The Plumberry School of Comfort Food

by Cathy Bramley

  Tom shook Gabe’s hand distractedly. He was staring at me. And at Noah. And then at me. His eyes narrowed.

  ‘You two look so . . . so similar,’ he said, shaking his head incredulously. ‘The green eyes, the curve of your cheek bones, the line of your eyebrows, even your earlobes. It’s uncanny.’

  A shiver ran up my spine and I felt a flush to my cheeks.

  Noah wriggled to be let down and I lowered him to the rocks, reluctant to ever let him go again. It was true, I thought, looking at Noah’s eyebrows. I’d inherited my dad’s straight eyebrows, always envying Matt for getting Mum’s lovely arched ones. And I had weird earlobes like Noah, as in hardly any lobe at all. Noah had got his dad’s unruly hair but not his pale grey eyes. His eyes were as green as mine.

  My eyes flitted to Gabe. His mouth twisted and he raised his eyebrows. It’s up to you now, he seemed to be saying.

  I looked back at Tom and my heart thumped for him. There were a thousand different things I liked about him, his dark good looks – obviously – but more than that. He had a loving heart, he was kind and thoughtful and he made my own heart rise like the perfect Victoria sponge. I cared about him and I wanted him to care about me again, the way he had before Gloria died, before he’d suspected me of having an affair with Gabe.

  And all of a sudden I’d had enough of keeping Mimi’s secret. Wouldn’t honesty be the best policy anyway? For all concerned? Gloria had already guessed and for all I knew she’d told Mags and one day, probably soon, we’d have to start feeding titbits of information to Noah. Surely it would be better all round to come clean . . .

  I took a deep breath. I took a step forward and reached for Tom’s hand.

  He frowned and his eyes flicked to Gabe.

  ‘It’s complicated,’ I began, tightening my grip on his warm strong fingers.

  Mags chose that moment to come barrelling on to the deck. ‘Come on back up, my lovelies, the kettle’s boiled and I’ve got Noah’s favourite.’

  ‘Chocolate cake?’ Noah bounced on his toes.

  ‘Got it in one, chuck,’ she laughed.

  ‘Chocolate? Bagsy the biggest slice.’ Tom grinned. He withdrew his hand from mine and leaned in close.

  ‘It’s OK, Verity, you don’t have to explain yourself to me, it’s fine,’ he said stoically. ‘Come on, Noah,’ he said, holding out his hand to the little boy. ‘You can tell me all about your boat. What’s it called again?’

  ‘The Neptune,’ Noah answered, merrily falling into step with Tom. ‘I’ve got a bed under the window and twelve dinosaurs.’

  Gabe slipped an arm round my shoulders and my stomach lurched as I watched Tom walk away hand in hand with our boy.

  ‘Coming in for cake?’ he murmured.

  I pressed my lips together and shook my head. ‘I need to get home and let the dogs out. I’ll see you later.’

  He caught my fingers as I moved away. ‘I do love you, you know.’

  I gave him a watery smile. ‘I know,’ I whispered.

  But falling in love with me had never been part of the deal.

  Chapter 35

  I left the others enjoying thick wedges of a delicious-looking chocolate torte that Tom had brought back from Salinger’s and walked out of the Plumberry School of Comfort Food with my bags of goodies from my earlier shop.

  Simon from the micro-brewery pulled into the car park just as I was leaving. We waved to each other, but I wasn’t in the mood to stop and chat. I wanted to be alone for a few minutes, just me and my whirring thoughts . . .

  I rounded the corner on to Plumberry high street, my heart lifting as usual at the striped awnings over the shopfronts, the lovely creamy-yellow stone of the buildings and the huge planters filled with riotous summer flowers. I smiled at Annabel in the wine merchants and bent to inhale the fat bunches of sweet-smelling stocks outside the florist.

  What a day it had been! My lips curved into a smile. The Green men had always been a source of excitement in my life; well, so had Mimi, I supposed.

  I left the high street behind and lost myself in my memories as I headed back to Hillside Lane.

  Mimi had been devastated when she found out at the age of twenty-seven that she was infertile. She’d gone through the menopause early. It was called Premature Ovarian Failure, she’d told me.

