The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

The Parisian Christmas Bake Off
Jenny Oliver
Winter’s Fairytale
Maxine Morrey

Copyright

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2015

Copyright © Jenny Oliver/Maxine Morrey 2015

Jenny Oliver/Maxine Morrey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 9781474048507

Version date: 2018-07-23

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

The Parisian Christmas Bake Off

Blurb

Author Bio

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Winter’s Fairytale

Blurb

Author Bio

Acknowledgement

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Endpages

About the Publisher

The Parisian Christmas Bake Off

Welcome to the most celebrated patisserie competition in Paris – ready, steady, bake!

Watching snowflakes settle on the Eiffel Tower, Rachel Smithson’s cosy English village feels very far way – as, thankfully, does her commitment-phobic ex, probably already kissing someone else under the mistletoe. But Rachel hasn’t come to Paris to mope she’s come to bake. Hard.

Because the search for Paris’s next patisserie apprentice is about to begin! And super-chef judge Henri Salernes is an infamously tough cookie. But Rachel isn’t about to let her confidence (or pastry) crumble. She’s got one week, mounds of melt-in-the-mouth macaroons and towers of perfect profiteroles to prove that she really is a star baker.

As well as clouds of flour, and wafts of chocolate and cinnamon, there’s definitely a touch of Christmas magic in the air… Rachel hasn’t come to Paris looking for a fairy-tale romance, but the city of love might gift-wrap her one anyway…

Not even a dusting of icing sugar could make

The Parisian Christmas Bake-Off a more perfect Christmas treat!

JENNY OLIVER wrote her first book on holiday when she was ten years old. Illustrated with cut-out supermodels from her sister’s Vogue, it was an epic, sweeping love story not so loosely based on Dynasty.

Since then Jenny has gone on to get an English degree, a Masters, and a job in publishing that’s taught her what it takes to write a novel (without the help of the supermodels). She wrote The Parisian Christmas Bake Off on the beach in a sea-soaked, sand-covered notebook. This time the inspiration was her addiction to macaroons, the belief she can cook them and an all-consuming love of Christmas. When the decorations go up in October, that’s fine with her! Follow her on Twitter @JenOliverBooks

CHAPTER ONE

‘Why is Jesus a Buzz Lightyear?’

Rachel came into the school hall carrying two cups of PG Tips, and a packet of chocolate HobNobs that she’d stolen from the staffroom.

‘Purely for my own amusement,’ said Jackie, sitting back, feet up on a nursery-school chair as she took three biscuits out of the packet. ‘And because the arm fell off the normal one and Mrs Norris’s husband is fixing it.’ She nodded towards the stage. ‘The nativity’s good this year, isn’t it?’

Rachel turned to where fourteen five-year-olds had forgotten the words to ‘Away in a Manger’ as they rehearsed. ‘I’d say it bears a remarkable resemblance to last year’s.’

Jackie did a mock gasp of affront. ‘Except for the genius addition of the hip hop WyZe men and One Direction’s visit to the manger. I think I’ll make the school proud.’

‘The head’s going to kill you.’

‘It’s just a bit of fun.’ Jackie flicked open her ancient laptop as the kids on stage continued to sing a motley assortment of words while dressed in a variety of home-made costumes. ‘So fire me. Who else are they going to get to direct this? It’s not as if Nettleton has anyone pre-retirement age left—’

‘Look,’ shouted one of the kids on stage. ‘Miss Smithson’s here,’ he said, breaking off from the song as the others were belting out the second verse.

Rachel waved. ‘Hi, Tommy. Keep singing though—you don’t want to ruin the song.’ She could see the rest of her class starting to get distracted on stage.

‘But I don’t know the words,’ he said, looking as if he was about to cry.

Rachel jogged up to the front of the hall and climbed on the stage, whispering to Tommy as quietly as she could. ‘That’s OK, I never knew the words—when you don’t know them just open and shut your mouth like this.’ She did an impression of a goldfish.

Tommy giggled. ‘Can I go to the toilet?’

Rachel rolled her eyes. She didn’t envy Jackie the task of keeping this lot in order; just her own class were enough for her. ‘Yes, Tommy.’

‘Miss Smithson?’ said Jemima in the back row. ‘My wings keep falling off.’

Everyone had stopped singing now.

‘OK, I’ll have a look.’ Rachel tiptoed round in a crouch trying to be as unobtrusive as she could manage while Jackie tried to cajole them all back into singing.

‘Will you sing with us, Miss Smithson?’ Jemima asked as Rachel tightened her wonky angel wings.

Rachel swallowed, listening as the little voices had started up again on the fourth verse. ‘I erm …’ She found herself caught off guard with no ready answer, a whole heap of memories suddenly stuck in her throat.

‘Sing with us, please?’ Tommy was running back on stage, tucking his T-shirt into his cords.

‘No. I’m just going to watch.’ She shook her head, her voice annoyingly choked as she blocked out images of being on that stage herself with her parents clapping wildly from the front row. ‘I like listening to you,’ she said quickly, before jumping back off the stage.

Around the hall members of the PTA were building the nativity set, sewing costumes and making arrangements for lighting, seating, refreshments etc. Mostly they stood gossiping in groups, however, while one or two put together the bulk of the scenery—checking how well it had fared in the store cupboard since last year. Mr Swanson, Tommy’s father, was standing by the steps screwing together the roof of the manger. ‘Difficult time of year for you, isn’t it?’ he said as Rachel walked away from the stage.

‘Oh, it’s OK.’ Rachel waved a hand. ‘I’ll get through it. Great set this year, by the way.’

‘It’s the same every year.’ He laughed, then went on, ‘No need for a brave face, you know. We’re all here. All of us. Your mum was a great friend of ours and we miss her too.’

‘I know—thanks.’

He nodded and went back to changing the bit on his drill. ‘I was meaning to say, I thought you did a good job at the bake sale last week. Excellent scones. I’ve missed them, you know?’

She smiled. ‘Well, they’re not quite as good as Mum made.’

Mr Swanson thought about it and shrugged. ‘Nearly.’

In the background the children continued to sing out of tune as Jackie called instructions, and the parents chattered away, and Rachel found herself wishing, not for the first time this holiday season, that it could all just disappear. Poof. That she could click her fingers and it would be New Year and she wouldn’t have to shake her head and say everything was all right when people asked if she was OK, said that they always thought of her mum at this time of year and understood how hard it must be for her, and what was she going to do for Christmas. As Mr Swanson locked the bit in place on his drill, he put his hand on the wonky roof and said, ‘You’re a good girl.’

Rachel paused and allowed herself to nod as he watched her and smiled. Everyone was just being kind, she reminded herself. The village was like a family—they had all known her since she was tiny and they all wanted to make sure she was OK. Sometimes, though, she just wanted to be on her own. ‘Not so much of the girl any more though, Mr Swanson,’ she joked, trying to force a lightness into her voice.

‘Don’t say it.’ He shook his head. ‘You stay young, I stay young.’

‘OK, you’re on.’ Rachel laughed as she walked back over to where Jackie was stabbing at the keys of the decrepit laptop.

‘All right?’ Jackie glanced up.

‘Fine.’ Rachel nodded, looking back at the stage and taking a sip of her tea. She could feel her heart beating just a bit too fast.

Jackie was clearly about to say something more, to really check if Rachel was all right, but paused, the look on Rachel’s face making her decide against it, and said instead, ‘OK, look at this—’ Jackie pointed to the screen ‘—check this site out.’

Rachel peered forward to see the display. ‘What is it?’

‘Airbnb. It lets you turn your home into a hotel. Tonya from the hairdresser’s has let her flat out with them to a Swedish couple while she’s away over Christmas. Two thousand pounds she got for a week and a half. It’s amazing. Such a clever idea—your flat actually earns you money.’

‘Yeah.’ Rachel nodded, uncertain. ‘I think I remember one of my dad’s friends used it when he went to New York. Said the pictures weren’t anything like the place.’

Jackie shook her head. ‘Oh, he probably just likes a moan. I think it’s amazing. And especially good for someone like you who doesn’t care for Christmas. Wouldn’t you say?’

‘Not really.’ Rachel sipped her tea.

‘Oh, I think so. It’s a good way to make money,’ Jackie went on. ‘And the perfect opportunity for that person to do what they might always have wanted to do in life but was too scared to try.’

The kids on stage had changed song, coaxed into ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ by Miss Ven at the piano.

‘Jackie, whatever it is you’re driving at, I’m not interested.’

‘But let’s say—’ Jackie rested one hand on the lid of the laptop and waved the other from side to side as she mused ‘—for example, someone else thought you were interested in doing something different. Making a change. Thought maybe you were hiding away and wasting your life with a good-for-nothing waster, working at a tiny—but, let’s not forget, Ofsted highly commended—primary school, which they knew you liked but felt wasn’t quite right for you. Thought that you had other talents that you weren’t making the best use of. I mean, what then? What if they, for example, secretly took photos of your flat and maybe rented it over Christmas to a lovely retired couple from Australia who were arriving on Sunday. What then?’

‘Well, then …’ Rachel put the cup down on the table. ‘Then I’d kill you. But I don’t think you’d dare.’

Jackie’s lips drew up in a wry smile as the realisation of what her friend might have done dawned on Rachel. And as it did, suddenly all the PTA parents popped up from their various positions in the hall where they’d been painting scenery and bitching about the nativity casting, and shouted, ‘Surprise!’

‘What’s going on?’ Rachel looked around as the PTA head honcho Mrs Pritchard, alpha-mother of a girl in Jackie’s class, handed her an envelope with Eurostar stamped on the front and everyone clapped.

‘I kinda dared.’ Jackie looked a little sheepish. ‘You’re going to Paris.’

Rachel took a step back. ‘I’m not going to Paris.’

All the parents were nudging one another, nodding excitedly.

‘Yeah, you are.’ Jackie went on, ‘To bake with Henri Salernes.’

Rachel laughed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘It’s true.’ Mrs Pritchard nodded, patting Rachel affectionately on the arm. ‘It’s an apprentice competition. The infamous Henri wants an apprentice—well, actually we’re not convinced he wants, it’s possible that it’s more just to make money, but the opportunity is still there. It was a competition on In The Morning, on ITV. For amateurs to compete to work for him for a month. It coincides with a new book or something, I think. Was it a new book?’ She glanced around at the other parents, some of whom nodded, others looked unsure. ‘Anyway, it sounds fabulous. And we all just thought it would be a wonderful opportunity for you. Maybe get you back in the swing of it.’

One of the parents came over with a tray of tea and more biscuits and they all raised their chipped mugs in a toast to Rachel’s impromptu Christmas trip to France, enthusiasm plastered on their faces.

Her colleague, gym teacher Henry Evans, was the only one looking less than impressed. ‘Don’t know what we’ll do without you, though. Who’ll make the cakes for the Christmas Sports Day? And the Village Lights evening?’

‘Shut up, Henry.’ Mrs Pritchard elbowed him in the ribs while sipping her tea and then telling some of the other parents how she’d been the one to spot the competition on the telly.

Rachel wasn’t really listening; she was glaring at Jackie, who was finding the remains of her tea fascinating. ‘How could I have got into that competition? How can I be baking for Henri Salernes when he hasn’t tasted what I cook? I can’t go to Paris, Jackie, this is insane.’

‘We pulled some strings.’ Jackie shrugged. ‘Well, actually, Mr Swanson pulled some strings—he works for the network. It’s all very underhand and not above board at all, but we thought the good outweighed the wrongness.’ Jackie turned to point at where Mr Swanson was still standing by the manger, drilling the roof and looking a little sheepish. He waved a hand as if she shouldn’t have mentioned it and the quieter they kept it all, the better.

‘It’s not a problem. I cleared it with the team. Not a problem at all,’ he said, although he did look a bit shifty and his neck was flushing a similar colour to his Christmas jumper. ‘Wouldn’t have done it for anyone else, mind.’

‘Look, thanks, everyone, it’s really sweet of you, but I can’t go to Paris. And I certainly can’t bake for Henri Salernes. I’m nowhere near good enough. And, Jackie, no one’s going to be living in my flat.’ Rachel thought of all her things just the way she liked them being picked up and broken by a couple of Australian strangers. She thought of her usual Christmas Day hiding out in her bedroom with the six-hour BBC Pride and Prejudice DVD. She thought of the endurance test that went with avoiding the carol concerts, the presents, the festive cheer. Of locking out thoughts and memories of family Christmases that were just too achingly bittersweet to remember. ‘I just—there’s no way I’m going. I have loads to do here. I can’t. Absolutely no way …’

She trailed off when she looked up and saw all the happy little faces of the kids on stage. They’d stopped singing and run off to the wings without her noticing. Now they were holding up a banner saying, ‘Good Luck in Paris, Miss Smithson!’, smiling expectantly. All watching.

But now their faces were starting to droop, like flowers wilting. Little Tommy had pulled off his angel halo, his bottom lip quivering. It was as if she’d stood in front of them and picked all the decorations off the big Christmas tree at the back and smashed them one by one underfoot.

Jackie raised her eyebrows; Rachel narrowed her eyes back at her. She felt the PTA parents start to murmur and others look away, embarrassed, as if it certainly wasn’t meant to go this way. She watched the uncertain faces of her class, who couldn’t understand why their favourite teacher wasn’t laughing with delight. They’d clearly been prepped to expect some sort of party atmosphere. So as the silence fell around her Rachel did the only thing that she could so as not to disappoint: going against her every instinct, she swallowed, took a shaky breath and forced her best teacher smile.

‘Thanks,’ she said, waving the envelope of tickets so the kids could see. ‘Thanks so much. It’s really kind of you all. I can’t wait.’ Then she pointed at the stage. ‘What a fantastic banner.’

Mrs Pritchard took this as an obvious signal to start clapping and as she took the lead the other PTA parents joined in, unsure at first but gathering steam. Mr Swanson put down his drill and punched the air, triumphant. When the kids heard the cheers they tugged the banner as tight as they could so it pulled up high and just their smiling eyes poked out over the top. Then, when Jackie clicked her fingers, they all ran off the stage and swamped Rachel in a hug, so she was trapped in an island of five-year-olds unable to do anything but fake smile so hard her cheeks started to ache.

CHAPTER TWO

No way was she going to Paris. Back at her flat Rachel was stirring coq au vin on the stove with one hand while trying to pull baked potatoes out of the oven with the other. No way. Turning the dial on the oven down, she noted how clean and shiny it was, how she knew which hob worked and which didn’t light, how the cupboard to her left sometimes needed an extra shove to get the door to click shut—strangers staying in her flat wouldn’t know those things. Would she have to write them a list?

‘Do you want wine?’ her grandmother shouted from where she was sitting at the table, her big colourful scarf wrapped multiple times round her neck and the bracelets on her arm clacking together as she raised her hand.

‘I’m only just here, Gran, no need to shout.’ Rachel winced.

‘Sorry, was I shouting? I must be such an embarrassment to you.’ Her grandmother cocked her head and pulled a tight smile. ‘Do you know, Gran is such a terrible term. I’d really rather you called me Julie. What do you think, David?’ She turned to Rachel’s father, who was sitting quietly opposite her. ‘Don’t you just hate the term Dad?’

‘Sorry, what? I was miles away.’ Rachel’s dad had been staring into space and blinked himself back into the present.

‘Dad!’ Julie sighed. ‘Don’t you think it’s a dreadful word? A label. Wouldn’t you far rather Rachel called you David?’

‘I’ve never really thought about it,’ he said with a shrug.

Julie huffed a great sigh. ‘Well, think about it now! For pity’s sake, man, it’s just an opinion. He’s always been like this, darling, used to drive your mother up the wall.’

Rachel swung round too quickly at the mention of her mother, tried too late to shush her gran, and saw her dad visibly shrink back into his cardigan. She’d made it a point never to mention her mother in front of her dad; he always just clammed up immediately. When she caught her grandmother’s eye and gave her a ‘What did you have to say that for?’ look, Julie just shrugged as if she couldn’t see what the problem was.

‘I’m only talking about names, darling. I would just prefer to be known by my own name, not some generic term that half my bloody generation are known as.’

Rachel sighed, pausing with her hand on her hip to look back at her. ‘We’ve been through this. I can’t do it. It just won’t happen. When I try to it feels too weird. You’re my grandmother—that’s just the way it is.’ Julie made a face as Rachel turned away and slid the steaming potatoes from the baking tray into a terracotta bowl and carried them to the table.

Julie took the bowl from her. ‘Well, I don’t think things should always be the way they are. Who says that’s the way it should be? Do you have a mat to put these on? The bowl is very hot.’

Rachel slid a magazine over so her gran could put the bowl of potatoes down without marking the already pretty shabby table and went back to the stove; they had this conversation at least once every six weeks. ‘You know I don’t know the answer. I just can’t call you Julie. It’s weird. And …’ she paused, ran her tongue over her lips as it finally dawned on her why she clung to the name ‘… it reminds me that we’re related.’ She paused.

‘Maybe if your mother was still alive you wouldn’t mind so much,’ Julie said matter-of-factly. Rachel’s dad flinched again.

Rachel smacked the wooden spoon down on the counter. ‘Can we please talk about something else?’

Her gran narrowed her eyes and watched her for a moment, wondering perhaps whether to push this tiny crack in Rachel’s armour so it might widen and they’d all start talking. Rachel had already turned back to the coq au vin. ‘So I hear you’re off to Paris.’

‘Not that. Something other than that.’ Oven gloves on, she picked up the Le Creuset bubbling with stew and set it down in the centre of the table. ‘And by the way, I’m not going to Paris. It’s a ridiculous idea.’

‘Just so you know, I’ve volunteered to keep an eye on the lovely Australian couple.’

‘I’m not going.’

‘Why are you going to Paris?’ her father asked with vague interest.

‘I’m not,’ Rachel said quickly.

‘Oh, you must.’ Julie reached forward and grabbed a potato from the dish. ‘Gosh, this is hot,’ she said, slicing it open, forking up the fluffy insides and slathering it with butter. ‘David, she’s going to bake. Rachel, you must go,’ she said again, her mouth full of boiling potato. ‘This tastes divine. Divine as always. Mine are always so hard and the skin all soft and wrinkly—bloody microwave.’ She scooped up another forkful before carrying on about the impending trip to Paris. ‘Yes, you have to go.’ Then she waited a second before adding, ‘Your mum would have been so proud.’

It was Rachel’s turn to flinch; as she stirred the coq au vin she felt an unwanted lump rising in her throat. She pushed her fringe out of her eyes then redid her ponytail for something to do instead of answering.

She felt her grandmother watching her. ‘She would, you know.’

‘I didn’t think you baked any more,’ her father said, as if he’d missed something along the way, something that didn’t entirely please him.

‘I don’t,’ said Rachel, emphatically.

‘No. That should probably rest with your mother.’ Her father crossed his arms over his chest, and she stared at the holes on the cuffs of his shirt, the ones she remembered her mum darning.

‘Oh, don’t talk such tripe,’ Julie scoffed. ‘The last thing your mother would have wanted is you sitting around refusing to whisk a bit of flour and butter because she was good at it. For Christ’s sake, Rachel, I know you’re a very good teacher, but you were an excellent baker. You need to give it a chance. And, David, I’m sorry, but I can only say that your opinion on the matter is absolute bollocks. Rachel, you go to Paris, and, David, you go back to your bloody dream world and stay there. That’s the best option as far as I can see.’

‘I was only giving an opinion. I was asked for an opinion, Julie.’

Rachel watched her dad as he took his glasses out of his pocket, put them on and picked up the cycling magazine that he’d brought with him—watched him retreat back into his hobby so he wouldn’t have to face any more from her grandmother.

As Julie was about to reply Rachel cut in, saying, ‘I’ve forgotten the water glasses. Gran, can you get them for me?’

