by Sue Watson
‘My only worry is I’ve left it too late to make proper Christmas cakes…’ I said.
‘But it’s still a couple of weeks before Christmas Day, Amy, won’t that be long enough?’
‘Oh I can bake them in a few hours, it’s just that Christmas cakes are usually made in the autumn. They need to mature, and during the two or three months before Christmas they have to be fed brandy on a weekly basis.’
‘So do I, love, so do I,’ she said, delving in her drawers. I was expecting her to emerge with a bottle of stashed brandy and was just about to warn of the dangers of secret drinking when she produced a completed silvery table runner with a flourish.
‘You do the Christmas cakes and mince pies and I’ll do the tables,’ she said, with a big smile. She’d obviously given up on school work for the day and was flattening the table runner out along her desk, planning how she’d set the tables. ‘Anyway, Amy – don’t worry about brandy – some of the residents have been feeding on brandy for too long,’ she laughed, ‘and all it takes is one whiff of the barmaid’s apron.’
‘Okay, so we’ll keep alcohol to a minimum. I don’t suppose the budget can afford it anyway – which is why I’ve been delving around in my mind and trying to come up with ideas to dress the hall. Tin foil crackers on the tables …and jam jars with tea lights in,’ I suggested. ‘I’ve got loads of tinsel I can bring from home too…’
‘Ooh yes – let’s try and bring a bit of glitter into the poor souls’ lives,’ she sighed.
’Shall we have a theme?’ I asked. ‘People like a theme at Christmas, even if it’s just a colour or era.’
‘How about a silver singles Christmas,’ she giggled. ‘You and I could dress in glitter and stick two fingers up to being married.’
‘Mmm, the more I think about being married, the more I realise how unhappy I was. I still am, but that’s about adjustment…it takes a while to get used to being on your own, but it’s not the worst thing in the world. Being with someone you don’t love…and don’t even like, is worse than being alone. I think I fell out of love with Neil a long time ago…I just don’t know anymore how I feel about him.’
‘I do…but it’s not repeatable within the walls of an educational establishment,’ she sniffed.
I was keen to change the subject so I didn’t have to think too hard about Neil and how many years he’d sucked from me, ‘Bella Bradley’s doing a “Dickensian” Christmas this year,’ I said.
‘Oh…Dickensian? Children with rickets, cramped living conditions, pollution and the white plague?’
I laughed, ‘No. Red and green with oldy-worldy baubles.’
‘Ah, that Dickensian Christmas,’ she smiled.
Later that day I popped into the hostel to drop off the clothes I’d found in my wardrobe. Maisie was delighted with the warm coat and jumpers, but when I suggested another of the ladies try on a plum knitted dress and the cobalt blue jumper I’d found hard to part with, she turned her nose up.
‘Ooh no, dear, it’s not me – far too frumpy,’ she said, pulling a face.
I hadn’t taken it too much to heart until I offered the same dress and jumper to Pearl. She was an elderly lady wearing mostly layers of old coats and shabby cardigans who I imagined would be delighted with my cast-off knits, but she took great offence.
‘Do I look like the kind of woman who’d wear something like that? I’m not one of them Amish people,’ she snapped. I was a little embarrassed at being turned down, another slap in the face, but a reminder that being homeless doesn’t mean you have to lose your style. And apparently Pearl had better taste than I did.
As the hostel budget was as tight as my own, I knew I would need to box clever with the baking and not be able to create the kind of extortionately priced Christmas confections Bella was conjuring up every day on TV. Growing up, my family had been poor and Mum’s baking and cooking a highlight of our rather stark Christmases. Her recipes were brilliant, a talent borne out of having to develop her own recipes because she couldn’t always afford the ingredients. She’d used beetroot in her chocolate cake and grated carrot in her Christmas cakes – making the most of the veg from Dad’s allotment.
Until now I hadn’t used veg in my baking despite it being quite fashionable, but without the money for all the usual ingredients, this year I would try it out. And who better to help me through this than my mum. So I took out her old box of recipes and started to leaf through all her notes and cuttings. I used Mum’s recipes throughout the year but there was a special folder with Christmas scrawled across and one of Mum’s doodles of a sprig of holly. Every Christmas I’d take the folder out, just enjoying the way it made me feel close to her, like I was bringing her back into my life.
