Jenny Oliver - The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year - The Parisian Christmas Bake Off / Winter's Fairytale

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.

Rachel nodded, wishing her legs might overrule her brain and walk straight off the train, but then she remembered that she had nowhere to live if she did go home—the Australians would be arriving around about now.

She pushed through the people and luggage in the aisle to her new seat. As she lifted her bag onto the overhead shelf and sat herself down a little boy wearing reindeer ears across the aisle started screaming as his sister ate his flapjack.

‘We’re off to Euro Disney. Patrick, stop that,’ said the woman next to her when Rachel glanced across, watching the boy hit his sister on the head. ‘Leila’s going to be a princess. Aren’t you, honey?’ The mother reached over to break up the fight. ‘We always go to Disney at Christmas. It’s so magical.’

Rachel nodded but then turned away to stare out of the window as the train pulled out of the station, wrapping her scarf up round her head like a cocoon to block them all out. But the reflection of the excited kids in the window forced back memories of being little at Christmas—jumping on her parents’ bed and opening her stocking. Hot tea and buttered toast with home-made jam. Her dad always surprised by the stocking her mum had done for him. Rachel’s feet dangling over the bed, unable to touch the floor as she ate chocolate coins and a satsuma and looked at Rudolph’s half-chewed carrot by the fireplace and the signed card from Santa.

She hadn’t thought about that for years.

As the train sped up through the countryside the reflection in the window changed to the memory of the whole village on Christmas morning. Everyone out on the green for a massive snowball fight. Hers flying off at wonky angles because she had such a rubbish throw. Years ago they’d even skated on the pond in their wellies. She vaguely remembered her dad and her winning the prize for best snowman. It had been shaped like a wizard with a pointy hat. There was something about the hat—what had it been made of? It was bark, she thought, curled tree bark her mum had found, and the coat they’d covered in fallen leaves and acorn cups to make the pattern. She saw her dad holding up the prize of a bottle of port, triumphant, then hoisting her up on his shoulders, her wellington boots bashing snow onto his wax jacket.

It was odd to remember her dad with that smile, that buoyancy.

Since her mum had died, he just cycled. Always cycling. A group of them, sixty-five, and cycling. Never smiling. Six months after the funeral he’d gone on a trip and come back with a new bike and all the gear. Kept him busy, he’d said. Out-pedalling the memories, she’d thought. The moment he stopped he’d have to deal with life.