Page 13 of The Bordeaux Book Club

There was a pause. ‘If you want,’ came the eventual answer.

It wasn’t the most enthusiastic of yeses, but it was nice to know that Scarlett still craved her favouritemillefeuillemore than she disliked her mother. Leah imagined a set of old-fashioned scales: custard filled pastries on one end, her daughter’s negative impression of her – which she imagined as a heavy, black tangle of jagged metal – the other. The day she offered Scarlett the chance of a sweet treat and was rejected was the day she really had to worry, she decided. Scarlett was going through a phase, was all. Perhaps Nathan was too – just needingto get out a little bit more. Maybe even Gollum was getting itchy feet?

If you can’t beat ’em, she thought, looking at herself in the mirror,join ’em. And she’d go for her favourite lemon meringue and sod the calories. She’d earned them.

She wiped the steam from the mirror with her hand, leaving it shiny, but coated with droplets and runnels, and took in her reflection. Forty-five. It was hard to believe. Not because she didn’t look it (although in the right light and to someone with pre-op cataracts, she might pass for five years younger), but because it seemed now that she was here, the years before had passed in a flash.

At least once a day, the thought would strike her:I’m forty-five!Forty bloody five.

She ran a brush through her damp hair and watched it fall into gentle, thick strands. Then she quickly rubbed some moisturiser on her skin, dabbed on a light foundation and blasted her chestnut hair with the dryer, quickly and expertly fashioning it into her habitual style – the ‘just hanging there’ look or ‘neglected but serviceable’. She would do. The pastries were calling.

In her bedroom, she dropped her towel and pulled on clean underwear, then stepped into a fresh pair of navy jeans – smart ones that hugged her hips – and a warm, black, polo-neck jumper. She pulled on her knee-length, black boots and inspected the result in the wardrobe mirror. She looked OK, she decided. Definitely an improvement on the muddy, sweat-soaked, pre-shower version.

She grabbed a smart, wool, waist-length coat from her wardrobe and took to the stairs. ‘Scarlett!’ she called on her way down. ‘Are you ready?’

Scarlett appeared from nowhere in front of her, a ghoul hovering in her line of vision. ‘You don’t need to shout,’ shesaid. She, as always, looked stunning – she’d shed her carefully chosen school clothes like an unwanted skin and pulled on the pair of jeans Leah remembered having seen crumpled on her bedroom floor earlier, paired with a hoodie of Nathan’s that readVarsityon the front. Somehow, Scarlett made these dubious fashion choices look both chic and flattering.

Scarlett would never accept that she was beautiful. She shrugged off compliments and thrived on finding tiny flaws to beat herself up about. Yet, with her luminous skin, dark hair and blue eyes, she looked almost ethereal. Leah remembered herself at that age: a home perm, temporary red hair dye and a fringe she’d cut herself. She’d hated the way she looked too, as a teen, but unlike her daughter, she’d had every reason to.

‘Coat?’ she said, and was admonished with a look that was colder than all the days they’d endured in February put together.

‘I’ve got a jumper on!’ her daughter said with an eyeroll.

‘But it’s…’ she began, and was treated to another look. ‘Never mind,’ she said, opening the door and noting, slightly gratifyingly, Scarlett’s eyes widen as the reality of the cold air flooded in.

Nathan had taken the Scenic, so they were forced to jump in the doddery old Clio they’d bought as a backup. Still, they were only going to the patisserie, not right into Bordeaux after all.

Their house was on the outskirts of the city in a small enclave close toMignoy, far enough out to be affordable and have land to work on, but close enough to be able to drive to the centre with ease. ‘It’s the best of both worlds!’ Nathan had exclaimed when the listing had appeared on the website they’d been favouring. And it was, sort of. But what had seemed like a dream property on screen hadn’t turned out to be quite so charming in the flesh. The house had been uninhabited for five years, and had smelled of old carpets at first. The garden had been larger than they’d anticipated – which they’d thought a plus at the time – butLeah was beginning to see the acreage in terms of the work it represented rather than the space and potential.

They’d viewed the house on a sunny day in June – enjoying the sort of optimistic weather that makes you feel capable of anything and which makes small problems seem easily surmountable. But when they’d arrived that September, winter was lurking just behind the corner, waiting to demonstrate the realities of living in an old, draughty house and planning a garden into which you could barely drive a spade.

They’d worked hard since then and the house had begun to look – and smell – better. They’d had some radiators replaced, updated the bathrooms. Nathan had even had a go at tiling the kitchen floor – and as long as they kept the breakfast bar in situ to hide the unfortunate crack, it looked practically professional. Not a patch on Grace’s reclaimed vintage paradise, but good enough at least.

The land had been a different matter. At the front, their house had a traditional, slightly overgrown, front garden, with a central path leading to the front door. So far, so normal. But it had come with land that stretched out in a strange half-triangle shape at the back. Most of it had now been rotavated into beds. Shoots and mounds of earth and a pile of manure and discarded spades scattered the area. The chickens chattered in their run by the fence on the left-hand side.

When they’d talked of ‘living off the land’ and ‘having a peaceful existence’, she hadn’t realised the two ideas were oxymoronic. You could do one or the other. The land, whilst tranquil and manageable from a distance, or in your imagination, was a hard taskmaster. One mistake, a crop would fail. One missed day, and something would wither, weeds would take over or you’d miss the perfect moment for harvesting something or other. And the watering! They’d installed two water butts for the purpose, but still had to use their ‘grey’water – sourced from the bath or a bucket system Nathan had managed to fashion at the back of the washing machine – to keep everything hydrated.

The endless gardening had been great for her arms – her emerging bingo wings had retreated from whence they came. But in terms of enjoyment and ‘living the dream’, it wasn’t exactly what she’d envisaged. More hard work, less red wine and definitely more blisters.

‘Are we going then?’ Scarlett was standing just ahead of her on the drive. ‘You’ve gone weird.’

Leah realised she’d been staring out over the garden and flushed. ‘Sorry,’ she said, wishing almost instantly she hadn’t. It wasn’t OK for Scarlett to call her weird. Just because she might agree with the description didn’t mean she should endorse her daughter using it on her.

The engine started second time and, with a blast of heat and a stink of petrol (which for some reason, she rather liked), they trundled up the drive and onto the road. ‘Les Cerises’, the small boulangerie-patisserie that made up one of a few scattered shops on what passed as a high street in their suburb, was housed in a small, sand-coloured premises which formed part of a row of once houses, now repurposed into a brasserie, pharmacy, small shop and a boutique clothing store.

The owner had optimistically set a couple of tables in the freezing sunshine for punters who fancied dicing with the risk of death by winter, but once Leah had parked the Clio haphazardly in the nearby parking area, they walked in through the door, their sights fixed firmly on the inside.

It was a small enterprise – with just three indoor tables, one of which was taken up by a guy reading the local paper, so Leah went to set her handbag on the chair of the table closest to the window, with daylight and view of the high street.

‘Do you mind if we sit there instead?’ her daughter asked her, pointing at the other empty table towards the back and away from the window.

‘Sure,’ Leah said, picking up her handbag and obediently taking it to the table. Scarlett slid herself into one of the empty chairs. ‘Millefeuille?’ Leah asked.

‘Macaron.’

‘Oh.’ The unexpected choice threw her. ‘Sure, what colour?’

‘Flavour.’

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