The Art of Baking Blind (28 page)

‘You've got to let me be a parent,' he mutters as she brings Alfie back and pulls a woollen hat down over his curls.

Then: ‘He's going in the car. He doesn't need that.'

‘Bye, Alfie. Have lots of fun. Big snuggles when you get back.' She forces herself to hold a smile on her face, desperate to disguise the tension to ease the separation for her child.

Greg looks suitably uncomfortable, wrong-footed by his sharpness but inept at apologising. ‘He'll have a great time. Sorry to snap – I just wish you'd stop mothering him all the time.'

She laughs; a yelp of incredulity. ‘And how am I meant to do that? He's my baby. I'm his mum. It's in the job description.'

He pulls her close and places a kiss on the top of her head. Murmuring into her hair, he sounds suddenly weary.

‘Well, perhaps you should do it less; or I should do it more.'

‘Yeah, right.'

‘Do you want a row about this? I am trying.'

‘I know.' She gives up the fight and lets herself relax against his body. ‘I know. Have a lovely day. I'll miss you.'

‘Try to relax – and get those puddings sorted.' He grins at her. ‘You can do this, you know. Just write one of your lists and work your way through it. Be methodical.'

‘I know, I know.'

‘We'll expect to gorge ourselves when we get home.'

‘Yes, all right.' She manages a half-smile.

‘You're great at puddings. Seriously. Don't know what you're worrying about.'

She keeps the smile fixed on her face as she stands in the doorway, watching him strap Alfie into his car seat. The temptation to interfere; to take over with a brusque ‘Not that way: I'll do it,' is so great she has to hug her arms around her. She just manages to resist.

Alfie presses his snub nose against the window, she imagines forlornly, and she breaks into frenzied waving.

‘Bye, Alfie. I love you,' she calls as the car pulls off. Her waving feels almost frantic. She continues until the car has drawn out of sight.

Then she closes the heavy front door with its original stained-glass panels and rests her heavy limbs against it, pausing for a moment before confronting the chaos of the kitchen.

Stop all this mothering? She doesn't know how to. And even if she did, she wouldn't want to. Motherhood courses through her veins.

Which is not to say that she will not enjoy a day to herself. A flicker of excitement works its way through her body. She has a whole day in which to perfect her puddings, unencumbered by anyone else.

That's a thought. She pulls out her phone and fires off a quick text to Jenny and Claire. ‘Practising puddings. Hope you're OK and managing to do the same? Xxx'

‘Trying – with Chloe:/' Claire pings back immediately.

‘Some done. Lots more to do,' Jenny's text reads.

Better get on with it then. But first, she needs to wash.

With a renewed spring in her step, she runs up the stairs to the bathroom and the oblivion of an uninterrupted shower.

 

 

Kathleen

March, and she is still in bed, still nurturing her baby. She counts the weeks: seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Almost halfway through.

Her stomach has swollen into a neat hard-boiled egg, petite but emphatic. There is physical proof that, this time, something is living. She wishes she could flaunt it. But no one sees her bump besides those welcomed into the sanctum of her bedroom: George, Julie and Mr Caruthers.

Like a disgraced daughter, or a Carmelite nun, hers is a life of solitude. She does not mind. All her energy is focused on resting. On willing her womb to remain strong.

She flicks through the society pages of
Harpers
and
Tatler,
noting old acquaintances, and feels only mild interest. Much of the time, those dos were a bore. The Beatles claim to be ‘more popular than Jesus', and the Moors murderers are due to stand trial. She will not read the reports in
The Times.
Her child feels newly vulnerable: at risk in the world as well as in her womb.

Propped up in bed, she rations herself to just half an hour's writing, wary of what happened the last time she spent her days with a book on her knees, her pen hurtling across the page until her hand cramped. The words spill out in her assigned half-hour: afternoon tea is distilled in neat slots and she spends the rest of her long weary day dreaming up more.

And then something happens that justifies such behaviour; that makes the caution, the isolation and the tedium worth while.