Julie flumped up the scarf around her neck with a huff, then pushed her chair back and stood up to rummage in the cupboard. As she clattered about Rachel tried not to think about what her mum would have thought about a trip to Paris to bake with a professional, tried to ignore the fact that her relationship with her father was becoming more and more distant and how his comment just then had affected her. She’d known he might not advocate a baking trip to Paris, but she hadn’t expected such obvious disapproval.

‘These are very lovely.’ Rachel looked up to see her gran holding up three little mottled glasses with maple leaves painted on the sides that she’d picked up from the local antique shop. ‘I’d put them somewhere, if I were you, just in case the Australians are clumsy.’

‘I don’t want people in my flat, and—’

‘Nonsense.’ Her grandmother plonked the glasses down on the table and then sat back in her chair, folding her arms across her chest, her silver bracelets clicking, her lips pursed. ‘Anyway, it’d do you good to get away from that idiot guitar player. Brad? God knows what you see in him. You should go for that reason alone.’

‘Who’s that you’re talking about?’ Her dad glanced up from the pages of the magazine. ‘Do you have a boyfriend, Rachel?’

‘Of course she has a boyfriend. Really, David, sometimes I wonder where you’ve been. You’ve met him—that plonker from the band that played in the pub the other night. Wore all black. Remember? You thought it was all terribly loud. Brad.’

Her father shook his head.

‘Ben. His name is Ben and you know that.’ Rachel tried to take her annoyance out on her potato, sawing into it with her knife but having to pull back as she burnt her fingers on the crispy skin. ‘And he plays the drums, not the guitar.’

Julie made a face as if it made no difference.

‘And he’s fine. It’s fine between us.’ Rachel could feel the frustration boiling up inside her as her grandmother raised a brow sardonically, clearly questioning that statement. ‘And I’m not going to Paris.’ Rachel huffed as she shoved some potato into her mouth, burning her tongue but trying to pretend that she hadn’t.

There was another pause as Julie shook out her napkin, then held up her hands as if she’d say no more about it. ‘Well, come on, then.’ She nodded at the casserole dish. ‘Are you going to serve this thing or not?’

As Rachel ladled out the rich, thick stew Julie took a mouthful and sighed. ‘I’m going to miss my dinners here while you’re in France.’

At four a.m. the doorbell went, followed by the usual tap on the door. Rachel, had been lying in bed staring at the ceiling while her mind whirred with images of Paris, Christmas, her mother in the hospital bed—a limp garland of tinsel wrapped around the bedstead—Henri Salernes’ face on the flyleaf of the well-thumbed cook book she had on her shelf. She pulled on her dressing gown and tried to do something vaguely decent with her hair as the tapping got louder and louder. She checked her reflection in the mirror by the door, refusing to think about the fact she’d purposely slept in her make-up on the off chance this visit would happen.

‘Rach, honey, darling, beautiful …’ Ben bounded in off the step like a Labrador high on the adoration of his fans. Shaggy black hair, crack-addict cheekbones and eyes that crinkled as if they always knew a secret—her on-again off-again boyfriend was gorgeous and he knew it. He would also baulk at the term boyfriend but if she admitted the transience of their relationship in comparison to the time she’d dedicated to it, it would be too depressing.

‘Hi,’ she said coyly as he twisted her hair round his hand and pulled her head back for a kiss that tasted of cigarettes and beer and the toothpaste she’d just swallowed while running down the stairs.

‘Let’s get rid of this horrible thing, shall we?’ He smirked, pushing her old towelling dressing gown off and sliding his hands round her waist to her arse, then, leaning forward, whispered, ‘Go on, make me something nice to eat. I’m starving.’

As she stood open mouthed at his audacity he patted her on the bum with a wink and a heartbreaking smile and steered her in the direction of the kitchen.

Five minutes later Rachel was standing in her nightie, her banned robe still on the floor in the hallway, whipping up the perfect, smooth, yellow hollandaise and checking the timer for the poached eggs while she watched Ben as he sat back, feet up on the table, flicking through her Grazia magazine.

‘Do you want to sleep here tonight?’ She didn’t know why she said it; she hadn’t said it for months but she suddenly felt the overwhelming need to push the point. He peered over the pages he was holding and watched her for a second before his mouth quirked into its infamous grin.

‘Honey, you know I can’t sleep here. I need my—’

‘Own bed.’ She finished before he could and turned her back to him, scooping out the poached eggs. In the last year she’d woken up next to him once, and that was because he’d accidentally taken a sleeping tablet rather than a paracetamol for a headache when rooting through her bathroom cabinet. He claimed that he couldn’t sleep anywhere other than his bed and alone, and she’d always gone along with it, not wanting to rock the boat. After a moment or two of silence he came over and wrapped his hands around her, pressing himself close against her back. The sensation felt less fuzzy and cosy than normal, more as if he was locking her into place.

‘You smell awesome.’

She turned around in his arms and handed him the plate of Eggs Benedict, trying to ignore the sense of being released when he let her go and took the plate. Her grandmother’s quirk of a brow flashed into her mind. This wasn’t a healthy relationship, one side of her mind said, while the other just stared at his pretty face and argued that it most definitely was.

‘And this—’ Ben took the plate from her ‘—looks awesome.’

As he cut into it, the golden yolk oozing out into the toasted muffin she’d found at the bottom of the freezer and the silky hollandaise dripping from his fork, he paused before putting the first bite into his mouth, as if preparing himself for the bliss.

When he did eat it, gobbling greedily with his eyes shut, he hit the table twice with his fist. ‘Fucking amazing. A-mazing. God, it’s better than being on stage. Well—maybe not but it’s fucking good.’

Rachel couldn’t help smiling. Leaning back against the counter, she watched him, enjoying the sight of him eating the food that she had made giving him so much pleasure. Feeling almost proud.

‘You—’ He pointed at her, mouth full. ‘You are going to make someone a great wife one day.’

She paused for a moment, turning to pick up the mug of tea she’d made herself and taking a sip. Let it go … she told herself. Let it go and it’ll all just carry on as normal. Life can just carry on as normal. But then she found herself asking, ‘Not you?’

Ben laughed into his cup of coffee.

‘I’m serious,’ she said, running a hand through her hair and, feeling suddenly hot, holding her fringe back from her forehead.

‘Hun, come on, it’s too early for this.’

‘We’ve kind of seen each other for nearly a year.’

He made a face. ‘I meant in the morning. It’s fucking four a.m.’

‘Yeah, I know.’ She nodded, glancing down at her haphazard appearance as if to show him just how aware she was of the time.

‘Babe.’ He didn’t get up, but took another slurp of coffee. ‘No one gets married any more. What we’ve got … It’s good. Don’t—’ He shook his head, dark hair flopping over one eye, his brows drawing slightly together as if he was on the cusp of getting annoyed. ‘Don’t spoil it. Just let a man eat. Yeah?’

Rachel opened her mouth to say something but then closed it again.

‘And I don’t know that it’s been a year. I mean, not exclusively,’ he added, his eyes focused back on the plate of eggs, shaking his head as he carried on eating.

Oh, my God, she thought. Oh, my God, what have I been doing?

Who was he? Who was it that she had been seeing all this time? What had she seriously expected from him?

As she watched him eat, chewing furiously, it was as if the fog lifted and she suddenly saw what everyone else saw. A black hole at her table where her life disappeared.

‘OK, babe?’ He glanced up, checking that she was still there, still waiting for him to finish. He gave her a quick cheeky grin, as if to gloss over anything that might have gone before.

She nodded, her mouth frozen into place.

He pushed his plate away and stretched his arms high to the ceiling. ‘Awesome. Totally awesome, as always. Bed?’

‘I erm …’ But it felt as if her mind had slipped all the way through her body into a pool on the floor. And instead of saying anything else she let him lead her up to her bedroom, where she was suddenly ashamed that she’d changed the sheets because she’d had an inkling he was coming and had put the winter roses her gran had brought for her in a vase by the bed and sprayed Dark Amber Zara Home room spray to make it smell all moody and sexy.

When the front door clicked shut forty minutes later, she lay staring up at the ceiling and wondered what had become of Rachel Smithson, because right now she felt completely hollow from the neck down.

CHAPTER THREE

King’s Cross at Christmas was a nightmare. Giant sleighs and reindeer had been rigged up to float above the platforms from the metal rafters, while Christmas music played on a loop in every shop. Pret a Manger had a queue that snaked out onto the concourse and all the sandwich shelves were picked clean; WHSmith had run out of water, and she’d forgotten her moisturiser but Kiehl’s had sold out of her favourite. Everything seemed to be reinforcing the notion that going to Paris was a bad idea.

With just a lukewarm coffee in hand, Rachel forced herself through the crowds, thinking about how, in the end, she’d finally made the decision to go to Paris purely so she never slept with Ben again. It was heartbreakingly good-looking-boyfriend cold turkey—maybe that should have been Pret’s seasonal sandwich. She squeezed past kissing couples and hugging relatives to track down her train. The platform was packed; the corridor to the train was even worse, blocked with suitcases and big paper bags of presents.

God, she hated Christmas. She could just about admit, only to herself, that it had become like a phobia. And being on this train felt like when they locked someone with a fear of spiders into the boot of a car crawling with them.

‘Erm, excuse me, I think that’s my seat.’ On the train she pointed to the number on the luggage rack above the seat and showed the young blonde girl who had taken her place her ticket.

The carriage was hot and stuffy and smelt of McDonald’s and cheese and onion crisps. Rachel’s boots already pinched and all she wanted to do was sit down and wallow in her bad decision but the blonde wasn’t budging. ‘I really want to sit with my boyfriend,’ was all she said back.

‘Oh.’ Rachel bit her lip. ‘Well—’ Someone pushed past her and she had to hold the table to steady herself.

‘My seat’s fifty-seven,’ said the girl, shrugging before turning back to talk to the guy next to her.

Rachel nodded, wishing her legs might overrule her brain and walk straight off the train, but then she remembered that she had nowhere to live if she did go home—the Australians would be arriving around about now.

She pushed through the people and luggage in the aisle to her new seat. As she lifted her bag onto the overhead shelf and sat herself down a little boy wearing reindeer ears across the aisle started screaming as his sister ate his flapjack.

‘We’re off to Euro Disney. Patrick, stop that,’ said the woman next to her when Rachel glanced across, watching the boy hit his sister on the head. ‘Leila’s going to be a princess. Aren’t you, honey?’ The mother reached over to break up the fight. ‘We always go to Disney at Christmas. It’s so magical.’

Rachel nodded but then turned away to stare out of the window as the train pulled out of the station, wrapping her scarf up round her head like a cocoon to block them all out. But the reflection of the excited kids in the window forced back memories of being little at Christmas—jumping on her parents’ bed and opening her stocking. Hot tea and buttered toast with home-made jam. Her dad always surprised by the stocking her mum had done for him. Rachel’s feet dangling over the bed, unable to touch the floor as she ate chocolate coins and a satsuma and looked at Rudolph’s half-chewed carrot by the fireplace and the signed card from Santa.

She hadn’t thought about that for years.

As the train sped up through the countryside the reflection in the window changed to the memory of the whole village on Christmas morning. Everyone out on the green for a massive snowball fight. Hers flying off at wonky angles because she had such a rubbish throw. Years ago they’d even skated on the pond in their wellies. She vaguely remembered her dad and her winning the prize for best snowman. It had been shaped like a wizard with a pointy hat. There was something about the hat—what had it been made of? It was bark, she thought, curled tree bark her mum had found, and the coat they’d covered in fallen leaves and acorn cups to make the pattern. She saw her dad holding up the prize of a bottle of port, triumphant, then hoisting her up on his shoulders, her wellington boots bashing snow onto his wax jacket.

It was odd to remember her dad with that smile, that buoyancy.

Since her mum had died, he just cycled. Always cycling. A group of them, sixty-five, and cycling. Never smiling. Six months after the funeral he’d gone on a trip and come back with a new bike and all the gear. Kept him busy, he’d said. Out-pedalling the memories, she’d thought. The moment he stopped he’d have to deal with life.

She realised then why she rarely allowed such reminiscences. The thought of them compared to the stark new reality made her eyes well up. She groped in her bag for a tissue; when she couldn’t find one she had to ask the woman next to her.

‘Of course. I always have a pack. Wet-wipe or Kleenex?’

‘Kleenex, please,’ Rachel said, trying to cover her face so she couldn’t see the tears. ‘Winter cold,’ she added, while surreptitiously giving her eyes a quick wipe.

The train pulled into Gare du Nord under grey gloomy skies. Paris was freezing. Much colder than England. People blew into their gloved hands as they queued for a taxi. Rachel wheeled her bag over to the back of the line, rain pouring down in sheets. Her boots were soaked through. People kept cutting into the front of the queue as she was hustled forward, her coat and bag dripping wet. As she waited, rain catching on the hood of her coat and dripping down onto her nose, she clutched the scrap of paper with the road name in her hand, wondering what the place she was staying in would be like.

Jackie had booked her into an Airbnb rental in the centre of Paris. She could have killed her for doing this, Rachel mused as she finally got into a taxi just as the rain fell heavier, like a bucket tipped from the sky. She could actually kill her, she thought while gazing out at a dark, soaked Paris as the taxi whizzed through the streets, horn honking at anything that got in its way. Stab her maybe with her new Sabatier kitchen knives that Henri Salernes had demanded each contestant buy pre-course, plus slip-on Crocs and a white apron with her name stitched on the front. Rachel had failed the sewing part of Home Ec at school so she’d got her gran to do the embroidery this time. Julie had added a flower on either side of her name, for good luck, she’d said.

The taxi pulled up at the end of the road after clearly driving her all the way round the city unnecessarily.

‘One way,’ he said. ‘Your house, at the other end. You walk.’

The rain was unceasing. Rachel, imagining crisp snow-white streets, hadn’t thought to bring an umbrella.

The driver dumped her bag in a puddle and drove away leaving her alone at the end of the darkened road, the streetlight above her fizzing and flickering in the rain.

She hauled her bag behind her down the street, wiping rain drops from her nose and eyelashes with sodden gloves, stopping finally at number 117—a thick wooden door studded with big black nails and a brass knocker shaped like a lion’s head.

Someone buzzed her in with a string of French she didn’t understand. The piece of paper said Flat C. Rachel climbed the stairs, bumping her bag up behind her, holding onto the wooden banister. As she passed the ground floor the steps turned from plain concrete to white and blue tiles and wooden panels became richly wallpapered walls in cream, gold and burgundy. The huge double doors of Flat C were freshly painted glossy magnolia.

A woman opened the door almost as soon as Rachel knocked and immediately warm smells of herbs and cooking enveloped her. Looking into the flat, she saw glistening chandeliers, expensive chintz curtains draped over large French windows, soft cream furniture and paintings of fruits brimming over in their bowls. Wow. It was like looking into the pages of House & Garden magazine. She took a step forward. Maybe she wouldn’t kill Jackie just yet.

‘Je suis Rachel Smithson,’ she said to the woman in the grey uniform and apron. ‘Je reste ici. Airbnb.’

‘Wait,’ the housekeeper said. ‘I get Madame Charles.’

As Rachel waited she saw in the corner of the living room a Christmas tree that wasn’t a real tree but a metal sprig twinkling with white fairy lights and the branches tied with silver ribbons. It was the type of decoration that could be up all year round. Nothing, not even the garlands hanging from the mantelpiece, was too overpoweringly Christmas. Rachel was impressed.

On the sofa, two Siamese cats had wound themselves over the arms like matching cushions. Rachel was staring at one of them, trying to ignore the growing chill from her sopping socks and imagining what it was like to live in such luxury, when a tall immaculate woman, who must have been Madame Charles, appeared in the doorway.

‘Eer been bee,’ said the housekeeper. Madame Charles looked puzzled, as if she had no idea what she was talking about, and tapped ash from her cigarette in its gold holder into the tray by the door.

The woman was a vision in beige: floor-length oatmeal cashmere cardigan, white hair impeccably styled, wide cream trousers and beige turtleneck with a gold Chanel necklace. She was someone who might adopt Rachel and put her to bed in crisp Egyptian cotton sheets with a decaf espresso and a brioche. Someone, Rachel thought, who she might ignore Christmas with and eat oysters with and drink champagne.

‘Airbnb,’ repeated Rachel. ‘Dans le Internet. From England. Je loue the chambre. For a week. Pour une semaine.’ Christ, her French was bad. ‘Till Christmas,’ she added, pointing to the silver branch in the background.

‘Ah. Airbnb.’ As it finally dawned on Madame Charles what was going on she disappeared back into the apartment saying, ‘Un moment.’ One of the Siamese jumped off the sofa after her.

Rachel hopped from one damp foot to the other waiting to be led inside. But, appearing again with jewelled slippers on, Madame Charles said instead, ‘Follow me.’ And as she swept past her, closing the door, all three of them headed upstairs.

Rachel wondered if there was a separate entrance up there. Perhaps the bedrooms were accessed this way. Up they went, spiralling into what felt like the turret of a tower. The dark wood walls began to narrow and the tiles on the stairs were replaced by rough wooden floorboards.

‘Ah, ici.’ Madame Charles unlocked one of four doors at the top of the stairs with a big old dungeon key. Rachel took a breath.

Inside was a small room, separated into two by an alcove. It was grey, bleak and stuffy—as if no one had been in for a century. The housekeeper next to her shivered. Rachel felt her ‘oysters and champagne under the silver sprig’ dream dribble away as the bare light bulb swayed in front of her.

Madame Charles was unperturbed, her cigarette smoke trailing in wisps behind her. ‘This is the kitchen.’ A white rusty gas oven and hob with a grill pan at the top, the type her gran swore by. A mini fridge, two cups, two plates, one glass. ‘The TV.’ Certainly not a flat-screen; Rachel wondered if it even had a remote. ‘The sofa.’ Dark blue, no cushions. ‘And here—’ they walked through the alcove ‘—is the bed.’ A metal frame with a grey blanket folded at the end and pale pink sheets. A threadbare mat on the floor and a faded Monet print on the wall. The metal shutter on the only window was pulled closed.

‘Ça va, oui?’ said Madame Charles, breezing through the tiny space. ‘This was, how do you say? For the help. The servant. Oui?’

Rachel tried to make her mouth move into a smile. Her soaking feet and clothes suddenly freezing cold. ‘Merci beaucoup. It is très bon.’

‘De rien. It is nothing.’ Madame Charles smiled. ‘There is one petite problem. The bathroom, it is outside. In the corridor.’

After checking out the sad-looking shower and toilet in a shared room off the hallway, Rachel let herself back into her flat, sat down on the bed and found she was too tired to cry. Instead she just stared around the grey room, at her coat hanging on a chair dripping onto the floor, the bare walls with cracks up to the ceiling, a fly buzzing round the empty light bulb. What was she doing here? Why had she even considered coming? She didn’t really bake any more; she didn’t want to be someone’s apprentice. She wanted to be at home, enclosed by the safe walls of her flat and surrounded by her stuff and, at the very least, central heating.

She watched the fly weave a path from the light to the top of the oven, to the closed shutters and back again.

Standing up, she opened the shutters and shooed it towards the window with a tea towel, where it finally disappeared into the blackness.

It was only as she was closing the window that she saw the view. The trees lining the Champs Élysées glistening with a million lights strung from trunk to tip, hundreds of them shining a dazzling path that stretched on till the Arc de Triomphe, which glowed a warm yellow in the night sky. She pressed her nose to the glass and stared till the steam of her breath covered the view and then she opened the window again and stuck her head out into the rain and stared some more. Hate Christmas as she might, Rachel had to admit that, even in the pouring rain, this was breathtaking.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘OK, class, these are the rules: one, I don’t want an apprentice; two, you do everything I say; three, if you are shit, you leave.’

