Melissa was aged precisely four and a half when she met Sam – enrolled in the Sacre Coeur primary school as a sop to her mother’s Catholic guilt. Eleanor was what Max frequently described as a ‘lapsed catholic’. Not quite an atheist but certainly heading that way.
But Eleanor, Max explained, had made that first sacrifice of principle, so common among parents picking schools for their children. The Sacre Coeur was the best state school in their area and so what was a little hypocrisy when it was your child’s future? Eleanor and Max apparently reasoned that Melissa should make her own decision about faith when she was grown up herself. Meantime she should be taught the Catholic way with her parents on hand to dilute the scariest bits.
The strategy inevitably backfired. Melissa decided she was to become a nun – an obsession that lasted alarmingly into the third year, trumped only by the arrival of a striking new altar boy called Michael. This first infatuation came around the same time an older boy in the school called Samuel Winters began inexplicably to accompany Melissa on her walk to school, offering to carry her satchel.
‘I don’t need you to carry my satchel. It’s not heavy.’ Melissa liked Samuel very much but had not the foggiest idea where his sudden interest in her blessed satchel came from. Still. He was funny and could do impressions of all the teachers. He was kind and popular but he was four years older than her – hanging out with the big crowd, which rather scared her.
After Eleanor’s death, Melissa finished her stint at the Sacre Coeur then sat the 11-plus early to progress to the nearest girls’ grammar school, which was a forty-minute bus journey.
Michael the altar boy went on to the mixed Catholic secondary school, which was a temporary source of conflict between Melissa and her father. Samuel the Satchel, as she had come to know him, had long since gone on to the boys’ grammar school and she saw him only occasionally when they caught the same bus. On these rare occasions, Sam would sometimes sit with Melissa for the journey home, only desisting when his friends bombarded them with whistles.
‘I’ve no idea why they do that,’ Melissa complained. ‘It’s not as if we like each other in that way. Is it?’
It was not until the agony of A levels that Melissa bumped into Sam more regularly again. He was on the long haul studying Architecture at university and so was around only during the holidays when he managed to get a job at the local music shop. Melissa and her friends would often hang out there, using the booths to listen to CDs, and to her surprise, a number of her friends seemed to be in thrall to Samuel the Satchel.
‘Why didn’t you tell us you knew him?’ her close friend Emily whispered one Saturday.
‘Who?’
‘Him.’
Melissa had glanced across at Sam who was smiling in her direction.
‘I think he likes you, Melissa.’
‘Oh don’t be ridiculous. We’ve been friends since we were in primary school. That’s all.’
‘You think?’
‘I do.’
‘Well, good. Because I am hoping you can get him to notice me.’
‘You saying you fancy him?’
‘Duh, Melissa. Of course I fancy him. Everybody fancies him.’
Melissa would remember this moment always. She put the CD in her hand back in its slot on the shelf and looked again at Sam. By this time he was serving an older woman, who was in animated conversation about the soundtrack for some musical. Melissa noticed with no little amusement that even this older woman was trying to flirt with him.
Why it had not occurred to her before then that Sam would be a target for this kind of attention, she had no idea. She examined his jawline and felt her head shrink back into its neck.
Do you know that it makes you look like a tortoise when you do that…
Melissa listened to the echo as she watched him serving the customer across the record shop floor.
Good God. He really was quite striking these days. It was not so much that she had not noticed this, but rather that she had not registered that it had any significance for her.
‘So do you not fancy him then, Melissa?’
She did not know how to answer this. Sam was Sam. Sam was the older boy who walked her to school. The boy who helped her with her roller skates in the local park sometimes. The boy who did great impressions of the teachers. How could she answer a question like that?
Sam was Sam.
And then everything changed when Melissa started university herself. She was reading English Literature, which her father had actively encouraged, despite others around being a good deal less supportive. And what precisely is she going to do with a degree in English Literature? Read for a living?
Max, of course, had been a nightmare when it came to UCAS. He knew all the rankings and he knew all the insider gossip. And so on the grounds of teenage conflict alone, Melissa resisted every single piece of advice and plumped for Nottingham. The course looked good and the shops looked good. Also it was one of the few universities that Max had not actively promoted.
‘Why would you want to go to Nottingham? This is not about some bloody boy is it?’
‘Of course it’s not about some boy. I just like the sound of the course. Very traditional.’
Max didn’t know any of the professors at Nottingham University.
And so that settled it. Melissa would go to Nottingham.
What she did not know until two weeks into the term was that Samuel the Satchel was finishing the first part of the slog that was Architecture at Nottingham.
‘You’re here. Good God. I didn’t know you were here.’
She happened across him near the library, still thick with fresher’s flu, dark bags under her eyes and a messenger bag containing her laptop across her middle.
‘If you offer to carry my bloody bag, I will have to hit you.’
She gave him a hug, shocked at the very physical pleasure at her face close in to his neck for the very first time. Then instantly embarrassed. Awkward and surprised also that he smelled so very good.
‘Goodness. Nice smell. Is that actually aftershave?’ She was now pulling back and fidgeting with her hair.
