Once in a Lifetime

by Chrissie Manby

  Dani looked at the list of things she would be working on this shift: a full house for afternoon tea, two special birthday desserts for the evening’s dinner service, an anniversary cake for a couple celebrating their silver wedding anniversary … Dani rolled up her sleeves and got cracking.

  Chapter Three

  Though, in general, The Majestic’s staff got along quite happily, there was one member of the team who drove everyone bonkers. That was Cheryl the events manager. She was never seen without a clipboard (Dave wondered whether it was in fact part of her arm) and she was constantly poking her nose in where it wasn’t wanted.

  ‘With all due respect,’ she would say if anyone challenged her judgement, ‘I do have a degree in hospitality.’ And thus her word was final. Even if she was pronouncing on someone else’s area of expertise. Such as in the kitchen.

  Dave the chef refused to have anything to do with Cheryl after an incident during which she came into the restaurant and tasted a delicate consommé he was preparing for an event. Specifically, she tasted it without his permission, using a wooden spoon, which she allowed to fall back into the pot. She then had the cheek to suggest that Dave added more seasoning.

  After an altercation that almost ended in disciplinary action all round, Cheryl agreed that all future requests to the kitchen would go via Dani. Cheryl herself would venture no further than the serving hatch unless officially invited.

  She was at the serving hatch now, clipboard in hand.

  ‘Dani,’ said Cheryl. ‘I wonder if I could borrow you for a minute or two? There’s a customer here thinking of planning a birthday party celebration event.’ Cheryl never used two words when she could use four. ‘I said you’d be the one to talk to about the menu and the celebratory birthday party cake?’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  Dani quickly wiped the flour off her hands and followed Cheryl out into the dining room. As they walked, Cheryl briefed her.

  ‘I need you to understand that this is a very important VIP client and we hope to be doing much more business of this kind with him and his extended family in the future so it would be most expedient if you could …’

  For once, Dani didn’t even notice that Cheryl was doubling up on VIP and using ‘expedient’ in the wrong context again. She was staring at the man in the dining room.

  Cheryl’s ‘very important VIP’ customer had his back turned to the kitchen doors as he looked out of the restaurant’s vast windows to the grey sea beyond. Twenty-two years may have passed since Dani last saw him, and he had certainly made some sartorial changes since then – probably a good thing – but she recognised him at once. Her heart made a bid for escape through her mouth.

  ‘Nat?’ she asked, hardly trusting herself to say his name. ‘Nat Hayward?’

  He turned around. It was him.

  ‘Nat! No way!’

  Cheryl looked from Dani to her customer and back again as Nat’s face broke into a grin. Meanwhile, Dani felt as though she might be about to fall over. Her legs had turned to jelly. Ridiculous.

  ‘Dani Parker! You’re still in Newbay?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, desperately trying to act casual. ‘And, and … so are you?’

  ‘Just come back,’ he said. ‘Well, a few months ago actually. My dad’s … Oh, I’ll tell you later.’

  Cheryl was standing between them with her clipboard.

  ‘You two know each other?’ Cheryl asked.

  ‘We worked here together,’ said Nat. ‘Can you believe it?’

  ‘You worked here?’

  It was clear that Cheryl was surprised.

  ‘Just for a summer.’

  Nat of the Che Guevara T-shirt was long gone. His floppy fringe was just a memory. As was quite a bit of his hair, Dani observed. He was wearing a perfectly fitted navy blue blazer over his pristine blue jeans. He wore a pale pink shirt with a collar (he’d sworn that once he left Newbay for university, he would never wear a shirt with a collar again, let alone a pink one). On his feet were brown leather deck shoes – footwear about which he had always been so scathing. ‘Shoes for people who never go near a boat.’

  Nat’s family ran a fleet of pleasure boats out of Newbay harbour.

  ‘When was it, Dani? 1997?’ Nat asked.

  ‘’Ninety-six,’ she said.

  ‘I’d just finished school,’ said Nat to Cheryl. ‘I was waiting to go to university. You had another couple of years left to go, didn’t you?’

  Dani nodded. ‘A-Levels.’

