9
When the line of customers had dwindled, Henrik watched as Nora began to arrange the small rolls in the wicker baskets on the bench behind her, occasionally stopping to assist a customer. She had seemed tense at first, as all the participants did when filming first started, but then she appeared to forget about the cameras and the crew circling around her.
The door opened and Don slipped in, carrying a large cardboard cup from Espresso House. Henrik hadn’t realized he was going to be here today. His presence suggested that TV24 was taking the production very seriously. Unless there was another reason, of course.
Henrik had wanted to ignore his father’s comment about the viewer ratings. He had enough to think about now that his plans for the bakery were probably doomed, but could those numbers be the reason Don was here on the very first day of filming? Looking back on it, the production team had seemed more stressed during the planning meetings than they had in the past—but why hadn’t anyone said anything to him?
Don went behind the cameras, held up a hand to greet Henrik, and joined Ted in the corner. They spoke quietly, presumably discussing the filming. Something needs to happen. That was how Don had put it when they were talking about the Christmas special. More reality.
Nora continued to work beneath Henrik’s watchful gaze.
“I think we’ll do the scene where Henrik comes in and introduces himself,” Elnaz said after a little while.
Henrik nodded. “No problem.”
“Introduces himself?” Nora was confused.
“Yes, it’s for the viewers really. Henrik comes in and introduces himself, as if you’ve never met before,” Elnaz clarified.
“But we have met. Are we supposed to pretend?”
Henrik allowed himself an eye roll. “I really don’t have time for this.”
“Time? I have to understand what we’re supposed to be filming.”
“We’re already behind,” Henrik snapped.
“I wasn’t the one who arrived late.” Nora turned her attention back to the rolls.
“The viewers have to feel as if they’re with you on the whole journey,” Elnaz said, putting an end to their bickering.
“Okay—what do you want me to do?”
“A simple way of greeting someone is to hold out your hand, then shake my hand,” Henrik said. Jesus, how stupid was she? “And you say your name. And maybe nice to meet you .”
Nora narrowed her eyes.
Henrik put on his coat and went outside, leaving Nora by the counter.
How was he going to get through today? He had been awake all night, thinking about the disastrous meeting with his father. Eventually he had gotten up and made dough using the sourdough starter he kept at home. Because he was leaving early in the morning, he had left the proofed loaves for his neighbors, a very nice family whose children loved Henrik’s bread. They would be able to bake them for breakfast.
Baking and kneading was the most effective way he knew of relieving frustration, but the benefit had been temporary. His anxiety had come surging back once he was on the train.
He had decided he wasn’t simply going to give up on the bakery idea. He had emailed the external chair of the board, stating that he had an agenda item for the next meeting: the opening of a bakery to be known as Eklunds. If the other shareholders took his side, then his father couldn’t stop it from happening. He was also concerned about the viewer ratings, however much he tried to push the thought aside. He would have to speak to Elnaz as soon as he had a chance.
A chilly sea breeze made him shiver. Winter down south really was colder.
He went back inside and Nora beamed at him. “Well, hi there!” she said loudly. “Welcome!”
Elnaz frowned. “Cut. There’s no need to overdo it.”
“You told me to pretend.”
“Just say hi—even you ought to be able to manage that,” Henrik said. “And maybe you could try to be pleasant, unlike the first time we actually met.”
He went outside, feeling her death stare on the back of his neck. He reentered the café. At first her expression was mutinous, but then she gave him a welcoming smile. Well done.
“Hi, Henrik Eklund.” He held out his hand, and she did the same.
“Nora Jansson. Welcome to Nymans.” Her hand was unexpectedly warm, and the feeling of her fingers lingered after he had let go.
“Cut. Perfect, we can use that.” Elnaz held up her pad and appeared to tick off the scene—one of many. “We could keep going from there, with Henrik ordering coffee and something to eat—if that’s okay.”
Henrik was expecting an objection from Nora, but she simply nodded.
“Excellent—let’s go.”
When the camera started rolling, Henrik examined the cakes and sandwiches laid out in the glass display case. “I’d like a cheese roll, please.”
