Wish Upon a Star Read online

  We went back to my flat and that evening everything was all right between us – in fact, it was more than all right. He was tired and abstracted, not helped by a call from a colleague, though what could be that urgent about Antarctic pond life I couldn’t imagine at the time. His end of the conversation was a bit terse.

  I should have smelled a rat right then, because next morning it was like Jekyll and Hyde revisited: right after breakfast he suddenly announced he’d already signed up for another eighteen months in Antarctica and, moreover, he’d met someone else up there and she was going back in April, too.

  Of course I was devastated and furious. I told him to get out of my flat and my life and he’d packed up his stuff and left within the hour, with my parting shot that I hoped they both fell down an Antarctic crevasse on their next tour of duty ringing in his ears.

  Toto, gleefully grasping that the hated interloper was out of favour, managed to sink his teeth into Adam’s ankle at the last minute, which would give him something to remember us by till all the little puncture wounds healed up again.

  It was only much later that I realised that Adam had left me a much longer-lasting and life-changing memento.

  Once Stella was out of immediate danger, Celia needed to get back to her husband, four rescue greyhounds and six cats in Southport, who were all pining for her.

  I would also pine for her, though she’d promised to return when Stella was finally allowed home.

  Ma was staying on for a few more days, though I was sure she was dying to head straight back up north, too. In fact, I was surprised she’d stayed as long as she had.

  When I was growing up in Hampstead I’d thought she’d seemed happy enough, though she was always fairly reclusive and preoccupied with her work, of course, but she sold up and moved back with alacrity to the Lancashire village where she was born after Dad died.

  ‘Ma’ is not some cute contraction of ‘Mum’, but a relic of her early attempts to get me to call her by her Christian name, Martha. She was never much like any of my school friends’ mothers, delegating most of her maternal responsibilities to a series of foreign au pairs, but I’d never doubted that in her way she loved me. And Anna, the final and most beloved of the au pairs, a tall, blonde, Swedish domestic goddess, had instilled my love of cooking and baking, so it worked out brilliantly for me.

  I emailed Anna the news about Stella and received a warm, reassuring reply straight away: she’d always had the power to make me feel comforted, an effect that has also rubbed off onto the cakes she taught me to make.

  I decided that for Stella’s first birthday I would make her a prinsesstårta, that most splendid of Swedish celebration cakes.

  ‘You are going to tell Adam about Stella at some point soon, aren’t you?’ Celia asked, just before she finally set off home.

  ‘No! Why should I, after he accused me of getting pregnant on purpose when I told him she was on the way and then suggested I get an abortion?’

  ‘I know he didn’t want the baby, but now she’s arrived he might feel differently,’ she suggested. Having an incredibly generous heart she was always looking for the best in everyone, even my absent ex-fiancé, Adam Scott – or ‘Scott of the Antarctic’, as Ma generally referred to him.

  ‘I don’t think so. Anyway, he’s changed his email address and I couldn’t phone him in Antarctica even if I wanted to, which I don’t.’

  ‘Facebook?’

  ‘I’ve blocked him.’

  ‘I still think he ought to know,’ she said stubbornly. ‘He has a responsibility to support you, too.’

  ‘I don’t want his support and I’m sure he still wouldn’t be interested – even less so in a baby with health problems, because he’s got that phobia about illness and hospitals, remember?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I’d forgotten about that. So perhaps you’re right, but if he hears about the baby from anyone, he may contact you when he comes back to the UK.’

  ‘I doubt it, and it wouldn’t be till October of next year, when Stella—’

  I broke off, swallowing hard, and she said quickly, ‘Stella will be walking and saying her first words by then, you’ll see. The operation went well, didn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but they made it plain they couldn’t fix everything in one go and would have to wait and see how her condition developed. She seems to be making progress.’

  ‘The body has great powers of self-healing,’ Celia said firmly.

  I clung to that thought after she’d gone back to Southport: once I finally got her home, Stella and I would take the future one step at a time, savouring each moment like a special gift.

