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Happiness rushing through her veins as she swept her hair away from her face, leaving a trail of flour along her cheek, and turned her attention to making the madeleines. The sweet smell of baking sent her memory scuttling back to her childhood when she and Jen began their mutual love affair with all things cake-related. They had stood on their tiptoes on a wooden stool next to their mother and whisked, beaten, and licked to their hearts’ content. In her teens, she had been teased for frequently sporting a liberal dusting of flour or icing sugar in her hair, and, instead of the latest designer fragrance, a hint of caramelized apples.
The sniggers of her peers had hurt but she had refused to allow it to define her. She was always going to be identified as different by her, albeit faint, French accent and therefore fodder for their adolescent jibes. She’d worked quickly on erasing it and now only a trace could be heard when she was tired, angry or under the influence of a few glasses of cognac when it would become as thick as royal icing on a wedding cake and no doubt impenetrable to the ears of the natives of rural Oxfordshire.
She tested the final batch of cupcakes with a skewer and set them on wire racks to cool, then slid the trays of madeleines into the oven and started on the mini chocolate-truffle tortes. Baking had not only been her secret salvation in her teenage years but had come to her rescue ever since in times of heartbreak and despair. Over the years at Le Cordon Bleu, she grew accustomed to the compliments on her early forays into gastronomic alchemy. The obvious pleasure of hearing her tutors’ praise instilled a sweet taste of vanity in her heart and an addiction to its continuance.
Each recipe she tried became more intricate. She would perform meticulous autopsies on pastries purchased from the bakeries dotted along the streets of Oxford, cataloguing each ingredient, recording its ability to interact with its companion, improving them until they became a serenade on the lips. She had even forced herself to memorise the science behind the art of baking in order to pass her exams; no mean feat for a girl who consistently spent her school days daydreaming about the recipes she’d work on once she got home.
She ignored the detritus of culinary labour piling up in the sink and along the countertops and continued with the whirlwind of activity. As she decorated the cupcakes, she couldn’t prevent her thoughts flying back to Luke, his dark blue eyes staring into hers as they enjoyed a picnic along the river, or a meal out at a restaurant she’d been wanting to try out.
She knew she should be grateful to him – early on in their relationship he had led her along such an idyllic path that she had truly believed she could come to terms with losing her beloved father. Their relationship had been tempestuous; a rollercoaster of ups and downs, calm and disagreements, the subsequent make-ups thrilling. But of course, like everything in her life, all good things must come to an end – and boy, did Luke do that in style.
After removing the final tray of miniature chocolate-truffle tortes from the oven, she swept her eyes around the kitchen – a veritable cascade of chaos. It looked like a scene fromThe Caribbean Bake Off Massacre, but on the gastronomic battlefield there were bound to be casualties. She ran her eyes over the blobs of marmalade dripping down the front of the fridge, and the tea towels and dishcloths slumped amongst the washing-up. Realising she was humming a Bob Marley tune, her lips curled into a smile as she stood back, hands on hips, to survey the fruits of her toil.
With a jolt of surprise, she realised she had seriously over-baked. She had made over fifty madeleines, five dozen chocolate-and-orange-marmalade cupcakes, and a tottering pyramid of chocolate tortes! Whilst she adored desserts of every variety, there was no way she was going to get through all that by herself.
Noticing a long meandering snail’s trail of cocoa on the floor, she fished a cloth from the sink and knelt down to clean it up, her buttocks high in the air, wiggling from side to side as she got stuck into an off-key rendition of “No Woman, No Cry”. It was not herbestangle to present to visitors.
‘Hello? Anyone home? The door was open, so I thought… Oh, my God, what’s happened here? Marmalade Armageddon?’
Chapter Eight
‘A bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think?’
‘I thought all professional chefs were possessed of a Poirotesque fastidiousness in their working environment? With expletives liberally dispensed to minions who step out of line with a whisk?’
‘I see you’ve fallen into the trap of viewing everyone as a Ramsayan cliché,’ she countered.
‘And do you usually model your culinary creations?’ Zach swept his eyes over her hair.
Irritation rose in her chest at the continuation of their ridiculous verbal sparring, but she was determined to remain calm and rise above it. She shot into the bathroom where the ornate, gilt-framed mirror confirmed his diagnosis. She was indeed wearing an assortment of the ingredients she had used to create her culinary masterpieces. Her blonde hair resembled an ice-speckled pigeon’s nest, only it was flour not snow that had provided her with a generous dusting. More embarrassing, however, was the splodge of marmalade on her left cheek. She scrubbed it off with her cuff and took the opportunity to smooth down her fringe for good measure.
‘Hey, who said you could help yourself?’ asked Millie, as she re-joined Zach who was busy munching his way through a still-warm cupcake, his palm positioned underneath his chin to catch any escaping morsel.
‘Well, you seem to have overestimated your pool of consumers. What do you plan on doing with five dozen cupcakes and a whole brigade of little shell-shaped cakes?’
‘They’re not “little shell-shaped cakes,” they’re madeleines.’
Zach grinned mischievously as he helped himself to three.
‘Isn’t that a little greedy?’
‘They’re not for me.’
Zach placed his fingers to his lips and gave a short whistle. A whirlwind of black-and-white fluff raced up the stairs and bowled straight across to greet Millie. Taken completely by surprise she stepped backwards, tripped over a bag of sugar she had left on the floor and tumbled onto her buttocks, knocking a glass measuring jug from its precarious position on the draining board onto the tiles. It shattered into four pieces.
‘Agh!’ She covered her face with her hands as the Springer spaniel attempted to lick her cheek clean of its marmalade coating. ‘Get off me! Dogs are not allowed in the kitchen!’
‘Definitely not an animal lover, then? Is there anything you have an affinity with? If not humans or animals, perhaps plants? No, I’d hazard a guess you are as au fait with the natural environment as I am with whipping up a mango soufflé with raspberry-mint jus and decorated with popping candy. Or are you just permanently grouchy? Come on, Binks, leave the lady alone.’
The dog trotted obediently to Zach’s side and sat; his bead-like eyes trained longingly on the madeleines in his owner’s hands. Zach took pity on him and tossed one to his best friend before crouching down onto his haunches to offer Millie his palm to help her up.
‘For your information, I adore animals. Especially dogs!’
Millie’s exasperation with Binks’ master gnawed at her chest. Once again, she ignored his outstretched hand and pushed herself up to standing, whilst Zach scooted round to collect the shards of glass, wrap them in a discarded flour bag and spray the floor with disinfectant. Finally, he tossed another of her madeleines to a delightful Binks.
‘They’re not dog treats, you know.’ Millie couldn’t understand why Zach’s presence made her so tetchy. Maybe it was because everything he said caused her to rise to the bait when he denigrated her character traits. So, before thinking, she couldn’t help herself saying, ‘And who calls their dog “Binks”? It’s a ludicrous name.’
‘Oh, I suppose you’d call him “Fluffy” or “Curly”, would you?’
