Recipes for Melissa (25 page)

Still the lurch.

‘I’d give it ten feet,’ she was holding up her hand to halt him. ‘Should have stayed home but busy schedule.’

‘We could have fixed cover.’

‘Yeah I know. Like I keep saying. Way too keen.’

‘Would you like a coffee later?’ he hadn’t known he was going to say this. They hadn’t sat down together since the supper that was not a date. ‘At ten feet. Obviously.’

She laughed. ‘Sure. Though I’ll probably make it Lemsip. Just let me infect a few more freshers first.’

‘My office? Eleven?’ He was reaching into his pocket, for what he had no idea.

She checked her watch. ‘OK.’

He bought two small packets of biscuits from the cafeteria en route, agonising ridiculously over which kind she might prefer – shortbread or bourbons? – and was upset that she was already waiting for him.

‘Sorry. Am I late?’

‘No. I was early,’ she was filling the kettle in the little kitchenette alongside the office. ‘Hope you don’t mind me taking over but I badly need decongestant.’ She reappeared to pour the Lemsip powder into a mug on his desk as Max set up his cafetière.

‘So how are things with Freddie? I’ve been meaning to ask.’

She blew out a long puff of air, stretching out her bottom lip so that the upward flow lifted her fringe. ‘Of course I went completely over the top. Assumed he was dealing crack cocaine. Turns out it was very much simpler.’

‘Oh?’

‘A girl.’

‘Ah.’

‘Her parents were away. An opportunity not to be missed – obviously.’

Max smiled and then immediately apologised but Anna was grinning too, throwing the Lemsip sachet into a bin. ‘Takes you back, doesn’t it?’

‘So you two are OK, then?’

‘Yes. We seem to be. Apart from the new panic that he’ll get her pregnant. He’s at the obsessed stage. First sex I suspect. But I can’t be cross. Rather remember that myself. And at least he’s telling me the truth now.’

Max poured the boiling water.

‘And she’s very pretty.’ Anna had her hand up to her mouth again, first to conceal and then to actively point at her cold sores. ‘Memo to self. Do not invite son’s gorgeous new girlfriend around when you are impersonating Godzilla’

‘Can I repay the favour, Anna?’ Max hadn’t known that he was going to say this either, his vocal chords and brain apparently now disconnected.

‘Sorry?’

‘Supper.’

‘You are offering to cook for me, Professor?’

‘I was thinking of a restaurant actually.’

He let this hang in the air. Dangerous, unplanned words.

Her face said immediately that she was absorbing the significance. A restaurant made it a date.

She sipped her drink. ‘Can we wait for the cold sores to go?’

The lurch.

‘A week should do it.’

‘OK. Sure,’ he was topping up his coffee, then looking her in the face, wishing that he had the courage to tell her to put her hand down. To stop worrying about how she looked because he really hated the embarrassment in her eyes. ‘You tell me when’s good.’

‘And how’s Melissa? After the holiday? Has she made a decision on that new contract? Writing for one of the nationals, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes. A consumer column for a tabloid. She still hasn’t decided. She’s had a lot on.’

‘Oh?’

Max thought of the book again. How just last night he had lain in bed trying to imagine Eleanor sitting there writing it, which was not what he wanted to think about. Not here with Anna.

‘I’ll tell you at dinner.’

Anna was looking closely at his face and appeared concerned suddenly.

‘You OK, Max?’

How did this work? How could it possibly be all right that he wanted to talk to Anna about Eleanor?

‘OK. You tell me at dinner, Max. When I am looking less scary.’

And then very soon they were scurrying off to their next seminars, Max resisting the urge to glance back over his shoulder to watch her leave.

Half an hour later as he was just getting into his stride on the introduction to quantitative economics with a group of very promising second years, there was the screeching interruption of the fire alarm. Max turned away from the whiteboard. He hadn’t got the bloody email. Typical.

Max hated fire drills.

He waited for the long shrill bell to break into the familiar sequences of three – the cue that this was a dress rehearsal. It didn’t.

