Tea Loaf
Sixty years later
Jennifer Quinn had no idea that at the age of seventyseven she would become a household name.
It was a grey winter afternoon and she had decided to fill it with the small but satisfying accomplishment of baking a tea loaf, using a recipe that she suspected was even older than herself. It had found a safe home inside the faded cover of Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course and was written in her grandmother’s handwriting on a yellowed piece of paper that had sat beneath many cups of tea, judging by the golden rings of various sizes stained across it. Use marjarine if no butter, her grandmother had noted in brackets, a reminder of her lifelong struggle with spelling. It’s strange, she thought, how recipes outlive the people that wrote them and yet they almost bring a part of that person back to life, as if a tiny piece of their soul lives in those instructions. She poured the raisins into the brass bowl of her
cast-iron kitchen scales, the weights rising until they reached a delicate balance. She frowned to herself as she thought about the digital alternative that Bernard regularly suggested she purchase. Why, she wondered, did society feel a constant need to fix things that weren’t broken?
Next she tore open the packet of sultanas, overwhelmed by their rich, treacly scent which reminded her of helping to make the Christmas cake as a child. She remembered stirring the brandy-soaked fruit into the thick, lumpen mixture, sneaking tiny mouthfuls when her aunt wasn’t looking.
‘Yoo-hoo!’ called Bernard as the front door closed behind him.
She peered into the teapot. The Earl Grey had stewed to the point of bitterness, a delicate skin on its surface.
‘Hello, darling,’ said Bernard, ‘has something fallen in there?’
‘No,’ she said, replacing the lid as she poured it generously over the fruit, steam dampening her cheeks, ‘I’m making a tea loaf. How did you get on?’
He placed a paper bag on the worktop between the trails of sugar and flour.
‘It turns out I’ve developed asthma in my old age,’ he said, opening a small cupboard above her head and adding a box to the huddle of pharmaceutical jars. ‘They’ve prescribed me an inhaler.’
She turned, her eyes a little wider. ‘Asthma?’
‘Well, it’s either that or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – I’ve got to keep an eye on it.’
‘That’s quite serious, isn’t it?’ she said, noticing the weight of his breath, the fragile curve of his back beneath his wool jumper.
‘I mean, it wouldn’t be great if it turned out to be COPD, but I’m hopeful that the inhaler will do the trick.’
‘What makes them think it could be?’
‘It can happen as you get older; they think it might be linked to all the years I spent doing carpentry, the dust damaging my lungs. Anyway, I’ve been told to take it easy which I said wouldn’t be a problem – it’s not as if we’re about to embark on any grand adventures, is it?’ He closed the cupboard door, the beginnings of a chuckle catching in the back of his throat. ‘I said we’re more than happy with the newspaper and slippers nowadays.’
She pressed her lips together, nodding in cautious agreement.
‘I’ll never take for granted the privilege of growing old together,’ he said, planting a kiss on her head.
‘Never,’ she agreed, placing the soaking bowl of fruit on the windowsill in the hope that it would swell to the texture of fingertips after too long in the bath. Usually she would leave it overnight, but today a few hours would have to suffice.
‘Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to go for an afternoon nap.’
‘Not at all,’ she said, setting her timer with a sharp twist of the dial, each frantic tick amplified by the silence.
‘Your programme’s about to start!’ called Bernard from the living room, the television briefly distracting him from his newspaper.
‘Coming!’ she replied as she searched through the drawer next to the oven. It contained a mixture of the most and least useful objects in the house, depending on who was
looking, crammed full of things they had acquired over a lifetime together: a set of tiny screwdrivers from a Christmas cracker in 1995, a shell with bobbly eyes made by their great-niece, Poppy, and, most importantly, the greaseproof paper she was looking for. Lining the tin at lightning speed, she filled it with the mixture and slid it into the hot oven, before joining him in the living room.
Bernard’s unruly eyebrows were just visible over the top of the newspaper as he tapped his well-worn slippers to the theme tune of Britain Bakes. He claimed to be indifferent to it and remained behind his newspaper, yet she often watched his face appear from above it as his attention was drawn into the drama of a meringue collapsing in the middle.
