‘I think I’m a bit old to be throwing myself down ski slopes.’
Abby stuck her bottom lip out as if he’d ruined everything and George laughed. ‘I’m here, in Paris, isn’t that enough?’
She tipped her head from side to side. ‘I suppose.’ Then took a great gulp of wine and said, ‘Where did you learn to bake?’
‘Baker’s boy in the sixties,’ he said, stretching his shoulders back and taking off his glasses. ‘Sexual revolution passed me by. I had my head in a bloody oven the whole decade. Pay packet taken by me mum, bugger all I got. Everyone else is having sex left right and centre and I’m shovelling loaves.’
Abby laughed. ‘Surely, then, this should be the last thing you want?’
He tapped his nose. ‘You may think so, but what we forget is as we get older we find most comfort in the familiar. My wife died ten years ago, my kids have gone—all grown-up. All doctors—the lot of them. And I found myself alone, baking again. Then I had so much I took it round the neighbours and they passed it onto friends and then I had a little business. I made a cart out of builders’ crates that I take round offices. Who’d have thought? My neighbour, Jayne, painted it blue with lettering and that’s my job. Forty years an accountant, now a baker, just like I was as a boy.’ He put his glasses back on and shrugged, took a sip of his half-pint. ‘It’s a way of making friends. Keeping busier.’
Rachel listened through her wine haze. Comfort in the familiar. She looked at Marcel and he winked at her.
She smiled and kicked his foot under the table. ‘And what about you?’ she asked.
‘Lovely Marcel does it for the women,’ Abby slurred.
‘Touché.’ He smirked, tapping a cigarette from the pack in his pocket. ‘I do it because I can. Because it is something I am good at. It has been in my family for generations, from my great-grandfather grinding the wheat. One side of my family, they make the alcohol, the other side the bread. The two staples of life. So this for me is in my blood. I understand it,’ he said, tucking the fag behind his ear. ‘Like the women.’ He grinned, pushing himself from his seat and sloping outside into the falling snow.
Rachel watched the smoke of his cigarette curl up into the overhead light, twining round the glistening flakes.
‘He’s just so good-looking. It’s almost unfair.’ Abby had her chin in her hand and was looking out to where Rachel was staring, Marcel’s profile just visible through the half-open door.
They turned back to the table when someone else went outside and pushed the door shut behind them, partially blocking off the view.
‘It’s a shame Cheryl’s gone, isn’t it? I liked her. Unassuming,’ said George.
‘I know.’ Abby swept her hair back from her face. ‘Did you see her crying? It was terrible. I hope it doesn’t push her back into eating.’
Rachel bashed her on the shoulder. ‘It’s not going to do that.’
‘Well, you never know,’ she said into her wine glass and Rachel rolled her eyes.
There was a pause as Abby tried to formulate her point but had had too much to drink and Rachel went back to watching Marcel. The barman reached up to flick on the stereo and gypsy jazz started to play softly in the background.
‘It’s a shame someone has to win,’ said George into the silence.
Abby snorted.
Surprised, Rachel looked away from the smoke outside and back at George, a man with a bushy white moustache whom she had barely noticed that week, and smiled.
‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘It is a shame.’
***
Marcel offered to walk her home and, about to say no, Rachel found herself agreeing. The idea of no-strings company in her lonely flat, especially such goddamn good-looking company, seemed like the perfect rebellion from the strictures of the competition. It was like giving into pure, unadulterated temptation. Standing there in his battered leather jacket that shone in the moonlight, his arm draped casually over her shoulder, Marcel made her feel like the centre of the moment. It wasn’t buying a present for someone else with Philippe or begging Chef to keep her on or wishing Ben would sleep the whole night in her flat. It was her, singled out and centre of his attention and the feeling was addictive.
When she nodded Abby gave an unsubtle thumbs up that made Marcel smirk.
‘It’s a long walk,’ she warned him.
‘I like the challenge.’ Marcel shrugged, a cigarette clamped between his teeth.
She unlocked her bike and he took it from her, pushing it along beside them, leaving snake tracks in the snow.
‘This is a child’s bike.’
‘No, it’s small because it folds up.’ She laughed.
He held it at arm’s length, studying the rust. ‘Non. It is for the child,’ he said, then clambered on, cycling in wavy lines along the snowy pavement. ‘Get on.’
‘No way. You’ll kill me.’
‘Get on, Flower Girl, live a little.’ He circled her on the bike, his knees practically up to his ears as he pedalled.
‘OK but—’ As he slowed Rachel jumped onto the handlebars at the front and yelped as he rode them away along the cobbled backstreets, slipping through piles of grey slush and midway through taking one hand off to light another cigarette.
‘Are you smoking as well?’ She could barely turn her head, terrified that any minute they would crash into a wall.
‘Mais oui. It is fun, yes? You are having the fun?’ Plumes of smoke mingled with the falling snowflakes as he talked.
Squeezing her eyes tight when he veered from a lamppost, she opened them again to feel the snow dusting her face and her freezing hands clutching tight to the metal handlebars. ‘Oui. I am having the fun.’
‘Bon.’ He laughed and pedalled faster, but then slipped on a muddy puddle of slush and they fell off into a great mountain of snow that had been shovelled to the side of the road.
Rachel was on top of him, the bike halfway across the pavement; she was brushing snow from her mouth while he was leaning back laughing up at the clouds.
‘C’est fun, n’est-ce pas?’ He smiled, snow all in his hair, and then tightened his arms around her and rolled them over so he was on top of her and she could feel the freezing snow down her back.
‘I am going to kiss you, Flower Girl,’ he said, and she looked up into his ice-blue eyes and his perfect features and nodded.
His kiss tasted exactly of Ben. Of alcohol and cigarettes and arrogance. She let her head be pressed back into the snow and wrapped her arms tight around his back, her head swimming from all the red wine and the thrill of doing something she knew was bad for her.
Marcel only pulled back when they heard the siren of a police car in the background. ‘We go, yes? I do not want to be arrested for what I might do next.’
She laughed, pulling her coat tight around her as he stood up and then reached a hand down to help her up.
They walked on a little closer, their shoulders brushing with each step, glancing over at each other and then, as quickly, glancing away. When they saw a pharmacy green cross flash minus four degrees he put his arm around her and pulled her close, rubbing his hand down her arm as if trying to warm her up.
It was late when they got back to her apartment, maybe one o’clock. When she asked, ‘Do you want to come up, for coffee?’ he didn’t answer, just took the key from her gloved hand and unlocked the door, pushing it open for her, and followed her up the stairs.
Rachel felt