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The shop assistant took a white paper bag with the patisserie’s logo on it in one hand and with the other she slid two mountain-shaped cakes inside.
‘Ready?’ he asked, once he’d paid.
‘Sure,’ I said casually, trying to play it cool when really I was salivating at the thought of the mouthfuls of sugary sponge to come.
We perched on a nearby bicycle rack overlooking the water. I was careful to put as much space between us as I could, which wasn’t easy on a thin piece of steel. Léo took his cake and handed me the bag.
‘How on earth do I eat this?’ I asked, peeking inside.
It felt fragile in my hand, as though it was going to disintegrate the second I took a bite. I peered at it, marvelling at the crispy, pastry base and the spaghetti-like chestnut cream piped all over it, roughly forming the shape of a mountain. Presumably Mont Blanc, which I thought might be in the Alps.
‘Hang on,’ I said suddenly, ‘hold this for a second, will you? I want to take a photo of it.’
‘Be quick,’ warned Léo, who had been uncharacteristically quiet while demolishing most of his own, his Mont Blanc already just a pile of crumbs. ‘Otherwise it will collapse and you will lose it.’
I focussed on the cake cupped in the palm of his hand, taking the shot.
‘Perfect,’ I said.
He passed it back to me.
‘What do you like to take photos of now, then?’ asked Léo, wiping his hands on a napkin. ‘You have moved on from rusty climbing frames?’
Nobody had ever asked me that before. Not even Si, who I suspected considered my passion for photography nothing more than a fun little hobby. An incentive for me to pootle about taking pretty photographs of Portobello Road on a Sunday afternoon, or whatever. But for me it had never been just that. It symbolised the part of me that wanted more. I thought my dad might have felt that way about it, too.
‘I like beautiful buildings,’ I said, slowly. ‘Old ones and new. And the way light falls on objects: on a staircase, or rooftops, or a tree. And reflections. How water distorts everything, gives something solid and inflexible a sort of other-worldly quality.’
‘What else?’ he pressed, crossing one leg over the other and turning towards me so that his knee was practically touching my thigh.
‘I love the feeling I get when the composition is just right,’ I said, getting carried away. ‘When I’ve captured the mood of something. Or when I’ve caught a moment on film that will never, ever happen again, at least not in that exact way.’
I tried to concentrate on not dropping my Mont Blanc all over the front of Léo’s hoodie. Photography was the one subject I could go off on a tangent about, but I thought it was a bit much for most people.
‘But you say you are not a photographer?’ asked Léo, his voice gentle.
I shook my head to indicate that no, it was not my job. I couldn’t actually answer him because my mouth was full of the silkiest, nuttiest cream I’d ever tasted in my life.
‘Mmmmn,’ I said, giving him a thumbs up.
‘What is your job, then?’
‘I’m a human resources administrator. For a small law firm in the City,’ I told him in between mouthfuls.
‘Do you like it?’
‘Quite the opposite,’ I said, laughing lightly. ‘I can’t stand it.’
I pulled off a chunk of crispy pastry and popped it into my mouth.
‘Actually, it’s not the job, not really. It’s me,’ I said, chewing. ‘I’ve been thinking about leaving for the last three years and have done nothing about it. They keep trying to send me on these management training courses but I make excuses not to go. Last time, I said I couldn’t make it because I had food poisoning and then I had to take an extra day off sick to make it look realistic. And the worst thing was that the following day it was somebody’s birthday and there was cake in the office and I had to pretend that I felt too queasy to risk it, even though – as you now know – cake is my favourite thing on earth.’
He laughed. ‘You are funny, Hannah.’
‘And you ask too many questions.’
‘And here is another one. Why do you stay in that job if you hate it so much?’ he asked, looking sideways at me.
I dabbed at the side of my mouth with my fingertips, licking a smidgen of cream off my thumb. I’d wondered the same thing myself, hundreds of times. Fear of the unknown, I supposed. The idea that if I stayed where I was, I wouldn’t have to deal with the inevitable disappointment of trying something I actually cared about and being shit at it. And so I continued to get up, to go to work, to sit on the Tube alongside millions of other Londoners and I accepted my lot, assuming that I couldn’t have it all.
