Cathy nodded.
‘Oooh!’ Erica exclaimed again warmly. ‘That’s fantastic!’
Then Colin made a beeline for the banana loaf, while Dora took a Black Forest muffin and Iris popped a square of millionaire’s shortbread into her mouth with a satisfied sigh.
While Cathy’s sense of pride grew with every expression of absolute cake-induced rapture, so did her embarrassment. Accepting compliments wasn’t something that came easily to her, regardless of how well-intentioned they were. She was beginning to wish she’d dumped her cakes and left before anyone could eat them.
‘How do you get this so light?’ one woman asked as she marvelled at a cherry scone.
‘Oh, I can always taste baking powder in mine no matter what I do,’ another said. ‘Nothing worse… You must give me the recipe for yours, Cathy.’
‘Oh, me too!’ the first woman said.
‘No point in giving me the recipe for anything,’ Erica said with a laugh as she took her second coconut madeleine from the tub. ‘But any time you feel like baking some for me, I’d be glad to take them off your hands!’
To be polite, and because she felt sorry for the sunken fairy cakes, Cathy took one and bit into it.
‘Oh, I don’t suppose that’s a patch on yours,’ the lady who’d brought them in said. Cathy thought she might be Myrtle but she couldn’t be sure.
‘No, no, it’s lovely,’ Cathy said, forcing a smile. There was nothing wrong with it – a perfectly adequate little cake – but it wasn’t very thrilling. Cathy swallowed it down anyway.
‘Would you like another?’ the lady asked.
‘Ooh, yes please. Makes a change from eating my own, doesn’t it?’ Cathy said, taking one but wishing she was eating her own.
‘More tea?’ Iris asked, coming round with the pot. There was a chorus of ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ and a forest of hands holding up cups to be filled, Cathy’s included. It was almost like being at primary school again when the table server asked if anyone wanted the leftover jam roly-poly before it went back to the kitchen and there’d be a veritable scrum to get it before someone else did.
‘That’s a good cup of tea,’ Erica said as she slurped from her cup.
‘Special teabags,’ Iris replied, tapping the side of her nose, and Cathy couldn’t imagine what kind of teabags required being kept secret, though she did agree it was pretty good tea.
The door opened, a faint draught coming from the larger space beyond it, and another man walked in. Cathy noted straight away the black shirt and jacket and starched white dog collar. He was far younger than she’d have expected a vicar to be and actually quite good-looking, in a gentle sort of way, with an abundance of mousey hair stylishly dishevelled, a button nose and deep blue eyes. A sort of vicarish version of a young Michael J Fox.
‘Oh, hello, Vicar,’ Iris said, looking up and suddenly sounding rather breathless. ‘I didn’t think you were going to be coming over this morning – we haven’t had time to tot up all the donations yet.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ the vicar said, shrugging off his coat. ‘I had a meeting cancelled and thought I’d come and join in the fun. If you don’t mind me staying, of course. I haven’t brought any cake obviously, but, to be honest, you probably wouldn’t want my cake if you tasted it.’
‘As long as you make a donation like everyone else, we’ll let it slide,’ Iris said with a warm smile.
‘That sounds like a fair-enough deal to me.’ He took his coat over to a stand in the corner of the room and hung it there with everyone else’s. ‘It’s a good spread today,’ he added, casting an approving glance over the tubs and packs of cakes and biscuits.
‘Oh, most of that’s down to this new lady, Cathy,’ Iris said, and when she looked at Cathy, Cathy wanted the ground to swallow her up. She didn’t want to be singled out when everyone had contributed. Admittedly, she had brought more along than anyone else but that was only because she’d got carried away planning what she was going to bake and made far more than she’d really needed to.
The vicar dug his hands in his pockets and stood at the table, examining the goodies on offer.
‘I think I’ll take a scone if that’s OK,’ he said. ‘I’m quite partial to a nice scone.’
‘There’s cream to go with it in the jug,’ Cathy said. ‘And a little pot of jam too.’