“No problem.” She picked up a roll with the tongs and placed it on a white porcelain plate. White was fine, but he would probably encourage her to swap them out for stoneware. The coffee cups were a good shape, but they ought to be gray instead of that dated dark blue.
“And a cinnamon bun. And a macaron and maybe a cookie. Which would you recommend? No, wait—I want to try a piece of that shortbread. I didn’t think anyone under ninety-three made it anymore.” He let out a little snort. Nora’s eyes narrowed again. He decided to keep the thread going. “How many kinds of cookies do you actually bake?”
“Thirteen,” she said proudly.
“Wow. And you sell out of all of them?”
She looked wary. “Most of them.”
“How much time do you spend making cookies?”
“For God’s sake, this is a patisserie. I spend some time making cookies. Is that really what the show is going to be about? Cookies?”
Henrik looked wearily at Elnaz, who quickly smiled. “It’s fine, I think we’ve got enough.”
Henrik picked up his tray while Nora remained where she was. The scene was to begin with him on his own, and he went over to a table. One of the production assistants followed him with a cup of coffee—just a dash of milk, exactly the way he liked it when he was having something to eat. If he wasn’t eating, he preferred black coffee.
Ted had finished his conversation with Don and joined the camera operator. Henrik began with the cheese roll. The bread was perhaps a little dry, but generally okay. The cheese, however, was uninspiring, and there wasn’t enough butter. He took a bite of the cinnamon bun, which was delicious. He already knew that, but as he’d already pointed out, it was unnecessarily large.
He took a sip of his coffee and almost spat it out. He looked straight into the camera. “That’s disgusting! Undrinkable.”
“Good,” Ted said, pushing a plug of snuff farther up behind his top lip. “If you know what you want to say, we can bring Nora in.”
“Can we take a short break?” Nora called from behind the counter. “I need to fix up an order that’s just come in.”
“Fine—I need a break too,” Henrik said.
Elnaz slipped into the seat next to Henrik. “Can we have a chat? Why were you so late this morning?” she asked as the others headed for the coffee machine.
“Something came up last night—I thought I emailed you?”
“I didn’t get an email.” Elnaz was clearly annoyed. “We were trying to reach you all morning, but you didn’t answer.”
“Like I said, something came up, maybe I forgot to send you an email, and ... I apologize, but I switched off my phone.”
“You know the TV24 team is stressed, especially since Christmas with the Eklunds is going to be recorded in the middle of all this. We need every minute we can get.”
His father was the cause of all his problems—how the hell was it possible for him to ruin so much?
“Actually I was going to ask you something about TV24,” Henrik began, but Ted reappeared just then.
“Okay, let’s get back to it.”
“I’ll catch you later,” Henrik said to Elnaz. What he had to say could wait.
Ted waved to Nora, who was busy making notes and flicking through a pad at the counter.
“Ready?” Henrik shouted.
“In a minute.”
Henrik looked at the production assistant, a young guy who was in his first season with Let’s Get Baking . “Could you please go and fetch her?”
Nora sighed loudly. “I’m perfectly capable of walking across the room, you don’t need to send a runner.” She put the pad in a drawer and stomped over to the table.
“Great.” Elnaz checked her notes, then turned to Henrik. “It would be good if you could complain a little more about the coffee—mention the soul of the patisserie, that kind of thing.”
“That’s exactly what I was intending to do.”
“Super.” Elnaz gave him a thumbs-up.
Being patronizing and critical about bakeries on TV wasn’t much fun. Henrik felt like a complete shit about it, but that was what the viewers wanted: he had to criticize, but not go too far. Let’s Get Baking wasn’t in the business of humiliating the participants, but in order for something to change, he had to be a bit sharp now and then.
Nora sat down opposite him, and Elnaz gave Henrik the signal to begin. Don and Ted were beside her, keeping a close eye on things.
Henrik held up the cheese roll. “The cheese is sweaty, and there’s hardly any butter on this.”
Nora was immediately on the defensive. “The cheese has been on that roll since five o’clock this morning; we have to start preparing early to get everything done. And the butter ...”
“Yeah, yeah. The rolls are too small, the bread is tasteless and dry. There’s nothing exciting about them. I could find more appealing rolls in the supermarket. Prepacked.” Nora inhaled sharply. His criticism had hit home.
