She waves her cigarette at it. ‘We have bread here already from aFrenchbaker. From the machine. And it’s a lot quieter!’
‘I’m not trying to be a French baker …’ I say, feeling as if a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I’m not trying to be anyone else: I’m just me, Juliet, falling in love with this new adventure. A journey I couldn’t have imagined being on a few months ago. Just being me.
She looks down at the baguette again. ‘The shine is good,’ she says, the corners of her mouth still turned down. ‘It smells … not bad.’ And finally: ‘I will try it. As long as it isn’t going to poison me like your last bread did, with its terrible burning.’
I could try to argue that it wasn’t my bread’s fault but the oven’s, but decide not to.
She takes the baguette.
‘Merci,’ I say.
‘Bon après-midi,’ she says and looks at me.
‘Bon après-midi.’
I nod to her, but she doesn’t acknowledge me so I go down the stairs and walk towards thetabac.
‘Du pain!’ I announce, as I walk through the glass door into thetabac, holding two loaves to my chest.
Laurent looks up from behind the bar where he is drying glasses again. ‘Bonjour,’ he says.
‘I did it! I made bread!Bonjour!’
He looks at me in surprise, his hair dark and shiny in the sunlight, beard neatly trimmed above his jawline. He nods slowly. ‘We already said good morning, Juliet. Remember? Or am I so forgettable?’ He smiles. ‘Some people in France would take offence. You’re lucky I’m not some people!’
‘What? Oh, sorry!’ I wave a hand. ‘Anyway, I did it! I made bread!’ I am unable to keep the grin from my face. ‘Here!’
I place the two baguettes on the counter.
Laurent puts down his tea-towel and bends over to study them. He lifts one and smells it.
‘Let me know what you think,’ I say, practically giddy withexcitement, putting a tin of the shortbread I made on the counter. I’m watching him carefully and, I have no idea why, my stomach does a nervous flip as he looks at me with an interested and amused smile. ‘I’m going to be opening the shop next week, now that I’m making bread.’
He frowns. ‘Next week? It can take years to become a professionalboulanger.’
‘Well, it seems I’ve got the hang of it, so with any luck I’ll be up and running sooner than that,’ I say, with a confidence I can’t quite feel – but time isn’t on my side.
He looks at the baguettes, as do the three older men standing and leaning against the bar. He turns down the corners of his mouth. ‘It looks like bread.’
‘Try it,’ I say, ridiculously eager.
He pulls off the end, bites and chews. I hold my breath. Then he passes it to the next man at the bar. ‘Gilles,’ he says. Gilles tears off a bit, bites and chews, then turns down the corners of his mouth and passes the baguette to the two men next to him.
‘Du sel,’ says Gilles, shaking his head. ‘Needs more salt. The salt has killed off the yeast. You add the salt before the yeast.’ I concentrate hard on what Gilles is saying.
‘Too soft,’ says the next. ‘Needs longer cooking time.’
‘More steam,’ says the other, with a flourish of his hand.
And I look between them, all pulling the corners of their mouths down, shaking their heads one after the other and putting the bread back on the counter.
‘I like it white. But not soft,’ I manage to translate.
‘My wife prefers it darker, crunchier.’
Suddenly I realise there is a woman at the end of the bar, with bright red lipstick. She doesn’t speak, but seems to be hanging on Laurent’s every word as he tries the bread again and agrees with practically all the comments made, putting the half-eaten piece back on the counter and dusting off his hands. He shakeshis head. It takes me a moment to recognise the woman, clearly enjoying every moment. It’s the receptionist from themairie.
‘It needs work, lots more work,’ says Laurent.