  Chapter 3: Lardy Cake

  Long before Stella’s due date I’d stockpiled articles for my two regular publication slots: the ‘Tea & Cake’ page in Sweet Home magazine, which are quick, easy recipes, and my Sunday newspaper supplement one, ‘The Cake Diaries’, which have more complicated recipes along with some quirky background history, or stories about where I first came across a particular cake, thrown into the mix.

  I usually work months in advance for magazines anyway, filing my Christmas articles in summer and my summer articles in winter, but this time I had almost a year’s worth in reserve. This foresight proved to be a very good idea, given the distractions and alarms of Stella’s first weeks, because the pieces all came out just as if nothing was going on in my life but baking and eating cakes.

  Of course, I’d missed out on all the extra articles and assignments that would normally have come my way during this time, which usually put a bit of icing on the gingerbread of life. Once Stella was home, I knew I needed to get back into the groove as quickly as possible, even though this wasn’t going to be easy with a brain occupied entirely with worried thoughts wrapped in a thick fuzzy blanket of hope.

  I hadn’t even lost any baby-weight, either – in fact, due to lack of activity and comfort eating, I’d put more on – so when I inadvertently caught sight of my stolid, stodgy pale nakedness in the bedroom mirror soon after Stella finally came home, I thought I looked just like a lardy cake.

  Oh, lardy me!

  I sat down on the bed and wept, and once I’d started I found I couldn’t stop for ages, which I expect was all the hormones still whizzing about in my system. But at least it was cathartic. It finally shook me out of the zombie trance and set me back onto the researching, experimental baking and writing track again, even if I did tend to shoehorn most of it into the times when Stella was asleep.

  I’d kept on the expensive dog walker I’d had to hire for poor Toto while I was spending so much time at the hospital, and she took him out in the mornings. Eventually, when Stella was well enough, the three of us would head for Primrose Hill every afternoon for a bit of fresh air. (It’s as about as fresh at the top of the hill as you will find in London.) Toto, thank goodness, had taken to the baby immediately and didn’t seem in the least jealous, so slowly we all settled into the new regime.

  And – waste not, want not – at least the lardy cake revelation inspired a new ‘Cake Diaries’ recipe.

  Lardy Cake is a wonderfully stodgy, bready cake that originates from Wiltshire. It’s made with yeast and dried fruit – plus, of course, lots of lard, but I thought I would try to devise a slightly different version, replacing some of the lard with butter and adding a little spice …

  Stella’s first three years were as up and down as a ride on the Big Dipper at Southport fun-fair, and while I struggled to persuade my changeling fairy child to eat and put on weight, I went from a curvy size twelve/fourteen to a Rubensesque sixteen/eighteen. This is what happens when your comfort food of choice is cake, and the nature of your work means the oven wafts the sweet smell of temptation at you every day.

  The proof of the pudding was in the eating and I was that pudding.

  I said so to Celia, who had come down to stay with me so she could do some early Christmas shopping, pop into the Sweet Home office (she did their ‘Crafty Celia Pull Out and Make’ section – if you could st
ick it, knit it, or stuff it, Celia was your woman) and, most crucially, support me through the next meeting with Stella’s hospital consultant, when he would outline her care plan for the next year.

  ‘The extra weight suits you, though,’ Celia assured me, ‘because you’re quite tall and still in perfect proportion, while I’ve never had a waist to start with and now gravity’s pulled me into the shape of a squishy pear. Just as well that Will likes pears,’ she added, grinning.

  That was a bit consoling, but I’d have to accept that I was now never going to be an airy confection of spun sugar, only a solid Madeira sponge. My smart clothes had been packed away for so long I feared the creases were permanent and I was living in jeans, trainers and sloppy T-shirts. I’d also given up any attempt to straighten my curly fair hair, or cover the freckles across the bridge of my nose with makeup. In fact, I’d entirely resigned myself to looking wholesome, it just didn’t feel that important any more … though I might still grind cake in the face of the next person to remark brightly that I looked like a young Hayley Mills, because I’d Googled her films and no, I didn’t.

