The Parisian Christmas Bake Off

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.

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