After two months of this, I found I loved getting up at the crack of dawn, patting Nelson Eddy the dog, who fetched the newspaper for his mistress who lived on our street every morning, pit-patting past our door as we opened up; seeing the freshly cleaned cobbles come to life, water dribbling down the drains; the tiny funny-looking vans delivering drinks and fresh food; the smells of bread baking everywhere; the running hither and thither of kitchen staff. The sheer number of restaurants in Paris was dizzying, and Thierry seemed intent on visiting all of them; then the glancing up through the roofs and pigeons to the tiny floating clouds miles above to see if it was going to be another glorious day. That summer, it seemed, every day was a good day. I liked most of all getting dressed and going out on my little terrace first thing. The whole of Paris, laid out in front of me like a huge tray of macaroons, glowed rose pink, and I would think of the boarded-up high street of Kidinsborough with the pound shop and Kash4Gold, and how when it rained, the canal would spit old bikes out on the tow path, and feel as far away from home as if I’d landed on the moon. I did no food shopping (during my lunch hour, everything else was shut too, which drove me absolutely crazy), and mixed and scrubbed with all my might. I thought—I thought—one morning that I might even have actually had a dream in French. Sami and I often crossed paths at 4:00 a.m., he coming in, me arising for work, and we would often stop and take a coffee (with brandy for him, nothing for me, as every time I ran out of milk, I had to go down seven dark flights to find some, and it never seemed worth it, so I just learned to drink it black). Sometimes he was with chaps, sometimes with girls, sometimes alone, sometimes with an entire party. It was very fortunate I didn’t work normal hours; it could have been a disaster. The eyrie remained absolutely tiny, with no working kitchen beyond coffee, no shower, and a bath you had to sit in with your knees pulled up to your chin.
I loved it.
I tried to keep in contact with home, but it seemed so far away sometimes.
I knew I was getting into it when Cath and I swapped email. I think I was just a bit overexcited and needed to tell someone. In retrospect, Cath probably wasn’t the right person.
Hi C! I just got back from the most amazing party on a boat in the middle of the Seine. There were fire jugglers (my flatmate took me, everyone he knows does something stupid like that) and they kept setting drinks on fire and people kept trying to leap over them. Then these two chefs came on. One of them is my boss’s son, but they’ve fallen out with each other. Anyway, they were trying to hurl crepes over the flames in little pans, but they kept falling out and it was hysterical and brilliant. Hope you’re good, Anna.
Dear Anna,
On Tuesday I put four hours’ worth of extensions in “Ermine” (she used to be called Sal, do you remember? daft bint) McGuire’s head for her X-Factor audition. She smoked through the entire thing. I think I’ve gone blind. She wanted red, white, and blue and kept on talking about how she was going to pull Simon Cowell. It took all afternoon and I had to have the door blowing open on account of her wanting to smoke. I think I’ve got bronchitis. And I lost one of my new snakeskin nails in it. I said what was she doing, being the new Michelle McManus? And she told me to shut it, but I’d been standing all bloody day. Then she came in yesterday, her eyes red with crying, and said nobody had even seen her and she’d waited nine hours in the hosing rain and the colors had all run and it was my fault and she wanted her money back. I said she could go whistle and she said she could go punch me in the head. I got out the big scissors.
The police have said they won’t press charges, but I have to give her the hair back in a box. I said I wouldn’t be touching it, it probably had crabs already. PC Johnson smiled and said he got off at 9. So I’m off.
Come back soon,
Cath.
I hadn’t meant to gush to Cath, but it was really a proper fun night. Well, it had started in the morning. Thierry had marched in huffing something about refrigeration. He was furious about it; even if we were running horribly late, you could never, ever put his work in the fridge, because it took away the highly polished shine. Anyway, we’d had an electricity bill and Alice was spitting feathers about it and basically implying why couldn’t we work in the dark or something, and Frédéric had mentioned the fridges and Thierry had started huffing and puffing and getting red in the face, until eventually he’d signaled something to Benoît, who had immediately run up the street and returned with two dozen eggs.
“Anna! Come with me!” Thierry hollered. He had kind of taken me under his wing a bit. I was happy about this, obviously, in that I wasn’t going to get sent home to annoy Claire, but I could always feel Alice’s gimlet eyes boring into me.
“Chocolate pots,” said Thierry. “Seeing as we are paying for all this electricity…” He glared balefully at the large fridges, which were full of milk and butter actually. He grabbed the eggs and started separating them into a bowl, so quickly and deftly it was fascinating to watch. Then he took the whites, passed me over a bowl, and started to whisk them up at the speed of light.
“Can’t we do that in the mixer?” I asked tentatively, my wrist getting tired.
“We can buy them from the supermarket,” he barked back. “Would you like that? Would that suit you?”
Next, he started to melt some of the day’s fresh plain in a huge double boiler style device over boiling water, very carefully, stirring all the time. He added milk powder and cocoa powder, even though I raised my eyebrows at him. “You make it stick together if you want,” he said. “Don’t question my methods.”
But he was smiling though, so I knew it was all right. He made the whole lot into a kind of paste, then he studied the line at the back of the greenhouse for a long time, humming and hawing. After changing his mind several times and picking up and putting down a large bag of almonds, eventually he settled on half ginger and half lime, sprinkling them and tasting liberally in the two different vats. Then, once again with that dainty step of his, indicating to me to do the other ones, he poured one of the double boilers into two dozen little ramekin pots. Not taking any chances, I put mine in with a big soup ladle. Then we lined them up on trays.
Thierry flung open the doors of the fridge, saying, “Ta dah!!! Now I shall make use of you, you money-guzzling goddess!” But of course the fridge was actually full. Benoît dashed to clear some shelf space for us to put in les petits pots.