This week on the Britain Bakes Christmas Special, a cast of former contestants had been set the challenge of making a celebration cake. She twisted her fine, silver hair into a clip, feeling a sudden wave of discomfort at watching contestant Graham, a warm and likeable lorry driver, have his ‘Santa in the Chimney’ cake described as dry. It seemed to her that he had tried too hard to do something different with too many components. It was usually the people that did a well-executed twist on the familiar that won. As it turned out, a history teacher called Laura was awarded the golden whisk, with a chocolate, cherry and almond reimagining of a classic Christmas cake. According to the judges, the flavours were phenomenal, but in truth, she was sure she would prefer the classic. She looked to Bernard for his reaction but it seemed he agreed since his newspaper now covered his face and was rising and falling in time with his contented snore.
As the credits rolled she contemplated the approach of her seventy-seventh Christmas, as yet another year drew to a close. She watched Bernard sleep, his breathing now developing its own strange whistle, the soprano to the tenor of his snore. She let her mind wander to a solemn thought: how many more Christmases might they have left to share together? The prospect of him sitting alone in his chair, no one to wake him up and tell him it was bedtime, was unthinkable. She contemplated the other scenario, the one where she was left alone staring at his empty chair, the dark velvet moulded to the shape of his form, an imprint of someone no longer on this earth. Her heart flooded with the urgency of their dwindling existence. She felt the painful truth of her age, of having reached a point where there was far more of life behind her than ahead of her.
She picked up the remote from beside his chair and pointed it at the television as if it might also silence her thoughts, but it was just as she was about to turn it off that the credits were interrupted by an announcement.
‘Are you a keen baker? Do you have what it takes to be on next year’s show? Apply now by clicking the link on the Britain Bakes website.’
She felt her senses sharpen, her fear turned to fantasy as she wrote local newspaper headlines in her mind:
77- YEAR- OLD FROM KITTLESHAM WINS BRITAIN’S BEST BAKER AND JUDGES MARVEL AT JENNY
TEA LOAF
‘Has it finished?’ said Bernard, awakening with a jolt.
‘Yes, it has – time for bed!’ she said, quickly tidying her thoughts away to a hidden corner of her mind, as if she had been caught reading someone else’s diary.
The following morning Jenny woke as she always did, early, to Bernard whistling downstairs in the kitchen whilst making them each a cup of tea. It was a sound so etched in her mind, she wondered if she would always hear it, even if it wasn’t there.
She heard the rattle of jars as he took his various tablets, followed by great wheezing puffs as he used his new inhaler. Then came the rumble of the kettle as it reached boiling point, the suction of the fridge door as he retrieved the milk and the thud of the newspaper as it landed on the doormat. Like clockwork, he emerged with two cups of Earl Grey and a newspaper tucked under his arm, his white hair ruffled in endearing tufts that spoke of a good night’s sleep.
‘Morning, darling,’ he said, parting the curtains and showering the quilt in cold winter light. Outside the trees were quickly becoming silhouettes as the remaining leaves were stripped from their branches, the birds plump with cold.
‘I’ve had an idea,’ he said, and it sparkled in his eyes. ‘I’m going to make Poppy a doll’s house for Christmas, one of those traditional Victorian ones. I know I haven’t got long, but I think I could just about do it.’
‘How lovely,’ she said, taking a sip of hot tea, ‘but are you sure you should be doing that? It sounds like a lot of dust.’
‘I don’t think it will make much of a difference to me now,’ he said.
‘I’m sure she’ll love it,’ she replied. Not for the first time, she thought what a wonderful father he would have made.
As Bernard headed downstairs to embark upon a busy morning in the shed, she recalled what he had said about their adventures being over, about being happy to lead smaller lives, and in quiet protest she made her way into the study. It was a boxy room and home to all manner of anti-climactic post; the sort that arrived with a transparent window and a printed address. The centrepiece was a computer and printer which made her heart thump a little faster as she sat herself in front of it, sure that it was judging her on how well she could use it.
As she moved the mouse, the engine sprang to life as if it were powered by a multitude of whirring fans that made it sound like very hard work being a computer. On the printer were some abandoned pages titled DIY Doll’s House and she smiled as she imagined Bernard enthusiastically researching his latest project. Using just her index fingers she typed Britain Bakes into the search engine, clicking Apply Now.
