Recipes for Melissa

by Teresa Driscoll

  Melissa had gone to Cornwall, imagining that it might be kinder to leave Sam. To set him free of this and to make sure he would never be in her father’s shoes. It was the moment she realised that love is about the person you love and not your own happiness. She could give up the option of motherhood also – for keeps. She was young and ambitious and could throw herself into her career instead. She didn’t even have to have the gene test. If she wasn’t to become a mother, she couldn’t pass it on. She would simply have scans every year. She could take the contract in London. Try a job abroad.

  And then just two days later the whole world had changed. She was leaving Cornwall with the man she would always call her father driving her car in convoy behind while she sat alongside Sam, secretly carrying his child already. It must have happened in Cyprus. She had an upset stomach for a few days which must have affected the pill. And even this early and even though she was still quite young and was afraid and would not have chosen it this way, she suddenly felt that it was no longer about her and knew for the first time exactly how her mother had felt in those final weeks. And it completely broke her heart into pieces. Because the only thing which thundered through Melissa’s head, over and over as she sat in her bubble and looked out on a different world, was that her child must not have this thing.

  Fifty, fifty.

  Heads.

  Tails.

  Melissa made another very difficult call. She decided not to tell Sam about the baby until she had the gene test result. Though she had decided she would have the child, whatever the results, she wanted at least one of them to have the small chance of hearing the news in a better way. Having a child with a person you loved, even by accident, was supposed surely to be a wondrous thing. It was not meant to feel like this.

  To speed things up, Melissa decided to pay for a private referral. She informed her GP, using the same clinic and labs that the NHS recommended. Just hopefully a little faster. Around four weeks. She saw a genetics counsellor twice who referred her also, despite Melissa’s initial resistance, to a grief counsellor.

  ‘There is a lot of unfinished business,’ was what she said after their first session. ‘How about we deal with it, Melissa?’

  The genetics counsellor also made inquiries about her mother’s oncologist to see if the original test result could be traced. It was a long shot but would apparently greatly help the accuracy of Melissa’s test if they could know what her mother’s had revealed. James Hall the lawyer was using the book from Eleanor as evidence of consent – that Melissa’s mother wanted her to know the result. Melissa went along with all of this on the strict condition that Max was not to be told that her mother had secretly taken the test. Her mother had carried a lot to spare him this distress. It would not be right to tell him now.

  And so they all faced four long weeks of waiting – each coping very differently but with the same exaggerated pretence at normality.

  Over and over, Melissa apologised to Sam for bolting. For putting him and Max through that. She should have talked to him, she said. Shared. She knew that. But she was just so terribly afraid. All she told him was that the journal included information which suggested there was a stronger chance of a gene fault than anyone had realised.

  In response Sam was almost unbearably upbeat. ‘It will be fine. Negative,’ a strategy which was meant kindly but to Melissa seemed somehow to diminish what she was feeling. The terrible fear. They couldn’t know that it would be fine. She might have to have her breasts cut off. How could that be fine?

  And then she would feel terribly guilty and remember that he did not know about the baby; just how much there was at stake now.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sam. I’m just afraid.’

  ‘I know.’

  Max upped the running. Morning and evening. He took Anna to dinner – their first proper date – and tried very hard not to mention any of this and then ended up spending an hour pouring out his heart.

  ‘I am so sorry, Anna. All this baggage. You don’t need this. It is selfish and completely insensitive and unfair—’

  She had reached out then and suddenly kissed him.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She looked as surprised as he did.

  ‘Goodness. Don’t be.’ Kissing her back.

  And she had confessed then, still blushing and awkward, that she was flattered that he trusted her and wanted to share this. Had been drawn to him from their very first meeting and realising how inappropriate this was – her boss after all – she had overcompensated by behaving so bonkers. She told him that she got this odd feeling in her stomach whenever she saw him. Ridiculous, I know – but there it is. Seeing as we’re talking honestly here.

  And so there were more dinners and walks and he told her all about Sophie, then went to pick up the gift from Sophie’s gallery which was a painting of him and Melissa on a beach in the rain – in the distance a rainbow of purples and pinks and clashing blues. A tad sentimental, some might think. Not at all her usual work – the owner of the gallery had observed. But there is the foil that the rainbow colours are deliberately wrong. Out of sequence. Rather clever, actually. Yes. You have a rather nice piece there.

