The Little Paris Patisserie

by Julie Caplin

  He raised one of those ridiculously elegant, for a man, eyebrows and stared at her.

  She swallowed and shrugged, unable to look away. ‘I meant…’ Her voice trailed into silence. For a few seconds she met his steady gaze, her heart bumping uncomfortably.

  It was impossible to read anything in his expression, the dark eyes watchful and unblinking, although she noted his jaw was tense and he still looked a little pale, with that tightness around his mouth. Mind you, that had been there for a long time. He always looked serious when she was around, probably terrified she might get the wrong idea again.

  Ducking her head at the memory, which still had the power to make her blush, she gave the seatbelt another tug and managed to pull it round him but still not quite close enough to slide the buckle into place.

  ‘Thanks. I can take it from here.’ Sebastian’s caustic voice cut through her thoughts as he took the buckle out of her hands. Her brief quick blink was the only sign she gave of the current of awareness that went sizzling through her, setting her nerve endings dancing with sudden glee. She snatched her hands away horrified that the barely-there impersonal touch could still have such an impact.

  Chapter 8

  Working for Sebastian, Nina decided, was not going to be much fun. With his growls and snarling bad humour he was the original bear with a sore head. No wonder Marcel was keeping a low profile, taking advantage of the inaccessibility of the shopfront. The taxi had brought them round to the back door of the kitchen, which had no steps, and Sebastian had no desire, it seemed, to venture any further and attempt the small flight of steps up into the corridor to the shop.

  ‘Not there Nina,’ corrected Sebastian, as she moved one of the benches. ‘Over here, I want a “U” shape. And then you can put all the scales out.’

  She pressed her lips together firmly, keeping her back turned as she lifted the corner of the heavy table and manoeuvred it with a series of horrible screeches into place.

  ‘Christ, do you have to do that?’

  She did it again just to bug him. The table was bloody heavy. What did he expect? She hadn’t signed up for full scale furniture removal. Eventually, she’d arranged everything to his satisfaction.

  ‘Right, I’d like you to prepare a work station for each of the participants. We’ve got four now. One extra booking I could have done without.’

  Nina looked down at her feet, thinking of Marguerite.

  ‘We’ll set up with all the utensils they’re going to need. First up tomorrow is choux pastry, so we’ll need…’ He reeled off a quick-fire list. He had her racing around the kitchen grabbing whisks, saucepans, measuring jugs, sieves, bowls and wooden spoons, while he perched on a stool, his blue cast propped on the rung of another stool, and peered at his phone, making regular exclamations, muttering to himself and scowling at her.

  Feeling rather proud of herself that she’d managed to remember everything he’d said and laid it all out neatly, she stepped back to survey the kitchen.

  Sebastian stood up and hobbled over to one of the set ups. ‘Don’t forget you need one for us, or rather you. I’ll be directing you for the basic things and then I’ll demonstrate when it comes to solid technique.’

  That bit Nina didn’t mind, she was hoping to learn a lot from him.

  They were almost done when he tapped one of the flat glass weighing scales and frowned. ‘You did check the batteries in all of them.

  ‘Uh…’ Nina’s eyes widened in panic. ‘Erm…’

  ‘Oh, for crying out loud, surely you checked they all worked.’

  Nina flapped her hands. ‘Well … I – I…’

  Sebastian had already flipped over one of the set of scales and pulled out the little lithium circular battery from the back. ‘Go see if Marcel knows where we can get these quickly.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t…’

  ‘Think, Nina? How were you expecting everyone to measure their ingredients out? And where are the eggs? I can’t find them anywhere. And did you check the stocks in the pantry?’

  Her mouth dropped open in a horrified ‘O’. She’d completely forgotten both. She’d been so overloaded with butter and cream yesterday when she went to the shops for supplies, she didn’t dare risk carrying eggs too. Plus, she couldn’t find them in the supermarket and the French word ‘oeufs’ had completely slipped her mind. And then when she’d got back, she’d loaded everything in the fridge and completely forgotten to check the pantry.

