Jenny Oliver - The Parisian Christmas Bake Off

‘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.

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.