Her eyes scanned the application form. There were an overwhelming number of questions and it required photographs of both herself and her best bakes. Her eyes settled on Why do you bake and who do you bake for? She considered this for a moment. It was a question she had never given much thought to. When life felt overwhelming, baking was as simple as eggs, sugar, butter and flour. It was the strongest connection to the past and the recipes were at the heart of some of her most cherished memories. She thought about Bernard’s mother’s Quinn’s Crunch, each dense
Rice Krispies square as unpretentious and practical as she was. Baking immortalized some of the people she loved the most.
The box below read What is your most impressive bake? She remembered the birthday cakes she had made for Bernard over the years, themed to reflect his latest interests. One particular hit had been the gingerbread sports car she had constructed in the absence of being able to afford the real thing. Their wedding cake! Surely that was her proudest bake. She had made it almost sixty years ago and remembered the excitement she had felt as she piped the border in white icing, repeating her new name over and over in her head. Mrs Jennifer Quinn. All Saints Church had been situated on top of a hill, surrounded by fields and smelling of candle wax, frankincense and oak. Her father had walked her down the aisle towards her Bernie, a tall figure with his hands clasped nervously behind his back, his brown eyes absorbing her in that moment. His usually unruly dark hair had been combed neatly to one side, accentuating his prominent ears, a feature which caused him great humiliation but for which she had grown a great fondness.
Her attention snapped to a section of the form asking her to rate her skill level in biscuits, tarts, pies, desserts, cakes and . . . bread. She had never made a loaf of bread that she was proud of. In fact, her last attempt had ended up being so salty that even the birds had refused it, and yet here she was considering herself a contender for Britain’s best baker. Sobered by her own ridiculousness, it struck her just how deluded she was to think that she was anything other than an old lady who enjoyed baking, along with millions of others.
As she scrolled down the page, she felt herself slowly deflate. At the grand age of seventy-seven she should be happy with her lot, and yet she couldn’t help but wonder what she had really achieved in all that time. Without Bernard, what did she have? Guilt crept through her like smoke as she imagined that he could hear her thoughts, recoiling at her own ungratefulness. She went to close the form when her chest grew tight. At the very bottom of the page read the deadline: 11th January, underlined and in bold as if it were taunting her. Three weeks. She closed the website, turned off the computer and swept out of the room. Was it a sign, or just a painful coincidence?
Farmhouse Loaf
It had always been the Quinns’ dream to retire to Kittlesham, having stumbled across the village whilst holidaying on the coast one particularly hot summer in the early years of their marriage. The weather would have been the defining memory if it weren’t for Bernard’s brief foray into flared trousers. Nestled in the valley of the River Huckmere, it felt as if they had discovered it, like they had stepped into the secret garden or through the back of a wardrobe, and they had both agreed that it would be the perfect spot to spend their final chapter. It was a quintessential village of delightfully uneven houses and medieval pubs with doors so small that Bernard had to stoop to enter – a little less with each passing year. Even the village store felt more like somebody’s pantry, and whilst the customers evolved with the decades the shop remained unchanged.
It was a crisp morning and they were walking up the high street towards the church, the frost making it look as if someone had coated it in icing sugar.
‘Don’t slip,’ she said, gripping Bernard a little tighter as
she felt the collective warmth of her hand enveloped in his, two hands that had together grown swollen at the knuckles and pigmented by the freckles of age, yet remained the perfect fit.
‘Is that Ann and Fred with a pram?’ said Bernard, plumes of warm breath dissipating into the icy air.
She could see a muddle of coats and hats which grew animated as they moved closer.
‘I think it is,’ she replied.
Ann was a neat terrier of a woman with piercing eyes as cold as her demeanour. She was one of those unfortunate people whose first impression made them unpopular, yet Jenny had grown fond of her over the years, loving her all the more for it. She was fiercely loyal, and you always knew exactly where you stood with her. Her husband, Fred, made no decisions of his own and appeared entirely happy with this dynamic.
‘Hello!’ called Ann, as she pushed the pram towards them with great purpose so that it juddered violently over the cobbles, Fred and their two grandchildren in tow. It was as if it were a shopping trolley and they were items on her shopping list.