  ‘I – I…’ Why was it, when he was around, she was reduced to an inarticulate wreck? ‘Where is the pantry? I’ll look now.’

  He didn’t quite roll his eyes but he might as well have. ‘It’s at the top of the steps halfway along the corridor. Bloody stupid place to have it, which is why this building needs completely remodelling. And once you’ve done that, find out from Marcel if there’s anywhere nearby to get the batteries. Go buy some eggs and get back here pronto.’ Sebastian’s mouth tightened and with it came the familiar expression of dissatisfaction.

  Nina came face to face with Marcel, whose mouth appeared to have permanently pursed like a prune – funnily enough, much like Sebastian’s – lurking in the corridor beyond the door at the top of the steps.

  ‘I need to take a look at the pantry.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bother,’ said Marcel. ‘It’s empty.’

  ‘Empty?’

  ‘Yes. The previous owner sold everything.’

  ‘Everything?’ She was starting to sound like a gormless parrot.

  ‘To a woman who was opening a patisserie school in Lille. She came with her campervan. Took everything.’

  With a heart sinking faster than a lead balloon, she crossed to the pantry doors and flipped on the light switch. Shelves dusted with flour lay bare and forlorn, outlines of what was once there imprinted into the floury surfaces. Turning, she opened the double-doored fridge. Empty shelves mocked her.

  ‘Shit!’ She’d hoped that the basics would be there as Sebastian had assumed. Sebastian was going to have a cow. The shopping list was going to be huge and she didn’t have a clue how she was going to carry it all. She could hardly ask him for any help and Marcel, even if he’d been the least bit willing, needed to be at the shop. And there was no one to ask for help. Nibbling at her lip, Nina suddenly wished that her helpful family wasn’t quite so far away.

  Her shoulders drooped and she closed the doors slowly.

  ‘Perhaps this might be of some use.’ Marcel pulled one of those old lady, brightly-coloured shopping trolleys from out of the corner of the pantry.

  Nina took a minute to take a few deep even breaths, chasing away the threatening tears, before going back into the kitchen.

  ‘I’m popping out to get some eggs and batteries,’ she said, keeping her voice bright and cheerful.

  ‘Can’t Marcel go?’ asked Sebastian, looking up from his laptop.

  ‘He needs to be in the patisserie.’

  ‘Why? Don’t tell me there’s actually a customer in there? I’m surprised the place hasn’t closed down already.’

  ‘Erm … yes, there are a couple,’ she lied.

  ‘Well hurry up, I didn’t intend to be here this long.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Good job I brought my laptop, I can work on the important stuff.’ He was already pulling out his phone and tapping the screen. ‘Yeah, Mike. Have the lights been delivered yet? The sparkies booked for tomorrow?’

  He’d tuned her out, which was as well as it meant she didn’t have to tell him the full extent of the bare shelves. It would be yet another black mark against her which was so unfair. He had no idea what a state the kitchen had been in and how hard she’d worked to get it ship-shape. He was a bastard. A complete and utter unfeeling git with absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

  Did she really need to do this? Was it worth it? It was supposed to be a means to an end, but now she wasn’t so sure. Especially not after his scathing observation that it took years to become a pastry chef. She wasn’t completely naïve, she knew
that, but she’d hoped being here would at least help her make a start. Suddenly Nina wasn’t so sure that coming to Paris had been such a good idea after all.

  *

  Thank goodness for Doris, as Nina had named the granny trolley Marcel had given her, officially her best friend, saviour and heroine, despite one slightly wonky wheel. Given that the pantry was Mother Hubbard bare, she’d decided to double up on Sebastian’s quantities on his list. She felt rather pleased with this efficiency, even if it did mean that poor Doris was positively creaking under the weight of what felt like several tons of flour, caster sugar, icing sugar, butter and eggs. (Thankfully, in a rare moment of solidarity, Marcel had sorted out the batteries for her.)