Henri Salernes glowered at them and then turned away and disappeared into a side room at the back of the kitchen as if that was him done for the day.

He’d aged considerably since the photograph on her cook book, Rachel had thought when she’d seen him. Thick blond hair was now receding, his skin was rougher and horn-rimmed glasses seemed to make his eyes meaner. She glanced warily around the room. She’d arrived last and missed most of the introductions so immediately felt like the outsider. There were eight of them in total all vying for the coveted apprentice position. She wondered what they had had to do to be selected and felt a flicker of guilt about how she’d got her place. From the moment he’d walked into the room Henri had treated them like irritants he’d rather not have to deal with, and clearly the competition had been dreamed up by his publishers rather than his own desire to share his talent.

As they stood like lemons waiting for him to come back Rachel had another look at the competition. At the back was Tony, tall and dapper, who’d already sliced his hand open getting his new knives out. He looked taken aback by Chef’s abruptness and was shaking his head at the red-headed woman next to him, Cheryl, saying, ‘That was all a bit unnecessary.’

Everyone knew Henri Salernes had a fierce reputation. Once highly regarded in the industry, he was now a virtual baking recluse. Rachel had expected a bit of moodiness from him but not a complete lack of interest in them. As PTA Mrs Pritchard had said when she’d handed her the ticket, it was all for the money.

In the next row was Abby, who was all red lipstick and huge boobs; she was sighing and tapping her nails on the counter. When she saw Rachel looking at her she rolled her eyes as if to show she had no time at all for Chef’s behaviour. Next to Abby was Ali, who had introduced himself saying he ‘liked to experiment with flavour combinations’ and Rachel had had to stifle a snort. He was currently holding in a nervous giggle and looking about to see what everyone else’s reactions were. Marcel, a shockingly handsome Frenchman who had immediately caught Rachel’s attention, was raising one brow in disdain at Ali and allowing a sneer to play on his lips. And then there was George: old, bald with a white moustache, he put his hands on the counter in front of him and said, ‘Well, what do you think of that?’ But no one replied. The fierce-looking woman on Rachel’s far right, Lacey, who hadn’t told them anything about herself, shushed him. The only thing Rachel knew about her was from a phone conversation she’d overheard outside where Lacey was telling whoever was on the other end of the line that she didn’t need to be there. She was just brushing up on her pastry skills. She had a Culinary Arts degree.

They all fell silent as soon as Chef strode back in and Rachel stopped looking around and did what everyone else was doing: she rolled out her knives, checked her utensils, peered at the buttons on the oven and pulled on her new apron—the one her gran had embroidered her name on along with the sweet little flowers—fumbling the strings at the back with clammy hands.

Chef was up at the front shaking flour over his bench, which was double the size of theirs and wooden where their little tables were stainless steel. Next to him the walls were lined with bowls and trays and stocked like a greengrocer’s, fresh fruit and veg tumbling out of wooden crates, and huge sacks of flour and sugar leaned against the skirting board like fat men taking a rest.

It had taken Rachel ages to find the place; it was tucked down a side street and someone had graffitied over the road name. On the bottom floor was an unassuming pâtisserie that belonged to Henri and next to it a white door that opened onto a thin carpeted staircase that smelt of air freshener. The school was on the first floor up, a small room with two windows and packed full of work stations. Above it seemed to be another two or three floors of offices; she’d seen people in suits coming and going past the glass wall of their room.

Chef looked up when he was ready. ‘You have your aprons?’ He nodded when he saw them all, named like food on a shelf. Putting his arms behind his back, he strolled between them, peering at the stitching and reading the names aloud, then paused when he got to Rachel.

‘What the fuck is this flower? You think this is the kind of course for flowers?’ He glared at her, his thick eyebrows drawn together behind the rims of his glasses. ‘A sweet course? You think this is British Fucking Bake Off?’

‘No, Chef.’ Rachel swallowed.

‘You think you are Mary Berry?’

‘No, Chef.’

‘Get rid of those fucking flowers. Your name. The name is there so I don’t have to remember your fucking name. Comprende?’ She could feel his dislike emanating from him and immediately wanted to roll up her knives and run out of the building.

‘Oui, Chef.’

He cocked his head. ‘Don’t mock me.’

‘I-I wasn’t. I promise,’ she stammered.

‘I’m watching you, Rachel.’ He narrowed his eyes, leaning close so she could see the faint stubble over his jaw and the lines across his brow. Handsomely terrifying, a journalist had once described him, and she knew then exactly why. ‘Flower Girl,’ he said and stormed back up to the front.

Rachel glanced around, blinking away moisture in her eyes, and saw seven faces pretending not to look at her. George gave her a wink. As she swung back to the front she caught a look from Marcel on her left. Scruffy dark brown hair and wearing a woolly Lacoste jumper, he had bright blue eyes like a wolf’s that were watching her with either disdain or sympathy, it was hard to tell.

‘Flower Girl. This way!’ Chef shouted. ‘You’re here to learn, not look at the men next to you. Oui.’

Blushing scarlet, Rachel fixed her eyes on Chef’s table. He’d put out rows of pâtisseries—fluffy shell-shaped madeleines, rainbow-coloured macaroons, bite-sized lemon cakes, sticky rum babas and teetering piles of profiteroles.

Rachel loved profiteroles. She’d make them for Ben. He would say they were the best he’d ever tasted. Crème pâtisserie piped into the centre of perfect choux-pastry balls drizzled with the darkest melted chocolate she could buy in Nettleton. If Chef was going to say that they had to make profiteroles today then God or the Angel Gabriel was looking down on her. Chef wouldn’t call her Flower Girl after today, she mused as he summoned them up to the front. She’d be Profiterole Girl. Star Baker Numero Uno.

They gathered round the battered wooden bench, jostling to find a place where they could see exactly what was happening, and watched as Chef started to whisk together eggs and sugar. As he started to talk about all his little tricks of the trade everyone around her pulled out their notebooks and scribbled as he spoke.

Rachel felt herself begin to panic. No one had told her that she needed to bring a notebook.

‘Can I borrow some paper?’ she whispered to Lacey when she couldn’t stand it any longer, but Lacey pretended not to hear.

‘What is that? Who is talking while I talk?’ Chef looked up from his tray of madeleine moulds.

‘I needed some paper.’

‘Ah, you think you know everything, Flower Girl? You think you don’t need to write it down?’

‘No, it’s just—’ Rachel started but he’d gone back to his mixture, shaking his head as he spread it into the silver shells.

As she felt her face go red and nausea rising in her throat Abby nudged her on the shoulder and tore off some paper and George gave her a chewed pencil stump while Lacey shook her head and sighed.

It was a long day watching Chef work his magic. Rachel was exhausted; every inch of her scrap of paper was filled with notes. Then at the end of the afternoon he told them to make something from the day’s demonstration—something that best showed off their skills—and she found herself breathing a sigh of relief. He’d take her seriously after he tasted her famous profiteroles and Lacey could wipe that smug smile off her face.

But two and a half hours later the scene was not quite as she had imagined. Instead of savouring the flavour of her delicate creations, Chef was hurling her choux-pastry balls one by one out of the window, sneering, ‘These look shit.’

Rachel fled as soon as she could, stalking down the road, head down, humiliated, hat pulled low, and her coat, still damp from the night before, clutched tight. Her scarf was covering all her face except her streaming eyes. How had her pastry gone so wrong? In retrospect she realised she should have remade her pâtisserie cream because she’d known at the time it wasn’t her best, but she hadn’t thought it was that bad. It wasn’t that bad. Was it? She was out of her depth and the realisation that she hadn’t earned her place, that she wasn’t good enough, shouldn’t be there, was humiliating.

‘Hey, hey—’

She heard Abby call but kept walking. Feet pounding the pavement in her winter boots. Rachel had already decided she was never going back. She didn’t want this anyway. What had made anyone even think she had it in her to be a baker?

Saturdays at the counter standing next to her mum didn’t mean anything. She hadn’t actually baked anything that someone had bought, had she? Just pinched steaming loaves from the rack when no one was looking. Or sifted flour into the bowl for the lightest, softest croissants and whipped the egg white for the stickiest meringues while standing on an old bread box so she could reach the counter. It was her mum who’d done everything. All Rachel had done was cut the shapes of the biscuits. Bunnies at Easter. Ears of corn at harvest time. Ghosts at Halloween. Reindeer at Christmas; always with a red blob of icing on their noses. She’d watch her mum flick the nozzle of the piping gun so it was a perfect red dot. Then sometimes turn around and, when Rachel wasn’t expecting it, dot her on the nose with red. My little reindeer.

‘Hey, Rachel. Wait up.’

Rachel paused at the corner, wiping her nose with her glove.

‘We’re having a drink.’ Abby was out of breath. ‘Round the corner.’

‘Oh, no, thanks.’

‘No, come on, we need to get to know each other. That way we’re stronger against Scrooge in there.’ Abby did an impression of Chef Henri, waving his hands in the air in disgust.

Rachel shook her head. ‘There’s no point for me. I don’t think I’m coming back tomorrow.’

‘Oh, you have to. You have to. You can’t leave. You were so brave in there. I’d have had to run away if it was me.’

‘Thanks, but it’s not really how I imagined it. I don’t want to work with him. I’m going to go home actually. Get the first train back to London.’

There was a loud laugh behind her. ‘You quit, Flower Girl?’ Neither of them had seen Chef Henri cycling past on his old bike.

‘It’s not quitting,’ Rachel muttered, her nose tipped up in the air as she tried to look aloof. ‘I just don’t think it’s for me. I’ve made a mistake.’

He barked a laugh. ‘You are scared like a little mouse and running back to England with your tail between your legs. All the same, you English girls. Weak. Babies. It’s a little tough and you run home to Mummy. I bet—’ He paused. ‘I bet you can’t even make bread.’

Rachel took a deep breath, affronted and trying to think of something suitably cutting in reply, but he carried on.

‘Go on.’ He made a shooing action with his hand. ‘Run away. Run, run, run. One less person for me to get rid of. This is beautiful.’ He laughed and then cycled off, ringing his bell, before she could get out the words that were queuing up in her head.

She stood staring after him, furious. There was definitely a difference between leaving because it wasn’t right and quitting, wasn’t there?

‘Just one drink?’ said Abby, sensing weakness.

What was it her mum had said when she’d tried to leave the Brownies, gym club, pony club? Just give it one more chance, for me.

‘OK, I suppose one drink.’

‘Excellent.’

CHAPTER FIVE

Everyone in the bar was so confident in their skills. Ali was sipping a demi pression and half checking out his reflection in the mirror behind them, pushing a hand through his neatly styled black hair that was so heavily waxed it sprang back into the exact same position as before it was touched. ‘I’ve always known about flavour,’ he said, tearing his eyes from the mirror and looking at each of his fellow contestants. ‘That’s my thing. I’m just worried he’s too traditional for me. That we won’t be able to express ourselves.’

Marcel was feeding coins into the fag machine. ‘You must master the basics before you can express yourself properly.’

‘You sound like Chef,’ snorted Abby.

‘There are worse people to sound like.’ Marcel shrugged. ‘In his time he was the best. The greatest. My family, they had all his books. His restaurant had queues out the door. I ate there once and I’ve never forgotten it. The food was exquisite. Like nothing I have tasted before. And then—’ he blew a raspberry through closed lips ‘—nothing.’

Ali went on as if he hadn’t heard anything else that had been said. ‘It’s been since uni—I used to be in the Chemistry lab making cherry essence rather than recreating photosynthesis. I’m like a flavour alchemist.’

‘And you don’t think Chef is?’ Marcel rolled his eyes heavenward behind Ali when he didn’t even register the comment and leant against the cigarette machine, unwrapping the cellophane on his packet while Ali waffled on a bit more about the chemistry of taste.

‘Did you know about Lacey?’ said Abby, cutting in.

‘No, what?’

Heads crowded together over the table; Cheryl knocked over the sugar shaker. Rachel stayed sitting back and looked away at the posters of famous film stars like Clark Gable and Brigitte Bardot that lined the walls, not wanting to hear that much more. She was finding it all too stressful, the notion of competition and the obvious desire in everyone to win. It had been a long time since she’d put herself in a position where she could be judged and it made her feel more vulnerable than she’d imagined.

‘Big businesswoman. Thirty years CEO of a luxury goods company. Jacked it all in for this.’

‘Really?’ George was shocked.

‘Apparently.’ Abby nodded.

‘Goodness,’ said Cheryl, quietly.

‘And how about you?’ Ali turned to Cheryl, who was pouring more red wine from the carafe on the table as unobtrusively as she could. ‘How did you get into this?’

Cheryl blushed, placing the carafe back on the table and toying with the cuffs of her jumper. ‘Same as everyone.’

‘Oh, no, love,’ said George, his accent thick Yorkshire. ‘We’re all different.’

Cheryl had a neat red bob, perfect, as if it had been cut with a set square. Rachel watched her flick it so it covered more of her face. ‘I used to be a bit bigger.’

‘I understand.’ Abby patted her on the arm.

‘How big?’ asked George.

Rachel made a face across the table, trying to encourage him to be a bit more tactful with his questions.

‘Pretty big,’ said Cheryl, blushing again, her hair getting further over her face. ‘To lose it I had to relearn about food. Learn to cook.’

‘But all them cakes—aren’t you tempted?’

She shook her head. ‘I make them for my family, or for the neighbours. It’s the baking that hooks me. I just love it and for some reason I’ve found that if I make it, I don’t eat it.’ She laughed for the first time.

Everyone smiled but Rachel saw Ali do a little eye-roll behind his beer to himself. As if Cheryl was easy pickings.

‘I’ve got to go,’ she whispered to Abby.

‘Really? No. Don’t go. We’re getting to know each other.’

The last thing Rachel needed was these probing, nosy questions and people sizing her up as competition. ‘Yeah, I really should go.’

‘Will we see you tomorrow?’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

Rachel walked to the bus stop and when the bus didn’t come she walked back all the way to her dingy flat. There was thin drizzle in the night air, the droplets flecking in the beam of the overhead lights. All the narrow streets were lit with Christmas stars that had been twined up the lampposts and tinsel hung from windows and around doors. Outside the churches little nativity scenes glowed bright, but she barely noticed.

When she got to her building she stopped and looked up—at the blazing light from Madame Charles’s and then to the dark shutters in the roof—and thought of her lovely flat at home. Everything arranged just as she liked it. No surprises. All warm and cosy and hers.

Trudging up the stairs, she wished she were back home—sitting on her lumpy sofa, marking homework with smiley faces, secretly weeping at The X Factor—rather than here, in this draughty loft, baking with a load of strangers.

Inside she boiled up water on the rusty stove-top kettle and sat on the chair thinking about Chef laughing and cycling away. How could she have been so bad? It was gutting. And he was so cruel. She could make bread, for God’s sake. OK, she hadn’t baked it for years, but that wasn’t to say she couldn’t.

Bread was the one thing her hands simply refused to make, as if the dough held too much power in its smells, its texture, its taste—just the simple process of kneading and rolling was like her own personal Pandora’s Box. But she’d always been good at it. Her gran could often be heard lamenting Rachel’s refusal to make her a batch of rolls or a wholemeal. As she thought about it she wondered if Ali, with his flavour combinations, could make a decent loaf.

Damn Chef. He must have weaknesses. No one had come into the workshop and giggled at his past failures, had they?

She leant forward and turned on the oven, watched the flames roar to life through the glass and turned it off again. Then she found herself on her feet taking flour from the shelf, butter she’d got from the Carrefour out of the fridge and breaking eggs into a chipped mixing bowl. Before she knew it she was flouring the worktop and kneading and stretching her dough as if she were on autopilot. Not thinking, just doing. When she looked down and saw the little round blob of dough it almost took her by surprise. She was glad to be able to leave it to prove on the table and got as far away from it as she could, going to the window to stare out at the Champs Élysées view.

She gazed at the perfect strands of fairy lights on the beautifully trimmed trees. It was dazzling—not a blown bulb or twig out of place. But combined with the sweet, sticky smell of raw dough in the air, it all made her suddenly feel quite homesick. Made her think of the monstrous great big tree that they hauled into the centre of Nettleton every year, branches sticking out all over the place. She’d always get needles itching down her back from helping to carry, and Jackie would stand on the church steps, bossing everyone about which side should face front. The great tree would wobble precariously as Mrs Pritchard’s handyman, Kenneth, secured the base and her son tied the top with rope to a lamppost and the old King’s Head sign. She sniggered at the memory of the year they’d forgotten to tie the top and it had crashed through the upstairs pub window at two in the morning almost skewering a pair of sleeping ramblers.

Compared to these Champs Élysées trees, theirs was like the giant at the top of the beanstalk. Too big, hugely ugly and draped with a ramshackle selection of lights that the village had accumulated over the years. Some were big coloured light bulbs, others small maniacally flashing fairy lights that Jackie’s grandmother claimed had given her a funny turn. Around the lower branches the kids hung the snowflake decorations they made at school, all in a big cluster. And on the top was an angel that her gran could remember as a child. It was a disastrous beast. These perfect, beautiful French trees would turn their backs on it in disgust. They would shun the pride and joy of Nettleton.

Rachel had a sudden urge to ask Jackie to text her a photo of it, but stopped mid-message, not wanting her to think she was a pathetic, needy idiot.

Instead the alarm on her phone went off to tell her the dough was ready. In the past she would have plaited plump strands into individual little loaves but this time she just wanted it out of sight and hurled it into the oven, like a hot potato, where it sat off-centre on the baking tray.

There was a knock on the door as she was still staring into the oven trying to work out how there was bread baking in there after so many years of her steering well clear. Surprised, she ran over, oven gloves still on, and pulled it open.

Madame Charles’s housekeeper was standing on the landing, a big basket clutched in front of her paisley-patterned housecoat.

‘Bonsoir, Mademoiselle.’

‘Bonsoir—’ Rachel paused.

‘Chantal.’

‘Bonsoir, Chantal.’

There was silence. Rachel leant by the door unsure whether to invite her in or if she was just about to be told that she’d done something wrong. She wondered whether she should tell Chantal now that she was leaving tomorrow.

‘I bring you some things.’ Chantal held up the basket, then peered round Rachel into the flat. ‘For your room.’

‘Oh.’ Rachel didn’t know what to say. ‘I think I have everything I need. Actually I’m leav—’

Chantal cut her off. ‘Things to make it—je ne sais pas—happy?’

‘Happy?’ Rachel looked down at the bag as Chantal squeezed past her and put it down on the table.

As Rachel closed the door Chantal pulled out two red cushions, a little frayed around the edges, and went and rested them on the sofa, plumping them up with both hands and then pulling the corners straight so they sat beautifully, as they might have once done in Madame Charles’s flat. Coming back to her bag, she took out a strip of thick aquamarine wool and, shaking it out, draped it over the ratty armchair in the corner, tucking it in neatly around the edges of the cushioned seat. Then she stood back, arms pointing to the objects, as if highlighting to Rachel what she was trying to do.

‘Happy,’ she said again.

Slightly perplexed, Rachel watched her go back to her Mary Poppins basket and pull out a mirror with pink china flowers across the top. Pointing to a chip, Chantal rolled her eyes and said, ‘That Madame Charles throws away.’

Next came a spider plant that she carried through the alcove and sat on the window sill alongside a tiny snow-globe of the Eiffel Tower; this she shook and held out to Rachel.

‘I buy this for you.’

Crossing the room, Rachel picked the ball of plastic out of Chantal’s hands, lost for words. When she shook it she noticed her hands were shaking as she watched the snow fall gently round the spire—twisting and swirling round the miniature statue.

‘You shouldn’t have,’ Rachel said, transfixed by the globe and the kindness of the gesture.

