I still remember the number of bookshops we had to trawl through before we eventually found a cookbook with the recipe in a marketplace the day before we left.
I can’t think of Huguenot Torte without thinking of Sara. She couldn’t wait to try her hand at making it as soon as we got home, and after that first successful trial it became a Kirwan family favourite. ‘Huge No Tart’ Beth used to call it when she was a little girl, trying to twist her tongue around strange words. But like father like daughter, she always welcomed the dessert with the same wildly enthusiastic ‘yes please’ that I did.
The ten weeks since Sara died is the longest I’ve gone without Huguenot Torte in 23 years. There’s been no place for its sweet stickiness, even if I knew how to make it. I’ve been falling from the awful emptiness of one day without Sara to the next, living - no, just not dying- on a mixture of Cornflakes and Domino’s.
It’s been 66 days since I’ve seen Beth. Like me, she’s been wrestling grief alone. She went back to college the day after the funeral. She tells me during stilted conversations on the phone that the end of semester is a busy time, but assignments and exams never stopped her coming home for the odd dinner before.
She’s coming by tonight. She says it’s just a quick stop to pick up some textbooks, but enough of the fog has lifted for me to know I have to do something to stop losing her too.
Being more au fait with football than food, I’m not sure my attempt at dessert has been very good. I’m not even sure what I’m trying to do. Sara would know whether unsalted butter was strictly necessary, or whether cheating with the regular kind was ok. My translation of what a quarter cup of all-purpose flour is was a rough guess at best. I’ve no idea what a two quart baking dish looks like, and I know I added some tears that the recipe didn’t call for into the vanilla extract.
The sound of the back door opening jolts me from my reverie and suddenly Beth is in the kitchen. Looking straight past me, she sees my attempt at Huguenot Torte sitting on the hob.
‘Oh Dad, it never looked like that when Mum made it,” she whispers tearfully, allowing herself to fall into my desperate hug.
As my tears fall into Beth’s hair I know that I’ve lost Huguenot Torte and Sara forever. But I think I’ve just found my little girl again.