  Bugger Sebastian. He had his laptop and his phone, he could carry on working in the kitchen, so she allowed herself to enjoy the sunshine and being away from the stress of the kitchen as she ambled down the street heading back towards the patisserie, taking her time staring in the windows of the nearby shops, a pet shop, a haberdasher with a striking display of three beautiful cable knitted jumpers, a bicycle shop and a florist.

  The colourful display of flowers made her stop in her tracks and smile. Pink and yellow roses had been arranged in pretty posies, there were little silver pots of grape hyacinths decorated with lilac bows and a bucket packed with her favourite alstroemeria in pale pink, deep red and purple. A few steps past the florist and she stopped and turned back. A couple of bunches of flowers would brighten up the kitchen and the patisserie no end but there was no way she could handle them and the trolley. The little silver pots, however, she could manage and they would look cute on the tables and they would please her if no one else. Limited as he was to the kitchen, Sebastian would never know. With six bought and just about balanced in the top of the trolley, Nina set off again.

  It was when the wonky wheel decided to veer one way, as she was hauling the trolley the other, that she realised she’d overloaded herself a pot of flowers too far. Wrestling with it pushed her slightly off balance and, with horrible inevitability, one of the silver pots started to take a nose-dive out of the trolley, darn it, when she was at the junction literally across the road from the patisserie. As she made a lunge forward grabbing it with cricket-fielding accuracy that would have ensured a shout of triumph from any one of her brothers, she let go of the trolley, which started to tip forward, unbalanced by the extra weight at the front.

  ‘Whoa!’ A girl appeared from nowhere and snatched the trolley’s handle as it was about to land and with a triumphant flourish pulled it upright, with a big grin. ‘Blimey, what have you got in here? Half a quarry?’ she asked in a very loud Brummy accent.

  ‘With rocks and everything, yes,’ said Nina, with a laugh, struggling to get hold of the flowers. ‘You’re English.’

  ‘Just a tad. Although I thought this beret made me blend in.’ She patted the bright red hat perched on her dark curls.

  Nina eyed her sturdy frame and the belted trench coat before looking down at her footwear.

  ‘I think the Crocs might have given the game away,’ she said gravely, pinching her lips together.

  The other girl burst into laughter. ‘They are so thoroughly English, aren’t they? No self-respecting French woman would wear anything this practical.’

  Nina thought they might be Australian or American but from what she’d seen so far of French women, she was inclined to agree. She couldn’t imagine either Marguerite or Valerie de what’s-her-name being seen dead in the plastic rubbery shoes.

  ‘I stubbed my toe, think I might have broken the bugger. These are the only things I can wear. I was hoping that rocking the Audrey Hepburn look up top might stop people looking down below.’

  Nina struggled to keep her face straight.

  ‘I’m not rocking the Audrey Hepburn look either, am I?’

  Nina shook her head very slowly as if they might lessen the offence. ‘Sorry. No. But thanks for your help. You’ve no idea what a disaster that could have been. I’ve got three dozen eggs in there.’

  Together, they pulled matching horrified eek faces. ‘Can you imagine?’

  ‘Uh! Scrambled eggs.’ The other girl shook her head with the dark curls bouncing up and down like enthusiastic puppies, as they grinned at each other.

  ‘Which along with the flour, sugar and icing sugar would have been a recipe for disaster.’

  ‘Instant cake,’ she teased, amusement dancing in her eyes. ‘Who doesn’t love cake though?’

  ‘Mm, and instant unemployment for me. Thank you, you’ve saved my bacon.’

  ‘No problem, I’m Maddie by the way.’

  ‘Nina.’

  ‘Have you got far to go?’

  Nina shook her head. ‘Over there.’ She pointed to the patisserie on the other side of the street.

  ‘Oh, I’ve been meaning to go in there. Is it any good?’

  ‘To be honest, I’m not sure it is, but don’t tell anyone I said that.’

  ‘Let me give you a hand. I’ll carry the flowers and leave the eggs to you. So you work there?’

  ‘Sort of.’ Nina explained the whole story and told Maddie all about the patisserie course as they walked along in tandem.

  ‘How exciting. I’m a terrible cook. I’m more of a hearty stews and nursery puddings sort of girl.’