‘Present from my mum.’
‘Well it makes a change. All the guys in my house stink.’ Wishing now that she had done her face. Washed her hair that morning. At least put on some mascara.
‘And that’s not sexist at all?’
‘So how the hell are you? Oh God. It’s good to see you, Sam.’
‘And you. A very nice shock. So – you settling in OK?’
‘Loving it. Though dog-tired. Can’t hack the hours yet.’
‘Fancy coffee?’
‘Yeah, I do, actually.’
And so it finally began.
Melissa sat there over coffee, watching, as he told her all about his course, about the university and about all the best places to study and socialise and which agent to use for a house in the second year and which bars had the cheapest drink prices and where he was planning to do his year out before the slog of the second part of his Architecture studies. She was sort of listening and sort of in some kind of daze. Because in reality she was right back in that music shop, looking across at him, at the perfect line of his jaw and the unusual shade and the warm and very open expression in his eyes. Green. Yes. Looking at him again with a completely different lens on the camera.
‘I really had no idea that you were here. At this uni? Did you ever mention it to me, Sam? That you were coming here? Nottingham?’
‘Don’t think so. Why do you ask?’
‘I don’t know. It just feels really weird.’
‘Nice weird or horrid weird?’
‘Nice weird.’
‘Good. So does that mean that I can finally ask you out for a drink without you doing your tortoise impression…?’
* * *
A very loud clearing of the throat suddenly… ‘Excuse me. I’m sorry, madam. But I was wondering if you would like a drink?’ The steward’s raised tone confirmed this
was not the first request. Melissa physically started. A couple of passengers turned as her foot hit the back of the seat in front.
‘Sorry. I’m so sorry. Miles away. Two bottles of water, please. Oh – and some crisps. Any flavour. Doesn’t matter.’ She turned back to Sam who stirred momentarily at the noise but then rolled his shoulder over, trying awkwardly to nestle into the headrest of his seat, still asleep – mouth now gaping.
Melissa felt her pulse in her ear. The trolley trundled noisily past. A man stood up in the now vacant aisle to remove a small case from the overhead locker which made Melissa think again of all the luggage in the hold. The soft pink bag they bought at the kiosk. She was staring at the little cartons of crisps and then at the passengers across the aisle who had pre-ordered hot food. One older woman was tentatively dipping a plastic fork into what looked like some kind of pot roast. Or moussaka. Or lasagne. Or God knows what. It smelled terrible.
And now Melissa was thinking – why food? Why had her mother filled a journal with recipes? Melissa was a pretty average, basic cook but not an enthusiastic one. She did not understand why people made such an unholy fuss in the kitchen. Did not really have the patience for it, or understand why people devoted so much time when there were so many good restaurants and takeaways. And Waitrose. I mean – why had her mother not simply written letters? A diary? When there was so very much to say?
She twisted the cap from her bottle of water and took a swig.
Why food?
Easter Biscuits
8 oz self-raising flour
5 oz butter
4 oz sifted castor or icing sugar
1 medium egg
Dash of good vanilla essence… or a touch of cinnamon is nice too.
Preheat oven to 180 and grease baking trays. Sift flour and salt and rub into butter. Add sugar, plus your choice of flavouring, and mix. Add sufficient beaten egg to give a very stiff dough. Knead the dough lightly on a floured board until smooth. Wrap in foil and chill for 30 minutes. Roll out thinly and cut out circular biscuits. Place these on baking trays (not too close as they expand a bit) and prick with a fork. Bake for 12-15 minutes until pale gold.
These are firm favourites, Melissa, and you just have to make them. Why they are called Easter biscuits as opposed to Christmas biscuits or Halloween biscuits, I have not the foggiest. Gran just called them Easter biscuits and so that is what they are (though very happily eaten all year round).
I have my own particular memory of these and I am hoping you will too. For me they conjure up a very strong picture of a red, square biscuit tin which my mother kept on the second shelf of her larder (never the first or third; always the second – note). I guess that is what this book is partly about for me. Sharing and passing on to you things that I want to stay important. Family traditions and family memories. The continuum of stories at the stove, if you like. Generation to generation.
My mother was a very good, basic cook, who was indignant, and quite possibly a little snobbish, about the arrival of packets and freezers and anything which carried a ‘convenience’ tag. True – she came from a generation who had the time and had not yet experienced the chaos of juggling career and family which made mine rather rethink the whole equality battle (that’s a whole chapter, for sure. I’ve started a big section on modern motherhood at the end of the book. I am imagining it may not interest you yet which is why I have set it apart, but I like the idea of leaving my thoughts and tips for when they become relevant to you). Anyway, Mum, bless her, had both the will and the time to cook and so cook she certainly did.
These biscuits seemed to be available in our house as I grew up pretty much all the time – although the strict rule was that we had to ask for access to that red, metal tin on the second shelf.
In our home, as I write, you may well remember they are a holiday treat and always gone in a flash.