“As I said, in order to get everything done today, we made the rolls very early. And I use plenty of butter—that one must have been a mistake.”
“All I’m hearing is excuses. I mean, you offer sixteen different cookies—you clearly have time to make those.”
“Thirteen.”
“Sorry?”
“Thirteen different cookies. According to my great-grandmother’s tradition, there must be thirteen different types of cookies on offer.”
“And then there are the buns.” Henrik ignored what she’d said, took a bite. “They’re delicious, but the size is grotesque. Meanwhile, this cheese roll isn’t going to fill anyone up. What’s your thinking there?”
“I don’t know how things are done in Stockholm—I imagine you serve mainly date balls and raw beans dipped in stevia with your coffee—but here in Sm?land we like decent-size cinnamon buns. They’re supposed to be big.”
“Oh really? And do people usually eat the whole bun?”
Nora hesitated. “Some do,” she said quietly.
“Do you realize how much raw material you’re wasting?” He leaned across the table to drive his point home. “This isn’t Wayne’s Coffee in the year 2000. Grotesquely huge cakes and buns went out of fashion twenty years ago.”
She opened her mouth, presumably to defend herself, then closed it again.
“Okay. And this coffee.” He leaned back. “It’s like walking into a small-town cop shop. Pure tannin.”
“You liked it last time.”
Henrik didn’t say anything, he merely glanced up at Ted and Elnaz.
“We’ll cut that,” Ted responded. “Carry on.”
Nora frowned at him. “Sorry? Cut what?”
“There is no last time,” Elnaz explained. “Henrik has only just arrived here.”
Nora sighed. “Okay.”
Jesus, Henrik thought. If every scene was going to turn into a debate, they’d never stick to the schedule.
“Before you go on,” Ted broke in, looking a little uncomfortable. He turned briefly to Don, who looked expectantly at him. Ted cleared his throat and came up to the table. He pointed at Nora. “Maybe you could pull back your T-shirt to make it a little ...” He looked around the café, then beckoned to the stylist. “Sara, can you fix this T-shirt?”
Nora inhaled sharply and her eyes widened. Sara positioned herself behind Nora and pulled at the T-shirt, her expression inquiring.
“That’s it!” Ted exclaimed when the fabric stretched across Nora’s breasts. Sara let go of the T-shirt, unable to hide her skepticism.
“Are you kidding me?” Nora couldn’t believe what had just happened.
“Is that really necessary?” Henrik intervened. Okay, so they wanted more reality, but this wasn’t Paradise Hotel .
“A bit more,” Ted said, once again looking at Don, who nodded encouragingly. Sara shook her head, while Nora frowned and pulled the T-shirt back to its original loose fit.
Don sighed, and Ted stepped forward as if he were about to deal with the T-shirt himself.
“Enough,” Henrik and Elnaz said simultaneously. Ted backed away, and Don held up his hands in a gesture of resignation. Ted signaled to the camera operator to resume filming.
“You can’t serve coffee with this amount of tannin in it. You’ll give your customers a gastric ulcer!” Henrik focused on what he wanted to say in an effort to forget the incident. Don had definitely overstepped the mark. Thank goodness he had decided to let the matter go; maybe he had realized how ridiculous it was.
“I am your customer and I want quality coffee,” he continued, relieved to have sidestepped an uncomfortable situation.
“Actually, I’d quite like to give some of my customers a gastric ulcer.” Nora stared meaningfully at him. “A gastric ulcer that bleeds slowly, for a long time.”
Ted was grinning, looking very pleased with himself. Had he deliberately provoked Nora? Don looked equally smug. Henrik clamped his lips together, scratched his head, and waited for Elnaz or Ted to step in. But maybe this was exactly the kind of thing they wanted?
“Can you tell me a little more about the patisserie and what makes it unique?”
For the first time Nora’s eyes lit up. “Nymans is a family business that has been passed down through the generations on my mother’s side. My great-grandmother worked here, then my grandmother, and she eventually took over when the owner got too old. My grandfather had no interest in baking, but he helped out and was kind of there in the background.” She pointed to a black-and-white photograph of a woman standing between two bakers. “It was a big deal for a woman to run a patisserie in those days. Mom followed in their footsteps. When I was a kid, we were here all the time. It was my second home.” She smiled at the memory.