Stretching out in bed while re-reading
Lady Chatterley's Lover,
she feels a flutter so faint that, at first, she fears she has imagined it.

There it is again.

At twenty-one weeks, her baby moves.

29

It does not matter what you bake with your children though there is an argument for simplicity, and for tailoring the recipe to fit with their age. What matters is that you are spending time together: cosseting and nurturing them. Make the most of this when they are small for they may be more preoccupied with their education during the teenage years.

Karen, in her pristine white kitchen, is creating a baked alaska: the sort of dessert she often thinks she most resembles if she had to describe herself as a pudding. Glossy and crisp on the outside; ever chilly at the centre. Utterly desirable; always surprising. Only the sweetness and the initial warmth ruin the analogy.

Of course, it's not the kind of pudding she would ever taste but she takes great satisfaction from the various stages: the creation of the Swiss roll, the hulling of the fruit, the making of the meringue – whisked over a bowl of simmering water until it is stiffly peaked.

She has already made the fatless sponge: a tight roulade encircling home-made raspberry jam and then cut with mathematical precision into six two-centimetre-deep bases of light sponge. And now she places hulled and sugared fruit on top: blackberries, redcurrants and raspberries, which shine, ever jewel-like. She tastes just one: a raspberry she sucks on the tip of her tongue until the sugar dissolves away.

For a minute, she remembers her mother, cutting herself a slice of Bird's Eye Arctic Roll. A poor approximation of this most decadent pudding, with its piped strawberry jam and thin layer of sponge encasing a mass of yellow but, for Pamela, another Saturday night treat. More innocuous than the cigarettes and spliffs of her children. Almost infantalising. Wrapped in her small world of back-breaking work, telly and food, Pamela never asked any questions. Was she really so ignorant? Did she not know that Steven, charming but ever ruthless, was effectively pimping his sister? Or that Karen had initially gone along with it: desperate to please her brother, flattered to be in with his mates?

She begins the meringue, whisking egg whites and sugar with a cold, focused fury – yet still careful the gently simmering water doesn't touch the bowl and cook the eggs. The mixture gleams, glossily, like ice crystals sparkling on snow. She sets it aside and tops the fruit with ice cream then smothers each concoction with a sweet duvet of meringue. Three minutes in the oven, and she has six tiny Mont Blancs: dainty, golden and apparently symmetrical. She places them on duck-egg porcelain and, just for a moment, admires them: these works of art, too cute to eat.

Oh, but they're not though, are they? She takes a knife and thinks, as she grips it, of her brother. Her kids don't know they have an Uncle Steven. Well, she wants no connection. Imagine if he came across her beautiful, innocent Livy? She feels sick at the very idea.

And what about Jake? The same age as Steven when he started hawking her around, but a different class, a different generation. A different person – even if she no longer knows what sort of person that is. She must change that. She won't be a Pamela, choosing not to see what was in front of her. She will brave his hostility in a minute, and go and check up on him.

But first she will cut this baked alaska. The knife pushes to reveal a scoop of vanilla-flecked ice cream, the centre still resolutely cold. She probes further and a jumble of magenta fruits spill out, yielding their vibrant juices.

*   *   *

‘Jake?'

‘What?'

His tone, when she reaches his attic room, is less belligerent than weary – as if he cannot bring himself to speak to his mother: the habitual way in which he has communicated with her this year.

‘Can I come in?' Karen is hesitant, poised at the door of his bedroom, wary of intruding into his space and of his mood if she enters.

There is a pause, then a sigh.

‘If you have to.'

His rudeness riles her. Not for the first time, she considers the point of his expensive education – though she knows this contempt is reserved for her, and his friends' mothers reap the benefits of the extortionate school fees. She opens the door to his vast attic room, walls plastered with semi-naked female celebrities juxtaposed with motorbikes. Two blades – he is captain of his school's rowing eight – scull the ceiling. His duvet is rumpled on his bed; joggers strewn across an armchair. In one corner, a jumble of boxer shorts breed.

‘That's hardly very welcoming.' Her tone is tart as she addresses her first-born, who is lolling in the chair by his desk, long limbs stretched out, watching her with ill-disguised antipathy.