I smiled to myself thinking about how sumptuous our Christmas table used to look, with very little. One Christmas, Mum bought a small chicken instead of a turkey, but none of us realised because she made it look and taste so delicious. She’d added all the trimmings and served it golden and glistening with loads of fresh winter vegetables. I thought about this as I watched the TV, and wondered what Maisie and Stanley would make of Bella’s lips quivering in anticipation behind a flaming pudding. Having been comforted by her ‘plump fruits’ for Christmas in previous years, I was now irritated by her flouncing around the kitchen smugly.
Wouldn’t we all love to have the very best of everything? But then Bella had never had to worry about money, had she? As a child Bella and her family had lived in a big house and her parents both drove expensive cars and went out for posh meals. I remember a rare occasion when her mum took us for tea at a hotel. It was Christmas and as we pulled up outside the turreted building I could barely take in the enormous tree stacked with lights and topped with a huge star. Bella’s mum was so glamorous, and I recall sitting at the table in church-like silence, glancing at her while discreetly fingering the thick, white napkin on my knee. She ordered herself a vodka martini and asked me what kind of tea I would like and as I wasn’t used to such grandeur I innocently said ‘hot’, which made Bella smirk and her mother told her not to be so rude. Then she put her lipstick on and lit a cigarette at the table and I thought she was the one being rude, blowing smoke over our finger sandwiches.
Being with Bella’s mum made me miss mine even more and when a little later she shook a cracker at me with one hand while holding her cigarette with another I wanted to cry. I wanted to pull a cracker with my mum, not this chilly ice queen with bright orange lips and smoke coming out of her nose like a Christmas dragon.
Bella’s mother was dark-haired and voluptuous like Bella – but she was brittle too and as a child I could almost feel the chill around her. She couldn’t have been more different from my own mother. My mum never wore make-up and was usually dressed in her flour-covered apron but she was always smiling – even though she didn’t have much to smile about.
To make ends meet Mum regularly baked and cooked supper dishes for several women in the big houses on Leamington Row. Before she had kids, Mum had been a cook at the Barton-Pratt’s home and Margaret Barton-Pratt – or Mrs BP as Mum called her – had recommended Mum to all her wealthy friends. Mum was reliable and cheap and at the same time she could master any recipe and provide wonderful dishes for dinner parties at half the price of the big catering company in town. The women would also call up and ask for simple suppers like fish pie, lasagnes, curries – and this of course would usually include an order for Mum’s wonderful cakes and pies.
Dad used to say it was daylight robbery and Mum didn’t charge enough. ‘They can afford to pay a lot more, you’re barely covering the cost of the ingredients,’ he’d tell her. But Mum was kind – too kind, she adored working with food and was glad of the money. I realise now she was also flattered by the patronage of these women who always made a big fuss of her food. But looking back she wasn’t really valued for her talent, they knew she was good but she was also useful, reliable and most importantly - cheap. They didn’t see a human being, they saw a way to m
ake themselves look good in front of their husbands and friends without spending any of their time or too much money. One December Mum worked for three days on a Christmas party and when the driver was sent to collect it he said they’d pay after Christmas. Mum was devastated, I remember her sitting in the kitchen sobbing, there were pots in the sink, flour all over the table…the detritus of all her work. Not only had they not paid her for the dishes she’d made, she’d borrowed money from my nan and a couple of friends for the ingredients. Dad had his arm round her, trying to comfort her saying it was all okay, but it wasn’t, his wages barely covered the basics, the money she earned from the cooking was for presents.
‘It’s not just our Christmas, it’s everyone else’s,’ she’d said, devastated that she’d put loved ones in such a situation at this time of year.
‘I can’t buy you that doll for Christmas,’ she’d said to me later through her tears. ‘And I’d left a deposit on our Annie’s hairdryer and Gill’s new dress.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Mum, we’ve got each other – “things” don’t matter,’ I’d said, echoing what she always said to me.
