For Once In My Life: An absolutely perfect laugh-out-loud romantic comedy

by Colleen Coleman

  My name echoes around the room and a sea of hands fly upwards.

  ‘Looks like a unanimous decision.’ Mark shrugs one shoulder at me. ‘Lily? Are you happy to meet with McArthur as acting Editor in Chief?’

  Am I happy? Am I ready?

  Mark looks down at the watch on his wrist. ‘Lily? What do you say?’

  I hear a soft meow from Chaplin as he sidles up against my leg. I scoop him up and watch the smiles break the faces of my colleagues. It is the first time I’ve seen everybody smile. There are some people here I’ve never really seen at all.

  ‘Lily? What do you say?’ Mark asks me again; he needs an answer. We all do.

  ‘I say okay. I say let’s do this.’

  And the room erupts in applause.

  Chaplin in the crook of my elbow, I climb up and stand on the Editor in Chief’s desk. My new desk.

  ‘Right, this is a new page for the Newbridge Gazette. Everything begins now. We are going to save this paper. We will restore it to its former glory. Exceed its former glory.’

  Mark grits his teeth, flexing his jaw. ‘With respect, Lily, I think we need you to go in there and negotiate our redundancies. This is the ideal time to get out. Local papers are a thing of the past. We can’t compete with social media and national news streams. McArthur knows all about our plummeting sales, she’s here to shut us down. And, I for one, am happy to take the money and run.’

  But there’s no way I’m giving up now, now way I’m backing down.

  ‘Then you should,’ I tell him sharply. ‘You should take the money and run, Mark, because we have a lot to do and we can’t carry anyone who’s not with us wholeheartedly.’

  He runs his fingers through his hair, ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’d love it if someone came with a magic wand and could turn this whole situation around. I like it here, I grew up in this town, but we can’t fight the inevitable; local newspapers just don’t have a place in today’s world. It’s over. The internet is not going away. How can we compete with national news, world news, fake news…’

  ‘That’s exactly it!’ I cry. ‘People are getting tired of knowing who to trust online, tired of being bombarded with news that doesn’t hold meaning for them personally. Society is looking much more inwardly, buying local, supporting small business and seeking out ways to invest in their immediate surroundings. In-depth, factual, accurate reporting, that uses official sources as its basis is what they pay for and what we deliver. You can get your Facebook friend’s ill-informed opinion for no charge. You can read conflicting internet stories all day, every day and still not know what to believe. We are potentially at the start of a revolution that could see the local press have a resurgence. This could be the most important time for the Gazette yet!’

  I survey the dozen staff members in front of me, their faces full of anticipation. Or is that trepidation? Why is it that contrary feelings often look exactly the same?

  ‘So, by committing to working your asses off to save this paper and its 126 years of history, you are completing a circle that brings innumerable benefits to the people who live and work in your community.’

  Silence. Lip-biting. Thoughtful inhalations and wrist-grabbing.

  ‘Oh – and just to clarify, the Gazette has no money at all. If this paper folds, we’re all out on our ears. There’ll be no redundancy, no severance package on the table to help cushion the blow. No craft beer kick-start. No cash for pizza and FIFA in your pants. Just a goodbye and good luck as they turn out the lights and close the door for good.’

  I wait, holding my breath in my chest, expecting some to bow their heads, murmur their apologies and shuffle backwards out the door. But they don’t. Nobody does. Not even Mark. Not even the gum-chewing temp. I raise my eyebrow at her, just so she’s sure.

  ‘I’m Jasmine,’ she says as she steps forward, reaching up and tickling under Chaplin’s chin. ‘I knew that email was urgent. I just hated Gareth’s guts,’ she tells me with a wink, opening both hands to receive Chaplin as I climb down from the desk.

  ‘Well, Jasmine, great to have you on board,’ I tell her as I hand her Mr Clark’s purring little fluff ball and knit my fingers together as I take in just what happened. ‘So what does everyone else think? Are you with me?’

  Shrugs, smiles, nodding, resounding yeahs rise from the huddle.

  Oh-kay. She’s staying. They’re all staying. Maybe I underestimated them. Maybe they love this place as much as I do. Or, more likely, they’re skint. Either way, it doesn’t matter why they’re here, we’re in it together. Ready or not.

