The smell of freshly baked pies. Even now I can conjure up that smell just by thinking about it. They were sometimes apple pies, sometimes pumpkin, sometimes some other thing I had never heard of. But they all smelt the same to me. I think that made it all the more exciting, the thrill of not knowing what was in them, of finding out. It was all very magical, the way she pulled them out of their brown paper bags every evening. Like rabbits from a hat. Magicians did that a lot, I saw it on tv. I thought about what a great job she must have, going away every morning and returning with these wonderful treats she had made. A ‘baker’. That’s what she told me she was; and from that day on that’s all I wanted to be. She taught me English too. One new word every day.

*****
It always amused me, the look on his face when I got back from the bakery and handed him the bag with a few crusty old pies. I was only allowed to take them home because they’d gone past the sell by date, but he always thought I made them just for him. I didn’t have the heart to tell him. He had the same look on his face when I taught him a new word; he would bite into it like he did with the pies, and then roll it around in his mouth, his eyes full of wonderment. He called me a magician once, I’m not sure why. But I felt like one sometimes, unlocking his sense of taste and language, and watching him play with both.