with this efficiency, even if it did mean that poor Doris was positively creaking under the weight of what felt like several tons of flour, caster sugar, icing sugar, butter and eggs. (Thankfully, in a rare moment of solidarity, Marcel had sorted out the batteries for her.)
Bugger Sebastian. He had his laptop and his phone, he could carry on working in the kitchen, so she allowed herself to enjoy the sunshine and being away from the stress of the kitchen as she ambled down the street heading back towards the patisserie, taking her time staring in the windows of the nearby shops, a pet shop, a haberdasher with a striking display of three beautiful cable knitted jumpers, a bicycle shop and a florist.
The colourful display of flowers made her stop in her tracks and smile. Pink and yellow roses had been arranged in pretty posies, there were little silver pots of grape hyacinths decorated with lilac bows and a bucket packed with her favourite alstroemeria in pale pink, deep red and purple. A few steps past the florist and she stopped and turned back. A couple of bunches of flowers would brighten up the kitchen and the patisserie no end but there was no way she could handle them and the trolley. The little silver pots, however, she could manage and they would look cute on the tables and they would please her if no one else. Limited as he was to the kitchen, Sebastian would never know. With six bought and just about balanced in the top of the trolley, Nina set off again.
It was when the wonky wheel decided to veer one way, as she was hauling the trolley the other, that she realised she’d overloaded herself a pot of flowers too far. Wrestling with it pushed her slightly off balance and, with horrible inevitability, one of the silver pots started to take a nose-dive out of the trolley, darn it, when she was at the junction literally across the road from the patisserie. As she made a lunge forward grabbing it with cricket-fielding accuracy that would have ensured a shout of triumph from any one of her brothers, she let go of the trolley, which started to tip forward, unbalanced by the extra weight at the front.
‘Whoa!’ A girl appeared from nowhere and snatched the trolley’s handle as it was about to land and with a triumphant flourish pulled it upright, with a big grin. ‘Blimey, what have you got in here? Half a quarry?’ she asked in a very loud Brummy accent.
‘With rocks and everything, yes,’ said Nina, with a laugh, struggling to get hold of the flowers. ‘You’re English.’
‘Just a tad. Although I thought this beret made me blend in.’ She patted the bright red hat perched on her dark curls.
Nina eyed her sturdy frame and the belted trench coat before looking down at her footwear.
‘I think the Crocs might have given the game away,’ she said gravely, pinching her lips together.
The other girl burst into laughter. ‘They are so thoroughly English, aren’t they? No self-respecting French woman would wear anything this practical.’
Nina thought they might be Australian or American but from what she’d seen so far of French women, she was inclined to agree. She couldn’t imagine either Marguerite or Valerie de what’s-her-name being seen dead in the plastic rubbery shoes.
‘I stubbed my toe, think I might have broken the bugger. These are the only things I can wear. I was hoping that rocking the Audrey Hepburn look up top might stop people looking down below.’
Nina struggled to keep her face straight.
‘I’m not rocking the Audrey Hepburn look either, am I?’
Nina shook her head very slowly as if they might lessen the offence. ‘Sorry. No. But thanks for your help. You’ve no idea what a disaster that could have been. I’ve got three dozen eggs in there.’
Together, they pulled matching horrified eek faces. ‘Can you imagine?’
‘Uh! Scrambled eggs.’ The other girl shook her head with the dark curls bouncing up and down like enthusiastic puppies, as they grinned at each other.
‘Which along with the flour, sugar and icing sugar would have been a recipe for disaster.’
‘Instant cake,’ she teased, amusement dancing in her eyes. ‘Who doesn’t love cake though?’
‘Mm, and instant unemployment for me. Thank you, you’ve saved my bacon.’
‘No problem, I’m Maddie by the way.’
‘Nina.’
‘Have you got far to go?’
Nina shook her head. ‘Over there.’ She pointed to the patisserie on the other side of the street.
‘Oh, I’ve been meaning to go in there. Is it any good?’
‘To be honest, I’m not sure it is, but don’t tell anyone I said that.’
‘Let me give you a hand. I’ll carry the flowers and leave the eggs to you. So you work there?’
‘Sort of.’ Nina explained the whole story and told Maddie all about the patisserie course as they walked along in tandem.
‘How exciting. I’m a terrible cook. I’m more of a hearty stews and nursery puddings sort of girl.’
‘You should do the course,’ said Nina, hauling the trolley along, thinking about how long it was going to take her to unload this lot.
‘What a brilliant idea.’
‘Oh no, I didn’t mean it.’ She must stop saying that. It had been an off the cuff remark. She was recruiting new candidates quicker than people ate hot dinners. Sebastian was not going to be happy. ‘It starts tomorrow, so probably a bit—’
‘Perfect, I don’t have lectures tomorrow. And do you know what? It will impress the hell out of Mum. I could make her half-yearly birthday cake.’
Nina raised both eyebrows at the interesting statement.
Maddie laughed. ‘We celebrate half-yearly birthdays. We like cake in our house. Although they normally come from Tesco. I once attempted apple pie. Let’s say all of the words burnt, irrevocably moulded and knackered applied to the saucepan at the end. It had to go in the bin.’
By the time Nina was lifting the trolley up the step into the patisserie with Maddie’s assistance, the other girl was already musing out loud what sort of cake she’d make when she went home.
‘It might be a bit late to book for the course,’ said Nina.
‘Oh, no worries,’ said Maddie.
Nina heaved a tiny sigh of relief. God knows what Sebastian would have said about an extra student, especially if he heard she’d suggested it.
‘I’ll just turn up tomorrow morning, if there’s no space, no probs.’
‘We’ll leave in five minutes, are you all done?’ asked Sebastian barely looking up from his hunched position over his laptop as she walked back in still trying to manage the wayward trolley, which definitely had ideas of its own. With one leg hooked over a chair and working sideways onto the
