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telling you.’
    ‘Well…’ Rachel shrugged as if it barely mattered because she would never see him again.
    ‘Do you want an espresso?’ Françoise asked as she wiped her hands on her apron.
    ‘I shouldn’t really. But—’ Rachel glanced up the gloomy staircase to the workshop. ‘Go on, then.’
    Inside the pâtisserie, she perched on a stool by the counter as Françoise bashed away with the coffee machine.
    ‘This thing, it is shit.’
    ‘You sound like Chef.’ Rachel laughed.
    ‘Fuck no.’
    ‘And again.’
    Françoise laughed. ‘I have worked with him too long. He is a tyrant.’
    ‘He is, isn’t he?’ Rachel took the espresso cup and saucer from her and declined the two sachets of sugar.
    ‘No.’ Françoise shook her head. ‘He is OK. I think he suffers from the past.’
    Rachel raised a brow in disbelief. ‘I think he’s a tyrant.’
    Françoise laughed and then turned her back to Rachel and started doing her hair in the mirrored wall behind the counter. ‘My boyfriend arrives today. From Bordeaux.’
    ‘Very nice.’ Rachel sipped the coffee, wondering if she should say anything else.
    ‘I only see him once in the month. He is very—’ She paused, untwisting her lipstick. ‘He is like Chef. He has the hot blood.’ She turned back round to face her, eyes smiling, her mouth pulled into an O as she slathered it with Chanel Rouge. ‘You just need to learn how to ‘andle them. That is all.’
    Coffee finished, Rachel was second to arrive in the workroom. Lacey was already there, polishing her tabletop.
    ‘Hi,’ Rachel said as she unfolded her knives and put her snow-globe on the bottom shelf of her work surface where Chef wouldn’t see it.
    Lacey didn’t reply. Rachel studied her, her loose grey curls pinned into a neat chignon at the nape of her neck, apron covering a three-quarter-length mauve dress with capped sleeves that revealed gym-toned arms. Gold studs in her ears, coral lipstick and glasses hanging on a diamanté chain around her neck.
    ‘Where are you from?’ she asked as Lacey continued to wipe.
    ‘London.’
    ‘Oh, whereabouts? I went to uni in London. I’m from a tiny village in Hampshire.’
    ‘Look.’ Lacey screwed up her cloth and turned towards her. ‘I don’t want to be rude but I’m not here to make friends. This is a competition and I just want to keep it professional. No games.’
    ‘Games?’ Rachel looked perplexed.
    ‘I saw you yesterday with your little flowers getting all the attention. Some of us are here to work. Hard. So…let’s just—’ She held her hands up and then went back to polishing her station.
    Rachel couldn’t believe it. ‘I’m not—’
    ‘You’re back. Hurray!’ Abby bounded in with George, unaware of the tense silence in the room. ‘We wondered. We made bets. I said you would.’
    ‘I thought I’d give it one more go,’ Rachel said, hesitant after her altercation with Lacey.
    ‘Well, I’m really glad you did. We need to stick together.’ Abby patted her on the shoulder and walked over to her bench.
    Over the next five minutes all the others trooped in, with Marcel last. He glanced at Rachel and said, with his smooth French accent, ‘Looks like I lost my bet.’ Then he winked at her just as Chef strode in so she was blushing red as he towered over her station.
    ‘You are still with us? I thought you run back to England?
Non?
’
    Rachel shook her head. She tried to think of him as the great baker who had lost everything. Of the boy who had grown up too fast. Of the genius who revolutionised French pâtisserie.
    What was it Chantal had said?
Not a good home
. She thought of lovely little Tommy back in Nettleton who’d been adopted by Mr Swanson and his wife two years ago. He’d had
not a good home
. She tried to imagine Chef at Tommy’s age. Looking up at his stern, miserable face, she tried to picture him as a five-year-old, as one of her sweet little class with trousers too big and jam down his cardigan.
    She