As Victor spoke, a slow smile spread across his leathery lined face. It was the face of a man who’d lived well, who’d spent a lot of time in the sun and drunk red wine every day of his adult life.

So she’d spread her wings and landed at Rencontre. She’d been there six months and she hated it. It was a huge team and every commis chef around her had sharp elbows and even sharper tongues. She was on rotation working beneath various specialist chefs. This month she was assigned to the pastry chef, and he was the worst yet. Rob had taken against Minnie from her very first day. There was a dish on the menu served with a saffron butter sauce. Minnie had mentioned how at Victor’s they’d made a similar sauce but with a squeeze of lime rather than lemon. Rob humiliated her in front of everyone, asking if she wanted to rewrite the whole menu that had been designed by a Michelin-star chef. She’d quickly learnt to keep her thoughts on the food to herself.

She wanted to stick it out for a year, try and move up from second commis to first. This place would look great on her CV if she could leave with a good reference. But the hours were gruelling, the pace exhausting, and she didn’t even feel she was learning much.

Tonight was New Year’s Eve and the place was packed. She didn’t want to work tonight, but she’d been rota’d on all week without a break. She’d missed Christmas with her family and worked fifteen-hour days; her whole body ached with fatigue. All week she’d been charged with the monotonous job of piping brandy crème patissière into miniature Christmas puddings. They were to be served as mignardises – or petits fours – after the dessert course. The puddings were the size of walnuts and they had to be delicately holed out then filled in such a way that not a drop of filling was visible.

‘No.’

‘Again.’

‘Not right.’

‘Sloppy!’

‘Minnie, you’re a fucking disgrace of a pastry chef. Where did you learn to bake again? Greggs?’

Rob had been screaming at her all afternoon. Her piping was good and she knew it; he was just making her do it again and again because he could. She’d just finished a perfect sheet of twenty when he’d loomed over her, inspected one, then tossed the whole batch on the floor.

‘The crème pat is warm, you’ve overworked it.’

Rob’s face darted forward, inches from hers. His grey skin and stinking breath made her want to gag. He had eye bags that stretched down to his cheeks, giving the impression that his face was melting. ‘Do you even taste your food, or are you trying to watch your figure?’