He picked up the jam. ‘Home-made as well?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Wow! Must have taken you days to make all this?’
‘Oh, no,’ Cathy said, that funny mixed-up feeling of pride and embarrassment at the compliments rearing up in her again. ‘Besides, I really like doing it, so I enjoyed myself. If anything, it was like my version of a day out.’
‘Funny day out if you ask me,’ Dora said, crumbs spraying from her mouth.
‘Tea, Vicar?’ Iris asked.
The vicar had found a vacant seat and settled there with his scone. ‘That would be lovely, Iris. Your special teabags?’
‘Of course,’ Iris said.
What was in these teabags? Crack? They were good but they were getting people way more excited than teabags ought to. Perhaps Cathy would ask Iris for the name of the brand later on.
‘Is everyone having a good morning?’ he asked the room at large.
‘Oh yes!’ Iris said, before anyone else could draw breath. ‘I’m sure we’ll have raised lots of money today.’
‘The charity organisers at Cancer Care for Britain will be pleased to hear that,’ he said.
He turned to Cathy and Erica. ‘It’s good to see new faces too. Welcome to St Cuthbert’s.’ He shook both their hands. ‘If you don’t mind my asking,’ he continued, ‘did you have a particular motivation to join us today?’
‘I lost my dad to cancer,’ Erica said. ‘So anything I can do for cancer charities I’m happy to.’
The vicar pulled a sympathetic face. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that.’
‘It’s not much just turning up at things,’ Erica continued. ‘I know people run marathons and all sorts, but I’d like to do something good to redress the balance a bit, even if it’s only small.’
‘Nothing is ever too small or insignificant,’ the vicar said.
He looked at Cathy and waited. She wasn’t sure whether she liked his expectation, but then she thought if she was here and people were sharing, maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing for her to share too. It might even help her.
‘I lost my mum,’ she said. ‘I’m sort of the same – I wanted to turn my loss into something that can do some good.’
‘You lost your mum to cancer?’
‘Not to cancer – lung disease. A couple of months ago now.’
‘Then I expect it’s all still very new and hard, isn’t it? I am sorry to hear that,’ he said, and when people said that usually there wasn’t an ounce of sincerity in their voice. But with this man, Cathy could see he meant every word. ‘You’ve got a good network around you? Friends? Other family members?’
‘Oh yes,’ Cathy said, although she wasn’t sure why she was lying about it. She had some family – mostly disinterested, though she saw them from time to time – and her friends had gradually drifted away over the years because she’d never been able to find the time to see them. There had been a boyfriend too, once; a fiancé in fact – Jonas. Cathy had loved him and he’d loved her, but that had ended as well, unable to take the pressure that caring for her mum had put on their relationship. The last Cathy heard, he’d married a veterinary nurse and was living in Scotland with her. She wasn’t mad about it and she wished him well, but sometimes she felt sad for what could have been.
‘More tea for you, Cathy?’
Cathy looked up to see Iris hovering with the teapot.
‘I’ve still got this cup – maybe in a little while?’
‘Well,’ Iris said as she moved to the next chair, ‘just whistle when you’re ready and I’ll be right over.’
Cathy could have got her own tea easi
ly enough, but she realised that Iris wanted to do it and it probably made her feel useful. Cathy got that, and gave Iris a tight smile and thanked her, suddenly feeling very useless indeed.
Four
Cathy had enjoyed the coffee morning more than she’d ever thought she would. Of course, she’d been hoping it would be a good distraction from the hours spent alone at home, but when she finally made it back to her own little bubble, she was content and happy, her head full of the conversations that had taken place. Almost instantly, she seemed to have gained a whole new social circle. Iris and Dora, she soon discovered, were not only lovely old ladies but also a hilarious double act (whether intentional or not). They were cousins and seemed to simultaneously hate each other and yet love each other to pieces. They bickered and threw out sarcastic comments constantly but their affection was always on show, no matter what they were saying. Dora would rush to make sure Iris was OK if she stumbled, and Iris would rub Dora’s arm affectionately as she handed her a plate of cakes.
