The Art of Baking Blind (37 page)

Why is everyone telling her how to behave, all of a sudden? Why does everyone always do that? Stay in bed; rest; relax; do what's best for baby. Don't write; don't bake – but do be Mrs Eaden. Smile; pose; nod: nod, smile, pose.

She can't do it any more – or this. But first she needs to explain: this baby needs to stay inside her for six weeks longer. It really has to, though it seems to have a will of its own.

She groans then feels a slither as a hot, warm weight slides through her legs, caught by Caruthers and whisked away immediately. The pain has stopped but an awful silence fills the room.

The men in pyjamas are huddled around what must be the resuscitation trolley. The silence stretches out indefinitely. Her arms ache to hold her child.

I have failed, she thinks, as stars crowd her sight and she risks slipping out of consciousness. She fights against the dizziness. She needs to hold on. That woman is saying something important to her.

By her side, the nurse, looking at the resus trolley where the baby remains silent, mutters her judgement.

‘She's looking very blue.'

38

Gingerbread men make the simplest of treats. Children love them the best but, if you have none, you may still indulge yourself. Fashion hearts, or large families.

Bradley Hall, 9.45 a.m., and all involved in the Search for the New Mrs Eaden are waiting for Vicki's Freelander to surge up the drive. The tension is palpable. Harriet and Dan are hovering in the lobby; Cora is checking her phone needlessly and repeatedly, desperate for the final to run to schedule; Claire, perched on a chintz sofa, is rifling through her texts. She re-reads those from Jay – ‘162,000 hits altogether!' – then double-checks a love letter from Chloe, her passion etched in painstakingly neat joined-up writing. ‘You're the bestist mum and the bestist baker in the werld!!!' The pink pencil has pushed into the paper, as if to emphasise her certainty.

It is a glorious day. The former stately home is doing its best to look merely eccentric not architecturally grotesque and the weather is conspiring to help. Early morning sunshine bathes its golden stone, softening its ornate arcading. Lilies of the valley fringe it in white and green. The lush lawn sparkles. The marquee has been erected and, later, the contestants will shiver like guests dressed in summer regalia for a spring wedding.

Jenny stands in the bay window, looking less like the matronly cook she may have appeared to be at the start of the process and more like the lady of the manor. There is a serenity about her in contrast to the agitation that whirls around her. Head up, eyes peering down to the end of the drive, she is poised and still. She seems to have shed some weight but, more than that, she has shed some of her inhibition. She is a picture of self-possession.

As Vicki's car sweeps over the gravel, however, she moves into action, gliding to the door to take her friend in her arms.

Vicki is all of a fluster. ‘I'm so late, so late … Thank you for waiting for me … Has it held you up massively? Can I just go to the loo and grab a drink before we start? Where's Harriet? Are they angry? Oh, Jen, I feel so guilty for leaving poor little Alf…'

‘Calm down.' Jenny smiles, and envelops her in softness. Her body is more compact than Vicki had imagined: she does not sink into a duvet of flesh but is cushioned in comfort. She feels Jenny's surprisingly strong arms around her, breathes in her clean, neutral smell. This must be what it feels like to be held by your mother, she thinks. What it would feel like if Mum just let herself hold me. Utterly secure.

Her friend releases her.

‘Poor you – poor Alfie. How is he?'

‘OK. Well, he will be.' Vicki smiles, relief obscuring exhaustion. ‘I can't bear to think about him though, to be honest, or I'll just leave immediately. I've got to try to focus – just to get through today.'

‘Well, that's good news.' It is Harriet, who has bustled up. ‘Great that your little one's feeling better and fantastic that you're here. See you in the kitchen in twenty minutes?' And, imperious, she rushes off.

‘So this is it then.' Jenny smiles again. ‘Ready?'

‘Not really, no.' Vicki is apologetic. She draws Jenny aside as Cora, Claire and Mike begin to move to the kitchen. ‘I keep obsessing about Alfie and what you said last night about Kathleen. That we'd all made assumptions. That her life wasn't perfect. What did you mean by that?'