Chantal shrugged. ‘I think of you up here alone in this—’ she glanced around ‘—this place and I think that it is not comfortable, especially at Christmas. My daughter, she is about your age and if she was here I would want someone to make her comfortable.’ Chantal folded her arms across her chest.

‘Does she live in Paris?’ Rachel asked, turning the globe upside down again and watching the flakes tumble past the spire of the tower.

‘Oh, no.’ Chantal shook her head. ‘She is in the South. In Nice.’

Rachel looked up. ‘I love Nice. I went on holiday there a couple of years ago. Such a beautiful city. How lovely that you can go and visit her there.’

Chantal seemed to hug her arms a little closer round her chest. ‘I have not been.’

‘Oh,’ said Rachel. ‘She comes to see you?’ she asked and then kicked herself when she realised she’d missed the tension in the comment and should have just changed the subject.

‘Non.’ Chantal turned to look around the room, and then with a forced casualness said, ‘We do not speak any longer.’

‘I’m sorry.’

She waved a hand as if it were nothing. ‘She has a strong will.’

Rachel nodded, immediately curious as to what had happened.

‘Anyway, I think of her when I think of you up here, and I would want her to be comfortable.’ The oven timer pinged and Chantal, taking it as a cue to change the subject, wandered over, peered in through the oven door and, smelling the freshly baked bread in the air, she sighed.

Rachel went to place the plastic snow dome on the shelf but changed her mind and kept hold of it as she glanced at Chantal, who seemed suddenly smaller and more alone than she had done when she’d first come in. ‘Would you like some bread?’ Rachel asked.

‘Oh.’ Chantal rested her hands across her waist and stood as if this were what she’d been waiting for all along. ‘If it is not an intrusion.’

Rachel shook her head. If anything it was something of a relief to have someone there with her and Chantal appeared to feel the same way.

A few minutes later the housekeeper was sitting at the table with a cup of tea, smiling through a mouthful of warm, soft bread. ‘C’est très bon. Parfait.’ Tearing off another piece, she said, ‘You make very good bread.’

‘Thanks.’ Rachel hadn’t touched hers; she was somewhere else entirely, overwhelmed by the smell of fresh-baked dough, the sadness in Chantal’s eyes when she talked about her daughter, and distracted by her snow-globe and the red cushions.

‘Yes. It is very good. Très bon. Like the boulangerie at the end of the road.’

Rachel thought again about what her mum would say if she told her she was going to quit the contest: One more chance. For me.

‘You compete, oui? For the bread? That is the competition.’

‘Pretty much. With Henri Salernes.’

‘Oh la la, Henri Salernes. Very grand. Whatever happened to him? I had his book. Very good, a very clever man. And his brother, yes? The two of them, they had a lot of skill. And their restaurant, it was very famous. And now nothing except the pâtisserie, oui? Just a little pâtisserie that no one would know belonged to him. Very sad. Trying to prove too much too young, I think. That is what the papers say if I remember, grew up badly—not a good home, you understand?’

‘I don’t really know that much about the restaurant. Just that he was an amazing baker once.’

‘Oui, once. He was the youngest and the most celebrated. He changed the way we bake. And his brother, he change the way we cook. One was the savoury and one the sweet … Then it all goes, pouf, like that. All the money for Henri on the drink and the drugs, I think. It is always on the drink and the drugs. Silly man. He had a lot of talent. But …’ she held her arms out wide ‘… c’est la vie.’ She popped the rest of her slice of bread in her mouth. ‘Well, if I was the judge, you will win already. You do very well.’

Rachel reached forward and tore a little chunk off the loaf and popped it in her mouth. The power of the taste almost made her crumple on the spot. Soft and warm like a blanket.

One more chance. For me.

‘Very well. Very good bread.’

For me?

OK, Mum. She nearly said it out loud, nodding and holding tight to the globe.

‘You find it better? Yes?’ said Chantal, following her gaze from the snow-globe to the rest of the room.

‘Yes. Thank you,’ Rachel replied. ‘I find it much better.’

CHAPTER SIX

Next morning Rachel arrived at the pâtisserie with all the embroidered flowers that he’d made such a fuss about snipped off her apron, determined to prove to Chef Henri he was wrong about her.

Then she might leave.

The pâtisserie itself was one of her favourite bits about the whole competition. On the ground floor, it was small and unassuming but the counters were piled high with some of the most delicate pastries and tarts she’d ever seen. The glaze on the tart au citron shone as if it’d been freshly polished that morning. The sign on the front of the shop was written in gold and inside an old lino floor was scratched and scuffed where customers had stood waiting in line. To the left of the counter were high stools that seemed to seat the same three old men every day, who came in to drink espresso and eat croissants, and behind the counter was a young woman with bright pink lipstick and wild curly hair pulled into a messy plait, who had introduced herself to Rachel as Françoise the day before when Rachel had been completely lost trying to find the competition kitchen. She’d patted her on the shoulder and wished her good luck in a conspiratorial tone that Rachel hadn’t quite understood until she’d come face to face with Chef.

Now, as she walked in and bought herself a pain au chocolat for her breakfast, when it came time for her to pay, Françoise raised a brow as if to ask if Rachel now understood her words of luck; Rachel nodded, a silent understanding between them about the tyrant boss. Françoise laughed and told her that he didn’t get any better the longer you knew him.

As Rachel left the pâtisserie through the side door that led into the corridor she’d just started to take the stairs up to the kitchen when she came across a man in a suit, who flattened himself against the wall to let her pass.

‘Merci beaucoup,’ she said, not really paying attention, caught up in thoughts about what Chef would say about the fact she hadn’t run back home to England.

‘It is my pleasure,’ he replied as she passed. His perfect English made her glance back. Short, neat black hair, sharp, tailor-made slate-grey cashmere suit, thick, dark eyebrows that drew together now over big brown eyes as he watched her looking at him.

‘Thanks,’ she said again and then felt foolish. ‘I er …’ she started, pointing up the stairs. She felt her cheeks start to get hot and looked away, embarrassed by her reaction to him. He wasn’t good-looking per se, but striking in the kind of way that she just wanted to stare at him for days. Trying to disguise the reddening of her face by pretending she had an itch on her cheek, she turned back and said, ‘I’m going up there.’ A blatantly obvious statement that she couldn’t quite believe she’d just said. She hadn’t been so flummoxed in the presence of a stranger ever. Pull yourself together, Rachel, she thought.

‘So I see,’ he replied with a smile twitching on his lips and before she could reply he held two fingers to his forehead in a salute and turned away, clipping down the stairs.

She watched him leave, pulling on a dark-grey woollen coat as he got to the bottom step before yanking open the door into the icy cold. A lingering smell of expensive aftershave and soap made her close her eyes and consider how well groomed the French were. She breathed in again, trying to catch the scent once more, but it was gone. Running her finger along her bottom lip, she did a flash replay of the momentary conversation in her head, shook her head at her own embarrassingly floundering responses, and found that all she could remember was his eyes. They were espresso dark and dancing with confidence—that last little amused look had knocked her totally off kilter.

‘He is nice, non?’ Françoise had stuck her head out of the doorway and was following Rachel’s gaze.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t know,’ she said too quickly.

‘He is very nice, I am telling you.’

‘Well …’ Rachel shrugged as if it barely mattered because she would never see him again.

‘You are still early, non?’ Françoise said as she wiped her hands on her apron then looked at the paper bag with the pain au chocolat clutched in Rachel’s hand. ‘You should enjoy your breakfast, eat it at the counter with an espresso, mais non?’

‘I shouldn’t really.’

‘Ah, yes, you should. I will have one too. It is quiet. I am bored. I like to have someone to talk to.’

‘But—’ Rachel glanced up the gloomy staircase to the workshop where everyone would soon be gathered waiting to stab each other in the back or wait for the weak to fail. An offer of plain, simple company from Françoise was too tempting to turn down. ‘Go on, then.’

Back inside the pâtisserie, she perched on a stool by the counter as Françoise bashed away with the coffee machine.

‘This thing, it is shit,’ she muttered as she flicked some switches and the thick black liquid poured out into a small white cup rimmed with gold.

‘You sound like Chef.’ Rachel laughed.

‘Fuck no.’ Françoise sneered.

‘And again.’

Françoise laughed. ‘I have worked with him too long. He is a tyrant.’

‘He is, isn’t he?’ Rachel took the espresso cup and saucer from her and declined the two sachets of sugar.

‘No, I am being mean.’ Françoise shook her head. ‘He is OK. I think he suffers from the past.’

Rachel raised a brow in disbelief. ‘I think he’s a tyrant.’

Françoise laughed and then turned her back to Rachel and started doing her hair in the mirrored wall behind the counter. ‘My boyfriend arrives today. From Bordeaux.’

‘Very nice.’ Rachel sipped the coffee, wondering if she should say anything else.

‘I only see him once in the month. He is very—’ She paused, untwisting her lipstick. ‘He is like Chef. He has the hot blood.’ She turned back round to face her, eyes smiling, her mouth pulled into an O as she slathered it with more Chanel Rouge. ‘You just need to learn how to handle the men like Chef. That is all. Do not let them scare you. The anger, the words, it is all air that is hot. Big, hot air.’ She laughed. ‘Underneath is the mouse.’

Coffee finished, Rachel was second to arrive in the workroom. Lacey was already there; she’d watched her stalking up the stairs, and now she was standing alone, polishing her tabletop.

‘Hi,’ Rachel said as she unfolded her knives and put her snow-globe on the bottom shelf of her work surface where Chef wouldn’t see it.

Lacey didn’t reply. Rachel studied her, her loose grey curls pinned into a neat chignon at the nape of her neck, apron covering a three-quarter-length mauve dress with capped sleeves that revealed gym-toned arms. Gold studs in her ears, coral lipstick and glasses hanging on a diamanté chain around her neck.

‘Where are you from?’ she asked as Lacey continued to wipe.

‘London.’

‘Oh, whereabouts? I went to uni in London. I’m from a tiny village in Hampshire.’

‘Look.’ Lacey screwed up her cloth and turned towards her. ‘I don’t want to be rude but I’m not here to make friends. This is a competition and I just want to keep it professional. No games.’

‘Games?’ Rachel looked perplexed.

‘I saw you yesterday with your little flowers getting all the attention. Some of us are here to work. Hard. So … let’s just—’ She held her hands up and then went back to polishing her station.

Rachel couldn’t believe it. ‘I’m not—’

‘You came back. Hurray!’ Abby bounded in with George, unaware of the tense silence in the room. ‘We wondered. We made bets. I said you would.’

‘I thought I’d give it one more go,’ Rachel said, hesitant after her altercation with Lacey.

‘Well, I’m really glad you did. We need to stick together.’ Abby patted her on the shoulder and walked over to her bench.

Over the next five minutes all the others trooped in, with Marcel last. He glanced at Rachel and said, with his smooth French accent, ‘Looks like I lost my bet.’ Then he winked at her just as Chef strode in so she was blushing red as he towered over her station.

‘You are still with us? I thought you run back to England? Non?’

Rachel shook her head. She tried to think of him as the great baker who had lost everything. Of the boy who had grown up too fast. Of the genius who revolutionised French pâtisserie. Last night she had crept down the stairs and perched on the bottom step outside Madame Charles’s flat and, tapping in the code that Chantal had slipped her, had surreptitiously logged into her Internet. There she had spent an hour or so Googling Henri Salernes. The restaurant he had set up with his brother that had taken Paris by storm and made them among the youngest three-Michelin-starred chefs in the country. She’d pored over pages and pages of glowing reviews from even the most hardened critics and pictures of snaking queues out of the door and celebrities huddled in darkened corners sipping champagne.

Then the headlines changed to the shock exit of his brother, who walked away at the height of their fame. And then the steady charting of Henri’s epic rise and fall. The temper that had driven away most of his best sous chefs, the arrogance that had banned negative critics from walking through the door and the gradual loss of his Michelin stars, one by one over the years until there were none.

But just as the articles got juicy, she’d heard the click of Madame Charles’s heels on the stairs and, slamming her laptop shut, Rachel had backed up into the shadow of the landing and watched as her elegant landlady swept into her apartment, the lights glistening, the warmth emanating, and as the door shut the soft lull of some classical music and the ring of the telephone accompanied by Madame Charles’s soft, low voice as she answered the call. Rachel had watched the closed door jealously, reluctant to go back up to her room, especially now she was going back for more of Chef the next day. Wishing instead that the doors to this sumptuous apartment might open up and swallow her whole.

What was it Chantal had said about Chef? Not a good home. Rachel had thought of lovely little Tommy back in Nettleton who’d been adopted by Mr Swanson and his wife two years ago. He’d had not a good home. As he stood in front of her now she tried to imagine Chef at Tommy’s age. Looking up at his stern, miserable face, she tried to picture him as a five-year-old, as one of her sweet little class with trousers too big and jam down his cardigan.

She watched him glance at her apron and take in its absent flowers.

‘Well, we’ll have to see if you do better today, won’t we?’ He smirked.

‘Yes, Chef.’ She nodded. No, it was no good. He just wouldn’t shrink to the size of one of her pupils. He had been born a fully fledged pain in the bum, she was sure of it.

‘I have my eye on you,’ he said as he strode away.

Rachel made the mistake of glancing to her right and saw Lacey raise her brows with disdain.

The day started with pastry. Filo, short, flaky, puff, choux. Savoury and sweet.

‘You know nothing about pastry. Everything you think you know, you don’t know,’ hollered Chef.

All morning they sweated over it. Chef coming over and screwing it into a lump, slapping it across the room to the bin, shouting, ‘Too much flour. Start again.’

Abby cried. George had a coughing fit and Tony cut another finger, rendering him useless for the afternoon’s challenge.

‘After lunch you make me something. I spend the day teaching you, now you give it back to me. I want to see what you have. In here.’ Chef bashed his chest with his fist. ‘Now leave, it is lunchtime.’

Rachel walked out with Abby, both bundled into their coats and scarfs ready for the wintry cold that had hit last night.

‘I’ve left my family at Christmas for this guy. He’s a nightmare,’ Abby whispered as they left the room.

‘You have kids?’

‘Two. Little girl and boy. One year apart. Glutton for punishment, me. I’ve told them I’m off meeting Santa—we need to discuss how good they’ve been this year.’ Pulling out her purse, she showed Rachel a picture—a passport-photo strip in a plastic wallet of two bright blond children, aged about six or seven, could have been younger, and a fun-looking surfer-type guy holding them on his knee.

‘He looks nice.’

‘Doesn’t he? Jane from number seventeen thought so, too. He left last year, bought a boat, said family wasn’t for him, he felt suffocated, and he’s sailing round the world now—with her. Have you seen those boats? If anything’s suffocating I’d say it’s them—can’t even stand up half the time. He sends postcards from places like Mauritius and the kids think he’s all exciting and glam. Not like boring old Mum.’

‘You’re cooking in Paris. That’s glamorous,’ Rachel said, and they both turned to look back up the stairs at the peeling paintwork and blown light bulb and giggled.

Marcel was just jogging down the stairs and gave them a funny look when he passed them laughing. ‘It is something about me, no?’

‘No, not at all.’ Rachel waved a hand to show that it was nothing, that they were laughing at something else.

Marcel shrugged, a lazy grin on his face as he pushed open the door to the street. ‘You could give a man a complex,’ he said, winking as he strolled out and then lighting a cigarette behind hands cupped against the breeze.

‘You could give me anything you want, Marcel,’ whispered Abby dreamily. ‘He’s so pretty, isn’t he? Like a model for Gucci.’

Rachel nodded as they watched him disappear up the road. Marcel was chocolate-box handsome; perfect as if he’d been chiselled from marble and on show in a museum.

‘I find him very distracting,’ Abby mused. ‘I have to consciously not look at him during baking, otherwise I’d be all over the place.’

‘You have to get a grip—’ Rachel leant on the door, letting in a shock of icy air ‘—or he’ll sense your weakness.’

‘Please, God.’ Abby clasped her gloved hands heavenward. ‘Let Marcel sense my weakness.’

Passing the pâtisserie, Rachel saw the guy she’d passed in the corridor earlier standing drumming his fingers lightly on the counter. Same grey woollen coat, same thick dark hair, same instant flutter in her stomach. No one seemed to be serving. She glanced through the window, peering over the gold scrolled lettering that spelt out Salernes on each window, and saw no one except the customer. Where was Françoise? Had her boyfriend arrived already? She glanced from the shop back to Abby and said, ‘Do you think I should go and look for Françoise …?’

‘No. Absolutely not.’ Abby shook her head, pulling her coat round her against the chill and blowing on her hands. ‘Stay out of it. Come on, it’s freezing out here.’

They walked on a step but Rachel found herself turning back. ‘I think I should. Look, he’s waiting … And I don’t want her to get into trouble,’ she added, refusing to acknowledge that her reason for returning had very little to do with Françoise.

Doubling back in through the side entrance of the shop, she checked the two cubbyholes to see why there was no one about. The back door to the patio outside was open, cold air was streaming in along with the raised voices of an argument. She ventured forward and, peering round the door, saw Françoise and a man who must have been the boyfriend from Bordeaux in the middle of an almighty row, arms waving in the air, voices raised, Françoise’s hair all loose and wild escaping from her plait and the boyfriend scowling as he flicked cigarette ash angrily onto the paving stones. It certainly didn’t look like the romantic reunion Françoise had been dreaming of earlier.

‘Françoise,’ Rachel whispered, but she didn’t turn.

Rachel coughed a couple of times to try and distract her but she was clearly in her stride, yelling and shouting all over the place, her finger stabbing him in the chest as he flicked the fag away and huffed out an exasperated breath, running a hand through his hair.

‘Shit,’ Rachel said out loud as she stepped back from the doorway and into the cubbyhole.

‘Is everything all right?’ the man asked, a look of amusement on his face as the insults from out on the patio streamed in through the back door.

‘I don’t think so.’ She shook her head and made a face as she walked forward towards the counter. ‘I don’t think there’ll be anyone to serve you.’

He shrugged. ‘Can you?’

‘Oh, no, I don’t work here.’

He frowned. ‘You look like you do.’

Rachel found herself watching, distracted, as his fingers drummed casually on the counter top, mesmerised by his eyes as they glanced over the array of cakes. Then realising she hadn’t replied, said quickly, ‘The owner would kill me if he found me here.’

The man laughed, his eyes crinkling softly at the sides. ‘Well, I wouldn’t want that to happen.’

‘No,’ she said, trying not to stare. He wasn’t her type, not at all, yet she wanted him to keep looking at her that way. Maybe it was just because he was French and exotic and she felt far from home. She was usually all about the rough and ready, love ‘em and leave ‘em types, not the well-groomed, mature alpha males who looked as if they would buy her red roses, talk about current affairs over dinner and shrug unfazed if someone mentioned commitment. ‘I er—’ She pointed to the door, without taking her eyes from him. ‘I er—should be leaving.’

‘That is OK.’ He cocked his head, not bothering to hide his amusement at how flustered she was becoming as he went back to perusing the rows of pâtisserie.

She started to walk away but then found herself stopping and asking, ‘What were you going to have?’

‘I don’t know. I never know what to choose,’ he said, glancing up from the counter. ‘I like the eclairs, but I also think maybe the millefeuille. Or sometimes the tarte Tatin. There is too much to choose from and my eyes they are, I think I heard the phrase once, bigger than my stomach.’ He laughed. ‘It is hard, non?’

‘Oh, I know. I’m like that too.’ Rachel found herself bending down on the other side of the counter to look at the array of desserts between them. ‘I just want everything,’ she said, then, embarrassed by her own enthusiasm, quickly glanced away when she met his laughing eyes through the glass.

There was a pause as she felt him watch her blush, and then she heard him say, ‘Who would have thought choosing just one little cake could be so difficult?’

