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

around, she noticed that Lacey wouldn’t catch her eye. George was fussing with his disaster. Marcel was leaning back against the counter, one brow raised. She made a perplexed face at Abby but she looked down, away from her.

      Was it Rachel’s imagination or were her cheeks flushed?

      ‘And now we taste.’ Chef clapped his hands together and he and Philippe strode forward.

      Rachel stared in horror at her sunken mess.

      Lacey’s, of course, tasted bloody marvellous. Her bisque, Philippe thought, divine. Ali’s left them silent; beneath the fluffy top was a cloying mass of sticky rice and raspberry jam that fell from their spoons like baby sick.

      Chef snorted when he got to Rachel’s. ‘Oh, dear, oh, dear.’

      Hands clasped behind her back, she looked down, refusing to see the look of sympathy on Philippe’s face. ‘I don’t know what happened. It had risen when I got it out.’

      ‘A likely story, Flower Girl.’ Chef grinned and stabbed one edge with his fork, beckoning for Philippe to do the same. ‘If you can bear it,’ he added.

      It was only when Philippe dug his fork in that Rachel saw it—the slice. A cut the size of a Sabatier knife, stabbed into her right-hand side.

      She gasped. Someone had murdered her soufflé.

      ‘It is delicious,’ said Philippe, surprised.

      ‘Mais oui, the girl, she can cook. She is simply a disaster.’ Chef licked the last string of cheese off his fork and they walked over to Marcel.

      ‘Delicious,’ Philippe said again before leaving, but Rachel could only nod, distracted.

      She looked round the room again and she tried to get Abby to look at her so she could mouth what had happened but she wouldn’t.

      ‘Abby,’ she muttered in the end, but Abby bent down to rummage on her shelf.

      And that was when Rachel saw the missing slot on her knife roll. The twelve-inch blade empty. Probably in Abby’s sink, slimy with congealed parmesan and Gruyère.

      ‘You!’ she whispered.

      Abby looked back at her this time, but did a face of pleading innocence before turning away as the men appeared at her station and rhapsodised over her white-chocolate creation.

      Rachel stayed in the competition by the skin of her teeth. Luck was on her side as Ali’s and George’s were both dreadful.

      Ali stormed out refusing to talk to anyone after he was dismissed. George stayed and cleared up his table. ‘Oh, well.’ He shrugged. ‘Back to my little business. Dreams of stardom over. Too old anyway.’

      Rachel watched his back as he walked over to the coat stand and pulled on his tweed blazer followed by his Peter Storm cagoule.

      She wanted to stop him and say it was unfair. That there had been sabotage and cheating. ‘You’re not too old, George,’ she said instead.

      ‘You’re very sweet. It was enough for me. I’ve reached my limit. It’s hotting up. If it had been anyone else I’d have said, no, it’s time for me to go. I can feel it.’ He smiled. ‘And you, young lady, need to pull yourself together. You’re at the end of your nine lives. You hear me?’

      She nodded.

      ‘Good.’ He pulled on his flat cap. ‘I expect you to win.’

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

      There were no drinks in the bar that night.

      Marcel sloped off almost as soon as Chef left. Abby seemed to be absorbed in a task that prevented her from leaving. Rachel grabbed her bag, pulled on her hat and mittens and stalked out. In the corridor she passed Lacey, who was tapping into her mobile over her bifocals. Neither acknowledged the other. It was competition now. War.

      Rachel took a couple of paces outside and then ducked into an alley and waited. The snow was like a sheet shaken from a balcony—a wall of white coating cars in foot-deep white. Kids were pulling sledges down the street while businessmen slipped in leather shoes.

      She blew on her hands, white misty breath in the freezing air, and listened to the accordion music drifting out of the pâtisserie as it closed.

      When she heard familiar footsteps Rachel stepped out onto the cobbled pavement and said, ‘Why did you do it?’

      Abby hoisted her bag further up on her shoulder. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

      ‘Yes, you do. You sabotaged my soufflé. Why would you do that? After I saved you yesterday.’

      ‘Oh, yeah, great, you saved me. Aren’t you a star? I heard what he said, Rachel. When he called you back. I waited in the doorway. All good bakers have a signature.’

      ‘So?’ she said.

      ‘So he didn’t say he couldn’t see mine, did he? It was that he saw yours. He thought I had no signature. Well, I do. I do have a signature and I wanted him to taste it.’ She wiped her nose with her glove and then thrust her hand in her pocket.

      ‘So show him yours! Make something amazing like you did. That doesn’t mean you have to ruin mine.’ Rachel couldn’t believe it.

      Abby scoffed. ‘You really think that? You really think he’d have noticed mine after tasting yours?’

      ‘Yes, Abby. Yes, I do. If it was that bloody good. You were meant to be my friend.’

      Abby looked away. ‘It’s a competition.’

      ‘Fuck the competition. It’s an excuse.’

      ‘I bake every day, Rachel. Every day I make different pastries, breads, brioche—something. I bake something. I practise and I practise and I’m still not as good as you who doesn’t even try.’

      ‘I try,’ she said, affronted.

      ‘No, you don’t. Not really. It’s there in you. You don’t have to be here. You could just do it. You have it. I needed this. And yet I’m not good enough. I know I’m not good enough.’ Abby scuffed at the snow with her boot, then got out a tissue and blew her nose. ‘I know I shouldn’t have ruined your soufflé. I knew I shouldn’t at the time and I know it more now. I just wanted a taste of it, Rachel. A taste of what you have. Of what Lacey sort of has.’