  ‘You should do the course,’ said Nina, hauling the trolley along, thinking about how long it was going to take her to unload this lot.

  ‘What a brilliant idea.’

  ‘Oh no, I didn’t mean it.’ She must stop saying that. It had been an off the cuff remark. She was recruiting new candidates quicker than people ate hot dinners. Sebastian was not going to be happy. ‘It starts tomorrow, so probably a bit—’

  ‘Perfect, I don’t have lectures tomorrow. And do you know what? It will impress the hell out of Mum. I could make her half-yearly birthday cake.’

  Nina raised both eyebrows at the interesting statement.

  Maddie laughed. ‘We celebrate half-yearly birthdays. We like cake in our house. Although they normally come from Tesco. I once attempted apple pie. Let’s say all of the words burnt, irrevocably moulded and knackered applied to the saucepan at the end. It had to go in the bin.’

  By the time Nina was lifting the trolley up the step into the patisserie with Maddie’s assistance, the other girl was already musing out loud what sort of cake she’d make when she went home.

  ‘It might be a bit late to book for the course,’ said Nina.

  ‘Oh, no worries,’ said Maddie.

  Nina heaved a tiny sigh of relief. God knows what Sebastian would have said about an extra student, especially if he heard she’d suggested it.

  ‘I’ll just turn up tomorrow morning, if there’s no space, no probs.’

  Chapter 9

  ‘We’ll leave in five minutes, are you all done?’ asked Sebastian barely looking up from his hunched position over his laptop as she walked back in still trying to manage the wayward trolley, which definitely had ideas of its own. With one leg hooked over a chair and working sideways onto the bench, he looked extremely uncomfortable.

  ‘Actually,’ said Nina, busying herself unloading the eggs, grateful that he seemed absorbed in his work, ‘I need to … erm, perhaps set up another work station, you know … in case anyone else turns up.’ There was a loaded silence and she thought for a moment that she might have got away with it. No chance. He looked up from his laptop with a suspicious frown. ‘Run that by me again.’

  ‘Well, you know…’

  ‘No.’

  Nina risked peeking up to find his eyes boring into her. Feeling self-conscious, she rubbed the back of her calf with her foot, doing her best not to look shifty.

  ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake, Nina!’

  Nina winced. ‘I didn’t do it on purpose, I … well, I mentioned it to an English girl I met and she was really keen and…’

  ‘And you didn’t think to tell her the course was full or anything,’ he snarled with such feeling, Nina cou
ldn’t think what to say. Surely it wasn’t that big a deal.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ he snapped and snatched up his crutches. ‘I’ve had enough of this. Call a cab. I’ll be outside.’

  As soon as he’d gone, she blinked hard. No, not going to cry. He was not worth it, he was a pig but he was not going to make her cry. She hated him. How had she ever imagined herself in love with such an arrogant, rude, bad-tempered, surly, rude, opinionated, rude, pig?

  The taxi journey back to the hotel was completed in absolute silence, with Sebastian in the back seat again. Nina spent the forty-five-minute ride with a fixed gaze out of the window, mentally packing her bags. She didn’t need this. As soon as she’d helped Sebastian up to his room, she’d be hightailing it to his apartment and getting the hell out of Dodge. He could find someone else to help him.

  Her shoulder ached where the stop start of the hideous traffic threw her against the seatbelt. It was official, Parisian traffic was horrendous. The time in the car, which seemed to be going more slowly than regular time, seemed to have propagated the tense silence between her and Sebastian still further and was worsened by the driver’s kamikaze tendencies as he lurched forward to take advantage of every space that opened up before ramming on his brakes inches from the bumper in front. It was a relief when he slammed to a halt outside the hotel, having crossed three lanes of traffic in one quick, last-minute swerve.

  Sebastian handed over a fifty-euro note and manoeuvred himself painfully slowly out of the back as Nina waited with his crutches. The driver let out a torrent of French as Sebastian began hopping into the hotel.

  ‘Don’t you want the change?’ asked Nina, realising that the taxi driver was claiming he didn’t have enough change.