‘Well, if it was me …’ She gazed over the rows and rows of treats that sat in front of her. Bright marzipan shapes, chocolate twists dusted with sugar, sticky millefeuille layers oozing with cream, tarts brimming with frangipani, coffee eclairs lined up like fat fingers, red berries piled high and tumbling off crème pâtisserie tarts. And on the shelf above were piles of glistening chocolates. Dark glossy liqueurs with cherry stalks poking out of the top, dusty truffles and striped caramels, fudge coated in ganache. Strawberry creams shaped like tiny fruits perched next to pralines wrapped like presents in gold.

But sitting perched on the tray to her left were Rachel’s all-time favourites. ‘I always like a Religieuse,’ she said, pointing to the tower of two round eclairs balanced with a ruff of cream piped around the neck. ‘They are my first choice whenever I get to come to France.’

‘The Religieuse—the little nun,’ he said and she watched him laugh through the glass. ‘Bon choix,’ he added, before glancing up and meeting her eyes. ‘You are here for Christmas?’ he asked.

Rachel nodded, caught off guard by the question. He tilted his head, as if processing the fact and mulling over another question, but said nothing more, just went back to studying the cake choices.

Then suddenly a shout from the doorway made her jolt upright, almost banging her head on the top lip of the counter. She heard a loud, angry voice shout, ‘What are you doing in my shop? Where is Françoise?’ and turned to see Chef standing, hands on hips, in the doorway.

At that moment Françoise came hurrying in, hair all over the place, pale-faced and terrified, mascara streaked down her cheeks.

As Françoise rushed past her Rachel grabbed her arm to hold her back and said to Chef as confidently as she could in the face of his scowl, ‘Françoise wasn’t feeling well. I said I’d help.’

The cosy warmth of the pâtisserie suddenly felt too hot as Chef looked between the two of them, disbelieving. ‘You are ill, Françoise, you come to me. Rachel—out. Françoise, serve the man.’

As Chef narrowed his eyes, waiting for her to leave, Rachel whispered, ‘Are you OK?’ to Françoise, who’d clearly caught a glimpse of herself in the mirrored wall behind them and started scrubbing the black off her face.

‘Yes, yes, it is always the same,’ she muttered under her breath as she retied her hair. Then smoothing down her apron and giving Rachel a quick little wink, she added, ‘We will make up later.’ Rachel rolled her eyes and as she started to leave turned to look apologetically at her customer. ‘I’m sorry about this.’

‘It’s nothing. Merci beaucoup for your choice, mademoiselle.’ He tipped his head to her, his dark eyes crinkling with humour as he surveyed the scene. ‘I’m Philippe, by the way.’

‘Rachel,’ she said. She paused for a moment to smile at him and then, remembering where she was, turned and ducked away past a furious Chef to Abby, who was waiting, one brow raised, her arms folded tightly underneath her cleavage and her breath coming out in white clouds from the cold.

‘Even I could have told you that wouldn’t go well.’ Back at the workroom everyone was starting to prepare. There was a sense, as they plucked butter from the larder and scooped up flour from the bags, that they weren’t pretending any more.

‘You have an hour and a half. Everything here, it is for you. Use it. I don’t want to see some shitty nothing on a plate. Enjoy. I am here, having coffee.’ Chef took his seat at the front and surveyed them like a headmaster.

Rachel looked around; it seemed everyone was going sweet. Lacey was cutting figs and straining prunes from a jar. She could see a row of tiny moulds ready to be lined with filo. Marcel had told them on the way in that his chocolate tart never failed. The secret was Armagnac from his family’s distillery.

Rachel was dithering, her hand hovering over peaches. She watched George pick the fruits for a pear, apple and orange blossom tarte Tatin. Cheryl was asking Abby to confirm ingredient weights for a cherry and date Bakewell. And Ali had decided on a basil and white chocolate vol-au-vent, the idea of which had made Chef snort with disgust.

As she stood panicking, gazing at all the ingredients, her eyes landed on a lump of feta, hard and crumbling into the wooden cheese board on the side, and she had a brainwave. Almost kissed the air and said a prayer of thanks.

When she reached for the cheese she caught Lacey roll her eyes and mutter under her breath, ‘Oh, here we go. Trying to be different.’

But she ignored her. She wasn’t trying to be different at all. She was trying to do whatever it took not to be at the bottom. Being last wasn’t a feeling she was used to. And if she was going to cling on and prove she had some skill, then this recipe was tried and tested. She knew because it wasn’t just Ben’s taste buds that recommended it, it was generations. A recipe passed down from her Greek great-grandmother to her grandmother, her mother and her.

Tiny filo cheese pies so thin and delicate, brushed with glistening egg yolk and packed full of feta, ricotta, blue cheese and parmesan that cracked and burst on the top like volcanos when cooked. Baked till golden, they were the taste of summers in Greece sitting under vines, Coca-Cola for them, chilled retsina for the adults. Clinking ice cubes, steaming plates of cheese and spinach pies, sizzling prawns, pale pink taramasalata, olives warmed by the sun. Her gran in a hat fussing. Her great-grandmother in a chair, faded blue sundress and Scholl sandals. The waves rolling the pebbles. It was the taste of summer and sunshine and family.

It was the taste of a time that was perfect.

She still made the pies, every now and then, but she didn’t go to Greece any more.

As she rolled out her filo, Chef sat up at the front sipping his espresso, Lacey carved her figs into intricate flowers, Marcel dripped chocolate from up high so it would cool into stars on his baking parchment, Ali started whipping his basil with the blender to make a foam, and Tony cut his finger again—Abby said it needed stitches. Chef sighed. Rachel’s pies puffed and cracked in the oven.

Time ticked away and she ummed and ahhed about taking them out as she watched Lacey make the finishing touches to her tartlets, dusting icing sugar over a flowered cake stand she’d brought from home.

‘Five minutes,’ said Chef.

She needed six.

Abby was brushing down her counter. Rachel’s was a mess, the sieve poking out from a pan, a baking tray at an angle in the sink, spoonfuls of cheese splattered across the surface.

‘One minute,’ Chef yelled.

Rachel looked at her pies. Almost. Almost. She heard her great-grandmother: Patience, Rachel. Patience in the kitchen. Her timer ticked.

‘Fuck it,’ she said in the end as the others stood neatly by their creations. Fifteen seconds to go, she yanked open the oven door, her glasses misted with steam, and tipped her pies onto a white plate she’d found under her counter.

When the stopwatch beeped, Chef slowly unfurled himself from his chair and walked from stand to stand perusing the goods. Marcel had supplied a crystal glass of Armagnac, Abby had a model Santa and a sherry to go alongside her mince pies. Lacey’s beautiful tarts sat proud and decadent on their tiered platter, as good as anything Rachel had been served for her birthday tea at the Ritz. Slicing a sliver here and a chunk there, Chef announced his verdicts.

‘Délicieux.’ Lacey’s tartlets.

‘Average.’ Abby’s pies.

‘A waste of good Armagnac.’ Marcel’s chocolate.

‘Intriguing.’ George’s tarte Tatin.

‘Disgusting.’ Ali’s basil creation.

Then he stopped at Rachel’s. She watched as he cast a disapproving eye over her bench. He picked up and dropped her sopping cloth, then prodded her haphazard pile of pies. Their innards were squelching out as they squashed each other without the proper time to cool.

He took one between finger and thumb, holding it as if he found it as distasteful as the dirty cloth. He blew on it, tore it in half and listened for the crack in the filo. Satisfied by the sound, finally he put it in his mouth. Biting, waiting, smelling, biting again, swallowing, pausing.

Her palms were sweating. She couldn’t believe how much she wanted to impress him.

‘Rachel,’ he said. Paused. Seemed to disappear from the moment for just a second. Took another bite. ‘Your food, it looks like shit. But it tastes … It tastes not bad.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘The drinks are on me.’ Rachel didn’t know if it was happiness or relief but, God, she felt good.

Most of the group was crammed round a booth table in the corner of the bar; a carafe of white wine and a stack of tumblers were in the centre. Dressed in a black shirt and leather jacket, Marcel was loping back in after a smoke and Lacey hadn’t come because she didn’t like to socialise with the competition. Poor old Tony hadn’t fared the pastry test well and was pulled aside at the end and told not to come back.

He was sitting now, head in his bandaged hands, nursing a whisky and soda.

‘Bloody hard, wasn’t it? I mean, tough competition. Tougher than I expected.’ Tony was a proper English gentleman. A deputy head at a private boys’ boarding school in Suffolk. ‘I’ll have to lie to the kids. Can’t have them thinking I went out first round. That would never do. I’d never live it down,’ he said, taking a large gulp of his drink and shaking his head as the fire hit the back of his throat.

‘It’s not so bad,’ Abby offered.

‘And you had hurt your hands,’ Cheryl chimed in softly. ‘You can’t be expected to do your best if you’re injured.’

‘Yes. Absolutely. You’re quite right. That’s exactly what the wife said. She arrives this afternoon. I told her someone else already went out yesterday. We’ll have a couple of nice days in Paris. Spot of Christmas shopping and all that. Maybe go up the tower. Nice view from the top of the Pompidou, so I’m told.’

‘Where are you staying?’ asked Rachel, taking a sip of her wine while an image of her depressing little flat popped into her head.

‘The Ritz.’

‘Oh.’

‘And you?’ he asked, whisky glass to his lips.

‘Not the Ritz.’ She laughed.

As more drinks were bought, and tiny bowls of nuts and olives plonked onto the table by a moody waiter, round the table people had started talking about Christmas plans for when they went home.

‘I’m flying back on Christmas Eve, straight after the final event. Not that I’ve a hope after today.’ Abby poured more vin blanc. ‘Hopeless. How can you tell someone their pastry is hopeless? Like a soggy sock, Chef said. Here, taste this—does it taste like a soggy sock?’

Rachel took a bite of the boozy, sugar-encrusted mince pie Abby had handed her and shook her head. It tasted sweet and delicious to her, of plump sticky raisins, spiced brandy and flaky, buttery puff pastry.

Marcel sat forward, twirling his half-empty glass of rum between his fingers, wolf-eyes locking on Rachel. ‘When do you go home?’

‘Boxing Day,’ she said, glancing away, hoping the conversation would move on.

‘Boxing Day?’ repeated George. ‘You got family here or summat?’

She shook her head. ‘No. No family.’

Marcel sat back, swirling his drink in his glass, and she could feel him watching her closely.

‘What will you do on Christmas?’ Abby asked.

‘Sleep probably. I think Christmas Eve will be a big day whether we’re in the final two or not.’

‘But it’s Christmas …’ said George, pulling open a packet of crisps and glancing round as some instrumental Christmas music started up as if illustrating his point.

‘I know. But really it’s just a day like any other.’

Abby looked at her as if that was certainly not the case.

Rachel shrugged.

Marcel leaned forward; the perfection of his features made her want to reach out and trace them. ‘So you do not do Christmas?’ he asked with a quirk of a dark brow.

‘Non.’ She smiled, a touch shyly under his gaze. ‘I like Easter.’ She laughed.

Abby asked why she didn’t like Christmas but Rachel did a Lacey and pretended she hadn’t heard.

‘Interesting. Well …’ Marcel sat back and licked his bottom lip—the look in his eye reminiscent of Ben, and Rachel found herself wondering for a moment what he was up to back in Nettleton, whether he’d found an adoring groupie to visit in the early hours. She felt a shoe brush her foot and pulled away before realising it was Marcel’s. Brown hair falling in front of his eye, he pushed it away and went on with a drawl, ‘If you get lonely, you are welcome to spend the day with me.’

Rachel giggled and felt her cheeks start to pink. ‘Merci, Marcel.’

Abby shifted in her seat, pushing her boobs a little closer together to enhance her already impressive cleavage and leant a touch closer to Marcel. But Marcel was looking only at Rachel when he replied with a shrug, ‘De rien,’ his lips turning up into the hint of a smile.

That night Rachel strolled back from the bus stop; the rain had stopped for now and the sky was completely clear. The shadows of the plane trees speckled the road like puppets in the moonlight and the puddles of water glistened like crystal. Looking up at the few stars above her, she felt a rush of excitement.

‘Not bad,’ she said out loud. ‘They tasted not bad.’ And allowed herself a surge of pride.

At her door she found Chantal sitting on the thin wooden bench on the landing, knitting what appeared to be an incredibly long scarf in purple and maroon wool. She was buttoned up in her camel coat and scarf and Rachel wondered how long she’d been there.

‘Bonsoir, ma petite. What did you cook today?’

Rachel unlocked the door as Chantal packed up her needles and followed her in.

‘Cheese pies.’

Rachel stood back as Chantal squeezed past her while taking off her coat and hat, patting her hair into place and peering over the rim of her bifocals. ‘Ah, très bon. I put the kettle on?’

‘OK.’ Rachel watched her from the doorway, a little warily, as Chantal made herself at home—filling the kettle, laying out cups and a plate for the pies, then hoisting another huge bag onto the chair.

‘I bring more things.’

Rachel unwound her scarf and pulled off her gloves. ‘Chantal, you don’t have to.’

Chantal looked round as if it was obvious she did. Then began laying out her bounty. Another bedraggled plant. A bright blue frame, a horse ornament with only three legs, a throw for the sofa, a green glass vase with a crack down one side, and a lace doily that she placed in the centre of the table under the teapot. ‘Et voilà.’

Rachel laughed. ‘Thank you, Chantal,’ she said, thinking of all her minimalist white furniture and key pieces from Anthropologie and Heal’s back home.

The flat was coming to life. Splashes of colour and all the little extras beginning to make it more homely. It wasn’t her taste but it was certainly better than it had been.

Before she left, full of cheese pies and tea, Chantal threw an orange linen napkin over the sidelight so it cast a soft, warm yellowy glow on the room. She stood back and said with pride, ‘It is nearly perfect, yes?’

Rachel nodded, desperate to ask her why she didn’t talk to her daughter any longer and—if the way she’d adopted Rachel was anything to go by—wishing that her daughter knew how much Chantal clearly missed her.

Chantal was waiting the next night as well, when Rachel came home with strawberry tarts overfilled with crème pâtisserie so the strawberries wobbled precariously on top and most had slid off into the box.

‘Not very pretty.’ Chantal laughed. ‘But très bon,’ she said, licking her fingers and depositing a clock, a stripy rug that had begun to unravel and a red and white spotty biscuit tin.

With the tea and cake over she clapped her hands together and beckoned to Rachel. ‘Now you come downstairs with me.’

Rachel looked outside; it had started to snow, light flakes frosting up the window. Chantal was wrapping up in her layers.

‘Come,’ she said again, more forcefully.

Rachel made a face behind her back, as if she really didn’t want to, but pulled on her coat and boots and tramped down the stairs after her thinking about how tired she was and how many steps she’d have to trudge back up again.

Outside Chantal beckoned her into the alley alongside the front door.

‘Really?’ Rachel questioned, thinking this might be some crazy human-trafficking ploy. How well did she actually know Chantal?

When Rachel peered round the corner, Chantal lifted a hand to point and said, ‘Et ici!’

Rachel looked at where she was indicating and there, tied to a lamppost with a chain and padlock, was a rusted old fold-up bike. Chantal slipped her the key.

‘It was my daughter’s. She didn’t want it. She was going to leave it in the road. It has been in la cave at my house.’

The bike was turquoise, scratched and rusted with Mirabelle written down the side in white bubble writing and a white wicker pannier on the front.

‘For your cakes.’ Chantal laughed, pointing at the wicker basket on the front, which she had strung with silver tinsel.

‘I don’t know what to say.’ Rachel ran her hand over the handlebars.

‘You say nothing.’

‘I’m so touched.’

‘Ah, you are sweet.’ Chantal patted her on the arm and walked over to her 2CV. ‘Joyeux Noël.’

‘Chantal …’ Rachel called as she watched her heaving open the battered door.

The housekeeper turned, her hat pulled low almost covering her eyes, white curls just poking out around her ears. ‘Oui?’

Rachel wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to say, so just asked, ‘Are you sure your daughter won’t mind?’

Chantal shrugged. ‘She did not take it with her. I think she would like someone to have it.’

Rachel nodded. ‘Will you thank her from me, you know, if you talk to her this Christmas?’

‘We will not talk,’ Chantal said, attempting matter of fact but the sharp intake of breath at the end of the statement gave her emotion away. Then she got in the shabby old car and drove away while Rachel stood where she was, one hand still clutching the handlebars, and waved, wanting nothing more than Chantal to talk to her daughter so she wouldn’t have to see her look so sad again.

The following day, Rachel cycled to the pâtisserie, the tiny specks of blizzarding snow hitting her cheeks, making her feel alive and excited as she pedalled as fast as she could. Who’d have thought she’d be cycling the streets of Paris like a local?

Locking up her bike, she saw her man from the pâtisserie, Philippe, drive past and she put her head down, unsure why, but the thought of talking to him, of the look in his eyes when he spoke to her—of confident amusement—made her fumble her lock and then drop it in the snow by mistake.

But as she walked round to the front of the shop she saw he was just coming down the street, striding along in a dark cashmere suit, his long grey overcoat unbuttoned, and it was too late to pretend she hadn’t seen him.

‘Bonjour.’ He smiled, waving from a couple of metres away. Like hers, his scarf was up over his chin to avoid the pelting snow and when he got close he had to wipe the moisture from his face. ‘It is good weather, non?’

‘Hi. Yes. Bonjour.’ Rachel nodded, immediately flustered, immediately wanting to check her hair in the pâtisserie window. ‘Look, you know, I’m sorry about the other day. With Chef. It was very embarrassing.’

‘It’s not a problem. I know what he’s like.’ Philippe shrugged. He was much taller than her, which she wasn’t used to, Ben being about five foot seven, and she had to glance up when he spoke. Brushing the snow off the front of his coat, he went on, ‘Henri’s my brother. We have worked in the same building for a very long time.’

‘Your brother? Wow.’

Stepping forward, Philippe opened the door for her. ‘I’m not sure wow is quite right, but, yes, he’s my brother. He is less … let’s just say his bark is worse than his bite.’

‘I don’t know about that.’

‘You take my word for it. He er …’ He paused, changed tack. ‘He is consumed by it, by the baking. And I think it makes him—’ he blew out a breath ‘—frustrated when it doesn’t all go his way. As he would like. He doesn’t understand that not everyone is like him. Their brains are different. Oui?’

‘If you say so.’ Rachel raised a brow in disbelief, at the same time as trying to get a peek at the state of her hair in the reflection of the glass in the door.

‘Life has never worked out quite how it should for him. He’s OK. I promise.’

‘OK.’ She looked at him dubiously. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

As he gestured for her to go inside she hovered by the open door, pointing for him to go first instead, trying to be polite, but he stood firm, hand out to encourage her to go in. She hesitated and then they were suddenly both going through the door together, bashing into each other so their shoulders hit and they concertinaed in like an accordion.

Philippe laughed. She could feel the deep rumble where their bodies touched.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Rachel muttered.

‘It was my fault. Not like a gentleman.’ He laughed again and she watched his eyes crinkle up at the corners. And noticed how his hair, neatly combed to one side, had flopped a little out of place. When he smiled his teeth were perfect and his long aquiline nose with its bump on the bridge seemed suddenly to give him an air of distinction. She hadn’t thought of him as good-looking—not in the conventional way like Marcel or Ben—but now, as he smiled in the doorway she realised he was handsome. Like a nineteen-forties movie star.

And she also realised that she’d been staring.

‘OK, then. Good. Lovely. Au revoir.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ she said suddenly as he started to walk away, a realisation dawning on her. ‘If Henri is your brother, that makes you the other Salernes … You and him, you had the restaurant together. Oui?’ She smiled at herself, as if she were a regular Columbo, but her expression wasn’t reciprocated.

‘Oui,’ he said with a casual shrug but wasn’t forthcoming with anything more.