Cathy had got on well with Erica and had even arranged to meet her outside of the coffee morning sometime. Colin had regaled her with thrilling tales of his time in the navy as a young man, while Myrtle had told Cathy she had eight children and thirty-two grandchildren (number thirty-three was on the way). She insisted that there was nothing special about her until Cathy pointed out that anyone who had raised eight children and regularly babysat another thirty-two was pretty special.
Janet and Karen seemed to be a couple (although nobody said it explicitly, it was fairly obvious) and ran a centre for underprivileged children to participate in various sports, and Lulu – just like her more famous namesake – had a very successful (albeit very local) career belting out sixties classics in pubs and clubs. Cathy had asked if she’d called herself Lulu for the sake of her job and was more than a little surprised to discover that she’d actually being christened Lulu by her parents. Julia was a bit mysterious and volunteered very little information about herself; in fact, she’d barely spoken, even when prompted.
By the time the coffee morning was over they’d raised almost one hundred pounds for charity and Cathy had finally learned which face went with which name. In the heady spontaneity of the moment she might well have agreed to attend a service that Sunday too. She’d have to deal with that at some point because she had no intention of going, but she felt that her new friends might like her enough to forgive her if she reneged on that small promise. She hoped so; as much as she didn’t want to offend anyone, church just wasn’t her thing.
As if all this wasn’t enough, Cathy’s cakes had been an unqualified success and so many people had asked her for recipes that she announced it would take her until the next coffee morning to write them all down. So Iris had said that if she wanted to jot them down, she’d do photocopies for whoever wanted one. It seemed like a good plan and Cathy felt a warm sense of pride that her mother’s recipes were now about to grow wings and fly out into the wider community, to be enjoyed by other families around the town. Who knew? They might even find their way out further and further, passed on again and again, until people Cathy couldn’t even imagine were baking to them in far-flung corners of the country.
Maybe even further than that, she thought with that little frisson of excitement again. After all, it was a shame for Cathy alone to be using them, and it seemed a fitting tribute to her mum’s talents. She liked to think her mum would approve, or at the very least be flattered by the idea.
As the grainy twilight gloom gathered outside her kitchen window later that evening, Cathy sat at the table with a cup of tea. It was perhaps her fourth or fifth of the day already – she’d had so many top-ups from an insistent Iris that she really couldn’t be certain. She probably hadn’t needed to make one but it had become a habit: sitting at the kitchen table – unless it was for a meal – meant a mug of good strong tea, possibly a biscuit and, when she’d baked, more than one cake. It explained the extra few pounds of padding that had crept on in the time since her mum had died.
Comfort eating, one less tactful aunt had called it, but Cathy didn’t care. Her aunt couldn’t possibly understand what it was like for Cathy, and Cathy didn’t think she should be judging. She’d take comfort where she could, and if that came in the form of a custard tart then so be it. It wasn’t just down to the food anyway – it was also down to the fact that Cathy had a lot less running around to do these days with nobody to look after but herself. Perhaps that was about to change though.
In the meantime, she could occupy a lot of time gathering together some of the recipes that people had wanted from her and writing them down clearly so they could understand them.
In front of her now sat a brand-new exercise book embossed with pink flamingos and palm trees, ready to be filled. When all the recipes were in there, people could borrow it, pass it around, copy what they wanted from it and, when they were done, bring it back for Cathy to keep until the next time someone might want a recipe from her.
Once she’d collated them all she might even upload them to the internet as a blog. It would take time to set up (something she had more than enough of) but would make them available to the wider community. She could do that, she reasoned, but she was still going to put them all in her exercise book too, because she had a feeling quite a few of the older people who’d asked for them today – like Myrtle and Iris – didn’t go online and would still need paper versions.
And as she came across new recipes she could add to it – she could even get additions from other people at the coffee mornings, new ones she could try out herself. Along with her rather sorry little fairy cakes, Myrtle had brought courgette cake. Cathy had never tasted it before and couldn’t imagine it being nice, but she’d tried it anyway and found it surprisingly good. Maybe she’d get the recipe for that, tinker about with it a little, make it even better and then add it to her collection.