  ‘My ovaries are a failure, I’m a failure and Gabe will probably want a divorce.’

  What could I say to make matters any better? Nothing. So I simply held her and soothed her, handing her tissues and topping up her glass when she attempted to drown her sorrows in White Zinfandel.

  Despite Gabe’s assurances that he’d be happy to adopt if she wanted to or even not have children at all if that’s what she’d prefer, Mimi couldn’t get over the fact that she couldn’t have the baby she longed for to make her family complete.

  It had been an awful couple of months and for the first time in their relationship I began to wonder whether the two of them would make it through.

  ‘All I’ve ever wanted is to be a mum,’ she’d sobbed over a bottle of rosé and a takeaway pizza one night, after Chris, my fiancé, had tactfully made himself scarce for the evening. She’d cradled her hoody in her arms. ‘To hold my own baby like this, tuck him or her into bed at night.’

  It had torn me apart to see her so defeated. Out of all our friends at school, she’d been the first to get married, the first to buy a proper house and now the first to encounter a real, desperately sad, grown-up problem.

  At the time, Chris and I were storming ahead with our careers. We were engaged, had the house in Heron Drive, and had tentatively talked about a wedding abroad the following year. But a family? No, that was way, way, way off our radar. Something for the future, definitely, but I wasn’t even thirty; I had plenty of time to have a baby.

  ‘And you still can be a mum,’ I’d said gently. ‘It just might be a bit more complicated.’

  She’d shaken her head, a hollow expression in her blue eyes. ‘Adoption is not for me. And IVF using my own eggs isn’t an option. My only hope is going on the waiting list for a donor egg.’

  ‘There you go,’ I’d said brightly. ‘Where there’s hope, there’s life. Anne Frank said that, so it must be true.’

  Her face had crumpled, lines of tears making tracks down her pale cheeks. ‘That could take years. I could be forty before I reach the top of the list.’

  ‘If it’s eggs you want,’ I’d said straight away, ‘you can have some of mine. Then you won’t have to wait.’

  She’d blinked the tears from her eyes and stared at me. ‘You’d do that for me, for me and Gabe?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I’d said simply.

  ‘But promise me it will be our secret,’ she’d whispered, squeezing my hands until I thought they might drop off completely. ‘Just mine, yours and Gabe’s? Then everyone will think it’s really my baby.’

  I’d thought about that for a moment, watching as she pressed a hand to her flat stomach, a smile spreading across her face as she imagined the baby that could grow inside her.

  ‘I promise, but Chris needs to know. And my parents,’ I’d countered. ‘Just in case anything goes wrong.’

  ‘OK,’ she’d conceded. ‘But I’m not telling anyone, not even Mum. I want my baby to be mine from the very first second I get pregnant.’

  ‘And it will be.’

  ‘Verity, I love you so much. Never forget that.’

  Her eyes had sparkled for the first time in weeks and my heart sang with joy that it had been me that made her smile again.

  ‘And don’t forget: mum’s the word,’ she’d added, wagging her finger playfully.

  After that the human dynamo that was Mimi Green sprang into action. She talked Gabe round. That was the easy part – Gabe Green had been wrapped around Mimi Ramsbottom’s little finger since he was sixteen. The rest took some time, effort and lots of money.

  The three of us formed Team Baby Green and together we attended various counselling sessions: ‘You’re
going to be reminded of this baby’s existence every time you see him or her,’ the counsellor had warned me. ‘It’s more complicated than being an anonymous donor.’

  But it was only my egg, I reasoned, when I broke the news to Chris. This was about Mimi and Gabe and giving them the raw materials they needed to make a family.

  My fiancé had been against it from the outset. He had been worried for me and for us.

  ‘What about the risks?’ he’d argued. ‘The fertility drugs you’ll need to take. Not to mention the procedure when they harvest your eggs. What if you can never have your own kids after that? What about us?’

  ‘I’m young and healthy,’ I’d countered. ‘The risks are so minimal they’re hardly worth bothering with. There’ll be plenty of time for us, I promise.’

  I’d have my own shot at motherhood further down the line, I’d explained to my mum. But this was something I wanted to do. It would cost me nothing and would mean the world to Mimi and Gabe.

