Jenny Oliver - The Parisian Christmas Bake Off

‘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.’

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.