‘Toby, Isabelle, these are our friends Jenny and Bernard,’ she said.
Isabelle promptly hid behind Fred’s leg whilst Toby looked up at them, his nose pinched with cold.
‘Nice to meet you,’ said Jenny, watching as Bernard peered into the pram.
‘That’s my sister Ellie,’ announced Toby, his chest puffed with pride, ‘she’s new.’
‘Congratulations,’ said Bernard. ‘Isn’t she wonderful?’
‘We’ve got our hands full this weekend as you can see – grandparent duties!’ said Ann.
‘Lovely,’ said Jenny. ‘What have you been up to?’
‘Pick and mix,’ said Fred’s leg, which almost entirely eclipsed Isabelle.
Ann rolled her eyes as she fastened the top button of Toby’s coat so that it looked as if it were wearing him. ‘Fred took them for pick and mix, so of course the trip to the museum has been completely forgotten.’
‘How are you both?’ said Fred, a little louder than necessary as a result of his poor hearing.
‘We’re well, thank you,’ said Jenny. ‘Bernard’s spent all week in the shed making a doll’s house for Poppy, and I’m keeping busy with the Christmas baking.’
‘The luxury of endless free time,’ said Ann, pulling a tissue from her sleeve and wiping Isabelle’s nose in one skilled movement. ‘Five grandchildren is a full-time job, isn’t it, Fred?’
Fred smiled vacantly, a one-size-fits-all response that he had developed over the years.
‘We’d better let you go then,’ said Jenny, looking at the toe of Bernard’s shoe in an attempt to avoid Ann’s gaze.
‘We’ll see you soon,’ said Ann, manoeuvring the pram in sharp jerks. ‘Come on, Isabelle!’
As they continued to walk the cold grew teeth.
‘What lovely children,’ said Bernard, his ears turning an unhealthy shade of pink, ‘and they all have that red hair, even the baby.’
‘Let’s pop in here,’ she said, as she steered him towards the shop. ‘I need some bread flour and yeast.’
The kitchen had remained unchanged since the day they moved in and whilst it was small and unfashionable, it was beautifully familiar. Everything in it had a place, so much so that she operated it as if it were a car which only she knew how to drive. The cupboards, once stylish and new, were now heavy on their hinges so that they didn’t align, and she knew exactly how to open and close the drawers so that they stayed on their runners.
She had decided to follow one of her mother’s recipes because it was entitled Simple Farmhouse Loaf, and she traced her handwriting with her finger. It was scrawled as if in a hurry, reminding her of her mother’s constant race against the minute hand, simultaneously her most endearing and frustrating quality. She remembered being pulled down the road as a small child, feet barely touching the ground as her mother delivered her to the school gates ten seconds after the bell. Then there were the countless church services which she had slipped into the back of, tempering her breath so as not to alert anyone to the fact that she had sprinted there and was still five minutes late. Perhaps as a result of her mother’s tardiness, she prided herself on her time management.
She knocked the air out of the dough with her fists, the ache in her joints a reminder of her age as she pressed her knuckles into the elastic flesh. It expanded before her eyes, as if it were alive.
‘Once I’ve pressed the air out, this will need a second rise,’ she said, smiling into the window as if it were the whitetoothed TV judges on Britain Bakes.
‘After one hour it should be ready to go into the –’
‘Darling, are you all right?’
Bernard looked around the door, a figure of concern,
causing her to launch the dough over her shoulder and on to the cold kitchen tiles with a humbling slap.
‘Good God!’ she said as she gathered herself, scooping the soft ball from the floor in an attempt to save it. ‘I was just reading the recipe aloud – sometimes it helps me to remember it.’
‘I thought you were talking to someone through the window,’ he said, peering out to see if anyone was there whilst she shaped the dough into a loaf tin.
‘You’re still going to bake it even though it landed on the floor?’ he said, growing increasingly bemused by the situation.
‘Bernard, is this one hundred questions?’ She fanned herself with a threadbare oven glove. ‘I’m just seeing if it rises. I fancied a challenge; we don’t have to eat it.’
He nodded, retreating back to the shed.
