The Confectioner's Tale by Laura Madeleine

table, as if he doesn’t know what to do with it. ‘Even if he did keep things from you, maybe he did it out of love …’
    I take a large gulp of my drink.
    ‘Well, anyway,’ I try for a smile, ‘I have to find out before Hall.’
    ‘Is this really about Hall?’ Alex is looking me in the eye.
    ‘Of course.’ Quickly, I finish my drink, and reach for my bag. ‘Look, I’ve got to go—’
    Alex grabs my hand. I stop, astonished. His cheeks couldn’t get any redder.
    ‘Let me know,’ he says, ‘if there’s anything I can do to help?’
    I nod, and squeeze his hand in return. Alex lets go and reaches for his pint, nearly knocking it over in the process. Suppressing a laugh, I relax, and drop my bag to the floor.
    ‘Next round’s on me,’ he says and grins.

Chapter Twelve
    January 1910
    Gui did not go back to the pâtisserie the next Saturday, nor the one after that. He told himself that it was for the best. Besides, work on the tracks had resumed quickly after Christmas and was harder than ever. Every morning, a layer of snow coated the yard, turning first to slush, then to dense, pitted ice.
    Their washing water froze in its bowl and had to be broken with the handle of a razor. Gui’s hands seized up around tools, screaming back into life when he took his turn working the furnace. Chilblains made the tips of his fingers swell and itch.
    Some nights, he found himself reaching beneath his pillow, silently drawing Monsieur Carême out into the dark dormitory. In the weak moonlight, he turned the pages, and the voice of that architect filled his head once more. Before his eyes, the sketches and diagrams came to life. Sugar work spooled out like silk thread, crystallized into soaring towers and spires.
    He imagined the ghosts of impossible scents, trapped and infused, just as he’d seen in the kitchens of the pâtisserie. Monsieur Carême summoned the essences of the world to his fingertips. Roses and violets from summer gardens, sun-drenched Sicilian lemons squeezed of their juice and mingled with juniper from the frozen north. Saffron threads and gold leaf from the Indies waited to be turned into something magical. And contained deep within all of this was a smile that flooded him with warmth, a pair of blue eyes, and the scent of chocolate …
    A guttural snore from one of the men would break the spell and he would remember that he was cold, that the air around him was stale and damp, that Monsieur Carême would have sneered, had he been there in person.
    So he hid the book at the bottom of his trunk and tried not to think about it, or about Mademoiselle Clermont every time the sky showed a patch of chill blue.
    Instead, he threw himself into the life of a railwayman. He worked harder than any of the others; at night he fell onto his pallet bed and straight into a dreamless sleep. His arms grew stronger, his hands rougher, until he could put up a decent fight even to Léon, the largest man in the dormitory. Nicolas, for one, was delighted to hear that he had put a stop to his weekly sojourns across the river.
    ‘Dangerous, is what it was,’ his friend told him, as they planed down railway sleepers. ‘When you stayed for Christmas, I thought I’d come back to find you drowned in the Seine, a love letter to your bourgeois princess tied to your jacket.’
    ‘Who said anything about love letters?’ Gui protested.
    ‘You did, the way you’d try to comb your hair flat every Saturday without anyone noticing.’
    ‘I did not!’
    ‘As you like.’ Nicolas winked. ‘I’m just glad you’ve come to your senses. Men like us have no business with sugar plums.’
    Gui laughed then and felt better, as he always did with Nicolas. His friend was right. The longer he stayed away from the pâtisserie, the more foolish it seemed. It was a child’s fantasy, no place for him. He put it to the back of his mind, and tried to keep it there.
    Perhaps he would have succeeded; perhaps he would have gone on to work the