  What would I have done without Celia? Other friends had slipped away since I had Stella, but she had remained constant since the day I first moved out of the family home and we shared both a flat and the struggle to make a living. She met her husband, Will, when Sweet Home commissioned an article about his driftwood sculptures and we happened to be in the offices when he came in to ask about getting a regular column. Love at first sight. Will is so nice, he almost deserves her.

  ‘What does Stella want for Christmas – or need I ask?’ she said now. ‘More of those Sylvanian Families?’

  ‘Yes. I’m afraid the addiction might be permanent, and it’s all my fault,’ I said ruefully. I’d been too old really for the little fuzzy animal toys when they first came out, but I’d loved them anyway and, over the years, added a few more to my collection. Now Stella, at three, had taken them over and I’d bought her even more.

  ‘I know she’s scarily bright, but isn’t she a bit young for them?’

  ‘Perhaps, but she’s never put things in her mouth, apart from her thumb, and she plays quietly with them for hours. She wants a house for the mouse family to live in next, but there are a few other things that I know she’d like. There’s a Father Christmas mouse too, with a little tree and parcels – that looked fun.’

  ‘You can show me on the internet, and I’ll order something. You’re coming up to Sticklepond to stay with Martha for Christmas, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, and bringing all the ingredients for festive fun with us, as usual, because Ma wouldn’t bother otherwise. I do love going up there and I know that Ma, for all her reclusive ways, loves Stella.’

  ‘We all love Stella, she’s bright and delightful – she read her Meg and Mog book to me last night,’ Celia said. ‘And then she said if she knew a witch she would get her to do a spell to make her heart better.’

  ‘I only wish I knew one. She’s so tiny for nearly three and a half and she gets tired so easily that we still have to take the buggy everywhere. She doesn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive and any slight infection is dangerous …’ I sighed. ‘Well, we’ll see what the treatment plan they’ve drawn up for her at the hospital for next year is.’

  ‘They did say she might need another operation, didn’t they? Perhaps it will be the final one, so she can live a normal life,’ Celia said optimistically.

  But there didn’t seem to be an ongoing treatment plan – or not one leading in a positive direction. I was shocked when the consultant told me there was nothing more they could do and gave me to understand that Stella’s long-term outlook was poor and she was likely to go slowly downhill as her condition increasingly put a strain on her body, until finally she succumbed to some infection.

  ‘Of course, we would like her to gain weight so that she has the reserves to fight infections, but then again, as she grows, that will also put a strain on her organs …’ he explained.

  ‘When I asked him if they couldn’t operate again, he said no, because no one in the UK was doing the kind of complex surgery she needed,’ I reminded Celia later, back in the flat, when Stella had gone for a nap and we were talking it all over. I was still shell-shocked and tearful, but Celia suddenly seized on what I’d just said.

  ‘So he did! But maybe that means they are doing it in another country, like America? I saw a newspaper article about a child who’d gone to America for life-saving surgery, though it cost thousands and thousands of pounds, so they’d had to do a lot of fundraising to pay for it.’

  I stared at her blankly. ‘But – wouldn’t the consultant have mentioned it, if there was anyone else capable of helping Stella?’

  ‘Not necessarily, I don’t think, if it was another country. Come on, it’s worth a go – Google search.’

  And that’s how we found Dr Rufford Beems’ experimental programme over in Boston, and a fresh spring of hope.

  We emailed the hospital in Boston straight away and after that things just seemed to snowball, so by the time Stella and I finally set out for Christmas with Ma in Sticklepond, I’d had Stella’s medical information sent over to Boston, a very kind and detailed response from the surgeon, and a reluctant agreement from my consultant that it was currently Stella’s only option, other than settling for palliative care.

  ‘Dr Beems says it would be best to do the operation before Stella’s fifth birthday, but the sooner the better,’ I told Celia when I called her to give her the latest update. ‘I’ll need as much time as possible to raise the money, though, because it’s going to be phenomenally expensive.’

