Review

'A delicious confection. A tender fable about love and the power of the imagination to both sustain and heal us.' --Laura Harrington, author of Alice Bliss

'A beautifully quirky gem of a novel.' --Laissez Faire

'[A] quirky and touching tale...' --Woman's Weekly

'If you like a good fairy tale then you may well like this...' --New Books Magazine

'...a heartwarming story about love and the reasons why it's sometimes easier and kinder to tell lies rather than the truth... simply enchanting.' --Bookish Magpie

A delicious confection. A tender fable about love and the power of the imagination to both sustain and heal us. --Laura Harrington, author of Alice Bliss

About the Author

Maria studied English Literature and French at the University of Kent and has trained to be a teacher, massage therapist and counsellor. She currently works at UCL and works as a volunteer counsellor for a national mental health charity.

Maria's debut novel Nutmeg was written during her final year of counsellor training and was influenced by her study of psychological defenses. Maria lives in Hertfordshire with her husband, son and cat.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

I came out a little underdone. Five more minutes and I would have been as big as the other children, my mother said. She blamed my pale complexion on her cravings for white bread (too much flour) and asked the doctor if I would have risen better had she done more exercise (too little air). The doctor wasn’t sure about this, but he was very concerned about the size of my feet. He suggested that next time my mother was pregnant she should try standing on her head or spinning in circles (spinning in circles on her head would be ideal) as this would aid the mixing process and result in a better proportioned baby.

My father was a French pastry chef with nimble fingers and a gentle touch. On my mother’s sixteenth birthday he led her to a cherry orchard and fed her warm custard tart under a moonlit sky. She knew it would never last, that his passion for short crust would always be greater than his passion for her, but she was intoxicated by his honey skin and cinnamon kisses. When they made love the earth shook and ripe cherries fell to the orchard floor. My father gathered the fallen cherries in a blanket and promised my mother that upon his return to Paris he would create a cherry pastry and name it after her, but he never had the chance. Four days after his return to France he was killed in a tragic pastry-mixing accident. The only part of him still visible above the dough was his right hand, in which he clutched a single, plump red cherry. Finding herself alone with a bun in the oven and no instructions, my mother set the timer on top of her parents’ fridge to nine months and waited patiently for it to ping.

Throughout her pregnancy my mother suffered all manner of complications. She was overcome by hot flushes several times a day which the midwife blamed on a faulty thermostat, and experienced such bad gas that a man from the local gas board had to come and give her a ten-point safety check. Her fingers swelled up like sausages so that every time she walked down the street the local dogs would chase her, snapping at her hands. She consumed a copious amount of eggs, not because she craved them, but because she was convinced the glaze would give me a nice golden glow. Instead, when the midwife slapped me on the back I clucked like a chicken.

I want you to understand that these are all my mother’s words, not mine. I myself am mentally stable and under no illusion that any of this ever actually happened. I have no idea what did happen during the first five years of my life because for some reason I can’t recall a thing. Not a birthday party, not a Christmas, not a trip to the seaside… not a thing. I don’t remember my first bedroom, the toys I played with, the games I liked. Perhaps people don’t remember much from those first five years, but I’m convinced I should remember something. Anything. Instead, all I have to go on are my mother’s memories, which in fact are not memories at all but ridiculous fantasies that reflect her obsession with food and cooking and deny me any insight into my early years.

Am I annoyed at her? Of course I am! I want to know how I started out in this world, who my father was, what I was like as a baby, normal things like that. But however much I ask I always get the same old stories: the spaghetti plant that sprouted in our window box on my first birthday; the Christmas turkey that sprang to life and released itself from the oven when I was two; the horseradish sauce that neighed unexpectedly… I mean, what is all this rubbish? I’m a twenty-one-years-old and yet my crazy mother still insists on telling me idiotic stories like I’m a baby. She’s told these stories so many times that she actually believes them. The story of her pregnancy is ridiculous enough, but you should hear the story of my birth.