Shit.

‘OK. Everyone. Fire drill.’

So this was not a drill?

‘Our exit route is right out of this room and then the fire door is directly opposite. Gather your things. Nice and calm. Sorry about the intrusion.’

‘So it’s a drill?’ several voices at once.

‘Doesn’t matter what it is. We have to behave as if it is real.’

‘Can’t we just ignore it?’

‘No. Sorry. University policy. More than my pension’s worth. Up you get. Nice and calmly. Turn right and then the fire door opposite. Lucky for you – it’s so close. Out. Quickly. Come on. All of you. Then I have the excitement of proving that an economics professor can actually count.’

Max listened to the mumblings and grumblings, urging them to hurry. He counted the heads. Stood behind the group as they snaked right and then out the door onto the grass.
Eight. Nine. Ten
. ‘Our rendezvous point is the green opposite the library. I’ll see you there in just a mo.’

And then Max felt his heart beginning to race as he checked his phone, calling up the departmental timetable to check where she was. Shit. Seminar room eleven. Third floor.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Max turned the other way and headed back to the main stairwell where Alistair Hill – one of the caretakers and departmental fire wardens – was standing with his arms outstretched, barring the way.

‘Other way please, Professor Dance.’ There was smoke on the stairwell. Max could now see it quite clearly.

‘So this is not a drill?’

‘No. Not a drill,’ there was crackling on Alistair’s walkie-talkie, pinned to his belt. Also his mobile phone was ringing.

‘So what’s happening?’

Alistair answered the phone and the walkie-talkie in turn, holding up his hand to halt Max’s inquiries. A panicked, staccato conversation, impossible to decipher from one side only. Finally he put both back down, looking across at Max again.

‘Kitchen of the main cafeteria. Faulty equipment. Fire brigade on the way.’

‘So what about the people upstairs?’ Max was glancing up the stairwell, trying to work out which route they could take. The rooms were directly over the cafeteria. He was trying to remember the last time he had used the rooms himself. Was there an external staircase? A fire escape? He couldn’t remember. Never paid enough attention in all the bloody fire briefings.

‘I’m sorry. I’m going to have to ask you to turn around, Professor Dance. Go the other way, please. We have this all under control.’

32

MAX – 2011

There was a part of Melissa that wished she was back in work. She missed the rhythm of it. The in-tray overflowing with letters from pensioners, ripped off by smooth-talking con artists. The noise of the keyboards tap tapping all around her. The furrowed brows as deadlines approached. The strong coffee and the raised voices. Journalists liked a good debate, when time permitted, and she was missing that.

But no. All around her was now too quiet. Melissa was still on leave from the Bartley Observer to make the decision over the contract. Sam meantime was suddenly crazy busy. As expected, he had been offered a partnership and was putting together a financial package to buy into the business. His niche was to be converting and extending listed properties, for which he had a good track record, having just led a project which made a feature in a Sunday supplement. But there was a lot to sort suddenly. A lot of networking. Meetings with the bank. Interviews with the trade press. Also there was the challenge of supporting Marcus. He and Diana had already consulted lawyers and the mud was flying thick and fast. Sam’s dad was helping out financially – setting Marcus up in a rented flat while he tried to sort the financial mess.

All this left Sam wearing dark bags under his eyes, with Melissa, in contrast, juggling free time at the flat. She was supposed to be using this space to prepare for a final meeting with the editor of the tabloid.

Melissa had put together cuttings from her consumer success stories and jottings for new campaign ideas but she was now distracted – unable to get the journal, the cooking and the seeds for some kind of blog out of her mind. She was still wondering if she dared pitch this also to the editor. The idea of sharing her own memories stirred by the cooking with an open invitation for others to do the same. She was well aware that there were many experts writing brilliantly on food but that was not what she had in mind at all. She wanted to write about the surprise of the novice. The continuum. The nostalgia and the importance of recipe twists and special memories handed down from generation to generation.