  I’ve convinced them to stay and that this place is worth fighting for, but can I convince McArthur? Is it already too late? Wanting to save the paper is only the beginning, how we’re going do that is another matter entirely.

  My hand grabs the back of my neck and I suddenly feel a little dizzy. I think I got carried away; I think I’ve set our sights too high; I think I’ve just climbed into a pressure cooker and sealed myself inside.

  I spot Mary through the glass panels. She gives me a thumbs-up and a wink. There’s a look on her face that tells me she’s watched this whole thing play out. I stand, dazed and overwhelmed a moment. Until I hear a knock on the glass and Mary claps her hands together as if to tell me to get a move on. I blink myself alert and clap my hands in the same gesture.

  ‘Right, folks, tidy up your areas, we’re expecting the owner of the entire company and some very important people anytime now. And I don’t know what they will ask of us, but we have to be ready, we have to show them that whatever it takes, we’re prepared to do it. There is still hope, guys, but we’ve got to fight.’

  Mark cranes his neck towards the car park. ‘Black Mercedes just pulled up. Two guys getting out the back… one’s young, one’s bald… and now a small, silver-haired woman.’

  That’s McArthur and her team.

  Here comes the storm.

  Four

  McArthur and her team burst in without greeting or introduction, parading past us all with stacks of files and folders. They head directly to the conference room shutting the door firmly behind them. They’re scary. This is scary. I take a long, deep breath and try to summon the courage to point myself in the right direction and put one foot in front of the other in their wake. I’m the Editor in Chief. It’s my job now to do stuff like this. The whole staff is counting on me. They put their faith in me. I can’t let them down at the very first hurdle! I repeat affirmations over and over in my head, as advised by Tony Robbins, Rhonda Byrne and all the other Law of Attraction guru books my mum left under the sink in the cottage loo.

  This is going to work, this is going to work, this is going to work…

  But despite signalling the universe, what if it doesn’t work? What if all my pleas and promises fall on deaf ears and they shut us down anyway?

  Well, then something else will turn up, something else will turn up, something else will turn up…

  But it might not be in local news or within commuting distance from the cottage or with enough salary to cover my basics. I’ve already accepted two pay cuts in the last few years, which makes me the only Editor in Chief to date to take on more responsibility for less cash. But still, this isn’t about the money. I don’t need much to live on here in Newbridge these days. I live simply, I eat simply, I dress simply, i.e. I eat the same stuff in the same order wearing roughly the same clothes week on week.

  I wasn’t always this way, as my lovingly catalogued archive of Jolie magazines would suggest. I used to pore over them, often over the kitchen table with my granny, finding inspiration for everything, from how to make home-made preserves to how to wear animal print without looking like mutton, and from achieving frizz-free hair to in-depth features on how people overcame tremendous obstacles to achieve their wildest dreams – housewives that became opera singers and gap-year students that found ways to raise thousands for charity. Jolie magazine was my absolute favourite. My gran bought me a subscription every year for my b
irthday, so I never missed one. I think that’s why she encouraged me to go for the job at the Gazette in the first place, that maybe it could lead to writing for a glossy publication like Jolie one day. She was sweet like that, always believing that I could do well, that things would work out if I kept trying my best.

  But so much has changed since then. After my disastrous wedding day – heavily inspired by the beautiful weddings I’d seen in Jolie – I dropped out of socialising altogether, for two main reasons. Adam and Hannah were my closest friends and the only ones I used to go out with and my granny became ill, so I stayed close by to care for her until she slipped away, one golden autumn evening, in her sleep. I didn’t renew my Jolie subscription. I’d no real need for new lipsticks or sky-high stilettos or reading up on must-see holiday destinations. Instead of making me happy, it just made me feel worse. So now my weekends roll like this: I read books, I sleep, I potter around the cottage. My only real indulgences are chocolate and stationery. I cannot resist a creamy caramel heart or a hazelnut swirl or a pretty new notebook, but what I do need is a purpose, a job, a place I belong. Because the Gazette is the only slice of life I’ve really got going on. We have to show McArthur that, whatever it takes, we’re prepared to make the changes and put this paper back in business. I accept my life isn’t much, but it’s comfortable and safe and it is mine. All mine. And without the Gazette, I don’t know what it would look like. And I do not like the idea of that.