The photo I have included alongside this recipe is from one of our trips to Cornwall when baking these cookies with you was a given. Insanity, your father always said, to bake when there was a wonderful pastry shop along the seafront and I was supposed to be on holiday. But that was all down to the juggling. The guilt at trying to combine a career with being a halfway decent mother, Melissa, which was not as easy as I had anticipated and there were not as many cookies baked in our house as I would have liked, that’s for sure.
But as you see from the picture, you loved to help me from quite a young age and so it felt like the perfect thing to do on holiday. It made us so very happy – you and me. And your father certainly never complained about helping us to eat everything.
And then there is this other, less pleasant thing I have to tell you. It is not that I want to upset you and I am hoping that you can set it apart from the whole recipes thing. I don’t actually like to link the two at all. The pleasure of the cooking… and this other stuff. But you know I promised honesty in this journal and one of my motives here is to be open and also to try to keep you safe.
It was on this holiday in Cornwall that I found the lump. The truth? I was brushing down flour that I had managed to sift all down my front while baking and as I smoothed down firmly, brush after brush, I felt this knot at the top of my left breast, near the armpit. I thought it was the bra at first and I didn’t want to let you see that I was concerned. As the cookie dough was resting, I went to the bathroom to check properly and there was no mistaking it.
I really don’t know how I had not felt it in the shower before then? A knotty little lump on the surface but which went much deeper in when I had a proper feel around.
Anyway, the point is I was stupid, Melissa. I worried and worried for the rest of the day and then I just sort of pushed it aside – blanked it, if you like – and got on with the holiday. Most stupid of all, I did not go to the doctor immediately when we got back. What I decided to do was to monitor what I assumed was some fluid-filled cyst or the like. I remember convincing myself that if I waited long enough it would surely just ‘resolve’. Go away – like some inflammation.
I ‘monitored’ it for a quite a lot of weeks before I finally accepted that it wasn’t going to go of its own accord and that’s when I took myself to the doctor.
I wonder now, of course, if it could have made any difference if I had acted sooner. Probably not. Let’s hope not. But I am telling you, woman to woman now, the truth because I need to be sure that you would never be so silly yourself, Melissa.
Dad will probably have told you the facts already – that my illness, both in nature and the unlucky speed of spread was extremely rare for someone my age. I do not want to worry you unnecessarily, but with that said you really do need to look after yourself, Melissa. To check yourself properly and often. My understanding is this is not familial, and the last thing I want is to instil paranoia. I don’t know of any other case of breast cancer in a close relative so I refuse to believe you are at increased risk.
But for all that, I have talked to Dad and asked him to press upon you the need to be sensible, just as all women should. He will obviously find it difficult – talking about it. So this feels like the right time, as you move properly into full-on adulthood, now to have my own loving, little nag.
* * *
Eleanor, as usual, read through her words as the ink dried and wondered if this was too much too soon.
She tried to imagine how it might feel for Melissa skimming the very same page, and suddenly felt the need to touch it. The page. She kept her hand there for several minutes – reluctant to lift it.
Eleanor had allowed herself to cry only once. It was at the appointment when the dreaded word ‘metastatic’ was added to her vocabulary. She had started out shocked but almost aggressively optimistic when the ‘c’ word was first mentioned. A spell of disorientation and then full-on fighting spirit. She was so young, she babbled to Max in the car en route to the clinic as they awaited the results of more tests and scans. It would be an early diagnosis and it would be fine. Wouldn’t it? And I mean – they could do abso
lute wonders these days. With reconstruction, people would hardly be able to tell. She had seen this programme where a woman had actually felt she looked better after surgery than before. No. Seriously.
She would not share with Melissa how badly the shock had hit her when the consultant explained about spread. And staging. They say that patients hear nothing after the word ‘cancer’ but that was not how it was with Eleanor. Not at all. She heard cancer on the first confirmation of diagnosis and she thought – OK. Shit. But we fight this? Yes? So tell me how we fight this.
It was not until that later appointment, when they had taken chunks and put a wire right into her breast and checked the horrid bits of tissue in their horrid little labs. No. It was not until she heard the words ‘stage four’ and ‘metastatic’; not until they were looking at scan results and talking inexplicably about her liver and her lungs that she stopped listening.
Her doctor had warned her not to turn to the new internet service which he knew she had access to via Max at the university. ‘If you have any questions ask me and not this new world wide web? OK?’ But Eleanor had already been reading up. Anything and everything that she could find. Pamphlets. Features. Research papers. And so while Max listened intently to the consultant, starting to talk treatments and timelines, Eleanor was already in her mind’s eye back at home – among the sticker books and fairy wands; among the biscuit cutters and clouds of icing sugar; staring at her beautiful daughter.
8
MELISSA – 2011
As Sam put the hire car forms into the glove compartment, neither of them mentioned the case – squashed now into the back of the Clio. Much too big for the boot. Melissa took out a guide book and map.
‘If you’d let me get a new sat nav, Mel, we could have added the programme for Cyprus.’
‘I can map read. I hate sat navs.’
Sam was grinning – brighter-eyed from his sleep on the plane.
‘What?’
Recipes for Melissa Page 4
