Recipes for Melissa (31 page)

The counsellor’s voice seemed to drift away with the detail. They had tested for everything they could. This was not an absolute guarantee that she could never have a breast cancer. She understood this? But no. They had found none of the genetic flaws which science had identified so far as pointing to an increased risk.

The result was negative.

Melissa asked then if Sam would mind leaving the room. He should go and tell Max immediately but Melissa had a couple more questions.

The counsellor poured her a glass of water as Sam kissed her on the forehead and closed the door.

‘Is this about your father’s test?’

‘I’m sorry?’ Melissa had wanted to ask only if they had traced her mother’s results.

‘It’s just your father agreed that his results should be shared with you. We phoned his over earlier.’

‘What results? I have no idea what you are talking about.’

‘He wanted to be tested also. For the genetic flaw? He didn’t tell you.’

‘But why? I don’t understand. There’s no cancer in his family. Why on earth would he want that?’

‘He was worried that if your result came back positive, that it might be from his side of the family. That there was no way of knowing for sure that it came from your mother.’

Melissa still didn’t understand.

‘But that’s ridiculous. Irrational. My mother was the one with the cancer.’

‘We are not always rational when we are afraid.’

‘And you agreed to this? Why would you agree to this? ‘

Melissa’s heart was now racing. DNA. Blood groups. Good God. What if a parental match was part of…

No. Please, no.

‘You asked us not to tell him that your mother had been tested. We had to respect that. And so in the circumstance, well – we agreed. We felt it would help him to accept the whole picture.’

‘And my mother’s test? Did you trace the result?’

‘We did.’

‘It was positive, wasn’t it?’

‘It was Melissa.’

She closed her eyes.

Heads. Tails.

And then a terrible thought growing and growing.

‘My father’s test. I don’t understand a great deal about genes. DNA and everything. And I have no idea why my father did this.’

‘Like I say. He didn’t want your mother to be blamed. If it went the wrong way. Without being sure.’

‘Right. Yes. But his test. Did it throw up anything? Well. Anything surprising?’ She was afraid to ask directly – about their match – but Christ. He was standing outside in the corridor. Melissa tried to read the counsellor’s eyes.

‘Well there’s the standard familial DNA match. You and your father, I mean. Ninety nine point nine per cent. That’s what we’d expect. But there wasn’t anything else unusual.’ The counsellor was glancing at the computer screen now. ‘As I say – he asked for his results by phone this morning and said we were to share everything with you. But nothing here. Nothing at all to worry about.’

‘Please don’t tell him my mother had the faulty gene.’ Melissa felt relief creep through every muscle of her body. As if she had not realised until that moment just how tense so many of her muscles really were.

‘I won’t. Are you OK, Melissa?’

‘Very OK. Very, very OK.’

She was thinking of her mother. How much she had loved her and wished that she could have taken all that worrying from her shoulders all those years ago. How she was so glad and so grateful that she had the book. Had her with her still.

Outside then after long and silent hugs with both Sam and her father, she asked Sam to wait upstairs a moment, leading Max away with the excuse of needing hot drinks. And then, once they were alone, in an alcove by the drinks machine, she cleared her throat.

‘In the journal, mum said you would do a great job.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Right at the beginning of the journal. She said that you would do a great job, looking after me.’

Max’s eyes changed – drifting away momentarily and then back, locked onto hers. Questioning.

‘I should have told you that before. Because she was right, Dad. And I don’t say thank you nearly often enough.’ Kissing him on the cheek and then pulling back to ask him to wait just a moment – while she went to collect Sam.

‘You gonna be OK, Dad?’ Hand pressed against his face.

‘I am now.’

Back upstairs, Sam was searching on his phone for something.

‘Sam, I need you to listen to me.’

‘I am taking you to lunch. No arguments. You and Max. Somewhere really terrific. Somewhere outrageously expensive.’

‘Look at me. I need you to listen to me.’

‘Champagne.’

She wouldn’t drink champagne. Couldn’t drink champagne.

‘There is something I need to tell you. And you must promise not to be angry. That I didn’t tell you before.’

He tilted his head.

‘I am a bit young. We are probably both a bit young. And I wouldn’t have planned it this way. But you need to know that I have never been more happy.’

‘You’re not making sense, Melissa. Of course you’re happy. The test was negative.’

‘No.’ She reached out for his hand and placed it on her stomach.

She looked right into his face. He moved his head by way of a question, narrowing his eyes.

For a moment Melissa could imagine another face watching and listening. Warm eyes looking down. Warm sand. Running across a beach.

‘We’re having a baby, Sam. It must have been Cyprus. When I had that bug. It was an accident. But I’m not sorry. And I really need to know what you think. I mean, if you think the timing is tricky with the partnership now. And if you’re very angry I didn’t say. It’s just with all this hanging over us, I was afraid… Say something, Sam. Please say something.’

‘A baby?’ He looked utterly shocked.

‘Yes. A baby.’

‘Oh my God.’ He tilted his head back and closed his eyes.

‘You’re very shocked?’

‘Of course I’m shocked.’

‘Bad shocked? I mean – are you very angry? Because I didn’t tell you?’

