The Funny Thing about Norman Foreman by Julietta Henderson (e book reader online txt) 📕

actually felt like they were going to fall down any minute, I just grabbed a handful of material and twisted it up and tucked it into the back of my underpants. Then I put on the smallest of all the white jackets and it was so big that when I saw my reflection in the door of the tumble dryer I looked like a fridge with a couple of black and white checked legs sticking out the bottom. Like someone had been squashed underneath me. But James said, you’ll do lad, and I thought, well, maybe I look OK.

He definitely looked a lot more like a proper chef than I did when he put on his outfit, but he said nae bother, and there wasnae any more time to worry about it because it was a fair bet Slim’s mum’s ninetieth birthday party wasn’t going to kick on so time was of the essence. But then he said wait a sec, and rummaged through the dryer again and found a couple of crumpled-up black chef caps and told me to put one on my wee scone. But even when he pulled it down right over my ears to make it fit better it still didn’t look as good as the one on his scone. Because with all his hair sticking out every which way his head looked like it was made for a cap to top it off. Mine just looked like it was trying to get away from it. And even if I’d had a Post-it with me so I could write down what might actually happen if your head did try to run away from your hat, I wouldn’t have been able to. Because time was of the essence and because I was so nervous and excited I felt like I might be about to wee those big old chef’s pants right off my legs.

So then James got down on one knee and put his hands on my shoulders and goes, right. This is it, lad. Are ye ready? And even though he had hold of a couple of handfuls of scabs that were in the middle of peeling off, having James hold on to me for a second or two actually felt really, really nice. Like if I stuck with him there was no way anything bad was going to happen, no matter what. Nae bother at all. Then he let go of my shoulders and goes, just remember, Norman, head down, eyes front, walk with a purpose. No guts, no glory, eh? When James said guts it sounded like gootz and I’d never been so scared and happy at the same time in my whole entire life.

James said that the thing about a uniform is that when you’re in one people think you belong. So if you do what people are expecting someone who wears that uniform to do, then nobody is going to even look at you twice. At least that was part of what he said when we were sneaking up the back stairs and into the kitchen of the Whisky-a-Go-Go Gentlemen’s Club. The rest I couldn’t really hear, but I got enough to get that because I was dressed like I worked in a kitchen James wanted me to act like I worked in a kitchen. However that was.

I’d never been in a gentlemen’s club before or actually even heard of one, come to think of it, so of course that means I’d never been into any kitchens of any gentlemen’s clubs either. But all I know is that place wasn’t like any kitchen I’d ever seen before, which wasn’t many, but still. It looked like it might be bigger than our entire house, and even though I had my head right down and I was walking as fast as I could I counted at least five massive stoves.

James had hold of the back of my chef’s jacket and he was pushing me ahead of him, so I couldn’t have stopped walking even if I wanted to, which I definitely didn’t. He was whispering stuff into my ear like, steady boyo and steady now lad and don’t stop now Norman, ye wee champ, and it was funny because even though it was practically deafening in there with all the yelling and pot banging and dish clattering I could hear him as clear as anything.

We kept walking, and my heart was banging against my chest so hard I could feel the scabs rattling and I was scared it was going to bust me right out of my disguise and rat us out to Slim’s bouncers any minute. James’s hand was still on my back but then he started pushing me to go a bit faster and I could see he was aiming me at two big white doors with little windows in them. I still didn’t know much more about kitchens, because I’d had my head down most of the time, but I did know that looked like a way out.

When I heard someone yell out, oi! you two! really loud, I swear my heart fell right down through my clothes, into my trainers and started squishing around in my socks. Then the voice shouted, didn’t I bloody well tell you to get those bloody desserts out to the buffet ten minutes ago and bloody MOOOVE IT! I took a quick sideways look over to where it was coming from, hoping that it wasn’t for us and that me and James could just keep walking right out through those doors, because they were only a couple of steps away. But it was for us.

The guy with the voice was dressed exactly the same as me and James, but I tell you what, I know for sure they weren’t his uniforms we’d borrowed out of the dryer because he was a real-life ginormous giant. It looked like someone had stood one person on top of another for a joke and just added one angry head