It was a further two hours before her loaf was complete, making it a five-hour activity which, unlike with a cake, didn’t even allow you the joy of scraping the bowl to get every last mouthful. As she cut into it, the slices fell on to their sides with a thud. It was dense and dry, and after taking a bite she knew for certain that she didn’t want to take another.
‘Simple farmhouse loaf?’ she scoffed, heading out into the garden with it under her arm before tearing it apart for the birds in careless chunks.
Jenny scrubbed the mixing bowl, hot water lapping at her wrists as she watched the sun sink below the trees, when a blackbird landed weightlessly on the bird table, picking at her bread in staccato pecks.
‘Well, at least he’s enjoying it,’ said Bernard, twisting a tea towel into a water glass as he watched for her reaction. ‘If the birds are no longer rejecting it, then that’s an improvement.’
The blackbird flung the crust into the air so that it scattered, before hopping away across the lawn.
‘I think you’ve spoken too soon,’ she said, her smile doused by a tinge of guilt.
If she were to even consider entering, she reasoned, she had a lot of work to do first. She would keep it to herself for now, only telling Bernard if she were to go for it and be successful. It made sense that way. In their fifty-nine years of marriage, this would be only the second secret she had ever kept from him. The first was safely buried in the depths of her, belonging to a different lifetime, a place she would hold it for all eternity.
Chocolate Log
Christmas Eve was the perfect time for Jenny to practise the bakes for her application form without anyone questioning why she was churning out enough treats to feed the entire village. She was in the latter stages of creating a chocolate log, a treasured family recipe belonging to Bernard’s late sister Margot. She had been a great lover of life, embracing everything and everyone with such enthusiasm that to be in her company was like walking in the sun. In fact, it had once occurred to Jenny that she had lived with the generosity of someone who always knew their time would be cut short. Jenny had continued Margot’s tradition every year since she had gone, in light of its significance to Bernard, and so that she would always be a part of their Christmas. She inserted a fork tentatively into the centre of a sheet of chocolate sponge, quietly congratulating herself when it came out clean. Setting it aside to cool, she laid a tea towel over it which was covered in self-portraits drawn by Poppy’s reception class. Poppy didn’t have a body but instead just a large, ecstatic face with arms and legs sprouting from
it, framed by an abstract interpretation of her bob. The boy next to Poppy was called Oliver and looked like a different species entirely, unusually petite but with clover-like hands and missing no vital body parts.
It struck her just how much personality lay behind these drawings. She could tell from the detail that little Oliver was quite a considered character, deeply observant. Poppy – following firmly in the footsteps of her grandmother Margot – was a chatterbox, and her big smiling face on legs spoke of a carefree confidence.
Once the sponge had cooled, she used a spatula to layer it with glossy chocolate ganache and clouds of whipped cream, imagining it to be the most indulgent sandwich in the world. She began to roll it up inch by inch, holding her breath as she coaxed the sponge with the utmost care. A crack would be disastrous, although Margot wouldn’t have minded. She would have told her it would still taste the same, and that no one would notice under the icing sugar.
‘Good grief, are you sure we are going to fit all of this in the car? We have the doll’s house too . . .’
Bernard had walked into the kitchen where every surface was covered in baked goods and the air was warm with chocolate sponge. Lined up on cooling racks were the old family favourites: mince pies, tiffin and the chewy Rice Krispies squares of Quinn’s Crunch which always made a special appearance at Christmas. Beyond those were some new and rather extravagant additions, including a bundt wreath covered in sugar-frosted berries which looked as if it had been lifted directly from the cover of a magazine.
‘They’ll fit in the car, I’ll sit with them on my lap,’ said Jenny, revelling in the satisfaction of shaking icing sugar
on to the chocolate log, second only to watching real snow fall.
‘Margot’s chocolate log,’ he said, greeting it like an old friend.
‘It’s never missed a Christmas,’ she said. ‘Now where’s Ernie?’
She opened the drawer next to the oven and rifled through it, eventually retrieving a rather dishevelled-looking robin decoration which she perched on top, his beak hanging on by a thread.
‘At least someone’s aged worse than me,’ said Bernard, pressing the lids on to the tins.