‘You’re a chef,’ Rachel went on. ‘You’re an amazing chef.’ From what she’d Googled, the Salernes brothers had taken the culinary world by storm, and it certainly wasn’t all Henri. While he was infamous for inventing mouth-watering desserts that challenged the very physics of pastry, his brother, this man standing in front of her, was responsible for some of the dishes that changed the way people cooked. He brought a simple, affordable casualness to the Michelin-starred nouvelle cuisine that was dominating restaurant fare. He learnt from the masters and then twisted the rules in his own unique way creating a culinary revolution.

‘Au revoir, Rachel. It was nice to see you again.’

‘No, wait. Hang on. You can’t leave just yet. I read about you. The other night.’

Philippe cocked his head, a smirk on his lips.

‘No, I mean—’ She huffed out a breath, half embarrassed, half exasperated. ‘I Googled Henri and I read about you. You were amazing. People said you were amazing. I really admire what you did and the boundaries you broke with your restaurant. Especially in a country with such a strong culinary tradition.’

Philippe shrugged. ‘I don’t cook any more. It is the past. Life, it has many cycles.’

‘But you should. People would love to see you cook again. You should do a book or something,’ Rachel carried on, moving down a step so she was a little closer to him, hardly able to believe that he could let such talent go to waste.

‘But I do not want to do a book.’ Philippe unwound his scarf and shrugged off his coat, shaking off the snow and deliberately avoiding eye contact with her. ‘You can learn everything you need to know from Henri. I am not interested, not any longer.’

‘It’s crazy. You have so much talent. You shouldn’t waste it. I would totally read a book by you.’ Rachel bit her bottom lip and stared down at him, her head shaking slightly.

She watched as he paused, folded the coat neatly over his arm and draped his scarf over the heavy woollen material, then, running a hand over his light smattering of stubble, he looked up, his eyes just a touch narrower than they had been. ‘And what about you? What are you hiding?’ he asked, taking a step forward, almost invading her space. ‘Not many people would come to Paris alone over Christmas, not even to bake.’

Rachel gave a little snort, retreating back into herself quick as a flash, and, stepping backwards up the stairs, muttered, ‘Point taken.’ Then she swept her fringe out of her eyes and said politely, ‘I have to go now. I’m going to be late. If I don’t get a move on.’

‘Of course.’ He stood where he was and watched her as she made to go.

About to hurry up the stairs, she paused with her hand on the banister, torn, wanting to run away but also not wanting to leave it like that between them. She didn’t know him well but she’d liked him instantly and was frustrated with herself for prying, for pushing him when, as he said, she had her own issues that held her back that she wouldn’t want to air to anyone who asked. ‘Did you—?’ She turned back to look at him. ‘Did you enjoy your Religieuse?’

‘Very much.’ Philippe smiled, straightening his tie.

‘Good.’ She nodded, waited to see if he was going to say anything else and when he didn’t she turned and flew up the stairs, two at a time, without looking back. Walking into the workshop, she found she was the last one to arrive. With poor Tony gone it was down to seven of them. Everyone was waiting, standing straight like toy soldiers behind their work stations.

‘Today is bread day,’ shouted Chef as he marched in the room.

Rachel had known it was coming. Lacey had told Marcel in confidence that bread was Chef’s pièce de résistance. It was all he cared about.

‘If I could—’ he stood at the front, hands on hips, nose in the air ‘—I would bake nothing. Nothing but bread. It is the essence of our existence. The food of generations. It is life. Bread. Le pain. Jesus—even Jesus—saw the promise of the loaf of bread.’

Rachel wanted to say that she thought the Feeding of the Five Thousand had another angle more important than the loaf but now certainly wasn’t the time. She glanced at Marcel, who rolled his eyes, which caught her off guard and made her burst out in a little laugh.

‘You find bread funny? Rachel, tell us what you find so funny about bread.’

‘Nothing. I don’t find it funny at all.’

Chef walked over and towered over her. ‘No. Rachel is the expert, it seems. Today Rachel,’ he sneered, slamming his hand down on the counter, ‘will be teaching us how to make the bread that she finds so funny.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘No, really. I couldn’t p-possibly,’ Rachel stammered at the idea of having to demonstrate to everyone.

‘Bake,’ he ordered.

‘Oh, really.’ Lacey sighed under her breath as she strutted over to Rachel’s counter.

‘We will all watch, Rachel.’

Rachel felt her hands shaking. Chef was standing so close in front of her she could feel his breath on her face. Everyone gathered round and stared in uncomfortable silence.

Gathering all her ingredients and a large mixing bowl, she took a deep breath and tried to calm the nerves that were shooting through her, but when she poured out some flour into her scales half of it tipped out into a heap on the counter.

‘I’ll get it,’ said Abby.

‘Non. It is Rachel’s work. Rachel will tidy it.’

Lacey tapped the surface, her diamonds clinking together, her lipstick drawing into the grooves around her pursed lips. Marcel was lounging back. For a second Rachel wondered if he had tried to make her laugh on purpose. She glanced longingly at the door. She’d swap this moment for a thousand Home Ec lessons with their Hitler teacher, Ms Potter, breathing down her neck.

Chef was clicking his fingers for her to get a move on. Ali was writing notes and was about to say something but Abby silenced him.

‘I don’t think I can—’ Rachel started to say as she scooped up the flour she’d wasted. But as she instinctively used it to cover the board for later, she was all of a sudden reminded of her mum doing exactly the same. Can’t waste it. Think of all the work that went into picking and grinding the little sods.

And it was as if she were there suddenly, pulling up the stool next to her; Rachel could practically smell the Estée Lauder. Why are you doing that? It’d be easier like this. Don’t worry too much about scales, feel how much you need—sense it. Bread should be about you. What flavour do you like?

Everyone at school has Mighty White.

Well, let’s make Mighty White, then. She’d laugh.

Rachel reached for the wheat grains and malt that her mum would add for sweetness and wholemeal to her starchy white bread. She glided through the motions as all the rest of them blurred into a mist beside her. She was aware Chef was talking, but she wasn’t listening. All she could hear was her mum, whispering words she’d been blocking out for years—the tone of her voice, her laugh, the touch of her hand on her shoulder, the way she’d brush her hair out of her eyes or sigh at how slow sieving things was. Shall we just chuck it in? Come on, no one will know.

It had been much easier to teach little kids their alphabets, Rachel realised, than step back into a bakery.

When she went to put the bread in the drawer to prove, she looked up and was surprised to find all the faces staring at her.

‘I’ll leave it for an hour,’ she said slowly, coming out of her trance.

There was silence for a second or two, where people glanced at one another, as if they’d all been somehow bewitched by Rachel’s demonstration. Finally Chef tapped the table and said, ‘Bon. Everyone, please, to the front.’ He seemed a littler quieter than usual. Less aggressive. ‘I will make soda bread while the dough rises.’

‘Was that OK?’ Rachel whispered to Abby.

‘Well, aside from you completely ignoring his every instruction, I’d say it was bloody marvellous.’

She didn’t listen to any of the soda bread instructions, just thought about the fact that twice now she had baked bread when she had been at her lowest point—lonely or afraid—and both times it hadn’t been the horror that she had imagined. It had actually been quite comforting. Sort of like a hug.

Out of the oven Rachel’s bread was beautiful. Exactly like the fake Mighty White her mum used to make.

‘This is delicious,’ sighed George with his mouth full.

‘Very tasty,’ Lacey managed through a tight grimace.

By lunchtime everyone had had quite enough of bread and they were all going to the bar, but Rachel cried off with the excuse that she had some stuff to buy. Instead she sat in the park on her own.

She found an empty bench and brushed off the snow with her glove, then sat on an old Pret a Manger napkin she found in her bag. The air was sparkling like a shower of glitter as the snow fell through the pine trees that loomed above her, big and dark and exotic. Huge pine cones jutted from the branches, white tipped with snow like porcupines, and birds dotted from branch to branch shaking the dusty sleet from their feathers.

All Rachel could think about was bread. To begin with the memories had been beautiful. But now that it was baked and eaten and over, she just felt sad. Drained. Drained by the memories and the emotion. Deflated and vulnerable, stripped of every barrier she had in place. She had felt her mum next to her as she had worked the dough, and, while at the time it had felt precious and perfect, now she felt as if she were back to those horrendous few months after she had died. It was as if she could see the hole in her heart and it was bigger than she’d ever let herself believe.

Christmas lights were twinkling in every tree, glowing stars dangled amongst the branches, and, all along the street, angels were looped across the road by their wings. She watched the people hurrying past on their lunch breaks, the pavement packed, everyone carrying bags of Christmas shopping. She heard carols echo from the nearby church choir practice and thought of her and Jackie singing in stupid voices as teenagers at the school Christmas choir service. Rachel pulled her hat down over her ears.

‘Is this seat taken?’

She looked up, surprised, and saw Philippe, his grey woollen overcoat hanging open over his suit, his scarf draped over his shoulders. Rachel shook her head and moved her bag along to make room. ‘No, please sit.’

He made a poor effort of brushing off the snow and folded himself down, resting his elbows on his knees and turning his head to look at her.

‘My brother is better today?’

‘No,’ she said with a laugh.

He nodded silently, then stared out ahead of him. ‘I wanted to apologise. For earlier. I was rude to you.’

‘Oh, no, you weren’t at all.’ Rachel shook her head, pulling off her woolly hat and trying to straighten her fringe. ‘I shouldn’t have gone on about you having a book.’ She laughed. ‘Who’d want a book anyway?’

She saw his lips tilt up ever so slightly at the corners. ‘A lot of people I think would like a book.’ He glanced over his shoulder at her. ‘Just not me, I am afraid.’

Rachel nodded, unconsciously pleating the fabric of her hat in her lap.

‘But it is no reason for me to be rude to you,’ Philippe went on. ‘Why you are here has nothing to do with me, and I should not have made a point of it. Once again, I am not like a gentleman.’

As far as Rachel was concerned no man had ever been quite so gentlemanly with her before. Certainly not Ben and his four a.m. visits and no sleeping over. ‘Honestly, it’s fine. We were both at fault,’ she said.

Rachel watched as he ran a hand over his bottom lip, once more staring straight ahead. She took the moment to study his profile, his wide broad shoulders that seemed to pull on the fabric of his coat, the neat line of his hair at the back of his neck and the smattering of stubble on his jaw. She liked sitting next to him. Liked the feeling of being in the park in the snow with this man on the bench next to her.

‘I have a problem,’ he said after a second.

‘Really?’ she asked, intrigued. ‘What kind of problem?’

He laughed. ‘Nothing serious. I must buy a gift.’

‘Ah, I see. What kind of gift?’

‘I’m not sure yet. That’s my problem. I feel I will only know when I see it.’

‘A tricky gift.’ She laughed.

‘Mais oui.’ He sat back, stretching one leg across the other, raking a hand through his neatly cropped hair. ‘I am on my way to look now. I see you and I think maybe you would like to come? Your taste so far has been … impeccable.’ He smiled.

‘Oh, no, I can’t.’

He nodded and looked forward again, unmoving. ‘That is a great shame.’

‘I have to go back to class soon. I don’t have time.’

‘How long do you have?’ He checked his watch.

She looked guilty. ‘Forty-five minutes.’

He smiled again. ‘I understand.’

‘No, no, you don’t, it’s just I feel I need some time. Something happened in class. I just—’

‘Come anyway.’ He cut her off. ‘Come anyway, just because. Maybe just because I really do need some help.’

Rachel fiddled with her gloves, picking a hole in the wool. The snow had started to get heavier, dusting the pavements like icing sugar.

‘OK,’ she said after a pause. ‘OK, why not?’

‘Bon.’ Philippe stood up and held out his hand to help her up; she took it for a second but let it drop as soon as she was standing. As soon as she did she wished that she hadn’t.

He put his hands deep in the pockets of his overcoat and they walked together to the row of little shops in the Marais.

‘Wait a second—what is this?’ Philippe stopped her halfway down the road and then peeled something off the back of her coat. ‘It is a new look, yes?’

She blushed as she looked at the tatty, wet napkin he was holding that she’d used to sit on. ‘It was to protect my coat,’ she said, grabbing it from his hand and scrunching it up in the bin. ‘How embarrassing. I walked the whole way from the park with it hanging off me.’

He blew out a breath. ‘No one will care. They will think it is fashion.’

She raised a brow as if that would never be the case and he laughed as if he completely agreed.

They walked on in the direction of the Marais, their feet leaving a trail of footprints in the light coating of snow as Philippe pointed out landmarks and places she might want to visit some time.

Approaching the network of narrow streets, she saw all the gift shops were bustling, looking warm and inviting, playing classical carols and serving glasses of vin chaud.

‘So what does your friend like?’ Rachel asked.

‘I’m not so sure.’

‘Great start. Male or female?’

‘Female.’

She felt a bolt of jealousy that took her by surprise. Who would be buying her presents this year? Not Ben. She always insisted he shouldn’t bother and he never did. Jackie always gave her a bottle of champagne that they drank on Boxing Day. Her dad usually posted her a paperback. And her gran would declare that she was sending a donation to the RSPB or something similar in Rachel’s name—Birds, darling, I much prefer birds to humans. Then there was little Tommy from her class; he always gave her something. It was a tradition. She tried not to have favourites but he was so sweet and ever since she’d found him standing alone in the playground complaining of a tummy ache, which after floods of tears he’d said was caused by no one wanting to play with him, she had made it her mission to make sure he wasn’t left out again.

She’d put a cushion in the corner of her classroom with a stack of books next to it and a secret packet of chocolate digestives and said if he ever felt lonely he could go and sit there at lunch break. She’d kept an eye on him, encouraging him to pluck up the courage to ask if he could join in with the games the other kids played and finally knew he was OK when she caught them all tucking into the digestives, Tommy beaming that he’d been the one to show them the stash. Since then he’d always made her presents—for her birthday, for end of term and for Christmas. Last year it was a Santa made out of a loo roll, painted red with a cotton-wool beard. She’d left it up all year round.

Philippe paused next to a stall selling herbs and baskets of lavender and she watched as he scooped some dried oregano up and smelt it.

‘This is my favourite. I adore it. Here, smell.’ He held the little silver scoop out for her to have a sniff.

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘No, it’s his stall.’ Rachel looked around, embarrassed. ‘You can’t just smell things.’

‘Why, of course you can. It is what it is here for. I think you worry too much about what all these people you don’t know think. You are a chef? Why do you not smell?’

Rachel caught the eye of the stall-holder, who nodded as if he couldn’t care less what she smelt, and leant forward for a quick sniff. ‘Very nice.’

‘Ah, oui. And this.’ He picked up another, crushed rosemary.

‘Again very nice.’ She did a quick embarrassed smell as he went on to sniff the lavender and the nutmeg and the big bags of ground cinnamon. ‘Do you smell everything?’

‘Everything,’ he said, very seriously, and asked the stall-holder to bag up some cinnamon for him. ‘For the vin chaud,’ he said to Rachel.

After paying they strolled on and Philippe turned to her and said, ‘Do you smell nothing?’

‘Well, yeah, I smell some stuff but not in the street.’

‘I think you are mad. The smell, it is the most sensual of all the senses. Here …’ They paused at a fruit and veg shop. ‘What about this?’ He picked up a fig and held it to his nose. ‘It is divine. It is much better than the taste.’

She peered forward, checked the shopkeeper wasn’t looking and had a smell of the fig. ‘It is very lovely. It reminds me of my holidays in Greece when I was little.’

‘Pas oui, of course, it is the best memory of them all. It reminds me of the tree we had in our garden. Henri would make me climb up it to get the biggest figs at the top. One day the branch break and I fall to the floor. And Henri he laugh and that makes me laugh, not cry. I was only six. All that from a fig.’

Rachel thought of her dough and her soft, sweet-smelling Mighty White loaf. She was about to say something about how it could sometimes be too powerful, the memory too overwhelming, but she stopped herself and laughed instead, saying, ‘You’re a crazy smeller.’

‘Yes, that is the case. I am. Look at my nose—it is built for the smelling.’

‘Mine too.’ She laughed, pointing at her own long straight nose that had been the bane of her life.

‘I think you have a very nice nose,’ he said, looking down at her face.

‘I think you have a very nice nose.’ She laughed.

And then they both looked away, as if they were both equally unsure what to say next.

‘I will buy the figs,’ Philippe said and disappeared inside as Rachel looked out into the street, at all the stalls selling gifts and trinkets and delicious delicacies, unable to hold in a smile to herself that he’d said he liked her nose.

Philippe came out with three bags and handed two of them to her. ‘A gift to say thank you for shopping with me.’

‘Oh, thanks, you shouldn’t have,’ she said, surprised, taking the scrunched brown bags from him and peeking inside. The first glistened like rubies—a bag of hundreds of tiny dried cranberries. The second was bursting with thin strips of candied orange thickly coated with crystals of sugar. They felt like the most perfect presents she’d ever been given.

‘These are lovely. Perfect. Thank you.’ She glanced up at him, a huge smile on her face that she couldn’t hide, but as he watched her his demeanour seemed different. It was probably just her being paranoid but he seemed suddenly to regret buying her the bags of fruit—as if in the giving the gesture had turned into something more than he’d intended. ‘They might be good for the baking, you know.’ He shrugged distractedly, staring ahead at the snow-covered canopies of the stalls, then he started to walk on and Rachel had to do a little jog to catch up.

‘Is everything OK?’ she asked, wanting to go back to the ease between them. Wanting to tell him that she knew it was just fruit, nothing more than that, however happy she’d seemed when she’d looked in the little bags.

‘Mais oui.’ He turned to her and smiled. ‘It is all fine.’

‘OK.’ She nodded, shaking off any unease. ‘So say again what it is your friend likes.’

‘She likes beautiful things,’ Philippe said after a moment.

‘Don’t we all?’ Rachel laughed. ‘Expensive, beautiful things.’

‘Ah, non. Not expensive.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t think expensive is what she’d want.’

‘Fair enough.’ Rachel stared into the shop window wondering who this perfect woman was. ‘How about a scarf?’ She nodded to the mannequin in front of them.

‘Too plain. She has one already. Too boring.’

‘Oh, OK.’

‘No, no, don’t take it that way. It was a good suggestion. I just think something maybe more like this—’ He pointed to a jewelled box in the next window.

‘Hideous,’ Rachel said before she could stop herself.

He laughed. ‘See, this is why I need a second opinion.’

They strolled on in silence. Rachel didn’t often do silence—usually chattering away to fill the spaces in her mind—but it felt as if silence was something Philippe was comfortable with. And somehow that started to make her comfortable too.

When they paused at a stall selling roasted chestnuts and bought a bag to share, she was almost reluctant when she said, through a mouthful of burning chestnut, ‘You know, I should be getting back.’

‘Mais oui, of course. I forgot. We can go this way.’ He touched her elbow to steer her down a side road and she felt a tiny jolt at the touch.

She thought about Ben saying she’d make someone a good wife one day and she’d known before she asked that it wouldn’t be him. She realised then, as she strolled with Philippe, that it hadn’t been Ben keeping her at arm’s length—well, of course, it had been—but it had been her, too. Who had a relationship that lasted between the hours of four and six in the pre-dawn morning?

Ben was like Tony’s jam tart—looked good but no substance. And she realised, as this French stranger steered her down the street, that she had chosen that.

She had chosen tasteless. Bland.

Tasteless was easier than complexity and flavour. Less work. She had had a boring flan when really she should have been holding out for a coffee profiterole or a violet and blackberry macaroon.

‘Ah, what about this?’

Philippe had stopped midway down the cobbled street. Rachel turned and was caught by the beauty of the window display before she could summon up her usual disdain for anything Christmas.

