and six cats in Southport, who were all pining for her.
I would also pine for her, though she’d promised to return when Stella was finally allowed home.
Ma was staying on for a few more days, though I was sure she was dying to head straight back up north, too. In fact, I was surprised she’d stayed as long as she had.
When I was growing up in Hampstead I’d thought she’d seemed happy enough, though she was always fairly reclusive and preoccupied with her work, of course, but she sold up and moved back with alacrity to the Lancashire village where she was born after Dad died.
‘Ma’ is not some cute contraction of ‘Mum’, but a relic of her early attempts to get me to call her by her Christian name, Martha. She was never much like any of my school friends’ mothers, delegating most of her maternal responsibilities to a series of foreign au pairs, but I’d never doubted that in her way she loved me. And Anna, the final and most beloved of the au pairs, a tall, blonde, Swedish domestic goddess, had instilled my love of cooking and baking, so it worked out brilliantly for me.
I emailed Anna the news about Stella and received a warm, reassuring reply straight away: she’d always had the power to make me feel comforted, an effect that has also rubbed off onto the cakes she taught me to make.
I decided that for Stella’s first birthday I would make her a prinsesstårta, that most splendid of Swedish celebration cakes.
‘You are going to tell Adam about Stella at some point soon, aren’t you?’ Celia asked, just before she finally set off home.
‘No! Why should I, after he accused me of getting pregnant on purpose when I told him she was on the way and then suggested I get an abortion?’
‘I know he didn’t want the baby, but now she’s arrived he might feel differently,’ she suggested. Having an incredibly generous heart she was always looking for the best in everyone, even my absent ex-fiancé, Adam Scott – or ‘Scott of the Antarctic’, as Ma generally referred to him.
‘I don’t think so. Anyway, he’s changed his email address and I couldn’t phone him in Antarctica even if I wanted to, which I don’t.’
‘Facebook?’
‘I’ve blocked him.’
‘I still think he ought to know,’ she said stubbornly. ‘He has a responsibility to support you, too.’
‘I don’t want his support and I’m sure he still wouldn’t be interested – even less so in a baby with health problems, because he’s got that phobia about illness and hospitals, remember?’
‘Oh, yes, I’d forgotten about that. So perhaps you’re right, but if he hears about the baby from anyone, he may contact you when he comes back to the UK.’
‘I doubt it, and it wouldn’t be till October of next year, when Stella—’
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
