The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris
Read The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris Online
Authors: Jenny Colgan
Copyright © 2014 by Jenny Colgan
Cover and internal design © 2014 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by Jennifer K. Beal Davis
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The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
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Originally published in 2013 in the UK by Sphere, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher.
T
here are lots of marvelous artisan chocolate shops in Paris. My favorite is called Paul Rogers on the rue du Faubourg. I would strongly recommend a visit there and a taste of their hot chocolate, whichever season you go. They're run by the eponymous Paul, who is, indeed, a curly-haired, twinkly-eyed, roguish-looking chap.
This book is not based on any of those shops in a single detail, but instead on the principle that when people dedicate their lives to one thing that they really, really love and learn a lot about, amazing things can happen.
Somebody once said the reason we love chocolate so much is that it melts at the same temperature as the inside of our mouths. Scientists also talk about releasing endorphins and so on, which may be the chemical reason for it, but whatever the explanations, it is a wonderful thing.
It's not just a woman thingâif you don't believe me, try a random sample of six-year-olds. I can't even smuggle a packet of chocolate cookies into my house without my husband sniffing them out and guzzling them. So I've put some really lovely recipes in here too. I like to think as I get older that I can actually cook with chocolate instead of just, you know, accidentally eating it as soon as it gets in the house or sometimes in the car.
When we moved to France a while back (for my husband's work), I was surprised to find they took chocolate as seriously as they take any kind of food. La Maison du Chocolat is a really high-end chain and you'll find one in most towns, where you can chat with the chocolatier about what you want and what else you're going to be eating, like a wine waiter. But I personally am just as happy with a great big slab of Dairy Milk or Toblerone or my absolute fave, Fry's Chocolate Cream (plain). Not everything has to be luxury to be enjoyed. Alas, my children have now reached the age where it's becoming obvious who keeps stealing the Kinder bars out of their party bags. Kids, hum, look, I hate to have to tell you this. It was definitely your dad.
Before we start, I wanted to say a word about language. In my experience, learning another language is really bloody difficult, unless you're one of those people who pick things up in two seconds flat, in which case I would say *bllergh* (that's me poking my tongue out) to you because I am extremely jealous.
Traditionally, too, when people in books are speaking a foreign language, it's indicated in
italics
. So you should know that anyone Anna speaks to in Paris is speaking French back to her unless I've mentioned otherwise. To which you and I would think, cor, that's AMAZING she learned such fantastic French so fast. Obviously she has lots of lessons with Claire, but if you've ever learned another language, you'll know that you can be totally confident in a classroom then turn up in the country and everybody goes “wabbawabbawabbawabbaWAH?” to you at, like, a million miles an hour, and you panic because you can't understand a single bloody word of it. That's certainly what happened to me.
So, anyway, you need to take it on trust that it's exactly the same for Anna, but for purposes of not repeating myself endlessly and slowing down the story, I've taken out the millions and millions of times she says “What?” or “Can you say that again please?” or needs to check her dictionary.
I do hope you enjoy it, and let me know how you get on with the recipes. And bon appétit!
Jenny. x
T
he really weird thing about it was that although I knew instantly that something was wrongâvery, very wrong, something sharp, something very serious, an insult to my entire bodyâI couldn't stop laughing. Laughing hysterically.
I was lying there, coveredâdrenchedâin spilled melted chocolate and I couldn't stop giggling. There were other faces now, looking down on me; some I was sure I even recognized. They weren't laughing. They all looked very serious in fact. This somehow struck me as even funnier and set me off again.
From the periphery, I heard someone say, “Pick them up!” and someone else say, “No way! You pick them up! Gross!” And then I heard someone else, who I thought was Flynn, the new stock boy, say, “I'll dial 911,” and someone else say, “Flynn, don't be stupid; it's 999. You're not American,” and someone else say, “I think you can dial 911 now because there were so many idiots who kept dialing it.” And someone else taking out their phone and saying something about needing an ambulance, which I thought was hilarious as well, and then someone, who was definitely Del, our old grumpy janitor, saying, “Well, they're probably going to want to throw this batch away then.” And the idea that they might not throw away the enormous vat of chocolate but try to sell it instead when it had landed all over me actually was funny.
After that, thank God, I don't remember anything, although later, in the hospital, an ambulance man came over and said I was a total bloody nutter in the ambulance and that he'd always been told that shock affected people in different ways, but mine was just about the differentest he'd ever seen. Then he saw my face and said, “Cheer up, love; you'll laugh again.” But at that point I wasn't exactly sure I ever would.
- - -
“Oh come off it, Debs, love, it's only her foot. It could have been a lot worse. What if it had been her nose?”
That was my dad, talking to my mum. He liked to look on the bright side.