‘Oh, it's not important.' Jenny, gathering her cardigan and handbag, avoids looking her in the eye. ‘Not in the grand scheme of things.'

‘You said that last night, but it is to me…'

Jenny stops collecting her things, and looks at her. ‘I can see that. Are you sure you want to discuss this now, just before the competition?'

‘I wouldn't ask if I didn't!' Vicki's frustration comes out louder than she intended. ‘I'm sorry…' She is quick to apologise. ‘I just can't stop thinking about her. I feel as if we've somehow done her a disservice.'

The look Jenny gives her – cool, quizzical – is disarming. Slowly, she puts down her handbag and rifles through it. She finds what she's looking for: a sheaf of blue-grey Basildon Bond, inscribed in cobalt-blue ink, neatly folded.

She hands it to Vicki.

‘What's this?'

‘A letter: I found it in one of Kathleen's cookery books. I'm not sure she ever sent it, but just read it.'

‘A private letter? I'm not sure I should do that. How did you get hold of it?'

‘I borrowed it.' Jenny blushes. ‘I thought you needed to read it. Look, I'm going to take it back once you've done so. Please, take it: it just makes sense.'

As if sleep-walking, Vicki takes the letter from her, carefully unfolds it, and begins to read.

Little Haven,

Trecothan,

15th June 1972

My dearest Charlie,

Wonderful to see you yesterday. To have you down here to help celebrate Lily's sixth birthday. It may seem ridiculously formal my writing but I wanted to stress how grateful we are for you making the effort – and for treating her just like any other child.

She loved the kite. What an inspired choice! We tested it out this morning, at low tide, on the flat sands of Constantine. We took down the wheelchair equipped for sand – the one with the massive wheels you hate carrying – and attached the line handles firmly, in case it should blow away. Then she held the lines and, with George pushing behind, they raced the length of the beach as if pulled by this glorious kite that swooped and soared in the sunshine. I wish you could have heard her peals of laughter. She sounded so infectiously happy. Squealing with excitement and for fear that her fantastic new toy would blow away.

Needless to say, it didn't. George had tied it on too tight for that – can you imagine the tantrum if he hadn't? – and we must have spent a good hour and a half flying it. I thought George was going to have a heart attack, he was so out of breath from the exercise, so I took over. And I am so glad I did.

It was the closest I've ever come to taking her hand and just running with her – and your kite enhanced that sense of freedom, sprinting ahead of us, up in the blue, like some unencumbered sprite.

Later, we tried another first; and I am so proud of this. I got her to make gingerbread men – a whole family. And she made them herself. Well, she needed help with tipping the ingredients into the bowl but she managed to bind the dough and to roll it and to press down the cutters to make shapes. She may not have been standing on a chair next to me but who cares? We were baking together properly, just as I'd always imagined I would with my daughter. At one point she asked: ‘Am I doing this right, Mummy?' I tell you, I almost cried.

Oh Charlie, when I think back six years, this all seemed impossibility. Do you remember what she was like when she was born? More bird than baby. Skin translucent; veins bright beneath it. Not an ounce of unnecessary, crucial flesh.

It seemed so cruel to have a child like this after my other three losses (I still can't use Caruthers' phrase: habitual abortion). Not the plump, healthy baby I dreamed of but a sickly scrap of a child born at thirty-four weeks. By rights, she shouldn't have survived and, at times, in those first torturous weeks, it seemed incredible and, yes I admit it, unkind – to us, but most of all to her – that she did.

I cannot believe I have just written that but the truth – and you are the only person I can admit this to – is that, for quite a time, I grieved for the child she wasn't and never would be, Charlie. But she persisted with us. And, as it became clear she would survive, my faltering love for her grew more and more intense. She was our little fighter. Perfect except for the cerebral palsy; untroubled except for the odd fit.

