I broke off, swallowing hard, and she said quickly, ‘Stella will be walking and saying her first words by then, you’ll see. The operation went well, didn’t it?’
‘Yes, but they made it plain they couldn’t fix everything in one go and would have to wait and see how her condition developed. She seems to be making progress.’
‘The body has great powers of self-healing,’ Celia said firmly.
I clung to that thought after she’d gone back to Southport: once I finally got her home, Stella and I would take the future one step at a time, savouring each moment like a special gift.
Long before Stella’s due date I’d stockpiled articles for my two regular publication slots: the ‘Tea & Cake’ page in Sweet Home magazine, which are quick, easy recipes, and my Sunday newspaper supplement one, ‘The Cake Diaries’, which have more complicated recipes along with some quirky background history, or stories about where I first came across a particular cake, thrown into the mix.
I usually work months in advance for magazines anyway, filing my Christmas articles in summer and my summer articles in winter, but this time I had almost a year’s worth in reserve. This foresight proved to be a very good idea, given the distractions and alarms of Stella’s first weeks, because the pieces all came out just as if nothing was going on in my life but baking and eating cakes.
Of course, I’d missed out on all the extra articles and assignments that would normally have come my way during this time, which usually put a bit of icing on the gingerbread of life. Once Stella was home, I knew I needed to get back into the groove as quickly as possible, even though this wasn’t going to be easy with a brain occupied entirely with worried thoughts wrapped in a thick fuzzy blanket of hope.
I hadn’t even lost any baby-weight, either – in fact, due to lack of activity and comfort eating, I’d put more on – so when I inadvertently caught sight of my stolid, stodgy pale nakedness in the bedroom mirror soon after Stella finally came home, I thought I looked just like a lardy cake.
Oh, lardy me!
I sat down on the bed and wept, and once I’d started I found I couldn’t stop for ages, which I expect was all the hormones still whizzing about in my system. But at least it was cathartic. It finally shook me out of the zombie trance and set me back onto the researching, experimental baking and writing track again, even if I did tend to shoehorn most of it into the times when Stella was asleep.
I’d kept on the expensive dog walker I’d had to hire for poor Toto while I was spending so much time at the hospital, and she took him out in the mornings. Eventually, when Stella was well enough, the three of us would head for Primrose Hill every afternoon for a bit of fresh air. (It’s as about as fresh at the top of the hill as you will find in London.) Toto, thank goodness, had taken to the baby immediately and didn’t seem in the least jealous, so slowly we all settled into the new regime.
And – waste not, want not – at least the lardy cake revelation inspired a new ‘Cake Diaries’ recipe.
Lardy Cake is a wonderfully stodgy, bready cake that originates from Wiltshire. It’s made with yeast and dried fruit – plus, of course, lots of lard, but I thought I would try to devise a slightly different version, replacing some of the lard with butter and adding a little spice …
Stella’s first three years were as up and down as a ride on the Big Dipper at Southport fun-fair, and while I struggled to persuade my changeling fairy child to eat and put on weight, I went from a curvy size twelve/fourteen to a Rubensesque sixteen/eighteen. This is what happens when your comfort food of choice is cake, and the nature of your work means the oven wafts the sweet smell of temptation at you every day.
The proof of the pudding was in the eating and I was that pudding.
I said so to Celia, who had come down to stay with me so she could do some early Christmas shopping, pop into the Sweet Home office (she did their ‘Crafty Celia Pull Out and Make’ section – if you could stick it, knit it, or stuff it, Celia was your woman) and, most crucially, support me through the next meeting with Stella’s hospital consultant, when he would outline her care plan for the next year.
‘The extra weight suits you, though,’ Celia assured me, ‘because you’re quite tall and still in perfect proportion, while I’ve never had a waist to start with and now gravity’s pulled me into the shape of a squishy pear. Just as well that Will likes pears,’ she added, grinning.
That was a bit consoling, but I’d have to accept that I was now never going to be an airy confection of spun sugar, only a solid Madeira sponge. My smart clothes had been packed away for so long I feared the creases were permanent and I was living in jeans, trainers and sloppy T-shirts. I’d also given up any attempt to straighten my curly fair hair, or cover the freckles across the bridge of my nose with makeup. In fact, I’d entirely resigned myself to looking wholesome, it just didn’t feel that important any more … though I might still grind cake in the face of the next person to remark brightly that I looked like a young Hayley Mills, because I’d Googled her films and no, I didn’t.
What would I have done without Celia? Other friends had slipped away since I had Stella, but she had remained constant since the day I first moved out of the family home and we shared both a flat and the struggle to make a living. She met her husband, Will, when Sweet Home commissioned an article about his driftwood sculptures and we happened to be in the offices when he came in to ask about getting a regular column. Love at first sight. Will is so nice, he almost deserves her.
‘What does Stella want for Christmas – or need I ask?’ she said now. ‘More of those Sylvanian Families?’
‘Yes. I’m afraid the addiction might be permanent, and it’s all my fault,’ I said ruefully. I’d been too old really for the little fuzzy animal toys when they first came out, but I’d loved them anyway and, over the years, added a few more to my collection. Now Stella, at three, had taken them over and I’d bought her even more.
‘I know she’s scarily bright, but isn’t she a bit young for them?’
‘Perhaps, but she’s never put things in her mouth, apart from her thumb, and she plays quietly with them for hours. She wants a house for the mouse family to live in next, but there are a few other things that I know she’d like. There’s a Father Christmas mouse too, with a little tree and parcels – that looked fun.’
‘You can show me on the internet, and I’ll order something. You’re coming up to Sticklepond to stay with Martha for Christmas, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, and bringing all the ingredients for festive fun with us, as usual, because Ma wouldn’t bother otherwise. I do love going up there and I know that Ma, for all her reclusive ways, loves Stella.’
‘We all love Stella, she’s bright and delightful – she read her Meg and Mog book to me last night,’ Celia said. ‘And then she said if she knew a witch she would get her to do a spell to make her heart better.’
‘I only wish I knew one. She’s so tiny for nearly three and a half and she gets tired so easily that we still have to take the buggy everywhere. She doesn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive and any slight infection is dangerous …’ I sighed. ‘Well, we’ll see what the treatment plan they’ve drawn up for her at the hospital for next year is.’
‘They did say she might need another operation, didn’t they? Perhaps it will be the final one, so she can live a normal life,’ Celia said optimistically.
But there didn’t seem to be an ongoing treatment plan – or not one leading in a positive direction. I was shocked when the consultant told me there was nothing more they could do and gave me to understand that Stella’s long-term outlook was poor