On the first page she wrote: ‘Cathy’s Cake Recipes’. Then she turned to the next clean page and stopped. Should she write a list of contents? An index? While that might make it easy for people to find a specific recipe it would soon get in a muddle when she started to add new things. She decided not to include a contents page, and maybe she’d think about an index later. She resolved to start with the more basic recipes first and then bring in the more complicated ones as the book progressed, so that people could try out the easy ones and work their way through the book as they felt more confident. Not that she was assuming a lack of baking skill on the part of anyone who might read it, but at least it would cater for the likes of Erica, who had freely admitted that baking made her nervous.
She tapped the pen against her chin, thoughtful for a moment, eyes on the darkening skies beyond the kitchen window. The sound of the radiators groaning into life broke the silence and the pipes began to creak and chug as heat started to trickle through them. Cathy looked back at her empty page. Where to start?
Banana loaf, she decided finally. Nice and simple, very hard to get wrong, universally loved and practically a health food, with all that potassium and fibre bursting from it.
Often, Cathy had very strong feelings and memories attached to certain foods and banana loaf was one of those. It made her think back to the days when her mum had still been well enough to look after her rather than the other way around, because it was one of the cakes she often baked for Cathy whenever she was recovering from an illness – like when Cathy had spent her twelfth birthday in bed with flu.
Not exactly the celebrations she’d been looking forward to – a trip to the local burger bar with her friends – but one mischievous microscopic bug had ensured that wasn’t going to happen. She couldn’t recall ever feeling so ill – she’d been utterly floored by it – but even as she lay in bed, she was more afraid of what effect it might have on her mum should she catch it than she was for herself. She’d noticed her mum was frailer these days, that she caught colds more easily and struggled with them for longer than she ought to, and had tried to ke
ep her from getting too close as much as she could. Miriam had tried to nurse Cathy, of course, but Cathy had often not allowed it and had asked her to stay out of her room as much as possible. At first her mum had looked hurt and offended by the request, but then she seemed to understand what Cathy was trying to do and perhaps felt a little relieved by it too.
Thankfully, when Cathy had woken two days after her birthday, she’d felt lighter and brighter and wondered if she was finally over the worst of it. Her mum had shown no signs of infection so far and they could only hope that she’d escaped it.
So, still weak and tired, Cathy had come downstairs with an actual appetite. Small, but she could definitely eat something and that was progress.
‘Oh, you’re up!’
Cathy smiled wanly at her mum’s exclamation of delight. ‘I’m hungry.’
The smile blooming again, Cathy’s mother took a step towards her and brushed a stray lock of hair from her face.
‘That’s good then… You must be out of the woods.’
‘I don’t know,’ Cathy said, taking a step back.
‘I’m sure it will be fine now. We’ve been careful – I won’t hug you yet – how’s that?’
Cathy nodded. Though she wanted that hug more than anything, she contented herself with what they had for now. She turned towards the kitchen, perfectly capable and willing to get herself a snack, but her mum following anyway.
Cathy turned to her. ‘I can do it.’
‘I know you can; I just want to help.’
‘I’m only having soup – I’ll just open a tin.’
‘I’ll do it for you; you’ve been poorly.’
‘I know but I don’t want you to be poorly too.’
Her mum waved a dismissive hand. ‘I’ll be careful.’
‘Mum, I need you to stay away from me.’
‘And I need to be your mum!’
Cathy paused, about to say something else, but then she closed her mouth. Something in her mum’s expression was so pained, so desperate, as if she knew something bigger than this was coming for both of them, something she hadn’t told Cathy – something she couldn’t bring herself to tell her – that Cathy hadn’t the heart to challenge her again. Her mum had obviously decided that not being able to be a mother was worse than any flu risk, no matter how hard it might hit her.
Cathy's Christmas Kitchen: A heart-warming feel-good romantic comedy Page 3