Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
Everything was going according to plan, until he showed up.
It was Friday afternoon and I was in the kitchen, melting white chocolate for my ganache.
I heard the little bell over the door ring, but took no notice of it until I heard Madame Moreau’s tone of voice change from welcoming to downright hostile.
‘You have no right to come in here,’ she said in English, which made me pop my head around the door.
I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw Hugo standing at the counter with another man, both of them sharply dressed and carrying briefcases. A love-struck smile crept across my face as soon as our eyes met, but that soon faded when I heard him speak.
‘We have been given permission by the bank and their estate agent to view the property, Madame Moreau,’ he said in a clipped tone.
Then the man beside him stepped in. ‘You did receive my letter regarding our visit, Madame?’
That was when Madame Moreau broke into a tirade of abuse in French that I could hardly understand.
It seemed I had been frozen to the spot while they argued, as I physically had to pull my feet from their entrenched position to go to her aid.
I put my hand on her shoulder and guided her back to her stool, giving her a glass of water, despite her considerable efforts to ignore me. I turned back to the men.
‘Edith,’ Hugo said, in a tone of voice that sounded almost regretful for my presence there.
‘Hugo, what is this, what’s going on? Why are you here – I thought you weren’t coming until next week?’
He looked visibly uncomfortable as he fidgeted with his briefcase.
‘Look, I’m sorry about this – I was hoping … well, never mind.’ He produced a letter and asked if I would mind giving it to Madame Moreau once she had calmed down.
‘I’m sorry, I really don’t understand all of this,’ I said, glancing down at the envelope.
I spotted a logo on the top right-hand corner that looked familiar.
Chadwick Holdings Inc. It took some time for the thoughts to form cohesively in my mind, but when I looked up at him, it suddenly became clear.
‘Hugo Chadwick. Are you…?’
He turned his head to the side and sighed. ‘Will you step outside for a moment? I don’t really want an audience,’ he said, looking around at the regulars who were all staring at us.
I agreed and closed the glass-panelled door behind me, aware that our audience were all but pressing their noses against the glass.
‘My brother was Chief Operating Officer of Chadwick Holdings and now the board wants me to take over,’ he explained, as if that would somehow make things clearer to me.
‘But they’re some kind of property investors, right?’ I asked and he nodded in confirmation. ‘I don’t get it – I mean, you told me you were a photographer?’
This time he just looked at the ground.
‘Oh, I get it, that was just some stupid story to impress a girl in a bar.’ I turned away from him, feeling utterly foolish.
He reached for my hand and turned me around to face him again.
‘I am a photographer; it’s just not what I do for a living, that’s all. I didn’t lie, Edith.’
‘No, you just weren’t exactly forthcoming with the truth, were you?’ I thought back to that night and his reaction when he walked me home. ‘That’s why you acted so strange when I told you I was working here. You knew all about it, didn’t you?’
‘Of course I knew,’ he said angrily, trying to keep his voice down. ‘They’re in debt up to their eyeballs,’ he said looking at the bakery, ‘and my father’s company, well, we offer solutions.’
‘You mean you find businesses that are struggling and prey on them to satisfy your investors.’ I spat out my words.
‘Exactly, Edith. Business. This is just business.’
‘Listen to me, Hugo, there is so much more to this than you know! I can’t explain it all now, but Madame Moreau and her grandson work twenty-four-seven to keep this boulangerie alive. They are good people and they don’t deserve to have their livelihood taken from under them.’
He sighed and let his head drop. I thought I was winning him over, but he started to shake his head, as though listening to a counter-argument in his head.
‘Look, they’ve had plenty of notice,’ he said.
‘Oh, well, that makes it all right then. As long as you’ve given them plenty of notice that their livelihood, no, their legacy is going to be erased by a heartless corporation like yours!
’ I walked away completely enraged and slammed the door of the bakery in his face.
Then I grabbed what I assumed to be the estate agent by the arm, struggled to open the door that had practically come off the hinges and slung him out into the street.
‘And don’t come back!’ I shouted, slamming the door again for good measure.
I felt so hurt and the look in Hugo’s eyes made it worse.
I couldn’t tell if he was angry, guilty or relieved that our relationship had gone no further.
But then the boulangerie broke into a spontaneous round of applause for me, led by Madame Moreau, who had come out from behind the counter.
I was shaking so much that I had to hold on to her for support, but on seeing a room full of outspoken, fearless French people applauding my courage, I had to smile.
Perhaps they were starting to rub off on me!