  I slope off to cool down and check myself out in the full-length communal toilet mirror. I’m not strutting catwalk confidence today. Jolie readers worldwide would recoil in horror. I finger-comb my hair and pin it into a makeshift chignon with a refashioned paper clip. My face is okay as long as I keep smiling. Torso will do, draped in standard-issue office wear: light pink blouse, black jacket and skirt suit. But things go downhill from there – my tights are ripped, and in terms of projecting the right message, I may as well go in with spinach stuck between my teeth. I could slip them off and turn them round so that the ladder is at the back of my calves and I might just get away with it and go unnoticed, but I then risk making the hole much bigger in the process of taking them on and off again. No, too risky. I rummage in my bag for inspiration and, lo and behold, a black felt-tip marker finds its way into my grasp. I smile at myself in the mirror. Something did turn up. If I can’t fix my tights, I’ll have to blend the ladder into the background. And so I do what any girl would do in a professional do or die situation: I colour in my leg.

  I’m impressed with my black-out camouflage artistry. The ladder is now undetectable, unless you’re on your hands and knees scrutinising my hosiery. And if it gets to that, then the Newbridge Gazette is well and truly done for.

  As satisfied as I can be with my appearance, I head out of the toilets, but instead of taking a seat outside the Conference Room, I pace up and down the office, restless with knowing just how important the next hour or so is. Jobs like this are rare outside the cities. Even more rare for the likes of me as I’m not a ‘proper’ journalist – as in formally qualified. What I am is a super-nosy administrator with lots of energy who happens to be passionate about reading and writing. I left school with a fistful of C grades and a report that celebrated my averageness. And as JJ is now retired and Gareth has jumped ship, I have no solid references to go forward with.

  So starting over somewhere else is not an option; I need this job. I need to convince McArthur that there’s life in this paper yet.

  I brainstorm possibilities, what can we do? What can be done? I sit back down, take out my little notebook and start scribbling down ideas and bullet points.

  But I don’t get very far because I hear raised voices outside and look out the window down to the car park. A tall, dark, messy-haired man is waving an arm in the air whilst in deep conversation with a gesticulating ponytailed blonde in yoga pants. Something in the way they are shaking their heads while talking to the sky, to the ground, to their own hands, tells me they are not arguing over a parking space. It looks heated, emotional. The blonde girl’s fingers are set claw-like, as if she’s about to pounce on him and tear him apart. A security guard emerges on to the car park and I’m relieved someone is around to de-escalate. I have to say, this kind of public argument isn’t rare outside our local pub, The Black Boar, at closing time on a Friday night, but it is extremely unusual in an office car park in broad daylight midweek.

  I turn from the window; I don’t like rows and I don’t like playing voyeur to other peoples’ misery. I was once the girl that everyone was gawping at; I felt every blatant pitiful stare and every uncomfortable darting glance. On the street, in the supermarket, in the café, people I hardly knew gave me unsolicited advice about ‘moving on’ and ‘bouncing back’. Yet people I had known for years and who I considered to be my friends avoided me altogether. Maybe they didn’t know what to say, or maybe they felt they had to take sides and chose Adam and Hannah over me. But I’ve learnt to shut this particular circuit of thought down. No point. No resolution. No joy. That’s why I would rather run a story on the have-a-go hero that wrestled a seagull to the ground when it attacked a one-armed man’s chips. I like that kind of thing. It makes me smile. Reminds me to look out for the often unreported best in people. And I figure I can’t be the only one who feels that way.

  I hear the door click and watch the handle turn from the inside. The sight of it sends my nerves into sudden overdrive – I want this so much, my stomach is sloshing like a washing machine; a loud, annoying washing machine that needs servicing. Dear God, I hope she can’t hear it.

  McArthur’s straight silver bob rounds the door. ‘I have to say, you don’t look much like a Gareth. Where is he then?’ she booms in a smoky, no-nonsense voice.