‘Oh love, you’re right,’ she’d smiled, stroking my hair, ‘but there’s nothing harder than not being able to buy your own kids a Christmas present.’
I remembered telling her that one day I would be rich and famous and would buy her a big house.
‘Other people will bake cakes for you, Mum,’ I’d said.
‘But I wouldn’t want them to – I love being in the kitchen, darling,’ she’d smiled.
I didn’t understand then, but later I could see there was something calming and comforting about being in a kitchen warmed by an oven full of cakes and creating delicious food to share with the people you love.
Now I was in my own kitchen, going through Mum’s Christmas recipes, remembering her like it was yesterday. I made a cup of tea and began leafing through the folder, each recipe a reminder of a taste, a moment – a time from the past.
Every now and then I’d look up from the recipes at the TV, to watch as Dovecote (always described in voiceover as ‘Bella’s beautiful home in The Cotswolds’) was paraded all over the screen. Each year it seemed more stunning than the last – decked to the rafters, champagne on ice, gifts wrapped in colour co-ordinated paper and bows under the tree.
Christmas Eve drinks parties, girlie nights in with Christmassy cupcakes and cocktails and a backdrop of homemade pies, bread, and cakes were what ‘Bella’s Christmas Bake Off’ was all about. Everything was smothered in icing sugar, and fairy lights – and the shiniest Christmas bauble on the screen was Bella.
Bella’s personal life off screen seemed equally perfect and straight out of a glossy magazine. Except for one thing: she and her delicious husband had never had children and she never spoke about it in interviews, which intrigued me. I knew she’d always longed for children and even if that had changed I imagined she’d be keen to produce a set of perfect ones to match her interiors. She’d often invite ‘friends’ children’ onto the set for the Christmas filming, saying ‘it’s not Christmas without children’, as they ran around her kitchen dipping their fingers in bowls. Bella would scold the children affectionately, rolling her eyes to the camera, her long, luscious lashes brushing perfect cheeks. ‘Kids!’ she’d say, and it all felt so natural and real. For a woman with no children of her own she seemed relaxed in their company and positively revelled in their boisterousness. It made me sad to think she and Peter had never had any children of their own, and I often wondered why.
It was those moments, when she ruffled the children’s hair and played impromptu hide and seek that won over the viewers and touched me too. Apart from her childlessness which was never discussed, Bella involved the media, her viewers and fans in every moment of her life. She often posted selfies with her perfectly risen soufflés her ‘to die for’ meringues which she titled ‘Stiff Peaks.’ She’d also put quite intimate photos of her or Peter – or both - on twitter. I remember one photo she posted was of the two of them in bed, his modesty covered only by a hand towel. Bella had also titled this ‘stiff peaks,’ and there wasn’t a meringue in sight. Yes, Bella shared everything from post coital nibbles to supper plates eaten on the other side of the world on film stars’ yachts. She had recently been described as ‘The Kim Kardashian of Cake,’ because of her constant selfies, tweets and her inability to hide anything from her fans – but I knew differently.
Nevertheless, it seemed to the rest of the world that she was a no-holds barred star who shared every intimate moment. Only recently, Bella had talked in some detail about the Silver Fox’s vasectomy, which put paid to the infertility rumours and increased her TV ratings tenfold. It must have been an oversight on the director’s part, but it wasn’t an easy watch as she shared this revelation while slicing a large Italian sausage.
Bella was now leaning seductively on the bright red Aga, full lips, rounded breasts and rising bakes, telling me what to stuff my bird with. I could barely reconcile this glamorous, sophisticated woman with the girl I’d once known. From being little, we’d played together at school and travelled the bumpy journey through the love and lip gloss of our teens. We were inseparable, slightly competitive, but ultimately very close.
Thinking about the past again was bittersweet. I still felt so guilty about what happened between us.
Bella refused to talk to me after what I did. I’d called her at home but her mum was always curt and said she’d left the area but didn’t know where she’d gone. The last time I called, she’d been very sharp, saying, ‘look, I’ve no idea where she is – and I don’t want to, I’m getting on with my life. My advice to you is to do the same.’
