Chapter 1
‘CHEESECAKE? CHEESE. CAKE?’
If the situation hadn’t been so dire, Marnie might have laughed at her mother coming across like an uppity Peter Kay.
‘Yes, Mum, cheesecake.’
‘You are not telling me that you’re leaving your job to . . .’ Judith Salt couldn’t finish off the sentence because the words were too ludicrous. Her mouth gave an involuntary spasm as if she had just bitten down on a pastry filled with battery acid.
Marnie might as well have said ‘I’m going to be a stripper’ or ‘I’m working in a brothel’ instead of ‘I’m making cheesecakes for a living’, though illicitly peddling sugar and fats was right up there with those sinful occupations, in the world according to Judith Salt.
Cheesecake was where it all started for Marnie really. Nearly twenty-two years ago, when she had first encountered the word.
Puddings and desserts were not allowed in Salty Towers, as Marnie came to think of both her childhood residences. At least not proper desserts: eclairs, cake with fudgy layers, a knickerbocker glory with a tower of whipped cream. Dessert was a banana, a baked apple, yogurt (low fat) and peaches that set her off gagging when her teeth made contact with their suede-like skins. Marnie’s diet at home was micro-managed and that included school packed lunches: no Penguins or Mr Kipling cakes for her in her Tupperware box. She wasn’t allowed to go to the birthday events of other children where there might be – drum roll – party food. If Marnie had been asked to give one word which summed up her childhood, she would have replied ‘hungry’. Hungry for food, hungry for attention, hungry for love.
Then, in the summer of 1994 old Mrs McMaid with the pronounced limp and the guttural Scottish accent moved in next door and Judith Salt thought it might be a nice gesture if ten-year-old Marnie offered to run errands for her in the six-week holidays. Her eight-year-old younger sister Gabrielle didn’t have the spare time, what with her singing, ballet, piano, flute, elocution and Spanish lessons. She had shown a natural propensity in all of these things, so Judith told anyone who cared to listen, therefore they were to be encouraged. Marnie had shown no such talents, which is why she escaped all the extra-curricular activities. She didn’t mind; she’d seen Gabrielle dance in a show and decided she had all the lightness of a Yorkshire pudding made with cement and was grounded for a week by her mother for tittering in the performance. And Sarah Brightman certainly had nothing to worry about. So Marnie was sent off to do her Christian duty and be of service to Mrs McMaid, with a firm dictate that she was not to be given any food whilst she was there as she was on a strict diet for health reasons.
It was torture for young Marnie because Mrs McMaid made jam, and lots of it. And she told Marnie how wonderful it tasted slathered on her fresh-from-the-oven white bread and warm scones, with curls of creamy butter that she kept in a big jug of iced water in her fridge. And she let Marnie whisk up bowls of cake mix, which smelled better than the baked end product, and line tins with circles of pastry for fruit tarts. Marnie’s stomach growled more that summer than it had in all her previous years put together.
‘Och, it’s a shame I canna give you any food, hen. What’s the matter wi’ you?’ Mrs McMaid asked her one day, absently handing her a jam spoon to lick before hurriedly snatching it back.
‘Nothing,’ replied Marnie with a sigh loaded with disappointment. ‘Mum just doesn’t want me to get any fatter.’
‘But you’re no’ fat,’ Mrs McMaid exclaimed, and her grey shaggy eyebrows creased in consternation. ‘In fact your mother and your sister could dae with fattening up a wee bit. It’s nae good fir you walking roon wi’ all your bones on show.’
And she passed the spoon back to Marnie whose hand almost shook with a seismic wave of joy as she reached out to take it and lift it to her lips. Her tongue snaked out in slow motion towards the sugary raspberry jam and when it made contact, her taste buds began to sing soprano. She closed her eyes and savoured the rush of sweetness and then she swallowed with a satisfying gulp.
Then the guilt washed over her like a tsunami.
Her mum would know. An all-seeing camera in the sky would report her sin back and she began to sob and Mrs McMaid enfolded her in a floral-scented cuddle and said over and over again, ‘It’s no’ right. It’s no’ right at all.’ Then she gave her another spoonful to help her feel better.
Contrary to her belief, her mother could not smell the licks of raspberry preserve on her and the relief that she was not indelibly permeated with it was palpable. That night she dreamt of swimming in a huge lake of jam, like an enormous ball pool filled with red berries instead of plastic spheres. She couldn’t wait to run around to Mrs McMaid’s the next morning in her cleaning clothes. She decided she was going to risk a mouthful of cake mix next.
But that day, instead of a sponge or scones or biscuits, she found that Mrs McMaid was making a cheesecake. The disappointment fell on Marnie like a hod full of bricks carried by a drunken builder.
‘Cheese cake?’ Marnie wrinkled up her nose. She envisaged a pile of melted smelly goo in the middle of a sponge and was a little bit sick in her mouth. ‘That sounds disgusting.’
‘Just you wait and see,’ laughed Mrs McMaid, unwrapping a packet of Digestives. She put them in a plastic bag and gave them to Marnie to crush carefully into crumbs with the rolling pin whilst she melted a block of butter in a pan. Then she combined both ingredients until the crumbs were all soaked, then she pressed them flat in the bottom of a round tin with her potato masher before putting it in the fridge.
‘That’s the base. Now comes the topping,’ said Mrs McMaid, taking a tub out of the fridge. ‘This is crrream cheese. Mascarrrpone.’ It had a wonderful exotic name, especially with all those rich, rolling, Scottish ‘r’s, far nicer than Edam, thought young Marnie. She beat at the strange white stuff with her wooden spoon, then whipped up some double cream until it stood in soft peaks when the mixer blades were lifted out. She put them both in her blue and white stripey bowl, and added some unholy white sugar which she stored in a jar with odd dried-up bendy brown sticks.
‘That’s vanilla,’ said Mrs McMaid and held up the sugar jar for Marnie to sniff. The little girl felt her nasal receptors sigh with delight. ‘All the way frae Madagascarrr’. It sounded somewhere dangerous and dark where spice wars might occur.
‘And then there’s this,’ said the old lady, adding a pinch of something into the mix from an old square tin she brought down from her shelf. ‘Ma secret ingrrredient, passed doon frae ma motherrr ’n’ her motherrr’s motherrr,’ she added in a low voice full of drama. Then she whispered what that secret ingredient was and told Marnie never to tell anyone else. A mere nip of it would make her cheesecakes different to anyone else’s, promised Mrs McMaid.
Then, with her large spatula, Mrs McMaid plopped the creamy mix onto the cooled crumbs and put it into the fridge for an hour before removing it from the tin and pouring over the raspberries and strawberries and bilberries that she had softened in a pan with a large spoonful of the vanilla sugar. Marnie was mesmerised as she watched the shiny glaze walk across the top and drizzle down the sides onto the plate. Oh my, the cheesecake looked wonderful, the best of all the cakes they had made in the summer.