‘Wait,’ she said, her tone deceptively spontaneous. ‘Would you mind taking a picture of all this, just whilst it looks so nice?’
He agreed, disappearing upstairs to get the camera. When he returned she had laid out their best red gingham tablecloth and was styling her creations with sprigs of holly from the garden.
‘What a feast,’ he said, his glasses perched on the end of his nose as he strained to look at the digital display. ‘I’ll get one with you in it.’
She combed her fine strands of silver hair behind her ears and put on a fresh coat of pink lipstick, smiling unnaturally towards the lens.
‘How do I look?’
‘Gorgeous,’ he said, catching sight of his watch. ‘Right, we’d better go. It could take up to three hours to get there in this traffic.’
It was a ritual that they spent Christmas with Bernard’s niece Rose, her husband Jeremy and their two children,
Poppy and Max. Poppy was now eight and Max fourteen, and the Quinns’ arrival marked the start of their Christmas.
Bernard arranged and rearranged the boot of the car, wrestling down the seats as he tried to fit in the doll’s house amongst their bags. Once he had been successful, he slammed the boot shut, noticeably short of breath.
‘Have you packed your inhaler?’ she asked, barely visible beneath the tins of baked goods.
‘In my suitcase,’ he replied as the engine roared into life. ‘God forbid we have an accident, Jenny – they’ll think the car was being driven by a family of profiteroles!’
As they drove along the motorway serenaded by carols on the radio, she looked into the neighbouring cars as the passengers headed to their various Christmases. She saw a worried-looking gentleman who she imagined had been sent out in a panic, on a hunt for the forgotten brandy butter. Little did he know it was so easy to make and far more delicious. In the back of a large family vehicle were two little boys peering up at the darkening sky, their eyes searching for an early glimpse of Father Christmas. One of the little boys turned and pointed towards their car, his nose pressed against the window. For a moment she wondered if he had mistaken her for someone, but it quickly dawned on her that it was Maurice that had caught his attention; the small, tired-looking bear propped in the corner of the dashboard.
Maurice had two beady eyes, one hanging on by a thread so that it looked in a different direction, and he was balding in patches where soft fur had once been. He had lived in all of their cars but was named after their first, a Morris Minor 1000. She remembered the day they bought it,
Bernard’s twenty-fifth birthday, and his beam as he stroked the domed bonnet, the colour of a duck’s egg. She had initially been cautious about the great expense, but there was no dissuading Bernard who had been saving his wages for months. Think of the adventures she’ll take us on, he’d said, and he had been right.
She looked from Maurice to Bernard as he focused on the road, the creases at the corner of his eyes and around his mouth exposing him as a kind man, a man who laughed. She admired his unusually thick eyelashes which she had coveted for half a century and thought of the hours she had spent sitting beside him as he drove. Sometimes they chatted and other times they enjoyed the silence of each other’s company. She couldn’t imagine a life without him in it.
A Mince Pie, Half a Carrot and a Drop of Sherry
Jenny stood on a stool, her mother’s pinny folded around her waist to stop it trailing on the floor as she watched her slice lard and margarine into small cubes which dropped silently into the flour.
‘You need to rub it together,’ her mother said, as she twisted off her rings and balanced them on the windowsill, slivers of Sunlight soap trapped underneath her nails from where she had been grating it for the washing.
‘Like this.’ She stood behind her daughter, singing as she scooped the fat and flour between her palms. ‘O come let us adore Him, O come let us adore Him . . .’ she rubbed her hands together as if she were trying to keep them warm, the mixture snowing down, ‘. . . O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.’
Jenny nodded, the soft fabric of her mother’s box pleat skirt brushing against the backs of her legs. She tried to emulate what she had done, her small palms significantly less effective.
‘That’s it,’ said her mother, stroking her hair behind her ears and planting a kiss on her head. ‘You just have to be patient; eventually it will look like breadcrumbs.’
The fat clung between her fingers so that she had to keep stopping
and pulling it off as if it were a pair of gloves, dropping it back into the bowl and going again. There was something so satisfying about using her hands, the tickle of the flour as it fell between her fingers.
Her mother gasped.
‘Two o’clock!’ she said, leaning over to finish the last bit at rapid speed, before pouring in a little cold water. ‘I promised Granny we’d be at hers by now – I don’t know where the time’s gone.’