It was a Russian shop—the window a scene from a fairy tale. Black lacquered boxes, painted with princesses in chariots pulled by fiery red horses and a wake of golden stars, were lined up like presents under huge frosted trees. A snow-capped forest towered high around a figurine of the Snow Queen, decked out in all her silver finery. And hanging from thick satin ribbons along the window were rows and rows of baubles, from big to tiny. There were diamond shapes and twirls or circles and hearts. Some white, some black, some shocking pink, with fairy-tale scenes intricately painted on each.

‘They’re beautiful,’ she whispered.

He clapped his hands as if decided. ‘J’agree. Merci, Rachel.’

‘You found them.’

‘Yes, but I wouldn’t have done without you.’ He started to walk on.

‘Aren’t you going to get one?’

‘Later,’ he said. ‘You have to get back.’

‘Oh, thanks. Yes.’ She glanced at her watch, having, in that moment, completely forgotten about the time. ‘Yes, I do.’

As they stepped out onto the main street she was checking the traffic to cross the road when her eyes fell on his coat. ‘Look,’ she said and pointed to where a thousand snowflakes had caught in the wool.

He paused, then picked one off and held it on the tip of his gloved finger. ‘It is perfect,’ he said, then took her hand and touched it to her glove where it sat tiny and perfect like a gift.

She felt him looking down at her, watching.

After a pause she blew it away, embarrassed by the whole gesture. ‘I can never believe that each one is meant to be different.’

‘Well, we are all different.’ He shrugged.

‘That’s true.’

‘Every one of us unique.’

‘I know, we could be anyone. I mean, if you think about it, I don’t really know you at all, or you me.’

She looked from his white-flecked coat back up to him and he seemed as if he was about to say something but changed his mind. Instead he just smiled and she noticed he had snowflakes on his eyelashes.

They had an hour and a half to make a Christmas-inspired bread.

Marcel was making an apricot, date and nutmeg Panettone. George was muttering about some sort of cherry-brandy yule-log buns. Lacey said nothing, just got to work. Abby looked perplexed—Rachel could see the competition was starting to get to her. She’d cried in the bar last night, weeping that she missed her kids. She’d Skyped them in the morning before class and had come in with red-rimmed, puffy eyes.

As Rachel watched Abby, Cheryl leant across her and picked some coffee grains off the shelf. ‘Sorry, hun, didn’t mean to push,’ she apologised, her cheeks flushing red.

‘No, it’s fine, I was miles away.’ Rachel stared at the ingredients. She thought about Philippe telling her she worried too much about what people thought—she felt it in herself, sticking too much with conventions and not going with her instincts. But her brain was blank. The only thing coming to mind was Easter. Warm hot cross buns that ripped apart like candy floss. She was reminded of the smells in the street today. Of the different spices and the sharp tang as they hit her senses. Of roasting chestnuts, mulled wine packed with star anise, cinnamon and nutmeg, and the brown bags of dried cranberries and candied orange that were stuffed in her jacket pocket.

That was it … Hot Cross Christmas buns. Warm and sticky and sweet. She’d pack them with candied orange zest and slivers of cranberry, raisins, sultanas and glacé cherries. Then glaze them with cinnamon syrup and white icing and when they were opened up she’d have a chocolate and chestnut purée that sank, melting, into the warm, fluffy dough.

They worked in silence, heads down, kneading, flouring, rolling, shaping. As Rachel’s dough was rising she tore the skins from her roasted chestnuts, burning her fingers, popping one into her mouth when no one was looking.

Chef was called down to the pâtisserie as she was melting her chocolate and when he left it was as if everyone had been holding their breath and could collectively exhale.

‘Oh, my God.’ It was Abby who punctured the contented silence.

‘What?’ Rachel turned.

‘I’ve used salt instead of sugar.’

‘No, you can’t have done.’

Everyone paused except Lacey, who just carried on silently. Marcel strode over and picked up the container. ‘She has. She has used the salt.’

‘Shit.’ Abby slumped onto her forearms. ‘How can this have happened? I don’t have time to do more. Oh, God, I’m out. How can I tell my kids that I’m out because of some stupid sodding mistake from being tired? You idiot.’ She smacked herself on the forehead. ‘I’m just so tired.’

Rachel watched as her friend started to cry. Hot, fat tears falling into her failed dough.

‘Don’t cry,’ she said, walking over to helplessly pat her on the back.

‘It’s useless. I’m useless. I’m a failure. A failure. A fucking failure with a stupid husband sailing the fucking Caribbean or wherever the hell Mauritius is.’

‘It is in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Africa,’ said Marcel.

‘Thank you.’ Abby wiped her nose on the tissue Rachel gave her.

‘Look, just have half of my dough,’ Rachel said.

‘I can’t take your dough.’

‘Yes, you can. Just pick the bits out and he’ll be none the wiser. You’re adding chocolate and vanilla anyway, aren’t you?’

‘But there won’t be enough.’

‘There’ll be plenty.’

‘It’s cheating.’ Lacey stopped kneading and turned round.

‘Who cares? We’re all adults. It’s not school, Lacey.’ Rachel shook her head. ‘And you know he’ll kick her out and she doesn’t deserve to go over a mistake.’

Lacey pursed her lips, tapping the wooden spoon in her hand against her palm.

‘I wouldn’t do it if I thought she made crap dough. It was a mistake.’

Lacey was silent.

Then Abby said, ‘Would you tell, Lacey?’

There was a pause. Rachel watched George and Ali exchange glances, Marcel raised a brow, intrigued at how this would pan out, and Abby looked on with pleading eyes.

‘It’s none of my business,’ Lacey muttered in the end and turned her back to them.

Rachel winked at Abby and went and pulled her dough out of the drawer, tore it in half and the two of them went about picking out all the cranberries and raisins she’d so lovingly folded in half an hour ago.

Chef strode in just as Rachel was running back to her bench, slamming her bowl of dough down hard by mistake. He paused, seemed to smell the air like a lion sensing a change in the atmosphere. Then he walked over to Rachel’s bench, reeking of fags, his expression suspicious. ‘What’s going on?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Something happened. And it is usually you.’

‘No, Chef. I’m just mixing my chocolate into the puréed chestnuts,’ she said without looking up.

He waited, and she could feel him staring at her, as if he knew exactly what was going on. Her heart was starting to quicken as she tried to act as nonchalant as possible.

‘Hmm.’ He stuck his finger in the mixture and licked it. ‘You try to be very calm. You are never calm,’ he said, then walked away, not before lifting the tea towel off her dough and scowling at it.

When they came to laying out their breads Rachel had brought in a special box—one that Chantal had given her that Madame Charles had discarded. It was wooden, meant for a small hamper from one of the expensive food shops on the Champs Élysées. The name was embossed on the side in grand, swirling writing. Rachel had lined it with a strip of red wool and piled her soft, squishy but depleted buns inside. Each one had a white star of icing piped on the top. The chestnut and chocolate purée was in a little glass jar nestled in the corner.

Chef peered at it. ‘Presentation—better. Could improve.’

Rachel nodded, holding in a smile that she’d at least moved it up a notch.

He spread the thick chocolate on the ripped-open bun that was still warm and steamed in the cool air. He closed his eyes as he ate, savouring the sweet softness. ‘Very nice. Clever. I didn’t expect … Very nice,’ he said again, as if caught off guard, then he nodded and walked on. Rachel nearly punched the air. Abby gave her a thumbs up.

Chef prowled the other benches, tasting, criticising, praising faintly. Marcel’s Panettone hadn’t risen very much but looked amazing. He muttered that Ali’s pumpkin, cider and marzipan buns were too sweet but better than he’d expected. Poor Cheryl’s coffee and pistachio tea-loaf had burnt on the top and risen unevenly. The dough inside was undercooked and Chef refused to put it in his mouth.

‘This will be the last day for you, Cheryl. You will go home. You understand?’ he said, prodding the soft dough with his finger.

George gasped.

Cheryl nodded silently, her hair falling forward so it was hard to see the reddening of her cheeks. When Chef walked away, Rachel watched her dab a tea towel to her eye and hold it there for a second as she took some deep breaths.

George’s, Chef thought, was marvellous; he couldn’t get enough of it. He even laughed at how he’d managed to make a bread look like a yule log.

‘This is very inventive. I like it.’

George was beaming.

Chef came to Abby last. Rachel felt her pulse start to speed up. When he put the chocolate twist in his mouth and paused, she thought she could actually feel the minutes tick by. By the time he swallowed and said, ‘Très bon,’ Rachel thought her heart might have leapt out through her chest and run out of the room.

‘That is OK.’ He nodded. ‘A good dough. Some OK flavours. But a little small.’

‘Christ,’ said Abby as they stumbled out, laughing. ‘I thought I was going to die.’

‘Me too.’ Rachel was clutching her chest.

‘Thank God it’s over.’

A door slammed above them and then she heard her name being called from behind her. ‘Rachel! Stop there.’

They paused and turned to see Chef standing at the top of the stairs. ‘A word.’

Abby made a worried face and squeezed her hand before sloping out while Rachel backtracked up a floor.

Chef was waiting, thumbs slung in the string of his apron. Rachel paused on the top step but he beckoned her to come further forward, to stand right in front of him.

She waited, glancing from his weathered face to the slogan of the pâtisserie on his apron, to his polished black shoes.

‘You think after twenty years I cannot taste?’ he asked.

She looked at the floor. Staring at the patterns in the carpet.

‘Let me tell you something,’ he sneered. ‘All good bakers have a signature. Did you know that?’

Rachel shook her head.

‘A cake, a loaf, a tart … it is signed by their own hand. You—’ He pointed at her. ‘You leave a signature. And I can read it.’

Rachel glanced up.

‘Yes, that’s right. A big, bold signature.’ He almost spat it out.

She was suddenly terrified that he was going to boot her out.

Over the last few days this competition had gone from being a burden to the most important thing in her life. She’d started to find the challenge addictive. While she loved her job in Nettleton, she hadn’t realised how much she had missed this—the skill, the craftsmanship, the smells, the textures, the familiarity. The thrill of knowing that she had a talent, however rusty. She would do anything for it not to end now.

‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I was just trying to help. I didn’t know. I did know. I know it was wrong. Oh, God—’

‘I should throw you out the door. You hear me? You waste my time. You make a fool of me.’ He waved his hands in the air. ‘You throw this away. That is what you have done. This chance that you ‘ave to be good and you have thrown it away.’ He paused, taking a deep breath.

She glanced up tentatively. Saw a look of confusion and annoyance pass over his face. It felt suddenly as if he wasn’t talking to her but that instead the words were ringing truer to himself. She thought of the stories she’d Googled. All that success that he had let slip through his fingers, the crown that he had allowed to topple, the reputation that had ended up in tabloid ridicule. In the moment’s pause he seemed to deflate before her eyes, his cheeks less puffed out, his colour less red. She bit her lip and tried to show the depth of her apology in plaintive eyes.

‘Merde, and I know what it is like. You are stupid.’ He took off his glasses and rubbed a hand over his face.

Rachel nodded, sensing something odd was happening between them. That she was teetering on the edge of being on the next train home but something, some emotion flickering over Chef’s face, might just be about to save her, throw her a rope and pull her back. ‘I’m sorry.’

He exhaled like a bull about to charge and ran his fingers over his stubbled chin. ‘I give you one more chance because you have a shred of promise. A shred. I am stupid to do it. But fuck me over again … you have no more chances. Comprende?’

She nodded, flooded with relief as if she might collapse into a puddle on the floor, and pleaded with herself not to cry.

‘Comprende?’ he said again.

‘Yes, Chef.’

CHAPTER NINE

That night Rachel got so drunk out of relief that she was still in the competition, terror at having been yelled at, and shock at the haunted look in Chef’s eyes. Her stupor meant that she didn’t pull her foot away from Marcel’s when he pushed his against hers under the table. Nor did she look away when he smirked at her across the table, his flirtatious eyes glinting beautifully. He had that familiar predatory nature of Ben that was surprisingly comforting.

When she’d walked into the bar Marcel had singled her out, got up to give her his seat, poured her a glass of wine, complimented her on her bake. He had made it more than clear that he was interested and the attention was intoxicating.

‘I think you are the best cook here. Without doubt. Chef, I think he is jealous,’ he’d whispered. ‘And—’ he’d paused ‘—you’re the most beautiful.’

She’d glanced away, blushing, but the words had hit their mark. He was pumping up her deflated ego, as if he knew exactly where her weaknesses lay, and she was lapping it up. Anything to take the attention away from her run-in with Chef.

Women were looking at Marcel from the bar, glancing round to see if he might be interested in them but he wasn’t; he was looking at Rachel.

‘So what did Chef say, Rachel?’ Abby leant forward, her eyes darting to Marcel as if trying to attract his attention, swirling her wine round in her glass.

‘Nothing. Just a reminder to work on my presentation.’

‘Ooh, special treatment for Rachel.’ She whistled, supposedly joking, but Rachel caught a weird look in her eye. ‘You and George had it nailed today,’ she said, taking a great gulp of red wine and pouring some more.

The air between them all was definitely changing. It was as if this really was a competition and for the first time in Rachel’s life she was near the top—not just hovering over average but up there in sight of the prize—and that clearly made enemies.

‘Don’t be daft.’ She laughed, brushing the comment away and reaching for a glass and the carafe to pour herself some wine. ‘He just loathes my mess.’

Abby raised a brow, disbelieving, clearly still smarting from her failure, and seemingly pissed off that Marcel wasn’t paying her the attention he was Rachel, and downed her drink before holding her glass out for Rachel to top her up.

‘A dark horse in the race, Flower Girl,’ drawled Marcel and, under the table, she felt his hand scrape her thigh. He had perfect hands, neat blunt nails and a dirty tan as if he’d spent the summer on a yacht in St Tropez and skied all winter. She decided that, in his black cashmere jumper, he actually looked fresh from the slopes of Val d’Isère. Close up she could even make out the remains of sunburn on the tips of his cheekbones.

‘Is there something on my face?’ he asked and she realised she’d been staring.

‘No, no. I was just wondering if you skied. You know, why you had a tan in December …’ She cringed at the embarrassment of being caught.

‘Mais oui, I spend every weekend in the Alps. It is my passion.’ He examined his hand to check out his own tan. ‘Do you ski?’

Rachel thought about the time when the hill on the edge of Nettleton had been caked in snow and Jackie had strapped her into her snowboard. You’ll be fine, just point it downhill and sit down if it goes too fast.

It had been a disaster not to be repeated. Rachel had sat down almost straight away and shot down the incline head first, one foot flailing about having popped from the binding and the other dragging the snowboard along with it. She’d waved her arms about in the air with the aim of getting someone to help her; instead the whole village had stopped what they were doing to watch. A photo of her at the bottom of the slope, caked in white like the abominable snowman, legs skew-whiff in the carved-up muddy slush, had appeared on the front page of the Nettleton News.

‘I snowboard.’ She shrugged, as if it were nothing. ‘Sometimes.’

A forgotten memory popped up of her and some of her class piled into an old canoe later that same day, winning a downhill race against Jackie and most of 3F on garden sacks, which was much more pleasing and obviously gave her a look of casual confidence that appealed to Marcel.

‘We should go together some time. Maybe.’

‘Maybe.’ She smiled, high on the attention, flirtily trying to tousle her hair.

‘Ooh, I’ll come,’ said Abby. ‘I’ve never been skiing. We could all go—it could be our reunion.’

‘Pas oui, definitely. The more the merrier. That is the phrase, oui?’

When Rachel nodded, Marcel squeezed her leg under the table and whispered, ‘I would prefer just the two of us.’

‘Me too,’ she whispered back, catching her smile with her teeth, relishing the attention, enjoying the haze of the wine and their intimate secret little club of two that was pulling back all the confidence she’d earlier let slip away.

‘Would you come, George?’ Abby leant forward, her boobs pushing together between her upper arms and, while not having the desired effect on Marcel, working well to get George’s attention.

‘Where?’

‘Skiing.’

George snorted into his beer. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Oh, come on, it’d be fun. We’d all have to go.’

‘I think I’m a bit old to be throwing myself down ski slopes.’

Abby stuck her bottom lip out as if he’d ruined everything and George laughed. ‘I’m here, in Paris, isn’t that enough?’

She tipped her head from side to side. ‘I suppose.’ Then took a great gulp of wine and said, ‘Where did you learn to bake?’

‘Baker’s boy in the sixties,’ he said, stretching his shoulders back and taking off his glasses. ‘Sexual revolution passed me by. I had my head in a bloody oven the whole decade. Pay packet taken by me mum, bugger all I got. Everyone else is having sex left right and centre and I’m shovelling loaves.’

Abby laughed. ‘Surely, then, this should be the last thing you want?’

He tapped his nose. ‘You may think so, but what we forget is as we get older we find most comfort in the familiar. My wife died ten years ago, my kids have gone—all grown-up. All doctors—the lot of them. And I found myself alone, baking again. Then I had so much I took it round the neighbours and they passed it onto friends and then I had a little business. I made a cart out of builders’ crates that I take round offices. Who’d have thought? My neighbour, Jayne, painted it blue with lettering and that’s my job. Forty years an accountant, now a baker, just like I was as a boy.’ He put his glasses back on and shrugged, took a sip of his half-pint. ‘It’s a way of making friends. Keeping busier.’

Rachel listened through her wine haze. Comfort in the familiar. She looked at Marcel and he winked at her.

She smiled and kicked his foot under the table. ‘And what about you?’ she asked.

‘Lovely Marcel does it for the women,’ Abby slurred.

‘Touché.’ He smirked, tapping a cigarette from the pack in his pocket. ‘I do it because I can. Because it is something I am good at. It has been in my family for generations, from my great-grandfather grinding the wheat. One side of my family, they make the alcohol, the other side the bread. The two staples of life. So this for me is in my blood. I understand it,’ he said, tucking the fag behind his ear. ‘Like the women.’ He grinned, pushing himself from his seat and sloping outside into the falling snow.

Rachel watched the smoke of his cigarette curl up into the overhead light, twining round the glistening flakes.

‘He’s just so good-looking. It’s almost unfair.’ Abby had her chin in her hand and was looking out to where Rachel was staring, Marcel’s profile just visible through the half-open door.

They turned back to the table when someone else went outside and pushed the door shut behind them, partially blocking off the view.

‘It’s a shame Cheryl’s gone, isn’t it? I liked her. Unassuming,’ said George.

‘I know.’ Abby swept her hair back from her face. ‘Did you see her crying? It was terrible. I hope it doesn’t push her back into eating.’

Rachel bashed her on the shoulder. ‘It’s not going to do that.’

‘Well, you never know,’ she said into her wine glass and Rachel rolled her eyes.

There was a pause as Abby tried to formulate her point but had had too much to drink and Rachel went back to watching Marcel. The barman reached up to flick on the stereo and gypsy jazz started to play softly in the background.

‘It’s a shame someone has to win,’ said George into the silence.

Abby snorted.

Surprised, Rachel looked away from the smoke outside and back at George, a man with a bushy white moustache whom she had barely noticed that week, and smiled.

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘It is a shame.’

***

Marcel offered to walk her home and, about to say no, Rachel found herself agreeing. The idea of no-strings company in her lonely flat, especially such goddamn good-looking company, seemed like the perfect rebellion from the strictures of the competition. It was like giving into pure, unadulterated temptation. Standing there in his battered leather jacket that shone in the moonlight, his arm draped casually over her shoulder, Marcel made her feel like the centre of the moment. It wasn’t buying a present for someone else with Philippe or begging Chef to keep her on or wishing Ben would sleep the whole night in her flat. It was her, singled out and centre of his attention and the feeling was addictive.

When she nodded Abby gave an unsubtle thumbs up that made Marcel smirk.

‘It’s a long walk,’ she warned him.