Talking of which, I know you are still concerned at our remaining down here, far from the teaching hospitals, but you are worrying unnecessarily. There is the hospital at Treliske and we continue to make six-monthly visits to the neurologist in Harley Street. Living in such a remote place allows her a freer life; one in which no one can ever point a finger and whisper about it being a tragedy; or make any reference to my loss of career. I couldn't exist anonymously in London with a handicapped daughter, or run with her free as a kite through Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens. Can you imagine it? Someone would always notice, a look of pity on their face.

I've just realised that sounds as if I am ashamed of her. You know I am not. But I cannot bear the attention. I always hated it when I had to do all those wretched openings and now, well, it would seem even more intrusive. It's bad enough that Mrs Eaden – and her naive assumptions about how she can please her perfect family, no, create the perfect family, through baking – still haunts me. I don't need anyone else to flag up my very public identity. Here, I can just be Kitty, Lily's mother. I can focus on my daughter and do everything in my powers to make her life, however long it is, happy.

Enough justification for our hermit-like existence. Every time I breathe in the Atlantic I know we are doing the best for her; and every time we go down to the beach together. Do let me know when we can next entice you down.

You are a stronger wheelchair sprinter than George, and Lily wants to take the kite to Watergate Bay next. The sands there are three miles long so you had better get in training!

With very much love,

Kitty

xxx

The script is so familiar: firm, expansive, looping and the voice as clear and vibrant as ever. But the reality conveyed in the letter is all wrong.

‘I don't understand.' Vicki is bewildered. ‘Who's this Kitty?'

‘Kitty was Kathleen. This was a letter from her to her brother.'

‘Kathleen? Kathleen Eaden?'

Jenny nods.

‘Then who's Lily? Kathleen's daughter is called Laura and she's only a couple of years older than me. Thirty-five, I think. I remember from that interview. She wouldn't have been six in 1972.'

‘Kathleen must have had another child. A child born very early who she wanted to protect from the public eye. It would explain why they sold the business and moved to such a remote part of Cornwall – or remote then, certainly – and why she didn't write anything further. She did always put her family first, as Laura said, and, with such a sick child – a child who had fits and suffered from cerebral palsy – perhaps it seemed the obvious, the only choice.'

The space around Vicki shifts slightly. She feels disorientated as if she has just spun very fast on a roundabout with Alfie.

‘She doesn't like being Mrs Eaden … She doesn't even think baking necessarily pleases a family.' Every certainty shatters into splinters.

‘No. I imagine that, faced with a very premature child, being Mrs Eaden felt a bit – I don't know – silly? No, disingenuous. A child with cerebral palsy – and the experience of multiple miscarriages – doesn't fit in with the serene, controlled, seemingly perfect world she describes.'

‘But baking could help? Baking brought her such happiness.' Vicki clings to one certainty.

‘And it evidently did.' Jenny seeks to reassure her. ‘She made gingerbread men with Lily, didn't she? And you can see that that still brought her joy.

‘But her life wasn't perfect, was it? At least, nowhere near as perfect as her book and her photos suggest. And, while perfection might be possible in baking, in life, well, it's impossible.

‘The perfect wife, the perfect child, the perfect mother? None of us can be these. They're mere fancies. For you, for me, for Kathleen.'

39

When making crème patissière, whisk the mixture constantly once the hot milk has been added. The custard must boil but not scorch the base of the pan. This is one of those moments when you must pay attention to detail. A moment's distraction and your custard is ruined.

It takes Frances only three rings to pick up her phone, not her customary ten.

Vicki, gripping her mobile, is startled. She had expected a few seconds to compose herself but, suddenly, she has to speak.

‘Mum?'

‘Victoria?' Her mother's voice is guarded, as if wary of another onslaught from her angry, needy daughter. ‘Aren't you at the competition? Shouldn't it start soon?'

‘Yes. In five minutes. But I needed to speak to you first. I needed to apologise.' The confession comes out in a rush of relief.

‘Go on.' Her mother's voice is low but the tone is calm rather than critical.

‘I should be doing this face to face … but I needed to tell you, quickly, so that neither of us brooded on this all day. I wanted to say sorry. For blaming you for the abortion. For implying that you forced me to do it. That I only did it because you suggested it.'