“Well, they could have given her a new nose. She hates her nose anyway.”
That was definitely my mum. She's not quite as good as my dad at looking on the bright side. In fact, I could hear her sobbing. But somehow, my body shied away from the light; I couldn't open my eyes. I didn't think it was a light; it felt like the sun or something. Maybe I was on holiday. I couldn't be at homeâthe sun never bloody shines in Kidinsborough, my hometown, voted worst town in England three years in a row before local political pressure got the show taken off the air.
My parents zoned out of earshot, just drifted off like someone tuning a radio. I had no idea if they were there or if they ever had been. I knew I wasn't moving, but inside I felt as though I was squirming and wriggling and trapped inside a body-shaped prison someone had buried me in. I could shout, but no one could hear me. I tried to move, but it wasn't working. The dazzle would turn to black and back again to the sun, and none of it made the faintest bit of sense to me as I dreamtâor livedâgreat big nightmares about toes and feet and parents who spontaneously disappear and whether this was going crazy and whether I'd actually dreamt my whole other life, the bit about being me, Anna Trent, thirty years old, taster in a chocolate factory.
Yes, actually. While we're at it, here are my top ten “Taster in a Chocolate Factory” jokes that I get at Faces, our local nightclub. It's not a very nice nightclub, but the rest are really much, much worse:
1.
Yes, I will give you some free samples.
2.
No, I'm not as fat as you clearly expected me to be.
3.
Yes, it is exactly like
Charlie
and
the
Chocolate
Factory
.
4.
No, no one has ever done a poo in the chocolate vat. (Though I wouldn't necessarily have put it past Flynn.)
5.
No, it actually doesn't make me more popular than a normal person, as I am thirty, not seven.
6.
No, I don't feel sick when confronted with chocolate; I absolutely adore it. But if it makes you feel better about your job to think that I am, feel free.
7.
Oh, that is so interesting that you have something even tastier than chocolate in your underpants, yawn. (N.B.: I would like to be brave enough to say that, but I'm not that brave really. I normally just grimace and look at something else for a while. My best mate Cath soon takes care of them anyway. Or, occasionally, dates them.)
8.
Yes, I will suggest your peanut/beer/vodka/jam-flavored chocolate idea, but I doubt we'll be as rich as you think.
9.
Yes, I can make actual real chocolate, although at Braders Family Chocolates, they're all processed automatically in a huge vat and I'm more of a supervisor really. I wish I did more complex work, but according to the bosses, nobody wants their chocolates messed about with; they want them tasting exactly the same and lasting a long time. So it's quite a synthetic process.
10.
No, it's not the best job in the world. But it's mine and I like it. Or at least I did, until I ended up in here.
Then I normally say, “Rum and coke, thanks for asking.”
“Anna.”
A man was sitting on the end of my bed. I couldn't focus on him. He knew my name but I didn't know his. That seemed unfair.
I tried to open my mouth. It was full of sand. Someone had put sand in my mouth. Why would anyone do that?
“Anna.”
The voice came again. It was definitely real, and it was definitely connected to the shadow at the end of my bed.
“Can you hear me?”
Well, of course I can hear you. You're sitting on the end of my bed shouting at me
was what I wanted to say, but all that came out was a kind of dry croak.
“That's great, that's great, very good. Would you like a drink of water?”
I nodded. It seemed easiest.
“Good, good. Don't nod too much; you'll dislodge the wires. NURSE!”
I don't know whether the nurse came or not, because I was suddenly gone again. My last conscious thought was that I hoped she or he didn't mind being yelled at by people who sat on other people's beds. And I couldn't remember: had my parents said something was wrong with my nose?
- - -
“Here she is.”
It was the same voice, but how much later I couldn't tell. The light seemed different. A sudden shock of pain traveled through me like a lightning bolt and I gasped.
“There you go; she's going to be great.”
Dad.
“Oh, I don't like the look of this.”
Mum.
“Uhmâ¦can I have that water?” I asked, but it came out like “Ca ha wa?”
Thankfully someone spoke desert sand, because instantly a plastic cup was put to my lips. That small cup of tepid chalky tap water was the single best thing I had ever put in my mouth in my entire life, and that includes the first time I tasted a crème egg.
I slurped it down and asked for another, but someone said no, and that was that. Maybe I was in prison.
“Can you open your eyes for us?” came the commanding voice.
“Course she can.”
“Oh, Pete, I don't know. I just don't know.”
Oddly, it was slightly to spite my mother's lack of ambition for me in the eye-opening department that really made me try. I flickered and suddenly hazing into view was the shape sitting on the end of my bed I'd been aware of beforeâI wished he'd stop thatâand two shapes as familiar as my own hands.
