Page 54 of From Paris, with Butter
“It was hard, harder than I expected, honestly. I was in the kitchens for ten or twelve hours a day, just baking, baking, baking. Normally that’d be fine, but this school was just a bad fit.” I sighed.
“Or maybe any pastry school would be a bad fit for me. I don’t know. The pastry school was in Vienna, and I worried it wasn’t what I wanted. It’s fully steeped in the classics, with no room for innovation. That’s not how I usually bake, but my mother so badly wanted me to go to her same pastry school, and I was so happy to make her happy.
“Everything I made was just a little wrong to my instructors. They hated any changes I made to the recipes. I was miserable, and I even started to hate baking, but I never breathed a word to my mother. I figured I’d just push through, get my certificate, make my mom thrilled, then go off and bake how I wanted.
My voice caught. “But then my mother died a few months in.” I sighed. “It was just like the wheels came off. Everything I made was burnt, or soggy, or tasteless, or…it was all just terrible.”
My voice wobbled and, impatiently, I cleared my throat. “The instructors already weren’t impressed with me, and by then I was so bad it was pulling everyone else down. One day, after I absolutely ruined a batch of canelés, the head instructor asked to speak with me after class. She was quite kind about it, but it was clear the decision was final.”
I cleared my throat again. “All that money my mother had saved, all the pride she’d had in me, was for nothing. She was so convinced I was a good baker. At least she never got to see how I ended up.” I pressed my lips tight together. I could feel my face burning. It was amazing, really, that the shame hadn’t lessened one bit over the years. It still threatened to eat me up.
I chanced a look at Laurent. His eyes were filled with tears. As I watched, one slipped down his cheek.
“Margot,” he said softly. “I don’t know what happened then, but I can tell you today that you’re an utterly amazing baker. You’ve made things I would be proud to have in any restaurant I worked at. I’m being completely honest when I say that your talent is incredible. You’re going to be amazing at the gala. Have you…” He hesitated. “Have you ever considered going back to pastry school?”
I laughed miserably. “I’ve filled out applications about fifty times. I always lose my nerve, though. What if the first pastry school wasn’t actually a bad fit, and I’m just really not good enough? I’d hate to let my mom down like that.”
Minerva stood up and resettled herself on my lap. Laurent watched her, smiling, then looked up at me. “Well, I won’t tell you what to do, but I can promise you something. I know your mother would be proud of you. That I can tell you without any doubt. You don’t need to be perfect to make someone proud.”
That, of course, made me cry again. Laurent’s arms came around me, and he pulled me close to his warm chest.
“I’m so sorry about your mother,” he said, his voice rough. “I’m so sorry you’ve had to live all these years feeling like you weren’t good enough.”
Laurent held me as I cried myself out. When I finally shuddered to a stop,I was trembling and there was snot all over my face. Laurent thoughtfully passed over the box of tissues. I gave him a watery smile.
“I do think you should consider pastry school again,” he said gently. “You shouldn’t let one bad experience stop you from the career you’ve always wanted. And you certainly shouldn’t worry one moment about Sabine’s opinion.”
I looked down at my hands. There was a smudge of blueberry on my thumb. I wanted to believe Laurent. I wanted to be the type of person who was brave enough to try again.
I sighed. “Let’s just enjoy dessert. I want to know what you think of this new pear turnover recipe.” I smiled until Laurent smiled back at me.
Chapter 20
“Do you think they’ll like me?” I asked for perhaps the thousandth time.
Laurent was peering at the timetable in the Gare de Lyon station, trying to figure out what platform our train was leaving from, but he paused to wrap an arm around my waist.
“They’ll adore you. And if not…well, my family are gluttons and you’re bringing half a bakery with you.” He grinned. “You’ll win them over, one way or another.” He turned back to the timetable. “There we are. Platform eight.”
When Laurent had originally asked me to spend the holidays with his family, Christmas had seemed ages away. But now that the time had come, I was jittery with nerves. Celebrities and heads of state I could deal with any day, but Laurent’s family? That was another prospect altogether.
The days leading up to Christmas were some of the busiest of the year at work. As my anxiety over this visit grew, I’d half-hoped I’d be able to use work as an excuse to wiggle out of going. But Yasmine had squashed that idea by immediately picking up all my shifts that she could, and Leïla had quietly, but firmly, insisted on covering the rest.
Laurent adjusted my bag on his shoulder and gave an exaggerated groan. “I amend my statement. There is a full-scale bakery in here.”
He wasn’t wrong. I baked when I was stressed, and I baked when I was meeting new people. This visit had created such a perfect storm that I’d stopped buying flour from the store and instead called the supplier to send boxes of ingredients to me directly.
“Margot, what is all this?” Madame Blanchet had asked when the shipment arrived, carried into the building by two burly workers. “Are you stocking up for the apocalypse? It’s good you realize that it’s coming, but oats are the betteroption, ma chérie. They last longer.”
I wasn’t sure what Laurent’s family would like, and he’d been extremely unhelpful in telling me that they liked “everything.” So, I’d baked everything.
In my bursting suitcase were three types of croissants: plain, pain au chocolat, and ham and cheese. There were also macarons, carefully packaged to avoid them getting damaged, chocolate and vanilla eclairs, toasted cardamom bars, sticky caramel gingerbread, tomato and cheddar cheese scones (a gorgeous recipe I’d picked up while living in America), a glossy fruit tart, and finally, because I’d rather die than meet anyone new without having these to gift, half a dozen baguettes, still warm from the oven.
“Should I have baked a cake too?” I asked.
“Margot, you’re going to cause a flour shortage,” Laurent said, laughing again. “You’ve done plenty. They’ll all love you.”
I bit a nail worriedly. The amount of baked goods I was bringing wasn’t as crazy as it first appeared. Laurent himself admitted that his family was large. There were his parents and, of course, his sister Noelle. Then there was the army of cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents who would assemble at the house over Christmas.
