And then they both looked away, as if they were both equally unsure what to say next.
‘I will buy the figs,’ Philippe said and disappeared inside as Rachel looked out into the street, at all the stalls selling gifts and trinkets and delicious delicacies, unable to hold in a smile to herself that he’d said he liked her nose.
Philippe came out with three bags and handed two of them to her. ‘A gift to say thank you for shopping with me.’
‘Oh, thanks, you shouldn’t have,’ she said, surprised, taking the scrunched brown bags from him and peeking inside. The first glistened like rubies—a bag of hundreds of tiny dried cranberries. The second was bursting with thin strips of candied orange thickly coated with crystals of sugar. They felt like the most perfect presents she’d ever been given.
‘These are lovely. Perfect. Thank you.’ She glanced up at him, a huge smile on her face that she couldn’t hide, but as he watched her his demeanour seemed different. It was probably just her being paranoid but he seemed suddenly to regret buying her the bags of fruit—as if in the giving the gesture had turned into something more than he’d intended. ‘They might be good for the baking, you know.’ He shrugged distractedly, staring ahead at the snow-covered canopies of the stalls, then he started to walk on and Rachel had to do a little jog to catch up.
‘Is everything OK?’ she asked, wanting to go back to the ease between them. Wanting to tell him that she knew it was just fruit, nothing more than that, however happy she’d seemed when she’d looked in the little bags.
‘Mais oui.’ He turned to her and smiled. ‘It is all fine.’
‘OK.’ She nodded, shaking off any unease. ‘So say again what it is your friend likes.’
‘She likes beautiful things,’ Philippe said after a moment.
‘Don’t we all?’ Rachel laughed. ‘Expensive, beautiful things.’
‘Ah, non. Not expensive.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t think expensive is what she’d want.’
‘Fair enough.’ Rachel stared into the shop window wondering who this perfect woman was. ‘How about a scarf?’ She nodded to the mannequin in front of them.
‘Too plain. She has one already. Too boring.’
‘Oh, OK.’
‘No, no, don’t take it that way. It was a good suggestion. I just think something maybe more like this—’ He pointed to a jewelled box in the next window.
‘Hideous,’ Rachel said before she could stop herself.
He laughed. ‘See, this is why I need a second opinion.’
They strolled on in silence. Rachel didn’t often do silence—usually chattering away to fill the spaces in her mind—but it felt as if silence was something Philippe was comfortable with. And somehow that started to make her comfortable too.
When they paused at a stall selling roasted chestnuts and bought a bag to share, she was almost reluctant when she said, through a mouthful of burning chestnut, ‘You know, I should be getting back.’
‘Mais oui, of course. I forgot. We can go this way.’ He touched her elbow to steer her down a side road and she felt a tiny jolt at the touch.
She thought about Ben saying she’d make someone a good wife one day and she’d known before she asked that it wouldn’t be him. She realised then, as she strolled with Philippe, that it hadn’t been Ben keeping her at arm’s length—well, of course, it had been—but it had been her, too. Who had a relationship that lasted between the hours of four and six in the pre-dawn morning?
Ben was like Tony’s jam tart—looked good but no substance. And she realised, as this French stranger steered her down the street, that she had chosen that.
She had chosen tasteless. Bland.
Tasteless was easier than complexity and flavour. Less work. She had had a boring flan when really she should have been holding out for a coffee profiterole or a violet and blackberry macaroon.
‘Ah, what about this?’
Philippe had stopped midway down the cobbled street. Rachel turned and was caught by the beauty of the window display before she could summon up her usual disdain for anything Christmas.
It was a Russian shop—the window a scene from a fairy tale. Black lacquered boxes, painted with princesses in chariots pulled by fiery red horses and a wake of golden stars, were lined up like presents under huge frosted trees. A snow-capped forest towered high around a figurine of the Snow Queen, decked out in all her silver finery. And hanging from thick satin ribbons along the window were rows and rows of baubles, from big to tiny. There were diamond shapes and twirls or circles and hearts. Some white, some black, some shocking pink, with fairy-tale scenes intricately painted on each.
‘They’re beautiful,’ she whispered.
He clapped his hands as if decided. ‘J’agree. Merci, Rachel.’
‘You found them.’
‘Yes, but I wouldn’t have done without you.’ He started to walk on.
‘Aren’t you going to get one?’
‘Later,’ he said. ‘You have to get back.’
‘Oh, thanks. Yes.’ She glanced at her watch, having, in that moment, completely forgotten about the time. ‘Yes, I do.’
As they stepped out onto the main street she was checking the traffic to cross the road when her eyes fell on his coat. ‘Look,’ she said and pointed to where a thousand snowflakes had caught in the wool.
He paused, then picked one off and held it on the tip of his gloved finger. ‘It is perfect,’ he said, then took her hand and touched it to her glove where it sat tiny and perfect like a gift.
She felt him looking down at her, watching.
After a pause she blew it away, embarrassed by the whole gesture. ‘I can never believe that each one is meant to be different.’
‘Well, we are all different.’ He shrugged.
‘That’s true.’
‘Every one of us unique.’
‘I know, we could be anyone. I mean, if you think about it, I don’t really know you at all, or you me.’
She looked from his white-flecked coat back up to him and he seemed as if he was about to say something but changed his mind. Instead he just smiled and she noticed he had snowflakes on his eyelashes.
They had an hour and a half to make a Christmas-inspired bread.
Marcel was making an apricot, date and nutmeg Panettone. George was muttering about some sort of cherry-brandy yule-log buns. Lacey said nothing, just got to work. Abby looked perplexed—Rachel could see the competition was starting to get to her. She’d cried in the bar last night, weeping that she missed her kids. She’d Skyped them in the morning before class and had come in with red-rimmed, puffy eyes.
As Rachel watched Abby, Cheryl leant across her and picked some coffee grains off the shelf. ‘Sorry, hun, didn’t mean to push,’ she apologised, her cheeks flushing red.
‘No, it’s fine, I was miles away.’ Rachel stared at the ingredients. She thought about Philippe telling her she worried too much about what people thought—she felt it in herself, sticking too much with conventions and not going with her instincts. But her brain was blank. The only thing coming to mind was Easter. Warm hot cross buns that ripped apart like candy floss. She was reminded of the smells in the street today. Of the different spices and the sharp tang as they hit her senses. Of roasting chestnuts, mulled wine packed with star anise, cinnamon and nutmeg, and the brown bags of dried cranberries and candied orange that were stuffed in her jacket pocket.
That