Then, when Bella had been gone about a year I received a postcard out of the blue. I was ecstatic to see her distinctive handwriting again. I was also pleased because the very act of getting in touch hopefully meant she’d forgiven me. ‘Hi Ames,’ it said, ‘I’m in Watford now, I have a new boyfriend and he’s gorgeous – he’s asked me to marry him. It’s going to be amazing!’
She’d put an address on the postcard and I immediately wrote back with my congratulations and offered to get the train and go and see her. But months went by, I heard nothing and it occurred to me that her postcard was merely a way of showing me that she was doing fine without me. Then a few months later another postcard with a pebbly beach landed on the doormat: ‘Hi Ames, I’m living in Devon now, I met this lovely guy…he’s gorgeous, got loads of money…’ A year went by until: ‘Dear Amy, I’m on holiday in Portofino with my new boyfriend David….’ She wasn’t trying to keep in touch, she was letting me know that despite what I’d done she’d survived and was having a wonderful life of money and glamour and had left me behind. One day, I opened a newspaper to see my old friend dressed up on the red carpet at some TV premiere. She was now apparently going out with a soap actor who played the bad-boy character in Dalmation Road. She looked wonderful and I hoped she’d finally found the happiness she’d been looking for. But just a week after she was on the front pages again, this time in tears with a black eye – it seemed playing the aggressive bad boy in a TV soap wasn’t such a stretch for the actor in real life. I sent her a letter to her last known address, I thought she might need a friend, but I heard nothing. Perhaps she hadn’t forgiven me after all?
It wasn’t long after the doomed relationship with the soap actor that Bella finally seemed to have found what she was looking for in Peter Bradley. She announced breathlessly on a TV talk show that the delicious foreign correspondent was her soul mate. A matter of months later they were married and the wedding was everywhere. She wore ecru lace and the ceremony took place in Venice, there were so many photos in the papers and magazines I felt like I’d been a guest. It was just as well, because I never received an invitation.
Marriage was obviously good for Bella, shortly after her nuptials, ‘Bella’s Bake Off’ was launched and she was suddenly the woman we all wanted to be.
I somet
imes wondered if she ever thought of me, her best friend, the girl who’d been her confidante through the tough years of growing up. In spite of what happened she’d risen like a phoenix – but I could still never forgive myself. I messed with her life and if she still hated me for it I couldn’t blame her. Watching her on screen, her glorious Christmas displayed around her home while with mine was in tatters around my ankles, I wondered if it was karma.
3
The Cook, the Thief, the Cakes and the Mother
The following evening I flicked on the TV to see Bella again as she talked about the traditions of Christmas and reminded me of my own tradition of sending her a card and a recipe. This year didn’t have to be any different, I never gave up easily and who knew, this might be the year that one of her lackeys decides to actually pass on the card to the woman herself. My annual ‘Christmas card in vain’ to Bella wasn’t just about our tainted friendship and all the hurt we’d been through, it was about my mum too. It was about our shared memories of her – by writing out her recipes and sending them to the only other person who remembered her as I did I was keeping my mum’s memory alive. The previous year I’d sent her mum’s gingerbread recipe which was very special to both of us, but even that recipe hadn’t prompted Bella to get in touch and I had to conclude Bella wasn’t receiving my Christmas post.
If she’d opened that card and remembered the gingerbread houses she would have been straight on the phone demanding we get together…wouldn’t she? Had I really been such a bad friend that she couldn’t bear to see me ever again? We’d both said things in the heat of the moment, but surely she was ready to forgive me now?
More than thirty years after we’d first iced gingerbread in Mum’s kitchen I was watching Bella ice a gingerbread house on screen. We were grown-ups now, but listening to her voice, her laugh and the way she screwed up her nose when she giggled told me the old Bella was in there somewhere under the make-up and the TV lights. Hearing her laugh I remembered the fun, the sheer innocence of our childhood friendship, bright pink and sweet like the icing on those gingerbread walls.