“So your parents ran the place together?”
“Yes. Until my father died, seventeen years ago.”
Seventeen years. Henrik did the math. She couldn’t have been very old—barely sixteen?
Her voice was steady, but there was sadness in her eyes. He sensed that she’d had to grow up quickly, a bit like he did, even if it was for different reasons.
“I understand. And now you run the business alone?” He didn’t ask about her mother. When he was doing his research, he had come across an article in the local paper, saying that Nymans’ owner had died of breast cancer eight years ago.
“I do. I have no brothers or sisters, so after Mom died, there was only me.” She gave a quick smile, smoothing over any awkwardness. Then she straightened her shoulders, as if to say, Don’t feel sorry for me .
He nodded. “Were you always going to take over?”
“Absolutely—it’s what I’ve always wanted.” Her tone left no room for doubt. “My great-grandmother lived for her work, and my grandmother had to fight to be allowed to run the business, then Mom carried on the tradition. It was incredibly important to her that Nymans should stay in the family.”
“Okay.” He sensed that there was more to it. It must be tough for Nora to run the place alone, without a partner or relative to share the burden. “What are you most proud of, apart from the fact that it’s been in the family for generations?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Our customers. The sense of community. Some of them have been coming here for decades. It makes them feel secure. They meet up with friends, have a chat, hang out. Or they chat with me.” She smiled again, and he could tell that this meant at least as much to her as it did to the customers. He understood perfectly; that was one of the reasons he wanted his own bakery.
“Okay. Let’s take a short break,” Ted said.
Don cleared his throat. “Henrik, do you have a minute?”
“Of course.” Henrik followed him to the very far end of the baking room by the dishwasher.
Don turned around. “She’s a feisty one—we like that. And there’s definitely chemistry between you. She’s going to make great TV. I want Elnaz and Ted to try out a few different angles, but based on the little I’ve seen, I think this is going to be very good.”
The feedback was positive, and Henrik really hoped he was right. And yet something felt ... off. And that business with the T-shirt ... What did Don have in mind for the show?
“What do you mean exactly by ‘try out different angles’? In the past we’ve picked up on a storyline and built on it, like if a participant was sick and struggling to cope.”
“Yes, and of course that’s worked. But I think we can boost the show’s ratings by exploiting what Nora’s got, drawing out genuine emotions.” He raised a hand, demonstrating the heights he expected the show to reach.
Henrik wasn’t completely convinced, but he had to trust Don, who was the executive producer. He was the one who was backing the show, the one who knew what worked in people’s living rooms.
“Sounds good. But anything like that business with the T-shirt or showing breasts is out of the question,” Henrik said firmly.
Don laughed. “I never said anything about showing breasts, I just thought the T-shirt didn’t look quite right.” Henrik didn’t answer. “Oh, come on—it was kind of cool, don’t you think?”
Henrik stared at him. “Not particularly.”
“Come on, relax.” Don shook his head, turned, and headed back to the café.
“Ready to get back to it?” Ted said. “I thought Henrik could go through the rest of the baked goods you have on display.”
“Why? So that he can patronize me for selling something as old-fashioned as Danish pastries?” Nora folded her arms. “I haven’t jumped on the trend for raw raspberry pies made of beans and sprinkled with quinoa.”
Henrik sighed. “Have you had anything to eat?”
Nora frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“You seem out of sorts.”
“Okay, okay.” Elnaz raised her hands in an attempt to shut them up. “I have a lovely surprise for you!” Her voice was exaggeratedly cheerful. “I’m going to ask the production assistant to book a table somewhere nice this evening. I’m assuming you’re free, Henrik, but how about you, Nora? To celebrate the start of filming.” She beamed at Nora, who looked as if Elnaz had just suggested meeting up to share an insect buffet.
“I’m busy.” No hesitation. “I’m ... babysitting. My friend is a police officer, and she works shifts.”
That was fine by Henrik. He had no desire to spend his evening with Nora.