  ‘Nothing is too expensive if it can cure her,’ Celia said. ‘We can do it.’

  ‘The surgeon is going to waive his own fees, since it’s still experimental surgery … and when he says experimental, my heart goes cold,’ I confessed.

  ‘Yes, but his success rate is already excellent and the alternative isn’t to be thought of,’ she pointed out. ‘It’s the best option. So now we need to work out a fundraising plan over Christmas. I’ll bring Will across and we’ll put our heads together.’

  ‘I … am doing the right thing?’ I asked her.

  ‘You’re doing the only possible thing,’ she assured me, but it suddenly felt as if Stella and I were drowning and someone had thrown us a lifebelt: I wasn’t quite sure how I could get my arms through it without letting go of her, but I’d have to give it my best shot.

  Chapter 4: Christmas Pudding

  I drove Stella up to Sticklepond a few days before Christmas with a boot full of hidden presents, the cake, turkey, mince pies and pudding – in fact, most of the ingredients we’d need for the festive season. Left to her own devices, I’m very sure Ma wouldn’t treat the day any differently from the rest of the year, but she went along with it all.

  As usual, I had the emergency numbers for Ormskirk Hospital and Alder Hey (the big children’s hospital in Liverpool) just in case – but I hoped we wouldn’t need them, because I was determined that this was going to be the best Christmas yet.

  ‘Toto has very sharp elbows,’ Stella said from her child seat in the back, as the dog adjusted himself into a sort of meagre fur lap rug. ‘Did you remember to bring his presents, Mummy?’

  ‘Yes, they’re in the boot.’

  ‘Will Father Christmas remember we’re staying with Grandma?’

  ‘I’m sure he will: he knows everything by magic.’

  ‘Like God,’ she agreed sagely. ‘Hal says God knows everything.’

  Hal is under-gardener at Winter’s End, the historic house just outside Sticklepond, and lives in a cottage on the edge of the estate, across the lane from Ma. A taciturn man with a bold roman nose and a surprising head of soft silvery-grey curls under his flat tweed cap, he’s been moonlighting as Ma’s gardener ever since she moved up there, and they seemed to have become increasingly friendly …

  ‘I like Hal,’ she added. ‘He makes me sweet milky tea in a speci
al blue cup when he brews up in his shed and last time we came he showed me a dead mole he found in the woods.’

  ‘That was kind of him,’ I said. Hal had created a cosy den in the old shed next to Ma’s studio in the garden, with a little Primus stove where he brewed up endless enamel pots of sweet tea for them both. Just like Dad, Hal seemed to wander in and out of the studio, or sit reading the paper in the corner, without appearing to bother Ma in the least.

  Despite looking so morose he was really a very nice man – and what’s more, he’d slowly brought Ma out of herself a little bit, to the point where, as well as the library, she went with him to the monthly Gardening Club, and the occasional game of darts at the Green Man with the other Winter’s End gardeners.

  Ottie Winter occasionally visited her too, because over the years her early patronage and help had turned into friendship. I’d often met her at our house in Hampstead, and Ma had taken me to one or two exhibitions of her sculptures, which are bold and figurative … sort of. You could say the same about Ma’s paintings.

  Her only other regular visitor seemed to be Raffy Sinclair, the Sticklepond vicar, despite her not being a churchgoer.

  ‘Are we nearly there yet? I wish we lived in Sticklepond. It’s much more fun than home,’ Stella said from the back seat.

  ‘Do you?’ I asked, startled and glancing at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘Wouldn’t you miss Primrose Hill and the zoo?’

  ‘No,’ she said firmly.

  Sometimes it was hard to remember that she was only three and a half going on a hundred … But I was just grateful we’d left the tricky subject of God behind and were not again pursuing the question of where people went when they were dead like we had the previous week, after I’d had to tell her that she wouldn’t be seeing one of her little friends from hospital again …