‘Charlotte!’ exclaims the woman in the shop doorway.
Madame B gives a nod. ‘Oui, c’estmoi.’
The other woman frowns, and points at the basket of baguettes on the counter. ‘It’s you who made the baguettes?’
She nods. ‘Oui, c’est moi. And now I am passing on thesavoir faire.’
The woman looks shocked. ‘All these years, the shop has been shut and we have lived with the vending machine. You said you would do whatever it took for it never to open again.’
Madame B nods once more. ‘I lost sight of what was important. I forgot what it felt like to love. But now, I remember and it’s there in my bread again.’
The woman is pale, as if she’s seen a ghost.
‘Would you like a drink of water, a coffee perhaps?’ I ask.
She’s grasping the back of the chair. ‘Un café, merci,’ she says, sitting, and I go to the scullery and fetch a coffee, placing it on the table in front of her along with sugar and some water.
‘What changed? This bread, it has changed everything for me. I wait for my husband Gilles to get home at lunchtime, keen to see him now. He even kisses me as he hands me the baguette.We smile at each other. The joy has come back into our lunches together. It’s like we are seeing each other again for the first time in years. We look forward tole déjeuner.’
‘Things have changed for me too,’ says Madame B. ‘I realised I shouldn’t waste the love I once had and should remember the joy it brought me. So I have. Thanks to Juliet.’
‘I must go,’ says Gilles’ wife, glancing nervously out of the window.
‘Drink your coffee.’ I smile. ‘No one will see you this early, especially as the light is on the church, not here.’
She nods gratefully and I see her smiling, relaxed. ‘And now I must take a baguette for breakfast,’ she says.
‘Of course,’ I say.
She stands and hands over a euro from her pocket. ‘But, please, don’t tell anyone I was here. I can’t be to blame if people stop buying from the machine and it disappears.’
‘Of course,’ I say again politely, but I’m dancing inside. ‘I can save you a baguette for tomorrow, if you like?’ I say, as I hold the door open for her, and Madame B picks up the broom.
She nods, taking the baguette for breakfast with her husband. ‘Merci, Madame,’ she says, and heads for home in the early dewy morning.
Madame B is smiling, her arms crossed. ‘That was a good sale,’ she says.
‘It was,’ I agree, then remember the conversation that needs to be had. ‘It’s great, but three customers a day isn’t going to keep us afloat. Unless I can make a profit, I can’t get my visa.’
‘Just wait,’ she says to me. ‘Just wait.’
I sigh. ‘I can wait one more week,’ I say, and then, voicing what needs to be said, like ripping off a plaster and knowing that it’s going to hurt, ‘then we’ll have to close.’
Chapter 34
The following morning, the bell rings.
‘I have your baguette, Madame,’ I say, coming out of the kitchen holding a freshly baked, warm loaf. But I stop. It’s not the woman I was expecting. It’s another I recognise from the vending-machine queue.
‘Madame?’ I say tentatively.
‘I could smell the ovens from outside when I was waiting,’ she says, referring to the vending machine. ‘It’s like when I was a child and my mother would send me for bread. I would wait in the queue here. Talk to friends. It was a treat to be sent out to see people and to walk home eating the end of the bread before I got there.’
‘Come in,’ I say. ‘Take a seat. It’s warm out there this morning. A hot night. Would you like some water, a coffee maybe?’
‘That would be lovely. And maybe … a baguette?’
‘Of course.’ I bring her a coffee and put down a baguette with the butter and jam from earlier.