  Nat continued. ‘We were waiting staff in this very restaurant for the summer season. We did all the weddings. I was hopeless.’

  ‘I’m sure you weren’t,’ said Cheryl politely.

  ‘No, I was. Always dropping things. Getting orders mixed up. Luckily, I had Dani here to rescue me, unless she’d been seconded by the pastry chef and spirited off to the kitchen. Where …’

  ‘I remain to this very day,’ Dani finished the sentence for him.

  ‘Gosh, it’s good to see you. It’s been a long time.’

  ‘Certainly has,’ said Dani.

  For a moment, holding each other’s gaze as though they were alone, they stood in silence. Yet there was so much to say. And most of it would be about the events of just one day.

  ‘A-hem,’ said Cheryl, who was clearly keen to get on with organising this very important VIP celebratory birthday party event. ‘Well, isn’t it lovely that you’ve met again? A good omen, I think. Shall we run through exactly what it is Mr Hayward wants from us here?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Dani.

  ‘It’s a thirtieth birthday celebration party,’ said Cheryl, flicking through the pages on her clipboard.

  ‘For my girlfriend,’ said Nat.

  ‘Oh.’

  Dani did her best not to look disappointed by the fact Nat had a girlfriend – though, of course he wasn’t single. Why would he be? – or surprised by the girlfriend’s age.

  ‘Her name is Lola.’

  ‘L-O-L-A Lola …’ Dani couldn’t help herself. They’d sung The Kinks’ song all the time that long-ago summer. Dave the chef had one of their CDs on repeat in the kitchen.

  Nat nodded.

  ‘Her dad loved the song. Which is supposedly about a transvestite, I know, but …’

  ‘Moving swiftly on …’ said Cheryl. ‘Mr Hayward’s celebratory birthday party event of eighteen invited guests and family members will be having dinner here in the restaurant, at the end of which they shall certainly be needing a celebratory birthday cake.’ Cheryl rustled through the papers attached to her clipboard again. ‘I have already shown Mr Hayward pictures of some of the cakes you have made in the past and he particularly likes the idea of a cake of the chocolate varietal.’

  ‘I know you make a good one,’ Nat said.

  ‘I hope I make a better one now,’ said Dani.

  ‘So,’ Cheryl continued. ‘A chocolate celebration cake …’

  ‘Three tiers with cream and ganache?’ Dani suggested. ‘Do you want a classic glossy covering, like a Viennese torte, or is there a theme you’d like me to try to represent in the decoration?’

  ‘Just a glossy covering and thirty gold candles?’ Nat suggested.

  ‘Good choice,’ said Dani. ‘Simple. Classy.’

  ‘Like your partner, I’m sure,’ Cheryl sucked up to her potential client. ‘Ms Parker will do her best to ensure that the aforementioned desired cake is exactly to your requirements.’ She turned to Dani. ‘The dimensions for a cake for eighteen people are …’

  ‘I know what they are,’ said Dani, suddenly needing to be somewhere else. Being in front of Nat like this, totally unprepared, was awkward to say the least. Being asked to make a cake for his girlfriend’s birthday was just surreal.

  ‘You’ve got the price in one of your spreadsheets I think. I’d better get back to the kitchen. Those éclairs won’t make themselves.’

  ‘It’s great to see you again,’ said Nat, reaching out to shake her hand.

  To s
hake her hand? Dani closed her eyes for just a second. If her sixteen-year-old self could have seen …

  ‘I’m a bit sticky,’ she said, snapping back from her reverie and waving her fingers at him.

  ‘I hope we catch up properly soon,’ Nat said.

  ‘Yes,’ Dani nodded. ‘I’ll see you around, I’m sure. Newbay’s not exactly huge.’

  ‘No,’ said Nat.

  ‘Mr Hayward, perhaps I can take you through the possibilities for celebratory floral arrangements now.’

  Cheryl was already whisking Nat back into the hotel’s cocktail bar, where she would run through the rest of the details over a pot of complimentary filter coffee and, possibly, if Nat’s budget was looking big enough, one of the kitchen’s delicious éclairs.