‘No, Melissa. Good shocked. A baby?
A real baby
?’

He put his arms around her then and squeezed very tight – just standing stunned and squeezing tight as a secretary tried to make her way past with a pile of files.

Melissa then pulled back. ‘Of course this means we have a problem’

‘You mean the job? The contract? You’re not to worry about that. I can keep us until…’

‘No, no. I don’t mean money.’

‘What, then?’

‘Well – it’s just I find that I feel so different. Terribly old-fashioned suddenly.’

Melissa was thinking of the final chapters in her mother’s book then. Not just the tips and the tricks but the joy on the page. The colic and the cots. All the ups and the down.

And one day… you will know exactly what I am wittering on about. Because it will suddenly become what you live for
…

Sam meantime still looked puzzled as another member of staff came out of a side room and they had to step backwards to let them pass.

Melissa looked over the railing to the atrium below them where Max stepped into view, carrying a cardboard tray with three drinks.

She needed to say it before they joined him.

‘I am going to have to ask
you
to marry
me
, Sam.’

And now for the first time ever he did the tortoise face himself. Pulled his head right back into his neck in sheer surprise before closing his eyes – a freeze-frame of utter disbelief – before opening them to kiss first her forehead and then each of her eyelids in turn. Melissa now embarrassed as another person appeared from yet another office along the corridor, watching them and waiting to squeeze past.

‘Is that a yes, Sam?’

Taking her finally very tightly into his arms again just as Max, below them, lifted his little tray of drinks as a signal to hurry.

‘That’s a yes, Melissa.’

ORANGE ZEST …

At the kitchen table the daughter is eating an orange. See how she breaks the segments, one at a time, placing each between her back teeth – wincing in bittersweet anticipation and then smiling as the juice bursts onto her tongue.

Beside the stove the mother is watching this and smiling also. She puts a zester in the sink then bends down to check the ovens. On the left, a tray of cupcakes is set on the middle shelf. In the smaller oven on the right, a leg of lamb is sighing into an unctuous mess of onions and wine and herbs. Look at the mother’s eyes more closely now.

See how they change as she turns again to her daughter.

‘When these cakes are cool enough, you can have one with your milk, then it’s time for bed.’

‘I’m not tired.’

The mother moves her head so that the daughter will not see her bite away an even broader smile as she picks up the oven timer from the edge of the table and pops it into her pocket. The child, eyes already heavy, will be asleep within ten minutes of head on pillow.

‘Listen – mummy is going through to finish her writing. You wash your sticky hands when you’ve finished. Yes? Then cake, then bed.’

The mother stands, checks the timer again in her pocket then walks past the table where she smooths her daughter’s fringe back from her eyes and kisses her forehead. Through the hall next, across the oak floor and up the stairs. In the corner of the bedroom there is an alcove with a big, bay window. She sits at a wide dressing table-cum-desk and glances for a moment at the tree beyond the window – straining to the left with the wind. Very soon her husband’s car will appear on the drive and the daughter will run into the hall to greet him. With her sticky fingers still unwashed.

The mother opens her laptop …

ORANGE ZEST….AND OTHER STORIES

BY FOOD BLOGGER MELISSA DANCE

Melissa leans forward to type the date.
March 2015
. She sees Sam’s car crunch across the gravel and smiles at the reaction downstairs.

And so – what to write today?

Ah yes.

Today she will share once again how this all began. How a campaigning journalist shape-shifted into the kitchen. How a precious journal sparked a memory. That sparked a blog. That turned a woman who thought cooking was just about food into a woman who can travel through time.

Today she will write about a child at a kitchen table in Cornwall who cannot peel her orange, moaning and whining for help. The mother – creaming butter and sugar and smiling –
I tell you what, Melissa. Why don’t I show you how to zest before I peel it? We can try the zest in the cakes instead of vanilla? See what we think
?

Yes. She will write once more about that twist. The memory and the magic of a single, simple scent.

Zest the orange. Close your eyes. Travel back there. Right through time.

Child at the table. Orange on the plate. Reaching out with sticky fingers….

…to hold a mother’s hand.

THE END

A NOTE FROM TERESA

Thank you so much for reading Melissa’s story – pure fiction, of course, but the theme does come from the emotional landscape of my life and I worried a bit about that.

I lost my mother to cancer when I was 17 and for a long time I wondered whether that experience had any place in my writing life. Then as a BBC television news presenter, I was asked to start a local Race for Life to raise money for Cancer Research and there were all these lovely ladies, many with a single word pinned to their backs.
‘Mum’.
It was both traumatic and comforting also and I realised, as a writer, I perhaps had something to say…

It took me a long time to find a strong enough fictional story to carry a theme so close to so many people’s hearts. But once Melissa and Eleanor finally stepped into my writing room, the novel almost seemed to write itself.

My next novel with Bookouture is THE SEARCH and I will share publication news and updates on my website
www.teresadriscoll.com
. You are also very welcome to get in touch via Twitter or my Facebook Author page.

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Thank you, again, for reading my debut. If you are able to post a review, that would mean a lot to me. Most important - I feel so very proud and privileged to be signing off here as an author at last.

With warm wishes,

Teresa Driscoll

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