She mixed it all together with a knife, her body shaking as her locket tapped against her chest. Shaping it into a ball with her delicate hands, she dusted the pastry board with flour and placed the dough at its centre.
‘Now you need to roll it out to about a quarter of an inch,’ she said, miming the thickness with her fingers before handing Jenny the rolling pin.
Jenny placed her hands on each end and pressed it into the dough, using her entire strength to move it forwards and backwards but instead achieving a large dent.
‘This is why I use half lard,’ her mother said, placing her hands softly over Jenny’s and applying some extra force. ‘It makes it easier to roll.’
Eventually the pastry resembled a cold, smooth sheet, and she couldn’t resist stroking it, flour coating her fingertips.
‘Now for the best bit,’ said her mother, placing a cutter on the sheet of pastry and making faint imprints. ‘You want to squeeze as many of these out of the pastry as possible, nice and close together.’
Jenny pressed the cutter into the pastry so that it sank through the dough until it hit the board. Tapping the neat shape out with her fingers, she admired its symmetry in the palm of her hand.
‘Beautiful,’ said her mother.
Eventually, all that was left on the board was a tracery of leftover pastry. Her mother gathered it into a ball with a sense of urgency, and repeated the process until they were left with a piece the size of a dice.
‘Can I eat it?’ she said.
Her mother nodded, a dimple appearing in her right cheek.
‘It’s not very sweet, is it?’
‘No,’ said Jenny, squashing the bland slug against the roof of her mouth. ‘I still like it though.’
They draped each round into the tin, pressing it into the corners and adding a teaspoon of mincemeat.
‘Do you want to know a secret?’ said her mother, leaning close so that she could smell her perfume. ‘If I have any going spare, I put a thin disc of almond paste under each lid. It’s why your father loves them so much.’
Jenny painted the circumference with water and pressed on the lid, forming a neat little mound in the middle which her mother pierced with a fork.
She felt the sinking disappointment that it was all over, when one round caught her eye.
‘You can make that one into a jam tart, if you’re quick,’ said her mother, retrieving the jam from the pantry.
‘I think I might save it for Father Christmas,’ said Jenny. ‘He might have had too many mince pies.’
Her mother posted them into the hot oven and Jenny sat with her body pressed against it, her cheeks scarlet as a sweet fug filled the house.
‘Mummy,’ she said, her brow creased with concern, ‘will there be a Christmas message this year, now that we have no King?’
‘I should think Elizabeth will do it, now that she’s our Queen,’ said her mother. ‘You funny thing. Jam teaspoon?’
Jenny’s face lit up as her mother handed it to her like a lollipop.
Pressing the cold dome against her tongue, she savoured its strawberry sweetness. There was nowhere happier.
The moon was bright against the night sky, and they sat around the fire with plates of cold ham, scotch eggs and
Waldorf salad, sipping warm glasses of mulled wine as they laughed and chatted with a glow that was unique to Christmas Eve.
The room was cloaked in the earthy smell of spruce as the Christmas tree stood proudly in the window wearing memories that told the story of the family. There were old forties decorations that had belonged to Margot; faded colourful baubles with inverted gold centres which looked like they had been moulded on the spike of a lemon squeezer. There was a salt dough star tied with a red ribbon, hand painted by Poppy with generous lashings of metallic paint, her initials etched into the back. On a lower branch sat a crepe paper snowman, dishevelled but precious, fashioned out of the same cotton wool balls that Rose probably used to remove her make-up.
Jeremy was telling Bernard about his cycling escapades. He was a wiry man of intense energy who spent the week working as a solicitor and the weekends dressed in Lycra, his piston-like legs powering him along winding country roads and up impossible hills. Poppy was squirming with excitement, intent on stealing Bernard’s full attention away from her father with interruptions such as Uncle Bernie, would you like to come and see my den?
Jenny understood why Poppy loved him so much. He had a wonderful way with children in that he spoke to them as if they were his peers. He never put on the patronizing voice of feigned enthusiasm or commented on their appearance, but instead listened to them with the same integrity he would give to any adult.