  As Dani made her way back to the kitchen, she glanced over her shoulder to see Nat one more time. Cheryl was still yakking away. But Nat was looking back at Dani with that smile. Just like he used to when they were sharing a private joke on a busy shift. Twenty-two years fell away.

  Chapter Four

  Nat Hayward.

  Dani knew who Nathan ‘Nat’ Hayward was long before they ended up on the same waiting team at The Majestic. He went to the boys’ grammar that was the ‘brother’ school to the girls’ High School Dani attended. From time to time, the two schools joined forces to put on musical extravaganzas that required players of both sexes. Starved of male attention, Dani signed up for every one.

  In the winter of 1995, when GCSEs still seemed a hundred years away, Dani was in the chorus of a production of HMS Pinafore. Nat was in the joint school orchestra providing the music. She noticed him at once and kept on noticing him. He looked so cool despite his slightly too-small sixth-form blazer and prefect’s tie. Dani missed her cue a couple of times because her attention wandered from the action on stage to the orchestra pit.

  On the last night of the play’s run, the cast and orchestra were all invited to a party hosted by ‘Call Me Mike’, the drama teacher from the boys’ school who had brought the production together. Dani spent the evening planning how she would talk to the shy but gorgeous ‘Nat the Oboe guy’ but by the time she worked out her opening line, he was gone.

  Then there he was again six months later: the only boy on The Majestic’s summer weekend waiting team. He sat at the back of the first training meeting, with his fringe hanging over his eyes. Still shy. Still gorgeous. As soon as she saw him, Dani knew she was going to love her new job.

  She was right. Every working shift felt like playtime, with in-jokes and pranks a-plenty. The team worked together and socialised together, at weekends heading from the restaurant to the nearby Mariner’s pub, where the landlord would serve anyone who looked older than twelve. The lock-ins at The Mariner’s were legendary. Dani told her parents that her Saturday shifts at The Majestic didn’t end until one in the morning and hoped they would already be asleep as she weaved her way upstairs when she got home.

  Less than eight hours later, Dani might be back at the hotel for another shift but no hangover could dull the prospect of another day with Nat and the gang. She always bounded into work, as though she would have paid for the privilege of being there. Just being near him.

  Over the years, she’d thought about him, of course. But after that summer when he was waiting to go to university and she had two years of A-levels ahead, she only occasionally heard actual news of him. He was a superstar at university, just as he had been at school. He was definitely on course for a first. He was playing oboe in a radical, experimental jazz band. He had a girlfriend. Seemed serious about her. They’d moved to London together. He got a great job …

  Everything she knew about Nat had come to her second-hand. She wondered what he’d heard about her in return.

  Dani had flunked her A-levels. She stayed behind in Newbay for another year for re-sits. Eventually went to her fifth-choice university. She changed course three times. She got mixed up with the wrong crowd. Got herself a boyfriend called Lloyd, who chipped away at her personality like he was trying to sculpt her into a mouse. Their relationship made it difficult for her to concentrate on her academic work. Then she got pregnant at twenty-one and didn’t finish her degree anyway.

  By the time Flossie was born, Lloyd was already off the scene. Dani had to move back in with her parents. Then Dani’s dad died suddenly of a heart attack and it was just her and Flossie and her mum. Dani had no idea life could be so hard.

  It was easier now, Dani admitted. Flossie was nearly launched. She liked her mum as well as loved her. That helped with all three of them living in such close quarters. The Majestic management treated her well. Most days, she thought she was lucky. Then …

  Nat’s visit to the restaurant was one of those moments when the life Dani might have had edged aside the lid on its battered coffin and peeped out like the ghost of summer past. A summer past that Nat had described merely in terms of their working together.

  Getting ready for bed that night, Dani stood in front of the bathroom mirror and gave herself an instant face-lift by pulling the skin back from her jaw. She wondered what Nat had made of their strange reunion. Was she on his mind as he was on hers? Dani frowned. If she was on Nat’s mind, he would be thinking ‘dodged a bullet there’. He had a thirty-year-old girlfriend.

  Thirty years old. Nat’s girlfriend Lola – who was most definitely not a transvestite – was ten years younger than he was. Eight years younger than Dani.

