CHAPTER ONE - APPLE PIE

Her first memory of apple pie was this. She sat on the front door step. It was hard and cold and she had been crying for ever.

Blood welled up from her knee (Could she have known then that was what was happening, she wondered? Anyhow, this was how she remembered it.) and dribbled down her leg onto the lace edge of her beautiful white sock. Her mother would be very angry. "Brenda, " she had said before she went out to play, "No messing about. We have to go to Aunt Maude's soon and I do so want you to look nice for once." As for her shoe, she had no idea where it was. One of the big boys had run off with it, daring her to chase after him. And she had tried but she couldn't run properly with only one shoe. She had tripped and hurt her knee: that was when she started crying. She had been sitting on the step for a long time and was getting very hungry

And then Dad had come home. "Brenda, you are in the wars," he'd said as he picked her up and gave her a cuddle. They'd gone to look for Mum but she was lying on the floor and didn't seem to want to wake up. There had been a lot of rushing about and noise and faces she hadn't known. Dad looked as if he were crying, but at four she already knew that dads didn't ever cry so she was briefly puzzled. Someone must have bandaged her knee because her next memory was a big sticking plaster with a smiley face drawn on it. She was still crying.

That was when she had discovered that Apple Pie made everything all right. "Now this will make you feel better," Aunt Maude said and gave her a whole apple pie with a dribble of sweet milk over it. It was warm and took a long time to eat with a spoon. Aunt Maud had been right. It did make her feel better. "Thank you, " she had said. "That was magic apple pie."

Funny, Brenda thought. After all these years she couldn't remember her mother's face. When she tried to remember her all she could see was a photograph that had been on the mantelpiece at Aunt Maude's. Mum was smiling to the camera and looked as if she were about to say something. She was wearing a flapper dress, a feather in her hair and exaggerated make-up so it must have been taken at some show or other. When she tried to remember all she ever saw in her mind was a slender huddled figure on the floor and the photo she had seen many times as she grew up.

And yet she could remember exactly how her aunt had 'made' the magic apple pie.

RECIPE FOR MAGIC APPLE PIE

Take one individual apple pie out of the cardboard box
Remove the foil cup
Place pie in microwave oven and heat on full for 30 seconds.
Open a small tin of evaporated milk.
Take hot pie from oven and place in a bowl
Dribble over some evaporated milk.
Eat, sitting on the kitchen table with your legs dangling.

Twenty years on Brenda still used the same recipe when she needed cheering up.

11/01/2011

Author's Note:
Extract from Day one's 2000 words. Tell me, does it work for you? Does it make you want to read more? Or perhaps it just makes you want to go eat pie? Yeah! Me too.

Posted on 11/01/2011
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