Whilst Poppy led Bernard around the house as if she were walking a good-natured but tired Labrador, Rose
coaxed conversation out of Max who had, it seemed, developed into a teenager since last Christmas.
‘Tell Aunty Jenny about the award you won at school,’ she said, tucking her thick blonde hair behind her ear as it sprang back in the enviable way that Quinn hair did.
Max bounced his knee up and down, avoiding eye contact so that she might as well have been naked.
‘I won the maths award for the highest grade in the year,’ he said, as if it was punishable by death.
She was quietly shocked to hear that his voice had found a strange new pitch, like a trumpet playing the wrong note.
‘That’s wonderful, Max,’ she said, remembering him as a little boy, standing on a stool in her kitchen as she made jam tarts and he made ‘pastry robots’ with the offcuts.
‘So you’re enjoying school, then?’
Max flicked his mop of hair further across his forehead as he subtly retrieved his phone from his pocket.
‘S’all right,’ he said, smiling at something on the screen before responding at an extraordinary speed.
‘He’s going to be choosing his GCSE options soon,’ added Rose, vying for his attention, ‘aren’t you, Max?’
He nodded. ‘History, music tech, Spanish and photography.’
‘Photography?’ said Rose, sitting up a little straighter. ‘Since when?’
‘Since my mates are doing it . . .’
‘You shouldn’t base your future on what your friends are doing –’
‘Spanish . . .’ said Jenny, watching as Max picked at his short slivers of nail, ‘what a great language to learn. It will be nice to have a variety of different subjects.’
‘Exactly,’ said Max, glaring at his mother from beneath his hair, the shadow of a first-time moustache on his top lip.
Jenny had watched Rose become a mother as if it were the most natural thing in the world. There were Christmases when Max had been hanging from her leg as she put together the Christmas dinner, all whilst having a tiny baby tucked underneath her jumper. There were moments where she pulled a breadstick out of her handbag like a wand, using it as a distraction technique for Max on the brink of tears, or conjured a colouring book out of nowhere as a bargaining tool whilst she tried to enjoy a meal. Jenny wondered if everyone so seamlessly developed these skills, and if Jeremy had grown to love Rose even more for it.
After supper came the moment they had all been waiting for: the unveiling of Jenny’s Christmas baking. Poppy’s eyes lit up and she clapped her hands together like an excited seal at the sight of the tiffi n. Jenny felt a warm sense of satisfaction as she watched Poppy devour it, nibbling the biscuit away until she was left with just the smooth chocolate top, savouring every last bite.
‘You’ve made more this year than ever – it’ll last us for weeks!’ said Jeremy, tasting everything with his eyes.
‘Oh look,’ said Rose, her hand hovering above the chocolate log. ‘Poppy, Max, this one here was your Granny Margot’s favourite.’
‘Nice,’ said Max, cutting himself a generous wedge and then devouring it as if it were his first encounter with sugar, barely coming up for air.
‘You’re the best baker, Aunty Jenny,’ said Poppy with chocolate teeth.
‘It’s her superpower,’ Bernard replied.
Jenny stared into the vast American fridge, their kitchen the polar opposite to her own, all straight lines and spotlights with nothing hanging off its hinges or balanced on its runners.
‘Do we need a glass of milk?’ said Poppy, as she pulled a carrot from the salad drawer. ‘He might be thirsty by the time he gets here.’
‘I think he’d prefer a drop of sherry,’ said Bernard, perched uncomfortably on a bar stool behind the island – a far cry from his velvet armchair. ‘What do you think, darling?’
‘I agree,’ Jenny replied, ‘everyone will leave him milk.’
She accompanied Poppy to the fireplace, absorbing the magic of her unwavering belief, before pulling the lid off the tin of homemade mince pies so that a poof of icing sugar followed. She watched as Poppy’s hand hovered above each one in careful consideration, eventually making her selection.
‘These mince pies have a secret ingredient, so I’m sure he’ll like them.’
‘What is it?’ said Poppy, as Bernard appeared with a glass of sherry.
‘There’s a thin disc of almond paste under the lid; it makes all the difference.’
‘Are you awake?’ said Poppy through the crack in the door, in a whisper that was intended to wake them.
‘Just about, Pops,’ replied Jenny, checking her watch