Alongside this, she was also distracted by a new and secret worry – spending hours online checking out the BRCA1 and 2 cancer gene.

It was not until Melissa began looking into it properly that she realised just how much she had misunderstood.

Max had raised the subject with her only once and very tentatively – saying that when she was older she might want to talk it through with her GP.

Did they not know about this when Mummy was ill?

It was new, Melissa. All very new.

In her teens, Melissa had no desire whatsoever to look into it. All she knew was that women with the faulty gene had both breasts cut off. Good God. She remembered once standing in front of the mirror naked and feeling very faint.

Now she read page after page online. Very quickly it became apparent that the research had come a very long way since the time that her mother fell ill.

The faulty gene was indeed linked to both breast and ovarian cancer – just as they supposed back in the 1990s – but it was not straightforward. A cell needed a number of ‘mistakes’ in a genetic code before it might become cancerous. Being born with a gene fault didn’t mean you would definitely get cancer… but it certainly increased the risk.

Official webpages of leading cancer charities explained that BRCA1 and BRCA2 – discovered around the time Eleanor fell ill – were the first breast cancer genes to be clearly identified. Anyone carrying them had an increased risk – estimates varying between 45% and 90% – of getting cancer in their lifetime. Options for treatment ranged from the extremity of a double mastectomy to the watch-and-wait scenario of regular screening.

Genetic testing was now an option for anyone with a strong family history of breast cancer or the associated ovarian cancer. To be tested via the NHS these days, you usually needed a living relative with cancer who could be checked first to verify if a gene fault was at play – and more importantly to pinpoint which one.

Melissa at first thought this closed the subject down for her. But more research revealed there could be flexibility depending on the family tree. Also the NHS route, though preferable, was not the only option. Further Googling revealed the inevitable. Genetic testing now had a booming private market. Melissa, with her journalistic hat, was immediately uncomfortable. She imagined frightened women having this test when they did not really need it – also without considering the full consequences.

But it did mean that she potentially had an option to be tested without going through her GP – and without anyone, by which she meant Sam and her father, knowing.

Further reading confirmed Melissa’s risk factors did not look good. That her mother and grandmother had died relatively young from linked cancers was the big red flag – especially in a family dominated by men. Melissa was also surprised to discover that men could be silent carriers of the gene fault. In either case a mother or father with BRCA1 or BRCA2 had a fifty-fifty chance of passing it on to their children.

The reason experts liked to examine the blood from a living cancer patient and relative first was because it allowed them to try to isolate very precisely the gene fault in play. This then made subsequent ‘predictive’ testing of any relatives much more successful and accurate. Testing without the blood from a living relative was possible but not ideal.

UK Guidelines recommended expert counselling but some online companies were happy to take your spit by post and return a test within eight weeks. Melissa had no idea on accuracy.

She took a break from the screen to make strong coffee and set her mother’s book in front of her. She put her hand flat on the cover and tilted her head to the corner of the room, picturing her at her desk – fountain pen in hand.

She felt a huge surge suddenly of compassion for her mother – facing all of that on her own. Melissa pressed her lips very hard together and suddenly knew for sure.

Like remembering a fact that was the answer in a quiz – that name not quite taking shape. That person just on the periphery of your vision.

Absolute clarity suddenly.

Melissa had realised for some time – from the early days of reading the book – that she had been angry deep down at her mother for not saying goodbye. But that was no longer it. Not any more.

All this confusion over Sam. She had imagined that what he said in the car in Cyprus during that row was perhaps right after all. That she was simply against marriage because she was
afraid
. That she didn’t believe in happy ever afters, scarred by what she and her father had gone through. But now she was understanding better.

It was about the children playing in the fountain. About the
parent
thing. It had hit her when Sam confessed just how much he wanted to be a father. Melissa had always guessed Sam might like to have a family but now there was no pretending she did not know how very
strongly
he felt.

Since being offered the partnership, he had been excited about the extra money he would be earning. And had been emboldened to show her on his home computer all the design plans he had been putting together for the so-called dream family home.