Page 35 of A Winter Kiss on Rochester Mews
‘Up to my elbows in rough puff pastry,’ Mattie said mournfully. ‘I haven’t even got time to make proper puff pastry.’
She quickly filled Sandrine in on the funny, festive, light-hearted clip on the six o’clock local news, which would feature her favourite daughter.
‘But that’s wonderful! You’ll light up the TV screens,’ Sandrine declared as Mattie chopped butter into small squares. ‘And you have the perfect face for television. Those big doe eyes! That button nose! Not to mention those lips. A perfect cupid’s bow. Ian!Ma petite Mathildeis going to be on the news! Everyone at the BBC is in love with her sausage rolls!’
There was a cough and then a gruff, ‘Bloody well done, Mattie!’ from Ian in the background.
Mattie pressed her perfect cupid’s bow tight so she wouldn’t smile. She might have put in a sausage and bacon order that would bankrupt her if her TV slot was bumped, but after that ringing endorsement from her mother, surely everything would be all right. Sandrine was her biggest fan and she certainly wasn’t shy about letting the world know that she had the most beautiful, most talented, most amazing daughter that any mother was blessed with.
‘Well, nice to chat, Mattie, love, but the hot-water pipes aren’t going to lag themselves,’ Ian said, although he and Mattie hadn’t chatted at all.
‘He doesn’t have a poet’s soul,’ Sandrine whispered as Ian no doubt shuffled out of the room she was in. ‘But he has the heart of a lion.’
‘Very true,’ Mattie agreed. ‘He is the best of men, you do know that, don’t you, Mum?’
‘I do,’ Sandrine said softly and without any of her usual flourishes. ‘The very best, and I should know, because I’ve experienced the very worst.’
Like mother, like daughter, Mattie thought, and she had to hold herself very still so she didn’t shudder, but then she heard a familiar tread on the stairs to the flat, taking them two at a time, and she did shudder as the front door opened.
‘Only me,’ Tom said loud enough that Sandrine on speaker in the kitchen would easily be able to hear him. ‘Forgot I left my phone charging. Are you staying upallnight to make pastry?’ he added as he peered down the corridor to the kitchen where Mattie had bowls of rough puff pastry in various stages of development resting on the table and both chairs.
‘Notallnight,’ Mattie tried to say lightly, though she had a sneaking suspicion that she wouldn’t get to bed until very, very late.
‘Well, I’ll try not to wake you when I come in,’ Tom promised with an easy smile and a nod of his head, as if they were proper flatmates and not just two people who were sharing the same living space.
The easy smile was so transformative, making Tom seem a hundred per cent more friendly and approachable and a hundred per cent less tweedy, that Mattie smiled back.
‘Have a nice time,’ she said automatically, as Tom headed out again. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’
Tom shot her a surprised look (probably because Mattie currently lived like a nun and the list of things she didn’t do was pages long) and then, instead of leaving, he stood in the hall taking for ever to wrap a hideous dark-green scarf around his neck.
‘That must be Tom,’ Sandrine breathed down the phone, each word practically coming to the boil. ‘When I met him at the opening of the tearooms, I thought he was so handsome.Très magnifique!Mathilde, you naughty girl, not to tell yourchere mamanthat the two of you are shacked up.’
Mattie couldn’t look at Tom, for fear that the inevitably appalled look on his face might turn her to stone, and all she could hear was a rushing in her ears. The shame! The utter shame!
‘Not shacked up,’ she managed to say in a strangulated voice. ‘Definitely not shacked up.’
‘Sharing a living space with a very firm set of rules and boundaries in place,’ Tom enunciated from the hall, each word as clipped and precise as a bullet, while Mattie’s expression froze on the ‘horrified’ setting.
‘Whatever you say,’ Sandrine cooed, as if she didn’t believe a word either of them had said. ‘Guy did mention something, but you know how he likes to tease. So, it’s just the two of you? So cosy! So romantic!’
‘It’s the furthest from romantic that it’s possible to get,’ Mattie said. Tom had a pinched look as if he was holding his breath. ‘Anyway, Tom is on his way out now, as we lead very separate lives.’
‘The most separate of lives,’ Tom clarified as he finally opened the front door, his phone clutched in his hand as if it were a protective talisman to ward off any of Sandrine’s most fervent hopes and dreams for her beloved daughter. ‘See you, then.’ He raised his voice: ‘Bye, Mattie’s mum.’
‘The pleasure was all mine. I cannot wait to see you again,’ Sandrine called out, but Tom was gone, the door slamming shut behind him.
Mattie put a pastry-encrusted hand to her chest, where her heart was racing like she’d recently run a marathon.
‘Even Guy said he was very good looking,’ Sandrine recalled gleefully. ‘And he has very high standards. Now tell me how love first blossomed.’
Tom’s footsteps as he thundered down the stairs grew fainter, then there was the slam of the door that led to the shop, so that Mattie could finally relax. She slumped against the fridge. ‘Nothing to tell because there is no love. He’s very dull. The absolute dullest,’ she said firmly. ‘The most interesting thing about him is that he’s thinking of becoming a Jesuit priest and they have to take a vow of celibacy.’
‘How boring,’ Sandrine said. ‘Talking of vows of celibacy, does that mean your love life is still non-existent?’
Mattie pulled a face at the nearest bowl of pastry. ‘Yes and I’m very happy about that. Next question!’
‘Couldn’t you get one of those friends with benefits,ma petite ange?’