  I straighten my back and swallow, trying to keep my voice steady and in control, not like I’m delivering further damning news about how chaotic and crazy things have become. ‘Gareth’s gone. He walked out on us this morning. I’d like to say I’m sorry to see him go, but, actually, leaving us is the best thing Gareth has ever done for this paper. So, I’ve stepped in to meet you instead.’

  She narrows her eyes to study my face and I feel her try to size me up.

  I thrust my hand out in an attempt to avert her gaze from my torn tights. ‘My name is Lily Buckley. Acting Editor in Chief as of this morning.’

  ‘Right, the plot thickens. I mean, does anyone know what’s actually going on around here from one minute to the next?’ She sighs and turns in to the office, still ranting with her back to me. ‘The office is clearly as out of order as the figures. This paper is just one giant headless chicken…’

  I follow her in and sit on the chair in the middle of the floor, now facing McArthur as she sits behind the long walnut table. A stern-looking man is already standing to her left with an overflowing stack of papers in front of him. He does not even acknowledge me.

  McArthur glares at me and knits her fingers together. ‘Look, I’m not here to pull any punches. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but the way things stand, I can’t see an alternative. You hire people to run something, you trust them, you leave them to it and what do they do? Strip out all that was good and replace it with dull, boring, irrelevant junk.’ She flicks a silver strand away from her face. ‘Well, today that stops. I’ve brought in my most trusted advisors to work out what the hell’s been going on and where the hell we go from here.’

  I nod to this tour de force, the real-life Mags McArthur with her swirling platinum bob and dark plum lips. No wrinkles. No eyebrows. Her pale blue eyes peer over the mounds of her cheekbones like a jungle cat. And I then nod towards the guy behind her – smart blue suit, heavy-set, bald, mid-fifties – who doesn’t look up at me at all but sighs and rubs his nose with the back of his hand. He’s immersed in stacks of cardboard folders, two laptop screens, a calculator and an open filing cabinet. His entire hairless head is glistening with perspiration.

  ‘That’s Jennings. He’s my accountant and a dog with
a bone right now.’

  Jennings and McArthur continue to flick through ledgers and print-outs from accounts, crossing out entire pages with red pen, squinting and circling tiny typed numbers, lots of head shaking, lots of lip biting. All I can do is sit still and wait. Which is really hard and awkward. I cross and uncross my legs. Try not to pick my nails or breathe in an annoying way. Which is hard when you’re gasping for air in a room that is too stuffy and too quiet. How long is this going to go on for?

  ‘Where the hell is Christopher, our oh-so promising transformational consultant?’ McArthur queries Jennings.

  ‘Last I saw, he had some rather urgent-looking business with Victoria in the car park.’ Jennings pushes out his bottom lip. ‘Looked… and sounded… rather intense from where I was standing.’

  He must be referring to the man arguing in the car park. Who knew that was the transformational consultant who was supposed to save the paper?

  McArthur rolls her eyes and shakes her head with blatant exasperation. ‘All that nonsense belongs in the bedroom, not the boardroom.’

  My sentiments exactly. I think I’m going to enjoy working closely with Mags McArthur. If I get the chance, that is.

  ‘Christopher claims that he is desperate to move up the ladder, totally committed to this process and then we get this.’ She signals to an empty chair beside her. ‘Anyway, back to business.’ She socks her fist into her other hand and glances down at my personnel file open in front of her, a snigger on her lips. ‘Liliana Bluebell Buckley.’

  A flush of red rushes into my cheeks. I hate that my mother gave me this ridiculous middle name, like she was naming a pet or a doll or something else that only reflected her own whims and quirks. Bluebell was actually supposed to be my first name, but after a tense stand-off, thankfully my grandmother talked my mother out of it on the steps of the birth registration office. Her other top choices were Infinity and Aura. No thought to the fact that I’d be branded by this name for the rest of my life; even as a second name I’ve never quite got used to the interminable wincing from everyone in authority – passport controllers to bank clerks. Being taken seriously in this industry without university qualifications is tricky enough without this ‘fanciful name’ distraction. People squirm when they read it aloud to me. Correction, we squirm together.