Croissant outline on the side of the ribs

We had tied up below Bramwell lock because the keeper's boy had sent word that his mother wanted croissants for her sister's christening. Dad hadn't made a croissant in eleven years. He said the butter was the trouble: it had to stay cold enough to hold its shape and soft enough to bend, and most people never learned the difference. I held the bowl while he rolled the dough across the scrubbed table, folding it over the slab of butter like a letter going into its envelope, then rolling again, then resting it in the cold of the hold where the bilge water slapped under the boards.

By the third fold my wrists ached and he had stopped talking. He only said, "Again," and I think he was listening for something under the hum of the engine.

They came out at dawn, crescent and gold, and the keeper's boy came down the towpath in wellingtons three sizes too big. He looked at the pastries for a long time before he picked one up. Then he pressed his thumb into the flour dusting the counter and drew a curve in it, slow and careful, leaving the middle empty. "Mum says that's where the air goes," he said.

Dad wiped the counter clean with his sleeve. I didn't ask him to stop.