should start our married life with an adventure and so we did. I was against it at first, too lavish. I protested, but Oskar would have none of it. He told me to take the trip, buy the shoes, eat the cake! This was his motto, and by golly did he live by it! So we took the trip. I arrived in Egypt a new bride and I left there an expectant mother. Adventure indeed. Oskar Rosenblatt, you sure knew how to show a girl a good time.’

  She gently closes her album and I put it back in its special place. While she then leafs through her newspaper, we chat about films and books and holidays, about work and house prices and airline strikes and everything else in between. I prune the window box for her, water the herbs, and take a few leaves for myself. I’m not in a hurry. There isn’t anything I need to do, nowhere I need to be. This is one huge difference I’ve found since I had to shut my own little restaurant, the relentless amount of time I’ve got. For the first time in my life, I have huge swathes of time. And I know that most people would think that this is enviable. But, actually, I hate it. I realise now that I was married to my role as restaurateur – so it feels like I’ve been dumped and deserted by an unrequited love. Because god knows I loved that restaurant; I gave it everything. I gave up everything else to focus on it completely, to give it my all. For me it really was till death do us part – although it was more like till debt do us part in the end…

  All this endless, aimless time has been one of the worst, and most unforeseen, results of going near bankrupt and losing my job and business. I no longer use my time productively, which makes me frustrated with myself even more. I use it to spend too long reading labels in little delis that I can’t afford to shop in and flicking through food channels and browsing cakes on Pinterest and Instagram and dragging my feet along the long walk home, which brings me past my locked-up restaurant. The curtains drawn, a ‘For Lease’ sign in the window. Being time-rich and cash-poor is zero fun. I need to be busy, to have a structure, a purpose, a goal. Before, I ate drank, ate, slept, bathed and burped my restaurant-baby. It consumed every waking moment. There were not enough minutes in the hour, not enough hours in the day. No time for myself, or my family, or my boyfriend, Ben. Well, that’s what he told me just before he left to chase his big break abroad. And now that everything is all over, with Ben and with my restaurant, I’m at a complete loss as what I’m supposed to be doing with myself.

  So at first, to put a silver lining on things, I thought, well, I’ll have oodles of time now to do all the stuff I couldn’t because I was working so damn long and hard. I can get fit, go on some dates, take up a new, life-enhancing hobby.

  But the truth is I’m no good with all this time on my hands. I don’t want to lift dumb-bells or sit in a pub with a stranger or learn how to paint in watercolour.

  All I want to do is chef. I doubt that’s ever going to change. And now that I can’t, well, killing time is killing me. What I had before was a very brief chance at heaven. I had a boyfriend I loved and a career that made me tingle with excitement. Every. Single. Day. Losing them has been hell. So I guess I’m stuck washing spuds in this purgatory until something else comes along for me.

  I stick on the kettle and make us both another peppermint tea.

  ‘Katie, I’m puzzled,’ says Martha, holding up her newspaper. ‘I need to a
sk you, what on earth is a “snowflake”?’

  ‘Snowflake?’ I repeat and shrug. Martha was a top city banker and she certainly hasn’t lost her marbles so I know it must something beyond the obvious. ‘What’s the context?’ I ask her.

  She holds out the newspaper to me. ‘Go to the back page, you’ll recognise that vile man. Jean-Michel Marchand. Complete narcissist if I ever saw one… He’s taken a full-page ad out. Shameless exhibitionist. I met him, once: tiny man, gigantic ego.’

  I turn to the back page. And sure enough, there he is. Jean-Michel, the most famous chef in the country, has taken out a full-page ad featuring his life-size face, so close up it’s as if he is really staring right back at me. In big bold letters across the top of the page reads, ‘Do YOU have what it takes to be Jean-Michel’s next Grand Chef?’

  I take a seat on the soft corner of Martha’s bed.

  Martha sits up and points to the small print under his chin. ‘See there at the bottom, it says “No home chefs or snowflakes need apply.” What on earth does he mean by that?’

  Wow. Jean-Michel is looking for a chef. Not any old chef. A Grand chef.

  ‘Do you know what he means, Katie?’

  I turn to answer her, peeling my eyes away from a face I’ve studied in recipe books and on television since the moment I knew that food was my future. ‘I can’t be sure, Martha, but I think it’s kind of a derogatory label for my generation. Some say that we can’t handle real life and we take offence to everything. So they call us “snowflakes” because they say that we think we’re special and unique and have an inflated sense of entitlement but don’t know what hard work is, so we melt easily under pressure.’