I could make out my mother's reddish hair that she colored at home, even though my best mate Cath had offered to do it down at the salon for a price that she thought was next to nothing, but my mother thought that was extravagant and that Cath was loose (that last bit was true, though that had nothing to do with how good she was at hair, which admittedly also wasn't very), so about one week a month my mum had this kind of odd, henna-like fringe around the top of her forehead where she hadn't wiped it off properly. And my dad was in his best shirt, which really made me worry. He didn't dress like that for anything but weddings and funerals, and I was pretty much 100 percent sure I wasn't getting married, unless Darr had suddenly regenerated into a completely different physical and personality type, and I figured that unlikely.
“Hello?” I said, feeling a rush that somewhere, the desert sands were retreating, that the division between what was real and what was a writhing sandy ball of confusion and pain was retreating, that Anna was back, that the skin I was wearing was mine after all.
“Darling!”
My mum burst into tears. My dad, not prone to huge outbursts of affection, gently squeezed my handâthe hand, I noticed, that didn't have a big tube going into it, right under the skin. My other hand did. It was the grossest thing I'd ever seen in my life.
“Ugh, gah,” I said. “What's this? It's disgusting.”
The figure at the end of my bed smiled in a rather patronizing way.
“I think you'd find things a lot more disgusting if it wasn't there,” he said. “It's giving you painkillers and medication.”
“Well, can I have some more?” I said. The lightning-sharp pain flashed through me again, from the toes of my left foot upward right through my body.
I suddenly became aware of other tubes on me, some going in and out of places I didn't really want to discuss in front of my dad. I went quiet. I felt really, really weird.
“Is your head spinning?” said the bed-sitter. “That's quite normal.”
My mum was still sniffing.
“It's all right, mum.”
What she said next chilled me to the bone.
“It's not all right, love. It's not all right at all.”
- - -
Over the next few days, I seemed to fall asleep on and off and at completely random moments. Dr. Edâyes, really, that's how he referred to himselfâwas my named specialist. Yeah, all right, I know he was a doctor and everything, tra la la, but you can be Ed or you can be, like, Dr. Smith or something. Anything else is just showing off, like you're a doctor on telly or something.
I think Dr. Ed would have LOVED to have been a doctor on the telly, looking at people who've got two bumholes and things. He was always very smartly turned out and did things like sit on the end of the bed, which other doctors didn't do, and look at you in the eye, like he was making a huge effort to be with you as a person. I think I preferred the snotty consultant who came around once a week, barely looked at me, and asked his medical students embarrassing questions.
Anyway, Dr. Ed shouldn't have been so chummy because it was kind of his fault that I was even there. I had slipped at the factoryâeveryone had gotten very excited wondering if there was some health and safety rule that hadn't been followed and we were all about to become millionaires, but actually as it turned out it was completely my fault. It was an unusually warm spring day and I'd decided to try out my new shoes, which turned out to be hilariously inappropriate for the factory floor, and I'd skidded and, in a total freak, hit a vat ladder and upended the entire thing. Then I'd come into the hospital and gotten sick.
“A bug tried to eat me?” I asked Dr. Ed.
“Well, yes, that's about right,” he said, smiling to show overtly white teeth that he must have gotten whitened somewhere. Maybe he just liked to practice for going on television. “Not a big bug, Anna, like a spider.”
“Spiders aren't bugs,” I said crossly.
“Ha! No.” He flicked his hair. “Well, these things are very, very tiny, so small you couldn't see a thousand of them even if they were sitting right here on my finger!!”
Perhaps there was something misprinted on my medical notes that said instead of being nearly thirty-one, I was in fact eight.
“I don't care what size they are,” I said. “They make me feel like total crap.”
“And that's why we're fighting them with every weapon we have!” said Dr. Ed, like he was Spider-Man or something. I didn't mention that if everyone had cleaned up with every mop they had, I probably wouldn't have caught it in the first place.
And anyway, oh Lord, I just felt so rough. I didn't feel like eating or drinking anything but water. (Dad brought me some marshmallows and Mum practically whacked him because she was 100 percent certain they'd get trapped in my throat and I'd totally die right there in front of him.) I slept a lot, and when I wasn't sleeping, I didn't feel well enough to watch the telly or read or speak to people on the phone or anything. I had a lot of messages on Facebook, according to my phone, which someoneâCath, I was guessingâhad plugged in beside my bed, but I wasn't really fussed to read any of them.
I felt different, as if I'd woken up foreign, or in a strange land where nobody spoke my languageânot Mum, not Dad, not my friends. They didn't speak the language of strange hazy days where nothing made much sense, or constant aching, or the idea of moving being too difficult to contemplate, even moving an arm across a bed. The country of the sick seemed a very different place, where you were fed and moved and everyone spoke to you like a child and you were always, always hot.