* * *
That night, I lay awake and turned the art of over-analysing into an Olympic sport.
My ego was badly bruised, as was my heart.
Still, I wasn’t sure if I had the right to feel so betrayed.
We had only just begun getting to know each other, but it was such a magical connection and I knew he had felt it, too.
The postcards, the book, buying me the bicycle; I mean, why would he have done all that if it didn’t mean something to him?
I reached for the lamp on my nightstand and accidentally knocked Hugo’s copy of Proust onto the floor.
I leaned over to pick it up, causing the bookmark to fall out.
I sighed. I should’ve dog-eared the pages, that would’ve served him right.
Although I wasn’t quite sure anybody deserved that.
I took it into my hands and opened a page at random.
It was the kind of book where you could do that – just pick up on the author’s memories and insights, almost like a journal.
I found it comforting to read the thoughts of someone who’d lived years ago, in very different circumstances, and still feel like it was written just for me.
I liked how Proust fleshed things out, connecting the dots in hindsight and finding some kind of meaning.
Maybe it could work for me too; if I could map out the past, perhaps I could understand myself a little better.
The thirst for something other than what we have … to bring something new, even if it is worse, some emotion, some sorrow; when our sensibility, which happiness has silenced like an idle harp, wants to resonate under some hand, even a rough one, and even if it might be broken by it.
Was my relationship with Hugo just that, something new to distract myself?
I wasn’t sure. Why was it so difficult to understand what was going on in my own head?
I couldn’t bear the thought of him being a part of the boulangerie’s demise.
Perhaps if he knew the truth, he would see things differently; convince the board of Chadwick Holdings that this wasn’t a good investment.
But I knew I couldn’t tell him – for starters he would probably think I was insane.
Spirits aren’t exactly mitigating circumstances for renegotiating your mortgage.
Although it didn’t seem that the truth ranked high on his list of priorities, and that was what hurt the most. I didn’t like being lied to, whatever the reason.
Yet there was a small part of me that wanted to believe he had his reasons.
Still, that didn’t change the fact that his company was going to take over the boulangerie and turn it into a boutique hotel.
And if that happened, how could there be a future for us?
These thought spirals were getting me nowhere.
‘This is useless,’ I said to no one and plonked the book back onto the nightstand.
I spied the red cover of the recipe book just underneath and decided I might find something a little more comforting and less confronting on its pages.
The time-worn paper felt soft on my fingertips.
I had begun to cherish it like an heirloom.
I flicked from one recipe to the next, looking for something that might speak to me.
Chocolate soufflé, millefeuille, eclairs … and then I came upon it.
Crêpes pour un coeur brisé.
Crêpes for a broken heart. ‘Perfect,’ I whispered to myself, before hopping out of bed and creeping downstairs to get the ingredients together.
The secret to a perfect crêpe is the batter, the recipe said. You must leave the batter overnight?—
Oh, well, I didn’t have time for that and besides, I told myself I could use any leftover batter in the morning for breakfast. I took out a small packet of flour and weighed 125g, mixing it with caster sugar and a pinch of salt.
I set a small saucepan on the hob and began melting the butter, before cracking two eggs and lightly beating.
Before I knew it, I was humming that old Eileen Barton song, ‘If I Knew You Were Comin’ I’d Have Baked a Cake’.
It was amazing how quickly my mood improved when mixing these ordinary ingredients.
The anticipation of the warm, satisfying tasty mouthfuls they would become seemed to release all of my happy hormones.
I found a heavy pan in the cupboard and set it on the hob, then mixed all of my wet and dry ingredients well with a whisk.
I turned down the heat before it began smoking and added a few knobs of butter.
Then the best part; I ladled the batter, just a small amount, onto the pan before taking the handle and tilting it round and round until it spread evenly.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the first pancake is never quite up to scratch and so should only be gobbled down by the chef.
After flipping it over, I plopped a spoonful of Nutella in the middle, before transferring it to a plate, where the chocolate began to melt.
With the light touch of a knife, it spread easily and I quickly folded the crêpe into quarters before stuffing it in my mouth.
I actually groaned with ecstasy! The edges, crispy from the butter, and then the soft, sweet pancake coated in warm, runny chocolate – it was, in a word, divine.
I looked back at the notebook and began to wonder if Pierre Moreau wasn’t some kind of genius.
It was the perfect recipe, simple though it was, for a broken heart.
I felt a sliver of hope return and even some optimism for the future.
Maybe things could still work out somehow.
But that might have been to do with the fact that I’d already begun ladling out the batter for another crêpe!