  ‘You make it sound so clinical,’ Mum had mithered. ‘What if you fall in love with the baby? I don’t want to see you hurt. And I’m telling you now, you’re in danger of losing Chris over this. Think of him. Verity, be careful, I really think you might regret this.’

  She’d been right about Chris. He was adamant that I shouldn’t go ahead and gave me an ultimatum: him or Mimi. I’d been devastated. I was hurt that he was making me choose and upset that he wouldn’t support me in doing what I felt wholeheartedly was the right thing to do. It had broken my heart to call off our engagement. But what could I do? By this time Mimi was knee-deep in baby names and Gabe had had to ban her from any more online baby shopping. I couldn’t have let her down. It had been unthinkable.

  My decision didn’t go down well with my family. Mum had urged me to reconsider and save my relationship with Chris. Dad had been less vocal, but I knew he’d been upset by the whole business too. It had pained me to lose their support and when my brother announced that he and Celia were expecting a baby and my parents made the decision to emigrate to be near their family, my sadness was compounded. The inference wasn’t lost on me and for the first time I almost wavered. But Mum had been wrong about having regrets. Because only a year and a half later, after a course of fertility drugs for both of us and countless ultrasound scans and blood tests, Noah Gabriel Green came bawling into the world weighing a whopping nine pounds and ten ounces.

  Our baby had been born. And I hadn’t regretted a single thing. Although keeping that first promise had been a bit of a tall order.

  I slipped my key into the front door at number eight Hillside Lane and lowered my bags to the floor as two little dogs came scampering towards me.

  ‘Wait until you see what Jack the butcher has sent for you,’ I laughed, pressing kisses into their whiskery faces.

  Comfrey and Sage tucked straight into their marrow-bones on the patio while I settled myself with a pot of tea and my phone in the garden.

  After the dramas of the day: meeting the solicitor, hearing Gloria’s will and losing and finding Noah, there was only one person’s voice I was longing to hear.

  It was mid-morning in Canada and I held my breath as the international dialling tone began to ring, hoping that she was at home.

  ‘The Bloom family residence,’ Mum answered gaily.

  My chest heaved with emotion and it took me a moment to muster up the power of speech.

  ‘Oh, Mum.’

  ‘Darling, what is it?’ I could almost see her furrowed brow.

  ‘Today has been one of the most traumatic days of my life,’ I said in a wobbly voice. ‘I could really do with a hug.’

  And breaking off only to sip my tea and dab my tears, I poured my heart out to my mum. I told her about inheriting the cookery school with Gabe and that although it was an amazing opportunity, I’d felt guilty about Gloria’s generous bequest. I told her about Dave and his philosophy on life and how he’d made me realize that I needed to make the most of life and that Gloria had even said something similar a couple of weeks ago. I described how it felt as if Gloria was trying to encourage Gabe and me to get together and how weird that was, especially as Gabe seemed to be thinking along those lines too. And that now he had kissed me and was waiting for an answer. We could be a family, he’d said . . .

  Finally, I took her through the harrowing ten minutes during which Noah had been missing. My little boy. My not-quite-but-almost son.

  ‘The sheer horror of it, Mum, I can’t begin to explain,’ I said tearfully, shuddering at the memory. ‘That little face, his pudgy arms, the little curls at the nape of his neck . . . Every inch of him is so precious to me. And if I lost him . . .’

  ‘Oh, darling. What a time you’re having,’ she gasped. ‘And you didn’t lose him, thank goodness. But what an ordeal for you all.’

  ‘Say it if you like,’ I said in a small voice. ‘Say, I told you so. It’s only an egg, I said when I told you my plans. I thought I was just supplying the magic ingredient that Mimi and Gabe were missing. But it was more than that, wasn’t it?’

  I could hear the hesitation down the line. ‘For what it’s worth, looking back, I think what you did for Mimi was an incredibly selfless thing. Brave and caring. I couldn’t have done it. I was bitterly disappointed for you and Chris, of course. I’d been so looking forward to seeing you get married. And I felt cheated, too, that I had a grandchild that I couldn’t openly acknowledge. I knew that would be too hard to bear, which was one of the reasons that your father and I decided to move to Canada, to remove ourselves from the situation.’