‘Sorry, Ma.' The apology is ironic. A lazy smile plays on his lips. She wants to smack him.

‘I just came to say I'm going to the gym. Olivia's revising at Anna's for the day and it would be a good idea if you did some work too.' She looks pointedly at the unopened arch-lever files on his desk. ‘Your mocks are what – two weeks away?'

He gives a snort.

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

He shrugs.

‘Jake?'

He remains silent but begins to kick at the corner of a rug, his size eleven foot, snug in rugby socks, ruffling it up then flattening it in an irritating tic.

She knows she should ignore such obviously adolescent behaviour but he has got under her skin.

‘I asked what you were getting at, Jake?'

He looks at her full on, as if assessing how far he should go to hurt her.
You're fooling no one, Ma.
Perhaps now, finally, she will get to the bottom of what he meant?

‘I just don't think you should lecture me when you never did A-levels – or even O-levels, was it?' he taunts her. ‘And I don't think you should lecture me when you obviously don't give a shit.'

‘Jake.' Her response is an automatic reaction to his swearing, to the charge – easily, lazily denied – that she doesn't care. She breathes a little more easily. This isn't the cause of his contempt. But still, it rankles. A knot of anger burns inside her and, inwardly, she counts to five.

‘I do “give a shit”, Jake, which is why I've asked you to do some work. And if I'm lecturing you it's precisely because I don't want you to squander the chances I never had at your age.'

She hears herself metamorphose into the cliché of a haranguing parent, and, momentarily, gives in.

‘You don't have a clue what my childhood was like, or why I didn't get any O-levels – or even CSEs – as you so kindly point out. You've never asked and I've never wanted to tell you. And that's the way it's going to remain. But don't you mock me for it and don't you mirror it. Don't take all this' – she gestures around the room – ‘for granted. You have a far better life. And I am so bloody determined you are not going to repeat my mistakes.'

She goes to leave the room, furious at herself for losing control of her emotions and for her failure to get at the root of the problem.

‘This isn't really about that, though, is it, Jake?' She gives a bark of a laugh and, with her challenge, opens the door to an honest conversation. ‘This isn't the reason you're so angry … or so contemptuous of me.'

He shakes his head in studied bemusement. ‘Chill, Ma. I don't know what you're talking about.'

‘About that dig.
You're fooling no one, Ma.
What did you mean by it?'

‘Don't know what you're talking about,' he repeats. His face is blank, as if he has no recollection.

Did she imagine it? Perhaps she is crediting him with too much intuition? She is either being paranoid – or he is lying. His face remains a picture of innocence. He was never good at lying, even as a little boy, his mouth twitching in an instant give-away.

She feels in the wrong.

‘OK, sorry. Sorry, Jake. Forget it. Forget it.'

She smiles at him, incapable of crossing the rift that is growing ever deeper between them. Standing in his doorway, poised in indecision, she wonders if she can attempt to breach it – or if she should fade away.

She takes the coward's route and makes her excuses – to his relief and her dissatisfaction. ‘Just try to do some work, all right? I need to go. I've got to get to the gym.'

As she turns from the room, she could swear she hears him mutter: ‘No shame … she's just no shame.'

*   *   *

In the changing room, she takes her time adjusting her hair in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors, eyes, apparently fixed on herself, busy spying. She is no voyeur but she charts the rise and fall in weight of her fellow gym bunnies just as assiduously as they do themselves. She may not know their names but she knows who has the baggiest stomach and who the breasts that flap like empty pockets. She can guess who starves herself and who overeats. She doubts that anyone else makes themselves sick.

In the spin class, she sits at the back, still assessing the other women and comparing herself to them. On a good day, she would perch at the front, vying for the attention of Ben, the muscular instructor. Today is not a good day. The class begins kindly: a light dance track with a strong beat that leads her to a light sprint. But within five minutes she is out of her seat for a ten-second sprint that sees her heart-rate soar to 85per cent of its maximum and her heart pound against her ribcage.