  Of course, at thirty it wasn’t as though Nat’s girlfriend was really all that young at all but Dani was still a little surprised. Eighteen-year-old Nat would have claimed that he wanted a peer. A true partner in life.

  Though being thirty didn’t mean Lola wasn’t Nat’s intellectual peer. A thirty-year-old wasn’t a child. It was the age at which loads of people were marrying, becoming parents, planning to be partners at big city law firms … There were thirty-year-old surgeons, CEOs and politicians. To have attracted Nat’s attention, Lola must be one of that breed of thirty-year-old. A high achiever. Someone who was going places. A businesswoman. Where did he meet her? What did she do? What did she look like?

  Nat Hayward’s girlfriend was about to turn thirty. That meant that when Nat and Dani were working at The Majestic together back in 1996, Lola was just eight years old. While Dani and Nat were listening to obscure indie bands no one outside the band members’ families had really heard of, Lola was probably prancing up and down in her parents’ sitting room, pretending to be one of the Spice Girls. Which of the Spice Girls would Nat have been attracted to? It was hard to imagine that the Nat Dani once knew would have been attracted to any of them.

  But time moves on and people change. Every cell in our bodies is renewed every seven years. Isn’t that the theory? Nat wasn’t the eighteen-year-old Dani had been in love with. Just as she was no longer Dani the sixteen-year-old who was going to conquer the world. She was Dani the thirty-eight-year-old, single mother to a sixteen-year-old. Who was just at that moment coming in. And trying hard not to make any noise as she did so. Flossie was late home.

  ‘Flossie?’ Dani poked her head around the bathroom door as Flossie tried to get upstairs without drawing her mother’s or grandmother’s attention.

  ‘Mum,’ Flossie put on a slightly manic smile. ‘I thought you’d be in bed.’

  ‘I’ll bet you did. What time is it?’ Dani asked.

  ‘It’s late, I know. But the bus was really slow tonight. It’s high season. The town is full of pensioners who need help getting on and off. The driver kept having to put the ramp down. It took forever.’

  As excuses went, that was a new one.

  ‘What did you get up to tonight?’ Dani asked.

  ‘We were round at Xanthe’s again? Revising?’ Flossie’s rising tone made the statements into questions.

  ‘Were her parents there?’

  ‘Later they were. They went to a party for a bit.’

  ‘Was Jed with you?’

  ‘For a little while. He met u
p with some of his mates.’

  ‘At the pub?’

  Flossie shrugged. ‘I don’t know?’

  That rising tone again.

  ‘You didn’t go with him, did you?’

  Flossie shook her head. ‘No. I know I’m not allowed. Besides, too much revision …’

  Dani was pretty sure Flossie was lying but she didn’t press her on it.

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ she said instead. ‘Don’t stay up too late, will you, sweetheart? You can do too much cramming, you know.’

  ‘I won’t. I’m really tired,’ said Flossie. Dani went to kiss her. Flossie quickly turned her face so that Dani caught her on the ear. Trying to make sure Dani didn’t smell any fumes, she guessed.

  ‘Drink a glass of water before you go to bed,’ Dani suggested.

  Flossie nodded. ‘I will.’ Then she smiled the smile that always melted Dani’s heart. ‘I only had two halves of lager,’ she suddenly admitted. ‘At Xanthe’s house. And only because it’s nearly my birthday.’

  ‘At which point you will still be two years off being allowed to drink legally.’

  ‘Not in France.’

  Flossie had an answer for anything.

  ‘We’re not in France,’ Dani reminded her.

  ‘Perhaps we could pretend we are?’ Flossie said in a terrible French accent.

  Dani couldn’t help laughing. Oh, her beautiful daughter. Her beautiful funny daughter. She could always find a way to make Dani smile. Sometimes Dani couldn’t believe that after all the things she had got wrong in her life, she had managed to make something so right.

  Chapter Five

  The following day was Flossie’s sixteenth birthday. As was the family tradition, the birthday girl got to have breakfast in bed. Flossie requested pancakes. She’d had pancakes every year since she was six. This year they had to be vegan. Fortunately, Dani was well versed in adapting just about any recipe in line with food allergies and preferences. Vegan pancakes were no trouble at all.