All of Virginie’s recipes feature on the cafe menu, along with seasonal fare developed meticulously by Viola, with suggestions from Mathieu that Viola is forced to, gently, reject. ‘You stick to writing about food,’ she says, ‘and I’ll stick to making it. All right?’ Whenever he acts offended, Hugo will remind him of the New Year’s Eve chocolate gateau disaster of two years ago and then Mathieu will, albeit reluctantly, concede that perhaps Viola is right.
They’d named the cafe W’s. It’d been Hugo’s idea – a joining of the two ‘V’s – and Viola, inordinately touched, had immediately declared that the hunt for names was over. François, annoyed that his own suggestion The Greasy Cafe (pronounced without the ‘e’ – ironically, of course) had now been trumped, had lobbied for a democratic vote but, being finally granted one, had lost 5:1.
Thirty minutes later, the timer on the oven pings, but Viola is already opening the door, propelled by a sixth sense that alerts her whenever a cake, or any other baked good, is ready. She’s not burnt anything yet.
With the greatest care, as if she’s holding a newborn baby, Viola slides the St Honoré cake out of its tin and lifts it onto a cooling tray. Then she goes to the fridge to locate the six tubs of whipping cream she needs for the topping.
‘Gertie!’ Viola calls. ‘Hugo!’
She’s not located the whisk before the two children skid into the kitchen, extremely keen and virtually salivating.
‘Is it time for the cream?’ Gertie asks.
‘You get the candles,’ Viola says, ‘while I whip the cream. Hugo, pass me those vanilla pods and the caramel.’
Gertie roots around in the drawers, while Hugo searches the shelves and Viola pours the cream into a copper bowl and starts to whip it. She’s a firm believer in doing everything, whenever possible, by hand. Electric whisks, while efficient, certainly, simply don’t produce the same result. Besides, this way she doesn’t need to bother going to the gym. Viola also forbids the use of microwaves and, she’s glad to hear, Virginie felt the same.
When the cake is ready, resplendent with great peaks of caramel cream, profiteroles dipped in caramel sauce, into which are stuck ten (four and six, for forty-six) candles.
‘So, who’s going to carry it in?’ Viola asks.
Hugo hesitates.
‘Him,’ Gertie says. ‘But we’re all going to sing.’
‘Sing?’ Hugo asks, slightly horrified.
‘Of course,’ Gertie says. ‘It’s his birthday. We’ve got to sing. And loud.’
‘Uncle Fran won’t do it,’ Hugo says.
‘Oh, yes he will,’ Gertie says.
Viola hides a smile. ‘Don’t worry, Hugo, we’ll all sing. No one’ll hear you.’
She watches Mathieu’s face as they walk into the cafe, the trio – Hugo proudly holding the cake aloft, Gertie leading a loud rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’, in French, no less, and Viola echoing her, word for word. Mathieu, François and Jude sit at the large round table in the middle of the cafe, watching them. Everyone else in the cafe falls silent as they sing, watching too. Viola meets Mathieu’s eye and can see that he’s as surprised as he is delighted.
‘We practised for days,’ Viola tells him, as the claps and cheers of the other customers fade.
‘You nailed it,’ Mathieu says. ‘I’m very impressed. And this’ – he regards the cake with wide eyes and wet lips – ‘this looks bloody delicious.’ He glances at Viola again and mouths ‘thank you’.
‘I think I’ll have that song in my head for the rest of my life,’ Jude says. ‘Gertie’s been singing it over breakfast, lunch and dinner.’
‘You can do a solo performance for my birthday, then,’ François says.
Jude laughs. ‘Only if you do one at mine.’
In response, François makes the sort of noise that suggests this won’t be happening anytime soon, at least not before he’s long deceased and hell has experienced a significant drop in temperature.
Hugo hands his dad a knife. ‘Hurry up, Papa, I’m starving.’
‘You’re always starving,’ Mathieu says, taking the knife and slicing into the cake.
‘Don’t forget to make a wish,’ Gertie says.
Mathieu glances at Viola again, then back at the cake, before dipping his finger into a particularly splendid peak of cream.
‘Oh, but I don’t need to do that,’ he says, licking his finger with a smile. ‘Not any more.’
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Acknowledgements
With special thanks to Neil and Jonathon for lending me your own enchanted Catesby’s. The name may have changed but the sentiments are the same – now it lives on, in these pages and in my heart.
About the Author
MENNA VAN PRAAG was born in Cambridge and studied Modern History at Oxford University. She lives in Cambridge and sets her novels among the colleges, cafes and bookshops of the city.
mennavanpraag.com
@MennavanPraag
By Menna van Praag
The House at the End of Hope Street
The Dress Shop of Dreams
The Witches of Cambridge
The Lost Art of Letter Writing
The Patron Saint of Lost Souls
Copyright
Allison & Busby Limited
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London W1T 6DW
allisonandbusby.com
First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2018.
This ebook edition published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2018.
Copyright © 2018 by MENNA VAN PRAAG
The moral right of the author is hereby asserted
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–2360–7
The Patron Saint of Lost Souls Page 26