Read Online One Step Closer to You by Alice Peterson - Free Book Online Page A

university I was lost as to what I wanted to do with my life. In the end, I enrolled on a one-year Montessori teacher-training course just off Oxford Street. It was hard work, practical and written exams at the end of the year, but I still managed to keep up my drinking and smoking habits full-time, rolling out of bed when my alarm clock shrilled at me, head pounding, only to be cured by another coffee and cigarette at breakfast. I passed my exams and found work, teaching children atBarn Owls Nursery in Earls Court. I enjoyed playing games and singing alphabet songs with the children – it seems like another world now. I gave up work after giving birth to Louis, though always intended to return to teaching. After my break-up I couldn’t go back. It reminded me too much of my past. I needed something new.
    During my unorthodox interview at the café I felt intimidated by Jean. He sat me down and began to describe how he had cooked all over the world. ‘America was like walking into my television set, Polly, it was as if I were on
Miami Vice
. Have you been there?’
    I shook my head, staring at my CV placed in front of him that surely showed an underachiever. As to my travelling experiences, well, I’d been stoned in France and drunk in Thailand, so drunk that I’d had a blackout for three days, waking up to find an old Thai lady trying to force me to drink some awful herb tea. Jean went on to tell me that he’d left school when he was thirteen to make his own way in the world. ‘My father, he said I could leave school if I work, not sit around doing, what is it you say …’ He clicked his fingers until it came to him, ‘sweet Fanny Adams. All I wanted to do was be a chef. And you Polly, did you enjoy school?’ he asked, finally flicking through my CV, looking fairly uninterested.
    ‘I wasn’t an A-grade student,’ I confided, realising there was little point pretending, my nerves finally subsiding. ‘I wrote, “Happy Christmas” on my maths mock exam paper.Got 3 per cent for that. Apparently that was for writing my name and the correct date.’
    That was when Jean and I clicked. ‘You’re funny, Polly. You make even Mary-Jane laugh, no mean feat,’ he said, gesturing to her chuckling at the sink in her Marigolds, ‘but is your cooking as bad as your mathematics?’
    I smiled at that, before shaking my head vigorously. ‘I can bake cakes, biscuits, pancakes, meringues, you name it, I can do it. I’ve loved cooking since I was a child, I’ve just never had this opportunity, so if you’ll let me …’
    I watched as Jean scrunched my CV into a tiny ball and threw it over his shoulder. ‘I’ll give you a trial run. When can you start?’
    *
    Almost four years on and I’m still working here, partly because I love the job and partly because Jean allows me to be flexible, working my hours around Louis. My role is to bake the cakes (we have a selection of three, daily) and I serve the lunches and chat to the locals, all part of the job since it’s a goldfish bowl here; there are no doors to hide behind since it’s open-plan. I have to pinch myself, knowing I’m so lucky to be here, although I worked so hard in my one-month trial to prove to Jean I deserved a chance. I sweated at the oven and put so much passion into my food, telling myself I had to make this work. I’ll never forget when Jean tasted my chocolate chestnut torte and said, ‘Pure, undiluted chocolate heaven. Trial over, Polly.The job is officially yours!’ I threw my arms around him and Mary-Jane clapped.
    Being here has made me fall in love with baking all over again. When I’m rubbing butter into flour to make a breadcrumb mixture I find it therapeutic; it takes me back to my happy childhood memories, cooking mince pies with Mum or apple crumble with Hugo.
    I take a file out from the shelf. The first cake is a chocolate layer cake with icing. As I sift the flour, soda and salt into a mixing bowl my mind wanders to Ben. Since I went