  Max put the painting on his wall and in the fourth long week of waiting, Anna began to join him running. Max knew then, running alongside her, silent but in rhythm, that if it were not for the cloud hanging over his daughter, he would be happy. Yes. He could actually imagine being happy again.

  They could not know – Anna and Max – just how far they would come to run together over the years and decades ahead. Marathon after marathon.

  None of this they could yet know. And so Anna would not yet stay overnight at Max’s – too afraid to upset her son – and instead they lay in bed in daylight, long hours after making love because neither of them could bear to get up and go back to the world.

  Marcus was in turn a surprise. The shock of Melissa’s circumstance – like a wake-up call. He put in long hours to try to get his business back on track and took up his father’s offer of a bridging loan plus the rental of a flat to get him on his feet. Each of the four Fridays he invited Melissa and Sam for supper with an update on his progress.

  While back in her own kitchen, Melissa cooked also – slowly working her way through all of her mother’s recipes. The scones, the Easter biscuits, the soda bread and with it even an attempt at the jam, which though it set too hard that first time was still delicious.

  She made the boeuf bourguignon again, serving it this time with rice. And secretly she began drafts of her blog, detailing her efforts and her thoughts. The sense of connection and comfort, using her mother’s treasured mixer and her little box of biscuit cutters.

  Not everything went well – but she remembered the advice in the journal. We bake, we learn, we get better…

  And then one day she decided to cook the cupcakes again, nipping to the nearest supermarket for cream cheese and rather dubious out-of-season strawberries for the topping. Melissa creamed the butter and sugar by hand this time, using a wooden spoon. Her mother used to do this sometimes when they were not in a hurry and she liked the sound. The crunch as you pressed the caster sugar against the bowl, coaxing it into the butter. It was on this occasion, reaching for an orange to zest, that something very special happened. So that by the time Sam came home early, with the cakes in the oven, she was sitting on the floor of the kitchen, back against the cupboards, her eyes red.

  ‘Oh God. Are you alright, Melissa? What’s happened?’

  ‘No. It’s OK, Sam. Something nice. I remembered something really nice…’

  After that Melissa returned to the computer a bit too. She claimed illness for missing the appointment with the London editor and was surprised to be given a second chance. The meeting went better than she could have hoped and so she took the contract, reasoning that it did not matter now that it was only temporary and freelance. She would be giving up work for a bit soon anyway. The baby. And OK – it would mean a new career plan, to have a baby this young, but th
e beauty of writing was she could work from home some of the time. Freelancing would actually be better.

  Through all of this the imperative – to try to stay as positive and as busy as possible. Cooking pretty much every day and sitting up to read her mother’s journal over and over when in the middle of the night she could not sleep and needed to hear her voice.

  Sam noticed that she had given up coffee and alcohol but Melissa used the script of a whole new healthy way of living. The worry of this cancer cloud.

  The appointment for the result was a Thursday. Sam drove and Max came too although Melissa insisted that her father must wait outside the consulting room.

  None of them said a word on the journey.

  It was a cold but clear day with a sky so blue that Melissa felt it was somehow much too beautiful. Out of sync.

  ‘You ready?’ Sam asked as they stood outside the door on the first floor.

  ‘No.’

  Heads. Tails.

  She was wondering now whether she should have opted for the results by telephone. ‘Do you want me to ask them to wait a bit? Go for a walk?’

  Would it have been worse or better by phone? She couldn’t decide.

  ‘No.’

  Inside finally, they sat side by side, waiting for the counsellor who came through from an adjoining office. She was smiling.

  ‘The news is good, Melissa.’

  It was Sam who made the loud noise. A weird noise which wasn’t a word and wasn’t exactly a cry either.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He was embarrassed.

  ‘Don’t be sorry. It’s a big ask. Waiting for this.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ Melissa became aware suddenly of the sky again. Through the window. True blue. Not a trick after all. She would remember it always, she told herself – this very blue and very beautiful sky.

  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.