new, laminated menu I’d created.
When Richard summoned me into his office on the Monday, I bounced in ready for the good news.
‘Hey, Lucy.’ Richard pushed himself off a filing cabinet where he stood, reading, and walked to his whiteboard like a country boy on a catwalk.
Richard was everything you’d see in an R.M. Williams catalogue. He was perfectly styled strawberry-blond hair and designer stubble, overpriced plaid shirts and moleskin pants, topped with pointy-toed boots that had never seen a day’s work on the land. Looking at him, I wondered when moleskins got to be so tight? Jesus. It certainly wasn’t offensive, and he was popular with the school mums, but …
‘Come in.’
‘You rang?’ I asked.
He waved me in. ‘Come, come. Sit down.’
Good thing, too, because I’d been on my feet all day. I flopped into the chair opposite his desk like an inflatable air dancer at a car yard sale and threw my head back. Richard laughed and closed the door with a quiet click. His office was everything I remembered about being in school. Awards covered the wall, along with drawings, notes on the whiteboard, and a roll of scratch and sniff stickers on his desk. Grape was my favourite sticker.
‘How was your day?’ Richard breezed past and sat down. His chair squeaked as he leant back, arms behind his head.
I yawned.
‘I’m hearing you.’ He laughed. ‘It’s been one shit fight after another today. Parents here, broken windows there, throw in a few detentions just to keep me on my toes.’
‘No, it’s good.’ I waved a hand. ‘It’s just been a big weekend.’
‘Mine was a madhouse.’ He shuffled papers, before handing me a menu. ‘So, the school council went through the new menu submissions Friday night last.’
‘I’ve been thinking about that.’ The menu I held wasn’t the one I’d produced, nor was it the one we’d been using this week. A sinking feeling settled in my stomach.
‘You have?’ he asked.
‘Well, not just the menu, really, the whole process.’ Talk, Lucy, talk. Sell it to him like you used to sell cakes.
‘Okay.’ That had caught his attention. Pen clicking, he leant in and opened to a page of his diary. I took a deep breath and jumped.
‘You can’t implement this. You discuss healthy eating in classrooms, and looking after our bodies, but then you pick a menu with doughnuts, cakes, slices, lolly bags, pies and pasties. Even if we’re offering apples, or a single grainy sandwich, I don’t know any kid who would pick the healthy option over a doughnut. Hell, I wouldn’t even pick the brown bread.’
Richard scribbled notes quickly. ‘Right.’
‘My menu is all healthy, low sugar, homemade, and it’s low waste, which helps the budget—’ I pulled out my phone to remind him.
‘Luce.’
‘—and it’s helping to promote the guidelines we teach. I’m really excited about everything it can do for us.’
‘Lucy. It’s been decided already.’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘We’ve already given this the go-ahead.’ He opened the document I’d emailed him. ‘Yours was described as … too much of a radical change.’
‘That’s not bad, though, shaking things up.’ I sat a bit taller. ‘It’s good. Change is good. Who Moved My Cheese? and all that.’
‘It’ll involve a lot of training,’ he reasoned.
‘Won’t somebody please think of the children?’ I joked. I was bombing, badly, a deflated balloon washing down a dirty drain somewhere.
‘Lucy, we can’t.’ Richard sat back. ‘As much as I admire your work, I just can’t. We’ve gone with Elouise for head of canteen, and this is her menu.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’m sorry, Luce. I know you worked hard on it.’
‘No problem.’ I nodded. ‘That’s understandable.’
‘Are you sure?’
Not really, I was about an inch away from throwing a shoe. ‘It’s fine, really.’
This was a sign.
Things had to change. After Edith’s cake and the breakup with Seamus, this was beginning to look a lot like bad luck arriving in threes. Except, if I chose to look at it differently, it was the universe lining circumstance up and pushing me in a direction that made me little bit tingly, excited, and a whole lot nervous. Making decisions on the spur of the moment was not my thing. In fact, it frightened the life out of me. However, people do like to tell us we should do something that scares us every day.
After sitting quietly for a few moments, Richard looking on as if he wanted me to say something, anything, I stood and handed him back the menu.
‘Richard, thank you for allowing me this job for the past three years,’ I said.
His face fell. ‘No, Lucy, that’s not what this is at all.’
‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘But I think my time here is done.’
‘What?’
‘I’m probably ready to move on to other things, so it’s good timing, really.’
Richard wasn’t convinced. ‘Well, could we maybe catch up and talk about this over a drink? Outside the more rigorous confines of the school? I’m sure we could work something out.’
‘Perhaps not.’ I smoothed my shirt down and clasped at the door handle. ‘Goodbye … and thank you.’
Relief washed over me as I skipped out the front door. I felt like I now had all the time in the world, and a thousand plans to enact. I wasn’t worried, but excited. My brain was awash with possibilities. Recipes I’d once cooked regularly were flipping up on rotation like an old jukebox as I turned left down High Street towards the general store.
A jacaranda tree, which did its best to hide the local church, smelt sweeter and seemed a brighter purple today. Even leaf litter on wet and muddy footpaths couldn’t dampen my mood. Cars pootled past slowly, in and out of the farm supplies shop, and on towards the general store, where I was headed. I threw a few dollars over the counter for coffee and a newspaper, collected my mail, and headed home.
With a diary, pens, pencils, and paper, I spread myself across the lounge-room floor and scribbled out a rough plan. Not that it was hugely elaborate and, really, amounted to writing, “See what happens” on a piece of paper, but there were some things that needed doing.
One of the best things about this house was the kitchen. Small, yes, but it was functional, and we’d been able to secure a commercial permit about eight months before Oliver left. It had since lapsed, but I made a note to get everything operating again. If I was truly going to succeed at this cake business, I was going to need that first and foremost.
I called those who’d made enquiries, chatted about designs and dates and, soon, had a few bookings in the diary. The fact they were all friends, or friends of friends, didn’t bother me. After all, word of mouth was the best form of advertisement, good or bad.
Later that night, I woke to a knock at the front door. I’d fallen asleep on the floor, pencil in hand, pizza and garlic bread stuck to my cheek. A slice fell back into the box unceremoniously, and I scrubbed at my face with a napkin as I opened the front door.
‘Oliver.’ I stepped out onto the veranda, which creaked under foot. ‘Hey.’
‘How are you?’ He fiddled with an orange envelope in his hand. His hands were crusted with paint and stain, fingernails full of dirt.
I