‘I like the challenge.’ Marcel shrugged, a cigarette clamped between his teeth.

She unlocked her bike and he took it from her, pushing it along beside them, leaving snake tracks in the snow.

‘This is a child’s bike.’

‘No, it’s small because it folds up.’ She laughed.

He held it at arm’s length, studying the rust. ‘Non. It is for the child,’ he said, then clambered on, cycling in wavy lines along the snowy pavement. ‘Get on.’

‘No way. You’ll kill me.’

‘Get on, Flower Girl, live a little.’ He circled her on the bike, his knees practically up to his ears as he pedalled.

‘OK but—’ As he slowed Rachel jumped onto the handlebars at the front and yelped as he rode them away along the cobbled backstreets, slipping through piles of grey slush and midway through taking one hand off to light another cigarette.

‘Are you smoking as well?’ She could barely turn her head, terrified that any minute they would crash into a wall.

‘Mais oui. It is fun, yes? You are having the fun?’ Plumes of smoke mingled with the falling snowflakes as he talked.

Squeezing her eyes tight when he veered from a lamppost, she opened them again to feel the snow dusting her face and her freezing hands clutching tight to the metal handlebars. ‘Oui. I am having the fun.’

‘Bon.’ He laughed and pedalled faster, but then slipped on a muddy puddle of slush and they fell off into a great mountain of snow that had been shovelled to the side of the road.

Rachel was on top of him, the bike halfway across the pavement; she was brushing snow from her mouth while he was leaning back laughing up at the clouds.

‘C’est fun, n’est-ce pas?’ He smiled, snow all in his hair, and then tightened his arms around her and rolled them over so he was on top of her and she could feel the freezing snow down her back.

‘I am going to kiss you, Flower Girl,’ he said, and she looked up into his ice-blue eyes and his perfect features and nodded.

His kiss tasted exactly of Ben. Of alcohol and cigarettes and arrogance. She let her head be pressed back into the snow and wrapped her arms tight around his back, her head swimming from all the red wine and the thrill of doing something she knew was bad for her.

Marcel only pulled back when they heard the siren of a police car in the background. ‘We go, yes? I do not want to be arrested for what I might do next.’

She laughed, pulling her coat tight around her as he stood up and then reached a hand down to help her up.

They walked on a little closer, their shoulders brushing with each step, glancing over at each other and then, as quickly, glancing away. When they saw a pharmacy green cross flash minus four degrees he put his arm around her and pulled her close, rubbing his hand down her arm as if trying to warm her up.

It was late when they got back to her apartment, maybe one o’clock. When she asked, ‘Do you want to come up, for coffee?’ he didn’t answer, just took the key from her gloved hand and unlocked the door, pushing it open for her, and followed her up the stairs.

Rachel felt a pang of guilt to see that Chantal had been there; a bunch of lilies on the turn were lying on the bench by the door next to a jar of strawberry jam. Marcel picked it up quizzically.

‘My friend,’ she said. ‘She gives me things.’

‘I thought you said you had no friends?’

‘Well, I—’ Rachel started, but he wasn’t listening. He pushed the door open and pulled her inside, kicking it shut on the wilting lilies.

As he unbuttoned and pushed off her coat she put her hands on his chest to slow him down, her mind swirling with alcohol. ‘Do you want some tea?’ she asked, moving towards the kettle.

‘Tea?’ He looked puzzled. ‘Why would I want the tea?’

‘To sober up?’ She shrugged.

He hung his jacket up and kicked off his boots, then rummaged in his rucksack and pulled out a litre bottle of Armagnac. ‘The last thing I want to do, Rachel, is sober up.’ He smirked, grabbing a glass and a chipped teacup from the shelf and sloshing them full of booze.

When he handed her the glass he chinked the edge with his cup and said, ‘To baking.’

‘To baking.’ She smiled, taking a tentative sip while he downed his in one and poured them both another slosh.

‘To winning,’ he said, holding his cup up high like a trophy.

‘To winning.’ She clinked his in the air and screwed up her face as she drank it down.

He laughed as he poured some more, spilling it over the floor as he trailed between his cup and her glass.

‘To the making love,’ he said next, blue eyes twinkling in the dim yellow light of the napkin-covered sidelight.

Rachel snorted into her Armagnac and had to wipe it off her face. Marcel was watching her over the rim of his teacup, waiting for her answer before he drank.

She swallowed. Tried not to laugh again and raised the glass in the air. ‘To the making love.’ She giggled.

‘Bon,’ said Marcel, draining his cup and ambling over to watch as she gulped hers down before sweeping her off her feet and carrying her through the alcove to the hard metal bed.

Next morning she woke when the garbage truck hissed to a halt in the street below. Stretching languidly, she reached across to find an empty bed.

‘Marcel?’ she said, sitting up and glancing around the flat.

Sensing something wasn’t quite right, she looked around for her phone but it wasn’t by the bed. Finally she found it still in her bag, alarm unset.

‘Shit.’ It was eight-thirty. She had thirty minutes to get across Paris to her class. Marcel was nowhere to be seen.

Yanking on her clothes, she glanced outside to see a thick carpet of snow, the heaviest it had been since she’d arrived. People were pushing through it, heads down. Cars were stuck, kids were sliding up the pavements on invisible skateboards.

‘Shit.’ She pulled on her boots, hopping around on the floor, while trying to look in the mirror. Staring back at her was a white hung-over face, dishevelled hair she had no time to fix and eyes puffy from lack of sleep.

It was only as she was flying down the stairs that it dawned on her Marcel had left her on purpose. That this was game-playing.

What a fool! Hadn’t Lacey warned her on the first day?

Clearly Marcel was trying to eliminate the competition by any means possible.

‘The little bastard.’ She paused, hand on the banister. She wouldn’t be surprised if he’d swapped Abby’s sugar for salt as well.

Outside the freezing air hit her like cold water and her feet disappeared into the snow. Hauling her bike into the partially gritted road, swerving on the death-trap black ice, she cycled as fast as her frozen legs would pedal her. Wiping the snowy ice from her face as it fell, she pleaded with whoever was listening for her not to be late. She realised how much she not only wanted this, but now wanted to win.

‘Mum, if you’re listening,’ she said up to the foggy white sky, ‘help me. Please.’

Chantal’s lilies were flopping around in her basket as she pedalled faster. She hadn’t wanted to leave them on the step and had been in too much of a hurry to unlock the door and put them inside, but now they were losing petals all over the place. She skidded on the ice and swerved in the thicker snow but as the time ticked away she seemed to be moving slower than ever. The weather was getting worse, the snow falling in heavier flakes so she couldn’t see, her tyres sliding in the slush.

‘Damn him,’ she said out loud. ‘Damn him.’ Exhausted, angry with Marcel but more so with herself for believing he thought her irresistible, she finally stopped when her tyre caught in a snowdrift. Hanging her head over the handlebars, she exhaled with great gulps of despair. Flashing images hit her of her mum serving warm pain au chocolat that oozed on the plate when torn open before church on Christmas Day. Of the queues outside the bakery on Christmas Eve. Of what she thought her mum’s face might have looked like had she made it through another round, even to the final, maybe—just to beat Marcel! To know that she threw it all away for drunken sex that, from what she could remember, hadn’t even been that good.

‘Fuck it.’ Rachel yanked the bike free but like a stubborn donkey it wasn’t going anywhere. She was kicking it out of pure frustration when a car drew up next to her and the window slowly slid down.

‘The bicycle, it not your friend?’ Philippe leaned over to look out of the passenger window.

Rachel stood back, pushing her hat out of her eyes and patting the bike on the handlebars. ‘We’re having a slight disagreement.’

He laughed. ‘You want a lift?’

‘I would love a lift.’ She smiled. Locking the bike to the nearest railing, she ran to get in the nicely heated car. ‘You’ve saved my life. I could kiss you.’

As she said it he made a face, bemused, and the air suddenly seemed a little warmer.

‘Not actually kiss you, you know, it’s just—you know—an expression … of gratitude …’

He kept his face forward, a smile now teasing the corners of his lips.

‘Oh, God.’ She ran a hand over her face and looked out of the window. ‘I’ll just shut up.’

‘You’re late today, no?’

‘Yes, I’m really late. Stupidly late.’

‘I’m having dinner with him tonight. I’ll put in a good word.’

‘I fear it might be too late by then.’ She checked her watch and sighed. Five minutes—there was no way they’d make it. Then she caught her reflection in the visor mirror and almost shocked herself with her dark puffy circles and glowing white face. She pulled her bobble hat lower.

Philippe wove through the slow-moving traffic as she tapped her fingers on her knees, watching the minute hand tick by.

‘I know a short cut, don’t worry,’ he said, and then, yanking the wheel round, proceeded to drive the wrong way down two one-way streets, up a bus lane and down a cobbled path that she wasn’t convinced was made for cars.

When they pulled up to the pâtisserie she was sitting rigid, clinging to her seat.

‘Et voilà, we are here.’

She looked over at him in his clean-cut smart suit. ‘I’m not sure that could legally be called a short cut.’

He laughed. ‘You’d better go. You’re ten minutes late.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, and reached over to give him a peck on the cheek. But just as she did he moved his head to look at her and she ended up awkwardly kissing him on the nose.

‘Oh.’ He pulled back.

‘Thanks,’ she said again, putting her head down to hide her blushing cheeks and, grabbing her bag, fled from the car.

CHAPTER TEN

‘Ah, Ms Rachel, so you decided to join us.’ Chef was breaking an egg into a bowl, the yolk caught between his fingers.

‘I’m so sorry. It was the snow.’ She ran to her work station, uncurling her scarf and shaking the flakes off her hat.

‘Look around, everyone else managed to find their way here.’ He transferred the yolk to a separate dish while glaring at her. ‘I don’t like to be interrupted.’

‘I know, I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.’

‘So why let it happen in the first place?’ Chef spread his hands wide but was interrupted by a knock on the door.

‘Henri, a word.’ Philippe pushed it open and was standing in the hallway, beckoning for his brother to step out and join him.

‘Un moment.’ Chef paused mid-tirade, wiping his hands on a tea towel and marching off to join Philippe.

Rachel shut her eyes and took a second to catch her breath.

‘Where have you been?’ Abby whispered.

She waved her question away. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Marcel sitting smugly, legs crossed, rolling an egg back and forth on his work surface, a wilted lily lying on the shelf with his pots and pans like a trophy.

She was about to say something when Chef stormed back in. ‘OK, let’s get on with it.’

‘That’s it?’ Lacey hissed. ‘How do you get away with it?’

Rachel didn’t look at her.

‘Today it is soufflé.’

‘Shit,’ she said under her breath. Rachel had never really made soufflé. She actively avoided making soufflé. She tried to concentrate extra hard on what Chef was doing but her mind wouldn’t focus—it was dancing back and forth between the thrill she had felt sitting next to Philippe on his reckless drive through the backstreets of Paris and Marcel and his traitorous, backstabbing ways. What a fool she had been.

She couldn’t stop casting sideways glances in Marcel’s direction, determined to make him feel uncomfortable but he wasn’t having any of it. Face impeccable, poised, concentrating on every word Chef said. Dressed all scruffy and artfully dishevelled, he was the exact opposite of Philippe with his cashmere suit and confident stride, but she wondered now, remembering the satisfied look on Philippe’s face as they’d zoomed up outside the pâtisserie, if maybe both of them had the same glint in their eye—a glint that no good had come from with Marcel as far as Rachel was concerned.

She reminded herself to be more careful; she was here to bake, not to get carried away by good-looking men. If Marcel had had his way she’d have been out of the competition and she was already on thin ice with Chef. Yet when she thought about Philippe she couldn’t help but wonder what he had said to stop Chef’s anger, and about the fact that whatever he had said, he had said it for her. But as she thought about how that made her feel, an image of the bauble he’d bought on their shopping trip sprang to mind, along with the question of who it was for …

By the time she got round to listening, Chef was pulling a perfect, puffy blue cheese soufflé out of the oven. As everyone gasped at the beauty of it, he said, ‘You, this afternoon, will prepare me and my brother a soufflé. Oui?’ Then he swept out of the room for a cigarette.

Rachel didn’t go out for lunch; instead she walked down to the pâtisserie and picked out the largest chocolate éclair there was and rammed it into her mouth right there at the counter. Françoise was laughing because her mouth was so full.

‘J’ai faim,’ she said over the cream.

‘Very hungry.’ Françoise nodded. ‘Un café, aussi? Very tired too?’ she said, pointing to Rachel’s face.

Rachel slumped down onto one of the stools. ‘Very tired.’

Françoise made her an espresso and popped it down on the marble counter. The dim white milk-glass of the lights took any brightness out of the room, making it perfect for her hung-over eyes. She stared at the wall behind the pastries where there were postcards pinned along of places she assumed customers or friends had been. Perhaps she could run away somewhere hot, leave smug Marcel and the daunting soufflé behind. The high stool she was sitting on was squishy and comfy, the espresso bitter and sharp. She remembered how that morning she had wanted to win the competition to make her mum proud, but just the idea of it now seemed overwhelming, the prize way out of reach. Perhaps she could have a little nap—the cup clinked into the saucer as she sat back and shut her eyes but she could still hear the clock ticking down the end of her lunch break, so she ended up just ordering another eclair.

Soufflé-making was hard. Rachel had never understood them. Her mum had never understood them. Once baked, twice baked, what was the difference? And were they really baking, anyway?

She was sticking to a really simple three cheese and spinach one with roasted cherry tomatoes and garlic on the side and perhaps a sprinkling of crushed rosemary. Lacey was doing a crab, lobster and clam soufflé with a prawn and fennel bisque on the side and a crispy garlic-infused baguette. George was doing cheese as well but was aiming to make it the highest in the group by fashioning a baking parchment sleeve that would force the mixture to keep growing to practically the height of the oven. Marcel—she didn’t even look at what he was doing. Ali had chosen raspberry rice-pudding soufflé with vanilla custard sauce, which he was planning very secretively, and Abby was doing a white chocolate and amaretto one with a sweet lemon and almond curd, which sounded delicious. Rachel gave her a thumbs up before they got started.

As she separated her eggs she could feel the tiredness creeping into her body, and she was coming down fast off the eclair sugar rush. All her determination was seeping out of her in favour of crawling back into bed. But there was the fact that Philippe was tasting and she found herself wanting to impress him with her food.

Ten minutes in, George burnt his butter, which made the whole room smell sweet like cinema popcorn. Ali tipped his whisked egg whites above his head pretending that they might slip out all over him, and when she heard Marcel laugh she gave him a sneer. Then she went back to cutting through her beaten whites with a palette knife but all she seemed to be doing was making her mixture go from light and fluffy to flat and drab. It just seemed too heavy, but it was too late to start again. The smell of her cheese made her feel sick, as did Lacey’s bubbling prawn stock.

Tearing her eyes from her solid-looking mixture as it tried to rise in the oven and switching off the grill as her tomatoes bubbled under the heat, Rachel wiped down her surface just praying that her mixture would puff up enough not to be an embarrassment. She only looked up when she saw Abby draw out a white-chocolate stunner. Smooth, fluffy and risen high like a chef’s hat, it was the most glorious-looking soufflé she’d ever seen. Dusted from up high with a snowy shower of icing sugar and sprinkled with slices of sugared lemon rind and circled with a vivid yellow curd sauce, it was a definite show-stopper.

As she glanced across at Lacey’s individual crab towers that were quite pale and George’s burnt crust it was clear that Abby would be the day’s winner.

Rachel hardly dared look at hers. Everyone else was putting the finishing touches to theirs. Ali was spooning his custard into a vintage blue and white Cornishware jug. George was looking dubiously at his very forlorn soufflé, blackened like a scorched Leaning Tower of Pisa. Sucking in a breath, she bent down and peeked through the glass of her oven.

There it was—tall and puffy and risen like a skyscraper, with a tear round the edge where the cheese had pulled like crocodile teeth. She did a little clap. Then yanked the door open and drew out her beauty, bronzed on top and glistening with a deep glazed shine.

‘Wow,’ said Lacey before she could stop herself.

Rachel could only nod, speechless that it had worked.

Abby came round to look at it. ‘That’s amazing.’

‘I know, I can’t believe it.’

They all stood round gazing at Rachel’s cheese tower.

A knock on the door broke the reverie and as Chef went to answer it Rachel pulled off her oven gloves and, turning her back on her prize creation, went in search of a plate.

Philippe walked in, wearing a black cashmere suit, and looked round the room till he spotted Rachel and smiled. She winked back and pointed triumphantly at her soufflé. He did a nod as if humouring her. She raised her eyebrows nodding more, to try and show him how much this risen soufflé meant to her. Even her mum had never been able to make them rise. There was a soufflé curse on her family that had now, finally, been lifted.

Beaming, she looked down to put it on her flowery plate and saw to her horror that it was completely flattened. Dissolved of air and height like a burst balloon. A sunken mush of stringy cheese. An echo of her now deflated heart.

‘How?’ she whispered.

Glancing around, she noticed that Lacey wouldn’t catch her eye. George was fussing with his disaster. Marcel was leaning back against the counter, one brow raised. She made a perplexed face at Abby but she looked down, away from her.

Was it Rachel’s imagination or were her cheeks flushed?

‘And now we taste.’ Chef clapped his hands together and he and Philippe strode forward.

Rachel stared in horror at her sunken mess.

Lacey’s, of course, tasted bloody marvellous. Her bisque, Philippe thought, divine. Ali’s left them silent; beneath the fluffy top was a cloying mass of sticky rice and raspberry jam that fell from their spoons like baby sick.

Chef snorted when he got to Rachel’s. ‘Oh, dear, oh, dear.’

Hands clasped behind her back, she looked down, refusing to see the look of sympathy on Philippe’s face. ‘I don’t know what happened. It had risen when I got it out.’

‘A likely story, Flower Girl.’ Chef grinned and stabbed one edge with his fork, beckoning for Philippe to do the same. ‘If you can bear it,’ he added.

It was only when Philippe dug his fork in that Rachel saw it—the slice. A cut the size of a Sabatier knife, stabbed into her right-hand side.

She gasped. Someone had murdered her soufflé.

‘It is delicious,’ said Philippe, surprised.

‘Mais oui, the girl, she can cook. She is simply a disaster.’ Chef licked the last string of cheese off his fork and they walked over to Marcel.

‘Delicious,’ Philippe said again before leaving, but Rachel could only nod, distracted.

She looked round the room again and she tried to get Abby to look at her so she could mouth what had happened but she wouldn’t.

‘Abby,’ she muttered in the end, but Abby bent down to rummage on her shelf.

And that was when Rachel saw the missing slot on her knife roll. The twelve-inch blade empty. Probably in Abby’s sink, slimy with congealed parmesan and Gruyère.

‘You!’ she whispered.

Abby looked back at her this time, but did a face of pleading innocence before turning away as the men appeared at her station and rhapsodised over her white-chocolate creation.

Rachel stayed in the competition by the skin of her teeth. Luck was on her side as Ali’s and George’s were both dreadful.

Ali stormed out refusing to talk to anyone after he was dismissed. George stayed and cleared up his table. ‘Oh, well.’ He shrugged. ‘Back to my little business. Dreams of stardom over. Too old anyway.’

Rachel watched his back as he walked over to the coat stand and pulled on his tweed blazer followed by his Peter Storm cagoule.

She wanted to stop him and say it was unfair. That there had been sabotage and cheating. ‘You’re not too old, George,’ she said instead.

‘You’re very sweet. It was enough for me. I’ve reached my limit. It’s hotting up. If it had been anyone else I’d have said, no, it’s time for me to go. I can feel it.’ He smiled. ‘And you, young lady, need to pull yourself together. You’re at the end of your nine lives. You hear me?’

She nodded.

‘Good.’ He pulled on his flat cap. ‘I expect you to win.’

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