  ‘Mum,’ I gasped, ‘I had no idea you felt so deeply about it.’

  ‘Which was exactly how I wanted it, Verity,’ she said softly. ‘You had enough on your plate without worrying about silly old me. Anyway, I worried enough for the both of us. My big concern in this was that you would get hurt somewhere along the line, that you would have regrets and want the baby back. And my levels of worry quadrupled once Mimi died and there was a mummy-shaped hole in his little life.’

  ‘It has been really hard to keep my distance since then,’ I admitted. ‘But I had to; I’d promised Mimi that she would always be his mummy.’

  ‘And legally she will be, won’t she?’ Mum pointed out. ‘But that doesn’t mean that you can’t love him too, listen to all his stories, be there when he needs you. You can still do that, can’t you?’

  ‘I’ve always loved him, Mum. And even if I have children of my own, you know, with a man and everything—’ We both giggled at that. ‘I’ll still love Noah, but today felt different somehow, like I’d uncovered a new depth to my love for him.’

  Mum sighed such a heartfelt sigh that I felt her concern all the way from Canada. ‘You know what that is, don’t you?’

  ‘Panic? Fear?’

  ‘It’s more than that, darling,’ she said softly. ‘It’s maternal love.’

  I nodded even though she couldn’t see me. She was right. Mothers were fiercely protective creatures, I’d discovered; I’d have given my own life today for Noah if I’d had to.

  ‘I wish I could put my arms round you, Verity. I miss you so much. Not just now, but I miss the relationship we had before all this. I should have been more supportive, I realize that now. I was selfish and I regret that.’ She paused and then murmured so softly that I had to strain to hear her. ‘I miss the little things we used to do together.’

  Tears pricked at the back of my eyes. I’d pushed Mum away when I began my fertility treatment because she didn’t agree with my life choices. I hadn’t wanted to listen, thought she was trying to interfere, talk me out of it. Now I saw that she was motivated by a special love that I’d only just begun to appreciate for myself, a bond so strong that we would fight like tigers to protect those that we cared for – the love of a mother.

  ‘Me too,’ I said huskily.

  ‘Oh, darling.’ Just hearing the smile in her voice made me feel warm inside. ‘Whenever you were sad, do you remember what we’d make together t
o cheer you up?’

  ‘Er . . .’ I racked my brains to pinpoint a memory of the two of us in the kitchen. ‘Oh, chocolate bites!’ I said with a grin.

  ‘That was about my limit in the baking department.’ She chuckled. ‘Good job you came across Gloria when you did.’

  ‘Mum,’ I pressed a hand to my throat, ‘I’m sorry for how things have been between us.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Mum, with a crack in her voice. ‘I miss having my girl around. Celia’s nice enough but,’ she whispered close to the phone, ‘very strict where sweets are concerned. Cake is a big no-no in her house.’

  We shared a chuckle and I felt Mum’s love, as sweet and comforting as the simple chocolate fridge cake I’d forgotten about, wrap itself around me across the miles.

  ‘Have I helped at all, love?’ she said finally after we’d finished laughing.

  ‘More than you’ll ever know, Mum.’ I smiled. ‘I love you.’

  After I’d hung up, I swallowed the last of my tea and, checking that the dogs were still happily chomping on their bones, I went inside.

  I set a bowl above a pan of simmering water, broke a bar of chocolate into it and added butter and golden syrup.

  I must have been about five when Mum and I had first made this recipe together. I’d been out in the car with Dad and he’d accidentally shut my thumb in the car door. We’d driven home, both of us ashen-faced – he was mortified and I was in shock. He’d managed to drive one-handed, his other hand wrapped around mine with his white handkerchief soaking up the blood from my throbbing thumbnail.

  Mum had made Dad a cup of sweet tea and sent him to watch telly, put a plaster on my thumb and sat me at a high stool at the kitchen worktop. Together we had broken up cubes of chocolate and smashed digestive biscuits with her rolling pin. She didn’t tell me off when I’d turned the biscuits into a pile of crumbs instead of the large pieces she’d wanted and I’d been allowed to lick the spoon after measuring out the golden syrup and scrape the bowl after we’d melted the chocolate in it. She’d kissed my poorly thumb over and over again and told me that I was her precious girl.