They cleared up the kitchen, did a bit of dusting and then Mrs McMaid said:
‘If you and I were to test oot the cheesecake, would you tell yer mammy?’
Marnie swore on the big bible that Mrs McMaid kept on her sideboard that she wouldn’t. So, they set up two deckchairs in the corner of the garden where the pale pink roses smelt of honey, then Mrs McMaid poured out two glasses of her homemade lemonade and passed Marnie a funny fork where the left outer prong was thicker than the others, and a whole equilateral triangle of the very berry cheesecake served up on one of Mrs McMaid’s lovely plates with bluebells painted on it.
Nothing could have tasted better. Nothing in the whole wide world was finer than Marnie’s first mouthful of that cheesecake. As they sat in the sun Mrs McMaid recounted all the flavours of them that she’d made in her time – and long before the fad came over from America, she said. Some with rum and raisins, others with chopped-up Mars bars in them, lemon and lime ones, salted toffee ones . . . And the bases – ginger nuts, crumbled coconut macaroons, minty chocolate biscuits . . . so many variations. Marnie wanted to make them all with Mrs McMaid. And the old lady laughed and said that they would – and more.
Mrs McMaid made cakes for fun and for profit. She made them to give to poor old souls who went to the same church as she did and needed a pick-me-up. And she made them for the woman from the big teashop in Ossett who pretended to her customers that she’d baked them herself.
‘But that’s lying and cheating,’ said Marnie, one day when the tea-shop woman with the fat legs and high heels had collected her load.
Mrs McMaid jiggled her old battered purse.
‘It is sort of, but I don’t mind,’ she replied. ‘I might as well sell a few because I could never eat all the cakes I love to make.’
‘I could,’ said Marnie and Mrs McMaid laughed and then asked what they should do that day. Marnie could choose. Anything she liked.
‘A rum and raisin cheesecake,’ said Marnie. It sounded naughty, illegal and exotic.
‘Rum and raisin it is,’ agreed Mrs McMaid, who produced from her pantry a jar of raisins which had been soaked in rum and were fat and sticky and smelt wickedly intoxicating.
That late August afternoon, they sat in the garden with a pitcher of Mrs McMaid’s blood-orangeade and a slice of rum and raisin cheesecake. It was Saturday and Marnie would be back on school on Monday.
‘But I can still come after tea and at weekends and half-term is only six weeks away,’ said Marnie, wishing she never had to go back to school again but could stay here with Mrs McMaid making cakes – even if they were for Mrs Fatty-legs.
‘Of course you can,’ said Mrs McMaid. ‘You’re always welcome in ma wee hoos.’ And Mrs McMaid suddenly put down her plate, lifted up Marnie’s face with her small, thin hand and smiled at her.
‘If I’d have hed a daughter, I’d’ve wanted her to be just like you, Miss Marnie.’
And Marnie didn’t say it aloud but she wished she had been her daughter and not Judith Salt’s. She knew then that she loved Mrs McMaid with her whole heart and knew that Mrs McMaid loved her back as much. Marnie felt as if the sun wasn’t only shining outside that day, but inside her too, as if she’d swallowed it.
The next afternoon, Marnie went around to Mrs McMaid’s with a cooked chicken leg that her mother had sent, and found the old lady at the bottom of the stairs, cold and lifeless with her body all twisted up. Marnie rang for the ambulance and waited with her old friend until it came and a minute before it pulled up outside, she took Mrs McMaid’s secret ingredient tin from the shelf and put it into her bag. It hadn’t felt wrong to do so then, and it never had since. Mrs McMaid would have wanted her to have it. She knew without any doubt she should be its rightful guardian now.
Marnie didn’t make any more cheesecakes for years. Not until she had grown up and bought her own house and someone at work asked if she’d donate a cake for a fundraising event. She made a raspberry cheesecake with a sprinkle of the secret ingredient and she remembered that wonderful summer and dear Mrs McMaid and her kindness. Marnie’s cheesecake went down a storm. No one had ever tasted anything like it. It had that indefinable . . . mmm, they said. And whatever it was, it was magic.
Chapter 2
Four months before the cheesecake conversation with her mother, Marnie walked into Café Caramba HQ in swanky central Leeds to find the new head of Merchandising in situ in his office. He was certainly a sight to warm up the frosty first working day of the year, her dilating pupils decided: tall, slim, dark hair with an unruly wave, brown-black eyes, sharp suit and a bleached-tooth smile worthy of a Colgate commercial.
If ever a man suited his name, it was Justin Fox, Marnie came to realise over the next fortnight. He was super good-looking with an arrogant swagger in his shoulders that said he was quite aware of his effect on the female workforce – and Glen from accounts. Marnie couldn’t stop her heart giving an extra thump of pleasure whenever her eyes came to rest on him, but she had no intention of advertising the fact. It wasn’t her fault, she kept telling herself, it was just her body reacting to ‘the type’ of man it had decided was a match for her. Jez, Robert, Harry, Aaron – all tall, dark, handsome snappy dressers. All tall, dark, handsome, complicated arseholes. And she didn’t want another one walking into her heart and stamping all over it with his size twelve lawn aerator spiked shoes – thank you!
She suspected that she was pretty safe from Mr Fox though. She had never felt the warmth of his tobacco-brown eyes coming to rest on her back/bum/tights whenever she passed his desk or when they were in meetings together. No flirty banter bounced between them, no hunting for her attention occurred. She pigeon-holed him as the sort who would go for skinny, leggy, blondes, and she was none of those things. And that could only be good news.
Marnie knew that she functioned much better without a man in her life, corrupting her focus. Whenever she didn’t have one of them trying to screw with her head, she could plough her energies into creating, forecasting, delivering. Work made her happier than any man ever had and she loved her job. She’d been at Café Caramba for six years now and worked her socks off for the company. When the last department head – Jerry ‘Tosser’ Thomson – left two years ago, there had been no one better to inherit the mantle than Marnie, even though HR had a bias towards men for the top jobs. No man wanted Beverage Marketing, though, because it was in a terrible state so the job slid easily to her. But Marnie Salt proved that she could turn a ship around in a force fourteen crosswind. Beverage Marketing was no longer a joke barge but a sleek cruise liner. There was even a waiting list in HR for people who wanted to join its crew and Marnie’s reputation, as captain, couldn’t have been higher. She was recognised throughout Café Caramba as naturally gifted at organising; an ideas person, an intuitive grafter with foresight who scoffed at comfort zones and a trailblazer for female employees of the company because there had been no other women top execs there – ever. Though Café Caramba, on paper, did most things that a progressive twenty-first-century workplace should be doing, the fat cats liked to see men in their boardroom, give or take the women in wipe-clean aprons pouring out coffees and distributing sandwiches. There wasn’t so much a glass ceiling there as a two-foot-thick lead one covered with razor wire.